“Hey Whitlock, there’s a lady on campus who will walk right up to you and ask if you are ‘confessed up,’” one of my friends said, amused at the reported spectacle. We were students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1980. It’s an excellent question we could all ask ourselves, even if not a Christian. …
It’s the week after Easter, and everything is back to normal. After the celebration on Sunday—sunrise services, baptisms, Easter lilies, family gatherings, and children finding Easter eggs—the same worries, fears, and anxieties await us at our bedside Monday morning. But wait. Isn’t something missing? What happens after Easter? My thoughts drift to a story that …
As an undergraduate student at Baylor University, I was part of a volunteer ministry that arranged for students to minister in churches once a month. I’ve wondered how those mainly small, rural churches tolerated what a kid preacher like myself had to say. But they did, and most of them did so with grace. One …
Mahatma Gandhi, who led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, once said, “It is better in prayer to have heart without words than words without heart.” Fortunately, there are those who pray with heart AND words, like Sister Hill, the wife of one of my students, Pastor Willie Hill. I teach a night class comprised …
We can learn how to live meaningfully from those who have lived their lives to the fullest. But we have to take time to listen to our elders rather than disregard them because of their age limitations. My mother-in-law, Ruth Ann Wilburn (or Roo, as the grandkids call her), reminded me of that on the …