I didn’t expect to feel this sad.

But the feelings are like the ones I had when I watched my dad decline and die two summers ago.

Except these feelings are not for a person; they are for a building.

Just a couple of months ago, my son’s fifth grade class “graduated” from Paul A. Schalm Elementary School in Clawson, Michigan. They were the 65th and final class to graduate from the school. In the days after they left, crews began gutting it for demolition.

We all knew it was coming. A few years ago, residents in Clawson voted to build a new elementary school, tear down Schalm, and sell the land for new housing. I voted for it. So did my wife. We thought then, as we do now, that making this change is the best course for our school district.

My mind made a sound decision; now my heart must grieve the cost.

Walk out our front door, turn right, walk a few paces to the corner, turn...

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When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
When you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
And the flame shall not consume you.
–Book of Isaiah 43:2

Thanks to Heather for sending this verse to me the other day.

Three things stand out here.

First, water and fire are not a matter of if, but when.

“When” you pass through waters and rivers.

“When” you walk through fire.

Go far enough in this life and you will have to ford dangerous floods and tread water that is over your head. Go long enough in this world and you will go through hell.

Second, God promises God’s people that the water will not drown them and the fire will not consume them. This is not a promise that individuals will not drown or burn. One of the best Christian men I ever knew drowned a month after we...

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Annual physicals are not what they used to be.

One year, in my early 20s, the doctor gave me a 10-minute exam and told me I was the picture of health.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” he said.

I smiled to myself as I thought of the junk food I ate every day.

I was bullet-proof.

Up-and-coming. Young.

“Look out world,” I thought. “If cholesterol, fat, and processed sugar can’t stop me, ain’t nothin’ gonna slow me down!”

That’s what I said.

But that was 25 years ago.

Yesterday, my doctor took an hour to examine my 48-year old body.

“You don’t have any problems yet, but you need to lose 25 pounds,” he said. “With your family’s medical history, you’re at risk. I want you to change your diet and start getting three hours of cardiovascular exercise every week.”

And, after putting me through a battery of questions and spending 15...

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Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
But rescue us from the evil one.

(From the “the Lord’s Prayer” in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9-13)

“Hallowed be your name.”

The closest we come to using the word “hallow” anymore is about once a year when it’s time for “Hallow-een.”

Think about it: When was the last time you heard someone (including yourself) drop the word “hallow” or “hallowed” into a conversation?

Hallowed means “holy, venerated, sacred.”

Jesus prays to his (our) Father in heaven: “Hallowed be your name.”

In my church, we sing and talk a lot about glorifying the name of God. For example, we have a song that repeats the line...

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As a rule, I don’t write on Saturday nights. I chill out with my family, stay up and watch some Hallmark Channel with my wife, and go to bed early enough to be fresh for Sunday morning worship.

Tonight, however, I can’t relax. I can think of nothing but today’s apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan or follower of Mr. Trump. He did not get my vote in 2016 or 2020 and he will not get my vote in 2024. Here, I will summarize, in brief, my reasons in two points.

First, I believe that too many Americans (and Christians) imagine presidents as their leaders. I have a Leader who knows me and who gives me the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Insofar as I follow my Leader, I am able to serve my family, church, and community. I don’t need or want someone in Washington to be my leader. I want...

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Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but the interests of others… (Letter to the Philippians 2:3-4).

“It would break my heart to see you playing that piano.”

Dad said this to our host as we walked through the auditorium of a little Church of Christ congregation in rural Ohio.

We were dinner guests of that congregation’s minister and his family. Dad brought along Mom, my two sisters, and me. Before we ate, we got a tour of the small church building.

We belonged to a Church of Christ congregation that read the Bible in a way that forbade instruments in worship. This was no small matter, but what we in the Church of Christ call a “salvation issue.” That is: instruments in worship would do no less than damn participants to hell.

So...

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My dad, a conservative Church of Christ preacher, did not like some of what the public schools taught his three kids.

In sixth grade, it was the Big Bang and evolution.

In sixth and ninth grade, it was sex education.

In high school, some teachers spoke in favor of abortion and gay marriage.

On the basis of his reading of the Bible, Dad opposed those things.

But as far as I know, he never thought about homeschooling or moving us to a private Christian school.

Nor did he run for school board to try to change the schools themselves.

Why not?

I think he had at least two reasons.

First, Dad told me more than once that truth has nothing to fear. If one has truth, he can face challenges to the truth with chin up and a cheerful whistle.

At best, our understanding of truth will pass the test and prove to be true indeed.

At worst, we learn that what thought to...

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Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
But rescue us from the evil one.

“Our Father in heaven.”

What could be more hug-you-tight intimate than Father?

What could be more light-years distant than heaven?

“Father” is as as close as “heaven” is far.

The effect of putting “Father” and “heaven” together is to bring us as close to heaven as curling up on Daddy’s lap.

But is also reminds us that the Father in heaven is not much like fathers on earth. The sun, more than 94 million miles away, is the source and sustainer of all life as we know it on earth. But anything that gets within a few million miles turns to vapor in the sun’s awesome...

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Americans know this line as perhaps the single most important phrase in their Declaration of Independence. Indeed, that phrase, more than any other, may be what Americans might call their national creed.

But when the delegates to the Continental Congress began signing their names to the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776, this “creed” was little more than hope. For one, the existence of the United States as an independent nation did not become a sure thing until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. But, more than that, the truths that the Declaration claimed to be “self-evident,” the rights it claimed to be “unalienable” for “all men,” in...

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I finally found a word to express why our national politics are such a danger to Christianity and the church of Christ in the United States.

That word is pessimism, which is “the tendency to see the worst aspects of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.”

Both political parties have their fans pigging out on pessimism these days. I see more than a few Christians eating it up and regurgitating it.

Why is this a danger to Christianity and the church of Christ?

First, it pre-*occupies us with something other than what occupied Jesus, who taught us to pray: “*Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Our Christ did not teach us to pray to “make America great again” or to “save democracy”; our Christ taught us to pray with urgency for the kingdom of God to come.

No...