wound moment

insane lust

forges a ravaged path of independence

causing a wound

in the garden

Saturday moment

the biggest waste of a life

is never being present in it

garden moment

Jesus
I am silent in the darkness
Your darkness
there can be no words

only worship

Wimber moment

Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, "That guy’s drunk." I said, "No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine." He asked, "Do you know about church?" I said, "Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?" It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master's wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, "Answer me this one question." Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. "If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?" He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, "Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book." I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. "Oh, God." I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, "Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church."
John Wimber

clay moment

I love clay
I love the feel of it
the texture
the colors
its squishability

I love how it oozes personality
how it becomes one with my hands
an extension of my thoughts

sometimes resisting
but never complaining
when I push
or prod

never just a lump
there is always something hidden inside
it simply sometimes takes time
to ponder
to listen
to feel
for the heart
just waiting to be exposed

to be workable
shapeable
moldable
clay must be damp

like us
the clay of us can be dry
old
cracked
and tired

it is our tears
often arriving unbidden
that enables a tender molding
pressing
shaping

under the hand of the potter

so that
in the end

with fragments of us
lodged under his nails
we forever bear his fingerprints

compromising moment

How much of pastoral ministry

is intentionally devoted to admonition and teaching

to produce spiritually mature people?

Overall,

pastors are not seen as spiritual directors

or teachers

whose role is to pastorally admonish and mould character,

but as employees of the church

to work as program-managers

and people-carers.

The spirit of compromise reduces the ministry

to a politically correct,

people-pleasing

peacekeeping corps

David Orton