On May 26, 1994, my mother called me at home and reminded me to be careful if I left the house – apparently, a teenage girl had driven in front of an 18-wheeler that morning and had been killed on impact. “Someone said her mom is a schoolteacher named Betty Myers and works in Hattiesburg,” said Mom. “Mom, Erin’s mother is named Betty, and she’s a schoolteacher in Hattiesburg.” My mom paused for a moment as we both put it together. “Oh no. Joshua, I’m so sorry.”
I feel kind of lame when I say this, but I do not enjoy the spiritual discipline of fasting, because it usually just leaves me feeling annoyed and inconvenienced. Even so, I’m finally coming to a place where I appreciate it a lot more than I used to.
When I was ten years old, my family and I did something that was rare for us: we went on vacation. During that weeklong trip, someone gave me a gift; and believe it or not, I’m still holding onto it today. I’ll never let it go.
The other day, my family and I were driving down the highway when a massive flock of birds rose from a lake and flew over the car, endlessly blanketing the early evening sky.
The other day, my three-year-old daughter was holding her baby doll and shushing it, using the same little rhythm over and over again. I didn’t notice it at first, but then it hit me – it was the tune of “Jingle Bells.” No way, I thought.
If you’re anything like me, just the thought of a new year’s resolution provokes a sense of dreaded guilt – the feeling that you’re only doing it because you’ve already failed in the previous year, and you’re going to end up failing in the next one anyway. I’m thinking this is not one of those things Jesus was talking about when he was talking about coming to give us abundant lives (John 10:10).
Recently, I was headed down Connecticut Avenue in the morning while it was still dark. There are several pedestrian crosswalks on that street that nobody uses at 5:20 a.m., so I was understandably surprised when I saw an old man standing in the middle of the street waving at me and yelling.
Christmas of 2002 was rough for me. I was in law school, and unlike many other students, I had taken out the absolute minimum amount of loans to avoid years of indebtedness after graduation. I was eventually grateful for that, but in the middle of my second semester, I was literally pulling together change to pay for groceries.
Let’s play a game. I’ll describe someone, and you tell me who I’m talking about. 1. He’s an old man with a long, white beard. 2. He sees everything you do. 3. He keeps a list of your deeds, good and bad. 4. He lives in a far-off, magical kingdom you couldn’t find if you tried. 5. He never allows himself to be seen; and 6. All the movies about him are fairly lame.
The last three months have been pretty hard on my family. A lot of it had to do with me traveling too much for work and struggling to find the time to complete a challenging feature article. Plus, the girls started school, which changed our whole routine, and my poor wife has gotten pretty sick a couple of times. And as much as I hate to admit it, somewhere in the midst of all that stress, my wife and I stopped being our best selves with each other.
The other day, I was walking through my neighborhood with my two girls, who are three and four years old, when we passed an older, serious looking gentleman. “Hello!” they both said, waving. He looked over at them and kept walking.
I’ve had close friendships with countless Christians in my lifetime, and if there’s one thing we’ve all got in common, it’s that we’ve all got some bad habit, some addictive sin, some hangup that we just can’t seem to overcome. People struggle with all kinds of things — rage, overeating, jealousy, passive-aggressive behavior, and porn addiction, to name a few.
I used to spend a great deal of my time digging in my soul for spiritual brokenness. I was on a manhunt for sinful motives, ungodly habits, and character flaws – for badness, brokenness, ugliness – all the things I thought kept me from God.
When I signed up for Facebook in 2008, I saw it as a way to connect with old friends and keep up with the self-affirming things everyone was posting about themselves. What I did not expect was that Facebook would become a place where people worked through life-and-death issues. But then Nan Taylor died.
I took an etiquette class several years ago in which the instructor told us that compliments must never be specific, because they already embarrass people as it is. The embarrassment only increases with the specificity of the compliment. This is not good for me.
Joshua Rogers 