Preview Changes “Let us not think we have created ourselves, as proud princes do.” — Dr. Doug Ottati, quoting Martin Luther. Dear Caldwell, A few weeks ago I was invited by Chris William, host of Carolina Business Review, to be a part of a show focused on gratitude. Together with a major non-profit CEO, a Christian counselor, a …
Dear Caldwell, Somewhere along the way, I received the good advice that we should leave something from Christmas up year-round, lest we forget. The balsa wood nativity pictured above is my response to that. The magi, the shepherds and the sheep, the angel, Mary Joseph and the babe stand watch all year long over whatever passes through …
When we are called to sing your praise with hearts so filled with pain that we would rather sit and weep or stand up to complain remind us God, you understand the burdens that we bear; you, too, have walked the shadowed way and known our deep despair. Dear Caldwell, In the words to the …
Dear Caldwell, On Sunday, we drop in on an intimate encounter between two unlikely agents of God (Luke 1:39-55). Elizabeth, unexpectedly pregnant with John the Baptist, was well past child-bearing years. Mary, pregnant with Jesus, was a poor, unwed teenager. Both would herald a messiah who would turn things upside down for ever after and show us …
Dear Caldwell, As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, we remind ourselves we are on the way to Bethlehem (because the world has many other interpretations of what these days are about). As we travel, some loud voices would rather preoccupy our hearts and minds with a new four-letter word – FEAR. Fear of the threats …
Dear Caldwell, As I will note in Sunday’s sermon, there are some voices in our country that know the power of fear – how it appeals to the worst aspects of our nature, how divides, how it inspires desperation. As people of faith, we await the Prince of Peace, and we are sometimes called to act on …
Dear Caldwell, On Sunday, we considered how God leads with grace, politely but firmly telling the world, with all its presumptions of power and control, “Step aside. Move over. We need room to have a baby here.” Not that I have any first-hand experience in giving birth, but we know that birth is a messy and …
Dear Caldwell, My cousin Frank was, in many ways, the best of us 7 cousins who gathered at my grandparents’ farm on holidays and for long, summer weeks as we were all growing up. Charismatic, smart, kind, compassionate, faithful, mischievous, wickedly funny and well-loved, there seemed to be no limits on what he could do …
Dear Caldwell, I trust and pray that you all had a peaceful and meaningful Thanksgiving with family and friends. At our house, we were able to fight off the Tryptophan that invades our bodies in a trojan horse otherwise known as a turkey long enough to watch the Panthers win. After that, things got a little …
AND SO, it is perhaps the right time, at the end of this Christian year, to come Christ the King and, as scripture says, “be still and know that I am God.” It is a time to empty our burdens, to take refuge, to …
