Ed Chinn

Ed Chinn has been published in The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, San Jose Mercury, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and other newspapers, magazines, and websites. He is the author of Footprints in the Sea (Cool River Pub, 2009) and New Eyes for a New World (Cool River Pub, 2011). Ed and his wife, Joanne, live in Middle Tennessee.

Sing Your Song

In April 2014, a young woman in North Carolina died in a car wreck. The investigation revealed that, at the moment of impact, she was posting a selfie on Facebook.

Oh, the rush that comes from a human touch through social media. The laughter, the buzz, the flirt. Human contact is so intoxicating, especially for the young. He notices me. Maybe I can see her tonight. 

But then…the grill of the gravel truck. The earsplitting grind of steel and glass. Bones splintering. The odors of fire, motor oil, and blood. Then everything is still; the only sound is a distant dog barking. 

Reality always wins.

Eventually, we all learn why Goethe said, “The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”

Have you noticed that so much of modern life teaches us to look away from reality? People die every day because they invite amusement (one definition: “to distract the attention”). 

It seems we’ve all been trained to just download data, provocations, concerns, even excitement. We do not think or meditate or study; we tend to just wait for various stimuli (like “breaking news,” talk radio, Facebook posting, political or religious agendas, etc.) to set up a crisis or a cause. Then, like a balloon man at a car wash grand opening, we jerk into reaction.

Are we so bored by our own lives and thoughts that we eagerly give ourselves to anything or anyone that moves or makes noise?

I care about God, Joanne, our kids and grandkids, extended family, friends, conversation, coffee, humor, our dog, Bernie, books, and music. I don’t have enough heart or brain space to give myself to things that matter least. 

Yes, I know many things matter to many people. I don’t despise that. But doesn’t the right to speak also carry the right to not speak? That’s not denunciation. I’m often silent just because others already work that side of the street and do so better than I could. Therefore, I simply choose to not open my heart about some issues (except with trusted friends as we sit on bales of hay in a barn on a rainy afternoon).  

Maybe it all comes to this: I don’t have enough sand left in my hourglass to annex other burdens, dreams, urgencies, or fights. I have a wife to love, a mission to fill, books to read, words to write, conversations to join, and places to go. I want to spend time with my family and friends, laugh, pray, and fire my friend Doug’s cannon.

Thoreau told us most people “go the grave with the song still in them.” Do you realize you carry a song? It flows from your Creator’s unique and personal design and gets boiled in and pushed out through your life. No one else carries your song, and many need to hear it. On this side of the grave.

Want to see what the song looks like? 

In his book, The Wright Brothers (Simon & Schuster, 2015), David McCullough looked at Wilbur and Orville Wright’s unrelenting focus on flight. The brothers worked side-by-side six days a week. They gave no opening to distractions (neither ever married).

At Kitty Hawk, they endured wind, cold, and swarms of mosquitos that blocked the sun; they stood for hours watching birds climb into the wind, ascend, glide, turn, plunge, and land. 

Wilbur and Orville knew their song. And because they were faithful to sing it, humans can mount the air and soar to the edge of the universe. Think about that. 

You and I have a choice. We can let the pollutions and conflicts of the lower elevations constrict or distract our attention or we can rise above the diversions and stimuli, perch like an eagle on a high rocky cliff, and sing our song. 

Finally, I’ve learned the song never springs from glamour or buzz. The deep wells of pain and loss seem to produce the richest and most moving tones. Like caring for a spouse, parent, child, or sibling as they move toward darker, deeper, and more resplendent glory. The most majestic songs I’ve heard were composed by some of you as you laid down your life for another.

Now, to turn an old observation, no one is going to lie on their deathbed wishing they had just read one more blog, sat through a few more sermons or sales meetings, watched another episode of Yellowstone, or joined more causes.      

But we may wish we had sung our song more clearly and often.

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An Elegant Life

One evening, as Terry Parker started closing up his gas station, a woman walked in and asked for help. Her car had broken down a couple blocks away. 

When Terry towed her car to his station and inspected it, he quickly saw and explained the problem. That’s when she told him she didn’t have enough money to fix it. Could she barter her services for the repair? As a prostitute, she would give him two hours anytime he wanted. 

He accepted her offer and said he would pick her up at 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning. So Terry and his wife showed up at her house and took her to their church, where she found a path to life’s higher ground.

Although I knew Terry for the last 50 years of his life, I never heard him tell that story, publicly or privately. A mutual friend told me (I did, however, verify it with Terry). I was not surprised; he was a genuinely humble man. 

I was also not surprised he so quickly gave up income to help someone he did not know. Or that he freely accepted the risks of weaving her into his life. Did he even consider the chance that one of her customers may have been a fellow church member? 

The Maestro

I’m sure it may surprise some that a devout Christian didn’t first study the scriptures, consult guides about ethics or deportment, or confer with a pastor on how to respond to her offer. I’m not surprised. He merely moved by instinct. 

Before the age of experts, most people lived in that kind of straight-ahead confidence. Sure, they prayed, studied the Bible, and sought counsel. But out on the front lines of life, they did not hesitate to act. They lived out what the Bible says about Christ being formed in people (Galatians 4:19). As that formation becomes more real, they have less need for a crash course in ethics. 

Among His other roles and attributes, Christians recognize Jesus as the Eternal Pattern of human life. They see that He turned away from the grandeur of His throne and stepped down into the mud-ruts of earth. He quietly slipped into earth through a side door, born as a baby in a barn. 

And throughout His earth life, He only did what He saw His Father do (John 5:19). Imagine living full-throttle, unplugged from the cramped, arid, legalistic, suffocating cages of culture, religion, politics, and other boxes. 

I don’t think Jesus lived as the Exemplar of “Law and Order” or “Rules for Radicals.” Good grief, He was the Maestro of life! Those who stood near Him probably didn’t see a man who strained to obey the rules or affirm societal patterns. I imagine He walked through His patch of earth in freedom and boldness. His demeanor and manners must have revealed a certain elegance, a sense of style that came from The Other Side.

Jesus probably saw and loved what Terry Parker did. Just as He must have enjoyed seeing men rip the roof off a crowded home meeting so they could lower a paralytic man down to Him (Mark 2). Both stories featured people moving in confidence and instinct, just living on earth in the style of their heavenly homeland! (Hebrews 11:16)

Going in Style

Theologian and author David Bentley Hart understands that. Consider his description of Jesus’ conduct toward the adulterous woman (John 7:53–8:11): 

…Christ’s every gesture in the tale is resplendent with any number of delicately calibrated and richly attractive qualities: calm reserve, authority, ironic detachment, but also tender­ness, a kind of cavalier gallantry, moral generosity, graciousness, but then also alacrity of wit, even a kind of sober levity (“Let him among you who is without sin . . .”). All of it has about it the grand character of the effortless beau geste [Note: French for “beautiful gesture”], a nonchalant display of the special privilege belonging to those blessed few who can insouciantly, confidently violate any given convention simply because they know how to do it with consummate and ineffably accomplished artistry… 

Then, Hart cuts to the larger truth: 

…if we truly love others, we don’t need to follow any moral rules, code, or law. Love, on its own, will create a good moral outcome. As Paul famously wrote, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”1

Or, as The Message interprets that verse: “You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.” (Romans 12:10)


  1. David Bentley Hart, Theological Territories (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) ↩︎

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A Ship on Dry Land

By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved… Hebrews 11:7[1]

The classic story of Noah’s ark weaves through many cultures around the world and across millennia. But beyond the saga presented on movie screens, through Bible studies, and in a big tourist attraction, that epic pulls heaven and earth together in a tight braid of timeless wisdom vs. moral goofiness and invisible vs. visible truth. 

 Noah’s Ark also presents a towering example of how things are rarely what they seem. Let’s look at that.

The focal point of the story is a ship sitting on dry land. Look at how it imposes a silent but disruptive image. Profoundly countercultural—out of sync with, and challenging to, everything—Noah’s ship had no flow with its environment. None. It was built in one time and place but would only work in a distant future no one had seen or considered. As we zoom out, we see a massive disaster racing like a tsunami below the surface. It’s moving toward us and all we cherish. 

Since no one could see the storm coming, a farmer building a 500-foot-long ship in his pasture probably suggested he was insane. He was apparently the only person on earth who built a ship “in the middle of dry land.” His neighbors probably joked about how he would drag that thing to the beach. 

I guess no one thought about water rushing to the ship.

Corrupt to the Core

God’s assessment of the earth was stark: “As far as God was concerned, the Earth had become a sewer; there was violence everywhere. God took one look and saw how bad it was, everyone corrupt and corrupting—life itself corrupt to the core. God said to Noah, ‘It’s all over. It’s the end of the human race. The violence is everywhere; I’m making a clean sweep.’” (Genesis 6:11-13)

If the Creator, who so loved the earth, held those thoughts, you know it was bad. Very bad. Beyond bad. No breezes of spiritual renewal, no prophetic voices, no fresh thinking, and no hope. “Corrupt to the core.”

 We too live in a sewer. The toxic streams of injustice, poverty, violence, lust, nihilism, etc. all flow into our water supply. So, why doesn’t God just “fix it?” Maybe because He thinks in terms of generations, eons, seasons, and seeds. Every seed carries entire orchards or forests. The Lord plays the long game. The very long game. 

Seeds of the Future

Genesis 6:8 says, “Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.” Because God liked the guy, he warned him about things coming that could not be seen. And Noah acted on that. So, of all the people on earth, God only disclosed his heart to one person, a man who lived by faith—total confidence in God’s purposes and promises

God seemed more interested in saving Noah and his family than in rescuing the corrupt world. He would have a conduit for His seed that would produce a magnificent future. So, in His conversations with Noah, His words fell as seeds into Noah’s fertile and willing heart. 

When those seeds came up, they caused the man to complete a grueling, audacious, and historic construction project. As a true visionary, he built something that had no apparent purpose. Because Noah aligned with the heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16), he had to build with none of the earth’s cultural and financial support. 

The lines of conflict were dramatic, literally “earth shaking.” The population of the earth comprised one team. God and Noah formed the other one. Then the future dropped into the soil of one human life. Even as neighbors mocked Noah, seeds cracked open below the surface. 

Then, suddenly, one day, rain revealed the only sane person on earth.


[1] All scriptures quoted are taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (TM): Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

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Don’t Tell Me I Can’t

Cole Summers’ parents knew he was exceptional when, as a 3-year-old, he changed a tire on their truck. At 4, he tore down (and helped rebuild) their truck engine. After watching YouTube videos of Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, and others explaining how to gain wealth, he started his first business (breeding and selling rabbits) at 7. At 9, he bought a 350-acre ranch. A year later, he bought a house.

He never attended school, watched TV, played video games, or accepted pessimism. In May 2022, at 14, he self-published his autobiography, Don’t Tell Me I Can’t, An Ambitious Homeschooler’s Journey. The book pulls readers into a view of living that few people can even comprehend today: A family that believes in freedom, responsibility, play, hard work, family love, and letting life teach its own lessons. 

       While his dad’s confinement to a wheelchair and his mom’s blindness might have shaped a fearful and overprotective parenting style, they took the opposite path. They encouraged independence, risk, and reaching for the dream. Cole said he has used nail guns, power saws, and other power tools for as long as he can remember. 

       I really enjoyed watching Cole press life’s limits. The book’s title captures his attitude. Who says children cannot own land, vehicles, and businesses? He has owned them all. As a child. 

       As an 11th birthday present to himself, he bought a John Deere tractor with a front loader, forklift, backhoe, disc harrow, and other tools. For his 12th, he dug a well. A dry one. Cole chalked that up to “education.” As he wrote, “When I measured the well when I was buying my ranch, I measured late in the fall. Had I known better and measured it in the summer, it would have been dry, and in the two years since I measured it, extreme drought led to two years of the water table dropping six feet both years.” 

       His education wasn’t finished. His business depended on his rabbits ending up on restaurant menus. So, with restaurants shuttered, COVID-19 killed his business. Part of the astonishment of this book was in watching the way the family faced crises. Repeated hospitalizations for Cole’s dad, a bone dry well, hauling water from the neighbors for 9 months, car and pickup breakdowns. But what resilience! When Cole got hit with a big tax bill, he got mad and made researching corporate tax law his 5th grade math class. 

Although it obviously was not included in the book, his story ends with a true gut-punch. A month after his book hit the market, Cole died in a kayaking accident. He was 14. At the time of his death, he was working on a plan to preserve the depleting aquifer beneath his Great Basin Desert ranch near Beryl, Utah. 

The book is not great literature; it’s easy to believe a 14-year-old wrote it. But I hope thousands of kids and their parents will read it. Don’t Tell Me I Can’t reveals the power and confidence of a straight-ahead life. And Cole’s death does not invalidate bold living. His was not a “life cut short;” he did not leave us “too soon.” He filled up a life, his life, just as it was designed and destined by his Creator. 

Of course, Cole was an astonishing kid. But, as I read his book, I kept wondering if his creativity and success are just normal reflections of what it means to be human. Maybe he stood out because he avoided the constraints of dismal bureaucracies, entertainment, addictions, and negativity.

For me, the real message of this book is that experts are overrated, fears are overblown, and thousands of audacious young builders are overcomers. The dawn of their day is breaking.   

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Going Off Script

In 2011, my friend Doug Roberts told me to stop reading books. Just like that, bold as a blizzard. So, I was surprised at how quickly my heart agreed. I quit, and I didn’t know (or care) if I ever read another book. Over time, I saw clarification about how, what, and why I should read. Today, I read again, but carefully.

 Doug didn’t know it, but the real issue behind his message was my consumption of words. I had allowed my heart’s receiver to pull in words—from books, yes, but also from music, movies, news, sermons, blogs, talk radio, etc.written or spoken by those who did not know me or my God. 

Made me sick. I had to clear the clutter in order to receive The Voice. Mother Teresa gave quick and strong support: “God is the Friend of silence . . . He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grow in silence. See the stars, the moon and sun move in silence.”[1]

The Power of Scripts

OK, let’s dig deeper to see how all that appeared in real life. 

Although Joanne and I have been (and remain) blessed with a happy and full marriage, a couple years ago, as COVID raged, our patience with and grace toward each other began to fade. Although we loved each other, we slowly drifted to our own spaces at opposite ends of our house. Sometimes we even snapped at each other. 

         Sensitive soul that I am, I didn’t even notice. Then one day, I suddenly realized we had become two different people. No, that’s not accurate; we were playing two different people. Something kept handing us scripts, which we (mostly I) dutifully read. 

         Our scripts came through the Zeitgeist, “the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era,”[2] the “Spirit of the age,” what the Bible calls, “the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.”[3] That insurgent realm fights the God Who is God and the atmosphere of righteousness, peace, and joy that surrounds Him. 

So, the “Prince of the Air” furiously writes and delivers scripts of anger, resentment, conflict, lust, distrust, and division. And the whole world system—banking, law, education, politics, journalism, entertainment, advertising, religion, etc.—receives and reads them. I wonder if that’s why the Bible says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs [My version: don’t read the damned scripts!] of this world…”[4]

One Thing!

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus said He only did what His Father did and only spoke what His Father spoke? That must mean His heart’s receiver was only tuned to the Father. Seriously? Could that model a better way of life for us? I think that would mean going off script, listening for God’s voice, and living life straight ahead. 

Think of it; no waiting for the Spirit of the Age to tell you who to hate or “like,” who to follow, or what to buy. And that might also help us see the “experts” in a new light; they have no love or wisdom for us, and no authority over us. Good grief, they don’t even know who you are. Walk around them and don’t look back. 

But how can we just go off script? 

Short version: Seek to dwell in the House of God—that serene, thoroughly clean, unassailable, and happy Residence (His home is infinitely larger than any of earth’s “holy places”).  

David described (and Eugene Peterson translated) that place: “I’m asking GOD for one thing, only one thing: To live with him in his house my whole life long. I’ll contemplate his beauty; I’ll study at his feet. That’s the only quiet, secure place in a noisy world, The perfect getaway, far from the buzz of traffic.”[5]

P.S. Joanne and I are just fine now! 


[1]  Mother Teresa, A Gift for God, Prayers and Meditations (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) 

[2] “Zeitgeist.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/zeitgeist. 

[3] Ephesians 2:2 taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION (NKJV): Scripture taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION®. Copyright© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[4] Romans 12:2 taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW LIVING TRANSLATION, Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

[5] Psalm 27:4-5 taken from The Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.

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Wisdom on a Cracker

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Anne LaMott

Why do we love and remember great quotes?  

       The best ones serve truth, wisdom, humor, inspiration, encouragement, and other qualities in very short lines. Succinctness and lucidity are vital parts of their power. Despite their brevity, they leave nothing else to be said.

       For example, you can read voluminous books and watch infinite videos on the human condition, but the Apostle Paul captured the whole sweep of that territory in sixteen words, O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24, New King James Version). 

       As in many things, less is often more in quotes. The “less” stays with you. “More” wouldn’t have improved it or made it stick. Extraordinary quotes deliver wisdom on a cracker. 

       Former UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold understood that. He stated his whole reason for living in a prayer: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.” Twelve words as prayer, mission statement, and autobiography.

       Teilhard de Chardin caught lightning in a bottle when he wrote: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” 


       So did Richard Bach: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

       Teacher, author, and guru Ram Dass delivered a wonderful reminder about gentleness: “We’re all just walking each other home.” In the same sense, Philo of Alexandria wrote, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

       Wendell Berry expressed another fine view of community: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”

       Ann Voskamp drove straight to the headwaters of a good life—humility: “Receiving God’s gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower.” 

       Goethe wrote with wonderful and concise clarity. For example: “Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” And I often recall Goethe’s generous view of people: “Treat an individual as he is, and he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

       An old African Proverb captures a persistent and painful reality: “When bull elephants fight, the grass always loses.” 

       Sometimes a great line blows all the smoke away, leaving nothing but the plain and simple truth. P. J. O’Rourke was a master of that: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

       Likewise, Paul Batalden analyzed every person, family, marriage, organization, action, or policy with his simple statement: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Think of that the next time your golf ball hooks into the lake. You perfectly designed your swing to do that.

       Something in me changed when I heard my friend, pastor Dale Smith, say in his Sunday sermon,“Where did we ever get the idea that all problems are to be solved?” In a flash, I saw my view of problems: just fix (or kill) it, box it, and ship it far away. Since that day, I’ve tried to hold problems before God, seeking what He may say or do to me through it. 

       As he always did, Jim Rohn delivered true wisdom when he said: “You must get good at one of two things: sowing in the spring or begging in the fall.”

       The towering American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote one of the great social realities in The True Believer (Harper & Row, 1951): “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”

       And that recalls James Q. Wilson’s summary of our times: “Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything.”

       But when those views ignite my cynicism, my friend and pastor Glen Roachelle reminds me to look past the visible and remember, “Sometimes we have to accept confusion and ambiguity while we wait for the contractions of history to give birth to a new era.” 

       Billy Graham laid nine simple words together in a momentous challenge: “Get to know people you’ve been taught to avoid.” 

       I once heard James Carville speak a very astute code for prudent living: “The best time to plant an oak tree was twenty-five years ago. The second-best time is today.” 

       And the truth of a line can sometimes ride in on laughter, as Former Senator and Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy knew: Running for president is like coaching footballyou have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it is important.” 

       So did Pope John XXIII, when he told his Italian audience, “Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways: women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.”

       You’ve just read 21 of my favorite quotes. If you want a few hundred more, go to my website’s STOUT WISDOM

       And, please, I’d love to hear your own favorite quotes. 

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What Bernie Brings

When Joanne and I decided we wanted a dog, our checklist was very specific: an old dog, a tender, obedient, and docile dog. A slow and sane dog. Big as a buffalo, he would take down intruders and sit on their chests till cops arrived. But also, a dog that would sleep most of the time and be gentle and loving to our family and friends.  

       So, of course, we got a puppy. 

Bernie, our Micro Bernadoodle, was and still is sweet and cuddly as a kitten. But docile? Sane? Obedient? He gallops like a horse, barks at snowflakes and leaves, and tackles our guests as we helplessly protest. In response to my commands, he cocks his head in a “Come on man, help me here” look. 

       Our living room looks like a daycare center. Bernie chews tissue paper, steals our shoes, and gnaws on furniture. When he scatters garbage over the floor, he stands within the carnage, wagging his tail, fully expecting a reward. 

       He also seems determined to join our human world. Standing on his back legs at our game table, he pats the tabletop with his paws… Hit me, Cowboy! During the recent Super Bowl, Bernie ran into the living room with a chew football. He danced around like Matthew Stafford in the pocket, presumably waiting for me to hit the front door, going out for his Hail Mary.

A Gift

Bernie is also a gift from God, one that “keeps on giving.” 

       For example, he has given us life beyond our ruts. After twenty-five years of empty nesting, Joanne and I may have grown a little complacent. We’ve lived in a latticework of delightful routines—parlor games, hanging out with friends and family, feeding our coffee addiction, slow drives through Middle Tennessee’s hills and hollows, and watching Jeopardy!

       That all changed the day Bernie cut across our self-centered lives. Our new “baby” pulled us into caring for him. Oh, the synergistic beauty of God’s caring creation. Bernie needs food; Joanne and I have fingers and opposing thumbs. 

       When Bernie first arrived, we caged him every night. And he accepted it. Until one night, about midnight, when he just started barking. That marked his rejection of his cage. He won. Since that moment, Bernie has slept all night, every night, on the floor outside our bedroom door. A silent sentry. 

       I didn’t understand what happened till I told that story to my friend Ian Wallbrech. He explained that Bernie was a born and bred protector. When I caged him away from us at night, I depressed his life’s purpose. He needs to guard us. But we have to release him to do that. As Tom Cruise said to Cuba Gooding in Jerry Maguire, Bernie barks to us, “Help me…help you.”

Flexibility and Patience       

Look; Bernie is more than a pet. Like all creation, he presents a window on the divine power, eternal nature, and invisible traits that fill the universe (see Romans 1:20). Since none of that arrives through human choice or creativity, we need great patience and flexibility if we are to ever discover it.

       My cousin Casey Chinn, a professional photographer, recently wrote a profound insight in a blog on how to take better landscape photos (I highly recommend the whole thing):

“Don’t be so focused on what you were seeking that you miss the other gems that might be there right in front of you. Learn how to respond to what nature gives you. If you wanted sunshine but instead you got rain, find things that look best in that soft subdued light… you might get something even better than pure sunshine when the fog rolls in… sometimes, you just have to be willing to sit it out and see what happens.”[1]

       We all live in stormy weather, cultural and spiritual. So, what do we do when we want sunlight, but get rain? Pack up and go home? Or could we wait for our eyes to adjust to the magnificent and magical gift of new light forming out there? Can we see the awesome mystery that flickers in and out of view as it moves over us? Might we adapt in the face of change?

What If?

What if we found the patience and flexibility to discern new shapes and sounds? Like Christians recognizing their Lord’s design in people of different faiths? Or vice versa? What if aggressive, gentle, introverted, militant, peaceful, or inspirational people could find value in their opposites? What if leftists or conservatives discovered wisdom in the other group?   

       In other words, is a tornado just a tornado, cancer only a disease, or a dog just a dog? Do they also bear messages about the glory of God?

       If I only recognize Bernie as a dog or “my pet,” then I cannot see the gorgeous mystery of the Lord’s purpose. Bernie brings the unexpected, uninvited, and inconvenient truths I need to live fully and maturely within the vast sweep of life. 

       Good boy!


[1] Casey Chinn, “Tips for Taking Better Landscape Photos,” Casey Chinn Photography blog, February 16, 2022, https://www.caseychinnphotography.com/casey-chinn-photography-blog/blog_posts/tips-for-taking-better-landscape-photos

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Renovation of the Heart

“We live from our heart.”

        From that first line of Renovation of the Heart (Navpress, 2002), the late Dallas Willard drills deep into our spiritual core and the need for spiritual formation through Christ. Clearly, this book rolls out of a well-lived life—studious, devotional, and humble. Willard obviously thought deep and long about character, personality, destiny, societies, and cultures. But mostly he thought about God.

       This book is so clear, gentle, and well organized. It’s like Willard discovered a big stack of unkempt theological firewood, then began to stack it neatly. Not too neatly, but just enough to help readers think as they read. Willard makes us full partners in arriving at discernments of truth. Now, what follows is not a review, but rather a rock skipping across the pond of this book.

       First, Willard understood how evil germinates in the human heart. That’s why too many people, including children, live along various fronts of “withdrawal and assault” from those who should care for them. That alienation and brutality eventually leads to the slaughter of millions from “enlightened” thinkers, leaders, and governments.

       Jesus, the eternal Son, is the largest figure in all of history because His life reversed the corruption that invaded all people in all times and places. We were designed to love and to be loved by God. When we refuse it—when we seek or find love in any other place, thing, idea, event, or person—we miss our purpose and end up imprisoned to sin. We all live under government. The only question is, who’s government—His or ours?

       While reading this book, I often thought of Paul Batalden’s great slice of wisdom: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” When we live in anger, weariness, lust, fear, “assault and withdrawal,” and other human conditions, it is because we have perfectly designed our lives to get them. The only answer is to forsake our own way and seek the King and His Kingdom. 

        First, as a foundational issue, Willard sees six basic aspects in our lives:

1.    Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences)

2.    Feeling (sensation, emotion)[1]

3.    Choice (will, decision, character)

4.    Body (action, interaction with the physical world)

5.    Social context (personal and structural relations to others)

6.    Soul (the factor that integrates all the above to form one life)

       Willard doesn’t present those aspects as contradictory to the triad view of human life—body, soul, and spirit. He simply lays them out as the crucial zones of life.

       Sadly, most people do not even understand that construct. As a result, they are lost. And, as Willard explains, “Something that is lost is…not where it is supposed to be, and therefore it is not integrated into the life of the one to whom it belongs and to whom it is lost. Think of what it means when the keys to your house or car are lost. They are useless to you, no matter how much you need them and desire to have them and no matter what fine keys they may be. And when we are lost to God, we are not where we are supposed to be in his world and hence are not caught up into his life. The ultimately lost person is the person who cannot want God. Who cannot want God to be God… Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me.” 

Right there is the crisis point of all life. Who owns us? On that, Willard comes down the track like a freight train:

       “Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained…Covetousness is self-idolatry, for it makes my desires paramount. It means I would take what I want if I could.”

       And that is why, “What we call ‘civilization’ is a smoldering heap of violence constantly on the verge of bursting into flame.” 

 Transformation of the Mind and Body

Willard, author (The Divine Conspiracy and other books), professor, and director of the University of Southern California’s School of Philosophy, was a true scholar. So, he understandably cared about clear thinking. He writes, “Bluntly, to serve God well we must think straight; and crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil. And when the crooked thinking gets elevated into group orthodoxy, whether religious or secular, there is always, quite literally, ‘hell to pay.’ That is, hell will take its portion, as it has repeatedly done in the horrors of world history.” 

       And he also focuses on the transformation of the human body. “For good or for evil, the body lies right at the center of the spiritual life …our body is a good thing. God made it for good. That is why the way of Jesus Christ is so relentlessly incarnational. The body should be cherished and properly cared for, not as our master, however, but as a servant of God.

       “Incarnation is not just an essential fact about Jesus: that ‘Christ is come in the flesh.’ Rather, he came in the flesh, a real human body, in order that he might bring redemption and deliverance to our bodies… This present life is to be caught up now in the eternal life of God. But of course ‘the life I now live in the flesh’ is inseparable from the mortal body I now have. So it too must become holy, must ‘come over’ to Christ’s side.”

Social Dimensions

The geniuine tragedy of human life sweeps in when damaged people get together. Toxic thinking, the centrality of feelings, corrupt choices, ignorance of the body, and disintegrating souls produce societies that abuse and destroy people. Especially children.

       “The spiritual malformation of children is the inevitable result. Their little souls, bodies, and minds cannot but absorb the reality of assault and withdrawal in the climate where their parents or other adults are constantly engaged in them. And of course they are soon in the line of fire themselves… in such a context you can almost see the children shrivel.

       “Their only hope of survival is to become hardened… Hardened, lonely little souls, ready for addiction, aggression, isolation, self-destructive behavior, and for some, even extreme violence, go out to mingle their madness with one another and nightmarish school grounds and ‘communities.’ They turn to their bodies for self-gratification and to control others, or for isolation and self-destruction.

       “The wonder is not that they sometimes destroy one another, but that the adults who produce them and live with them can, with apparent sincerity, ask ‘Why?’ Do they really not know? Can they really not see the poison in the social realm?”

       Willard also laments western society’s inept responses… “sickeningly shallow solutions to the human problem, such as ‘education’ or ‘diversity’ or ‘tolerance…’ they do not come close to the root of the human problem.”

The Covenant Community 

Finally, Willard turns to Romans 12:9-21 for a comprehensive list of what gatherings of covenant communities, local churches should look like:

1.    Letting love be completely real

2.    Abhorring what is evil 

3.    Clinging to what is good

4.    Being devoted to one another in family-like love 

5.    Outdoing one another in giving honor

6.    Serving the Lord with ardent spirit and all diligence

7.    Rejoicing in hope

8.    Being patient in troubles

9.    Being devoted constantly to prayer

10. Contributing to the needs of the saints

11. Pursuing (running after) hospitality

12. Blessing persecutors instead of cursing them 

13. Being joyful with those who are rejoicing and being sorrowful with those in sorrow

14. Living in harmony with one another

15. Not being haughty, but fitting in with the “lowly” in human terms

16. Not seeing yourself as wise

17. Never repaying evil for evil

18. Having due regard for what everyone takes to be right 

19. Being at peace with everyone, so far as it depends on you

20. Never taking revenge, but leaving that to whatever God may decide 

21. Providing for needy enemies

22. Not being overwhelmed by evil, but overwhelming evil with good

Willard says, “Just think for a moment what it would be like to be a part of a group of disciples in which this list was the conscious, shared intention, and where it was actually lived out…”

Transforming the Soul

This chapter, one of the book’s best, gets to the most crucial issue: the health of the human soul. He writes, “The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on the various dimensions of the self… And the person with the ‘well-kept heart,’ the soul will be itself properly ordered under God and in harmony with reality…. For such a person, the human spirit will be in correct relationship to God. With his assisting grace, it will bring the soul into subjection to God and the mind (thoughts, feelings) into subjection to the soul. The social context and the body will then come into subjection to thoughts and feelings that are in agreement with truth and with God’s intent and purposes for us.”

       One of the best paragraphs in the book: “… The Psalm 1 man delights in the law that God has given. Note, he delights in it (verse 2 ). He loves it, is thrilled by it, can’t keep his mind off of it. He thinks it is beautiful, strong, wise, an incredible gift of God’s mercy and grace. He therefore dwells upon it day and night, turning it over and over in his mind and speaking it to himself…The result is a flourishing life.”

       “… Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his Kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.” 


[1]  According to Willard, “a great part of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized around feelings. People nearly always act on their feelings… the will is then left at the mercy of circumstances that evoke feelings.” 

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Your Voice

Your voice, as distinct as a fingerprint, gives you the chief instrument you will use throughout your life to engage and perhaps change the world. It does so through formal language symbols, as well as grunts and groans, laughter, singing, sighing, crying, coughs, whistles, and whispers.

         That’s why your voice (oral, written, artistic, or praying) is one of the greatest treasures in your life. It allows you to send your unique message to your family, community, place of worship, nation, the world, history, and to God. How you use your voice is a very big deal. 

         My brother, Vernon, a retired Sheriff, says, “The right to remain silent is one of our most precious freedoms. Everyone should try it.” My friend Glen Roachelle once said something similar to me, “You don’t have to condemn anything. Just be silent.” I’ve found those twin words of counsel to be excellent guides for living.

The Creative Voice 

God spoke the whole universe into existence (see Psalm 33:6, Hebrews 11:3, other scriptures). That is how He creates. Because we humans are fashioned in His image, we too possess creative vocal power. Our words live. Like seeds, they create new life when they fall into receptive soil. 

         So, whether your message, your song, is delivered as a solo or as a member of the trio or choir, you can walk through the world releasing words that create, encourage, and bless. Think of it, when you speak a confident and smiling “Good morning” to your spouse and children, you just designed the environment of their whole day. And you can do that at the gym, your workplace, restaurants, and every other place in your daily path.   

         So, if you hold the historic power to create such fine results, why would you allow others to draft your voice into the army of their reactions? Just because others choose to speak for or against current events doesn’t mean I need to speak about them. My voice does not belong to our national echo chamber. 

         When I venture into Facebook or other sites in the public square, I don’t stand up for America, Trump, Biden, Christianity, or my mom. Why? Because wisdom says every “yes” is also a “no.” Therefore, if I take the time to speak or write about Dr Fauci, I have to say “no” to my own voice and vocation. Jesus said He only spoke what He heard His Father speak. That means He had to say “no” to many other people and purposes—even good ones.

Your Signature Sound

But it goes deeper than that. Your signature sound comes through life experiences that excavate deep caverns in your heart. When specific (and often painful) things hit you—the fatality car wreck, a promotion, the birth of your child, a miscarriage, that award, or bankruptcy—they dig new spaces in your life. Forever after, when air pushes up through the subterranean formations of your life (like the collapsed mineshaft of a longstanding dream), it creates vocal sounds unlike any other human on earth. 

         That’s why we usually know after one syllable or sigh if we can trust the one speaking—we hear a tone, a resonance, that delivers critically important reconnaissance. Just by the sound that came booming (or creeping) up out of his or her underground zone. After working with James Earl Jones in the 1990s, I learned the truth of his famous voice. It rumbles out of the bedrock integrity of his life.

Caring for Your Voice

A well-known singer explained to me the great care she must maintain over her vocal capacities. Specifically, she must prepare sufficiently, pace herself, get enough hydration and sleep, cool down after a performance, and find proper rest and recovery time. Like an athlete, she spends more time training and protecting than playing on the field. 

         When she told me that, I had to question if I value and respect my voice enough to focus on caring for it as she does. I also had to ask why I think I have the time and strength to criticize others, indulge controversy, or engage trivial matters.

         I know some people have a prophetic or activist gift. They speak out as they do because God created them that way. I salute them. But I also know the centrifuge of our times pull many others away from their creative purpose. It spins them out into the orbit of things they cannot possibly create, repair, or even influence.

         But, closer to home, we all have the great honor of dropping words into the human hearts we encounter each day. That is a very high and noble calling. Might be worth working in that realm for the new year coming up. 

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Joy Beyond the Walls of the World

Although we are multi-dimensional beings, most people only understand their body and personality. But the largest part, our spirit, our temple, is our least understood and most ignored dimension. Why is that? I think it goes something like this:

         A newborn baby only knows the breast. In time, other perceptions—voice, temperature, noise, pain, balance, motion, taste, smells, faces, language—awaken that young life. Soon, all five senses help integrate the child into her family and society.

         Sometime later, an awareness of the Holy arrives. 

         Perhaps it appears when the child first gazes into the night canopy of the cosmos. Later, the human heart hears a whispered invitation to step up to that holy realm. Now he or she will rise toward union with the Creator.

         But civilization seems to resist our response to the invitation. Well, of course it does. The foreheads of many cultural “experts”—like journalists, politicians, scientists, entertainers, and authors—appear permanently furrowed by darkness, cynicism, guilt, and fear; that’s why their voices scold and their touches injure. 

         Why do we even pay attention to them? Since we don’t know them personally; we have no idea what they know, believe, honor, embrace, or reject. So, why do we call them into our homes and invite them to open their thoughts?

         Psst, hey, you…the experts don’t know. Appearing on The View or The Five does not verify wisdom. 

Eucatastrophe

Many years ago, as I mowed several acres of grass with a tractor and bush hog, I suddenly realized my wallet had slipped out of my back pocket. Panic! My driver’s license, cash, and credit cards were gone. Probably chewed up by the bush hog. 

         For quite a long time, I walked slowly over the ground I’d already mowed, looking for shredded leather and paper. Nothing.

         As a last resort, I prayed. Earnestly. 

         Then I climbed back on the tractor to finish the mowing. A half hour later, when I saw a big rock in my path, I stopped the tractor and jumped down to move it. When I did, my right foot landed on my wallet! I will not live long enough to understand what happened. I hadn’t come near that spot earlier.  

         Aside from the joy of finding what was lost, that moment reaffirmed the creature’s connection with his Creator. I asked Him for my wallet. He wasn’t too busy. 

         J. R. R. Tolkien added the Greek prefix “Eu” (connoting “good”) to “catastrophe,” (from its rare meaning of “end of the story”) to coin the word, “eucatastrophe.” He defined it as “a sudden and favorable resolution of events,” or “Joy beyond the walls of the world…”[1]

         Think of the times when the shadow of loss darkened. Then, after standing face-to-face with “the end,” full joy suddenly invaded your life. Although you didn’t deserve it, pure delight rushed in from outside your familiar world. Finding my wallet was such a moment. 

The Audacity of Joy

Joy is not a response; it is a deliberate dance before Heaven and earth. Your whole being—body, soul, and spirit—chooses to celebrate. Audaciously. You don’t wait for circumstances to launch or approve your joy. You just do it; at noon or midnight, in full health or dying, and adorned by wealth or poverty. Be joyful. Hell or high water. 

            The Bible speaks of “Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame…”[2]

         Jesus knew He was destined for a barbaric death. But He also saw the eucatastrophe behind and beyond the end. His joy was not a response to the cross, but rather a bold declaration throughout the universe that He would win by crushing (not avoiding) the cross. As the author and perfecter of faith, Jesus pulled joy from somewhere beyond the walls of the world. Even in death.

         And as His sons and daughters, we can do that too.  Go ahead. Practice joy. Every day. Go past the borders of your experience to tap into the new and future world. Then bring its power and freshness back into your circumstances. You may find others are also waiting for the new world and its joy.


[1]  Verlyn Flieger & Douglas A. Anderson, Tolkien on Fairy-Stories (Glasgow: HarperCollins, UK edition, 2014)

[2] Hebrews 12:2 taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD (NAS): Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, copyright© 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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