Iowa is an Indian word meaning "beautiful land." And that's where it all began for me. I started out on a legal career and passed the Iowa bar. Long before, though, I had harbored thoughts of one day becoming a preacher. Sunday school had not been a bore as it often is for many kids. Attending summer youth conferences, then Bible classes in college - taught by Dr. Howard Legg, who looked like he b...
One of the dividends of the ministry is coming to know and enjoy different people - all ages and all human conditions. Often there are surprises. One came for me on a fall afternoon in the 1960s when some members of my Lexington congregation and I visited a Trappist monastery to see what life is like as a monk. Coming out of the Reformed tradition which has no such orders, I never thought of life ...
The pulpit is less than half of the mystery of preaching. If we attempt to separate it from what is happening on the listening side, it can be an empty gong or a clanging cymbal. Sermons are one-dimensional until a warming current begins to flow along the fragile wiring of the heart. One Sunday at 10:55 a.m. I was stopped in the hallway by a young church member who appeared in great distress. He a...
The Los Angeles summer of 1965 produced the frustration-generated Watts riots - or Watts "revolt" as I was taught to call those days. That was the year our family went to England for a pulpit exchange. We were in London the day after Adlai Stevenson dropped dead on Oxford Street, the victim of a heart attack. Mr. Stevenson never became president, but he won a special place in the hearts of the Ame...
If you could deliver one sermon, what would you speak about? Though the question sounds trite, it has sometimes been asked of most preachers - usually in a half-serious way. What text, truth, or character has come to fill your heart's imagination, changed your life, or made you eager to use one big chance to share it with others?
For me, the answer is in the story of the reconciliation in the des...
At a wedding I attended 50 years ago, the bride's brother sang a love song, "At Dawning." I was the groom, and have since forgotten the lyrics. But even the words of the title have a nice sound. Dawn is a gorgeous time of day. Drenched in pastel beauty, mist, and quiet, it comes very softly, even as the freeways begin their hum of first traffic. For ships at sea, it is a time to do important navig...
I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds.- Bertrand Russell"Windows On The World" is the name of a classy restaurant atop the World Trade Tower in New York. It has tall panels of windows, and it is one of the best places - especially around sunset - to see what the Apple looks like from 60 or 70 stories up."Windows" is also a metaphor in preaching that describes the role ill...
