ABOUT CRYSTAL Some years back, as a chaplain, I met with a young woman for several months in a jail. At the time, she had reached the status of psychotic paranoia due to a drug habit that overwhelmed her. When I started to meet with her, she believed all the guards in the jail were […]
THE MELODY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT I went into downtown Minneapolis in mid-March to hear Erin Keefe perform Beethoven’s Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 61. Before the concert began, the Holy Spirit called me to separate myself from everything but the music—for this would be the Melody of the Holy Spirit. […]
ABOUT SHAWN TYLER BENSON Just to remind you, Shawn is the man who killed a woman while he was completely wasted on meth, and later became a born-again Christian in the jail where I served as a volunteer chaplain. He called me last week to tell me a story of how he’s serving God in […]
About Joseph Joseph is a member of our church’s prayer group who puts his actions where his faith is. He believes that Jesus came to save and heal and that He works through His faithful followers today to continue His mission on earth until His work on earth is done. Every year, he travels to […]
Don’t Steal a Police Car, Part 2 For the next eight months, I met with Cate every Monday for 45 minutes. She was now saved but needed to be discipled, and she needed to learn the essentials of Scripture. We also talked about her court hearings that popped up every couple of months as the […]
Don’t Steal a Police Car Some years back, I was meeting with a young woman in a county jail whose life had fallen apart because of her addiction to methamphetamine. We’ll call her Cate, though that’s not her real name. She was in her mid-thirties and her addiction became so bad that child services took […]
God Loves a Murderer God has a special place in His heart for Shawn Tyler Benson, who shot a woman in the back of the head some years back and is presently serving out a 40-year sentence in a Minnesota prison. I’ve written about Shawn before. He’s a gentle soul who committed murder when he […]
The 4-H Club I was on a phone call with a friend from Texas yesterday, and he told me he was now a member of the 4-H Club. Given that he’s a physician and wouldn’t know a haystack from a bushel of wheat, I was a bit mystified until he told me what he meant. […]
ABOUT JUDAS On my drive to the VA in St. Cloud and back last week, I asked the Holy Spirit to give me another installment of what I call God’s History Lessons. I don’t give Him the subject matter; He gives it to me. And I don’t get a word-for-word “Thus sayeth the Lord,” from […]
A Most Important Question Years back, when I was visiting my mother in a nursing home in Hankinson, North Dakota, I asked her a question to make sure she would be safely tucked away in heaven when she died. “Mother, if you died tomorrow and were standing outside the gates of heaven, and St. Peter […]