Ever wondered what happened to Eddie Parish? Eddie and Judy were members at Highland, and Eddie taught in the Marriage and Family Institute at ACU. They now run the Parish Hermitage in Louisiana. As the website says: “All are welcome: The searching pilgrims of faith, the weary marriages seeking new focus and vitality… or anyone who hears the call to seek their spirit’s Source. In the spiritually safe and intimate confines of the Parish Hermitage, individuals, couples, and small family groups may discover afresh the life that Jesus offers.”
I want to encourage you to mark this site. I have a lot of confidence in Eddie as a Christian leader and therapist. I’m especially thinking of how helpful this could be to marriages needing a fresh start!
Here’s the obit for Mary Loraine Buffett (mother of Jimmy Buffett).
I’ve talked to several people recently who seem to have much more assurance about healing than scripture offers. I like this insight from Larry Crabb (meaningful to one who prayed for his daughter’s healing and was disappointed):
“How do parents of a suffering daughter cope? . . . To believe she could be healed and to pray for it, fervently, is Christian; to believe she would be healed if enough people with enough faith prayed is anti-Christian. It is the old way. It is demonic. It elevates our blessings above God’s glory.”
Now . . . on a bit lighter note this Friday, here’s a note about a young man who had a better year of earning in 2002 than I did. Our beloved SpongeBob, maintaining his humble roots by living in a pineapple at Bikini Bottom, made $800 million last year. Will I still know about the SpongeBobs and SquarePants of the world after Christopher is grown?
Today, a quote from David Wolpe’s wonderful book Making Loss Matter:
“My deepest prayer to God used to be to spare me from the pains of life that I so dreaded. Now I see that that is the prayer of a child. As a man I do not pray for a life without pain. Instead I pray: ‘Dear God, I know that there will be pain in my life, and sadness, and loss. Please give me the strength to create a life, together with those whom I love, where loss will not be empty, where pain will not be purposeless. Help me find the faith to make loss matter. Amen.’“
Last Sunday night our covenant group went through an exercise to help us explore one another’s early years. We completed several sentences and then shared them with everyone. One of them was this: “I grew up in a home with . . . (name common meals your family had).”
Here’s part of my list. I grew up in a home with fresh blueberries and blackberries; with bacon, mustard, and biscuit sandwiches; with a hot breakfast every morning; with dessert after every lunch and dinner; with fried chicken and mashed potatoes for Sunday dinner; with homemade ice cream; with bell peppers stuffed with rice and hamburger meat; with cinnamon pies; with pork chops; with squirrel and dumplings . . . . Wow, Mom–you were/are an amazing cook!
Anyone hungry?
Now how about you? What food can you smell from the home where you grew up?
Plus, I have to run . . . . It’s time to drop Chris’s frozen waffle in the toaster. (His mom’s a great cook, too. But with both parents working, breakfast is whatever is quick and relatively healthy. I often have a little salmon with my Fiber One cereal . . . but that doesn’t seem to be catching on in my family.)
“Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightening, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, ‘How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.’” Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessing
Thanks to Jeff Jenkins for this link to an article by Dan Kimball on the essence of the emerging church movement — a movement that is seeking to turn from a consumer mentality to a missional one.
As of today, fall is here. I can feel it! Or maybe it’s that I’m on the first flight out of Abilene this morning! Perhaps it’s exhaustion I’m feeling.
As I’ve read the student information sheets I asked my ACU students to fill out, I’m struck again by their responses to my question, “Who has influenced you most spiritually?” I guess it would be obvious that most would say moms and that many would say dads. But still, to read what they said reminds me again of what an amazing opportunity it is to be a parent.
You might read these and imagine a bunch of spiritual over-achieving parents. But I’ll bet they’re just people like most of us–people who did their best, blew it quite often, and have a few regrets. But the impact on their children of their constant love and spiritual devotion (despite all of the failings) is enormous. HANG IN THERE!!
A question we wrestled again with yesterday at a staff retreat: What is the difference between a church having a mission program and a church being missional?
One group that is addressing this important question is The Gospel and Our Culture Network. (Follow the link to their publications.)