I met with John again a week later. His face looked like he’d just been told his best friend had died. “What’s wrong, John?” I asked. “That getting rid of all the impurities in my heart and seeking all that’s true is really hard, Pat,” he mumbled. I smiled. “It’s more than hard, John; it’s […]
Some time back I was going through a spiritual dry spell during a time I had taken on two new clients in my business coaching and was editing a book that had almost as many errors as there were sentences in the manuscript (a slight exaggeration). In addition to this were the controversies over wearing […]
Danny is a real person I met in the Wright County Jail on two different occasions. The first time around, he was indicted on a bogus charge of rape by his girlfriend who wanted to get even with him for calling the cops after she hit him repeatedly while high and distraught. We prayed and […]
There was no doubt about his resolve, but the garden of his soul didn’t have the composition to carry it out. For too many years, it had been nurtured by himself, the world, and the evil one. As such, it was filled with poor soil, stunted plants, and an abundance of weeds. What Danny needed […]
Tony, an inmate in the Wright County Jail, asked me if I knew what it was like to be homeless. Could I personalize it? I’ve been away from home and lonely before, I’ve had times when money was tight, and I’ve been hungry before. But I’ve not been homeless. Before you start thinking, “Why doesn’t […]
If you want to watch one of Billy Graham’s early sermons, when he still had the thick Southern drawl of a North Carolina preacher boy, click on the link below. If you want to know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you’ll have direct evidence of it within a half hour. […]
Tony was released from jail last Saturday and had no place to go except his deceased father’s unheated home. It was 20 below that night, as Tony, draped with blankets, huddled in front of a small space heater. At 2 a.m. Sunday morning, he called a suicide hot line and told them he was freezing […]
I sat at a table in the Wright County Jail three years ago, with Jeremy sitting on the other side. This was his third incarceration for 5th degree drug possession. He’d been an addict since he was seventeen. “What is love, Jeremy?” I asked to start off this session with him. He stumbled and bumbled […]
Shawn murdered a young woman in cold blood and had been on death row for two years awaiting his execution. He was as guilty as guilty could be and had great remorse for what he had done. His appeals to escape the death penalty would run out sometime in the next year and then would […]
The following story is not meant to be a simile, metaphor, analogy, parable, or revelation from on high. It’s simply an observation I made yesterday morning at 7 a.m., sitting on a couch about a pillow’s throw from our lower-level gas fireplace. The pilot light is always on in the fireplace, a small blue flame […]