I had invited him, along with a small team of others to a school called Thomas Jefferson, in East New York, known for violence and poor graduation rates. The week before I had helped a dazed and bloodied student off the floor after she had been beat up, her blouse ripped, eyes glazed over. This…
Do You Know a Jeremiah?
I just finished reading “Death in the City,” a series of talks given in 1968, by the late Francis Schaeffer, to the students of Wheaton College. Schaeffer was calling them to step up and be Jeremiah’s. To voice a message of pending judgment, similar to how the prophet called out the nation of Israel. When…
The Changing of the Guard
As I step outside, I notice a line of elderly neighbors making their way down the sidewalk, very, very slowly. Maurice, my friend two stoops down, is bent over a walker, and glances up at me. We have history, and he shows me that toothy grin sometimes to let me know, he knows I know…
How I Keep it Real in Evangelism
My father is a common man; simple, intelligent and honest. A lot of the world is like him. I meet them all the time in my day-to-day romp around New York City, strangers at first, but friends when we part. Dad reminds me to keep my message a common man’s language, and so does the…
A Table Set Only for Two
Spiritual lessons are learned through setbacks, heart breaks and failings; a heavy toll paid to create a conviction, and lived out by the grace of God. Here’s one I can’t get out of my system. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” Jesus invites me to sit down with Him…
Can You Sit Still?
Can you sit still, just an hour or so? Will you find in your calendar minutes for me, squeezed from seeming nothing? Not time for time sake, or to appease conscience, but time for love to sit and relish in the company of companions. I want to help you prove to yourself that you can…
A Christmas Paradox
What king would stoop so low, As to touch a bed of straw? ‘No prince I know would have the gall!’ Yet, true the prophets said it so, A king would be born one night. ‘But in a pauper’s plight?’ A cave, a cold dank thing it was There bundled in the gloom. ‘Bah, Just…
The Value of Obsession
I love the novel, Moby Dick. The fateful journey of captain Ahab and crew brings a kind of telescopic context to life. For Ahab, a near fatal first pass at the whale had him tasting brine mixed with his own blood. That defeat crept into his soul, and retribution became an obsession. The novel wends…
Elwood
In the back of my mind I’ve always carried a picture of Elwood. He was not a friend of mine. In fact, I despised him in high school. He was the track manager, and wore coke bottle glasses, hitched his pants up to his belly button, and carried one of those plastic contraptions in his…
Get Ready for Your Float!
The last time floats cruised down the ‘canyon of hero’s’ in downtown Manhattan, was when the NY Giants after won the super bowl. I was standing 20 rows deep, and felt grateful to be there. A million others had been forced to crane their necks an entire block away, to snap futile IPhone shots of…
How to Pray for This Generation
David Livingstone died much the way he lived, in prayer by his bedside. He had cut a ‘gospel road’ through the interior of Africa, and forged alliances that ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery. So beloved was he that nations fought over his body. Britain wanted it returned for a proper ceremony, but the…
I Thought Love…
For me, a deep connection exists between love and prayer. The following poem sheds light on the futility of love’s pursuit aside from God’s invitation to ‘come,’ and tells a parallel story of grace found in prayer’s intimate union. I thought love a feeling, But somewhere in time It scurried away, So I sought the…
To Sir, with love 