Seagulls, Seals and the Primacy of Perspective

“Look at those birds!” I exclaimed to my Smitty as we squinted across the inlet of the Great Atlantic flowing into the Nauset Salt Marsh, across to a sandbar littered with small, black figures.  I left my binoculars at home, so we’d have to simply marvel from a distance at the sheer number of birdies lounging in the sun.  I wondered what they were… Terns?  Shearwater’s?  Sandpipers?

There aren’t many people on this remote section of the Cape Cod National Seashore, a good stretch of the leg from Coast Guard beach where our umbrella and summer reading awaited our return from our pilgrimage to what I nicknamed “Cape Horn”.  It’s a favorite place of mine, there at the  mouth of the Salt Marsh inlet where the waves don’t follow the rules even more than usual, skipping and changing direction faster than my youngest son’s video game character when he’s playing Super Smash Brothers.

A young couple approached us, (we would soon learn they were on their honeymoon) binoculars in hand, excited about the wildlife on the distant sandy outcrop.  “Did you see them?” they pointed.  We joined right in on the delights of nature, and then (in keeping with seaside language) they lowered the boom:  “So many seals all together!”

Seals.  No wings.  They don’t fly.  Those weren’t birds at all.  We weren’t seeing things clearly from that distance.  We made assumptions.  We know what seals look like.  (They hang around the beaches all the time in singles or small pods - hence the ever present shark alert flags at the National Seashore beaches).  But because we couldn’t see the details of their amusing, blubbery bodies and their adorable, whiskered snouts, we imagined flocks with feathers and beaks.  

Even as the light dawned, I started converting the story in the natural world to the great truth in the spiritual: without the right perspective, you can’t see clearly.  Without the binoculars of faith, the gospel becomes about good behavior instead of amazing grace.  A life’s direction and motives are skewed because the ladder being climbed is leaning against the wrong wall - of this world’s success, instead of eternal purpose. A person is being judged by outward appearance, rather that through the clear, illuminating glass of their infinite worth as a person created in the image of God.  

Wrong perspective is an easy trip-up.  Ask me how I know…

How grateful I am that the word of God is described as “a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path”.  How superbly Jesus changed the whole paradigm of religion, bringing God the Father so close that we could see what He’s really like, Christ being “the exact image of the Father”, both Just and the Justifier.  How wildly beautiful (like the glittering, dancing waves forging their way into Nauset Marsh) is the word of God, bearing witness with perfect perspective, from beginning to end, to the great pursuit of God for sinners like you and me.  

The ancient paths to perspective remain the same forever.  The truth of the bible, the prayers of  God’s people, the fellowship of the saints: all these keep the man or woman of God from blundering under false doctrines and crazy headed ideas.  They aren’t glitzy, but they are the prescribed binoculars, bringing the clarity of the living Holy Spirit, that keep us from seeing birds, when what’s really out there are seals.

A goofy little story, I know.  But there’s lots of parables on this path we’re on.  May yours be filled with wonder, and the perspective of faith.  

Your friend on the Pilgrim Road,

Loriann Smith

The Parable of The Dog, The Mud and The Hill

A few weeks back we had a lot of rain.  A few months back, we got a German Shepherd/Lab mix puppy.  And a few millennium back, the forces of erosion, tectonic plates, (and who knows what other natural phenomena) formed a spot of land into a small hill…

This is the story of how those 3 points in time came together to teach me some ancient and well tested truths...

Once upon a time, about 3 weeks ago now, I took aforementioned puppy  to the town park, a few days after the aforementioned rain.  And turning the corner to follow the well travelled trail down to a creek, the puppy spotted another dog.  That other dog was with a family - mother, father and a child, perhaps 3 or 4 years old.

I had one of those locking leashes that extend when unlocked.  And the now 60 pound puppy, great lover of all other dogs and people, charged ahead for a meet n’ greet. The leash was unlocked.  The ground was muddy.  The hill was following the law of gravity.  I was not, in any way, in control.

For fear of scaring the poor little boy as a large black dog bounded toward him (pulling a sliding  owner who clearly was not prepared for the moment) I steered myself into a tree to stop the bounder.  Into the tree.  Into the picker bushes surrounding the tree.  Smashing fingers into the tree to stop the leash from going any further.  Smashing legs in shorts into the tangled brush.  I stopped the dog…but I was a bloody mess of scratches and mud.  I finally gained control of the puppy, whose sole aim was to gleefully lick the entire family and their pet.  After apologizing profusely for scaring the wide-eyed foursome, I went my way to continue on the path, shaking and very glad I was wearing my $5 Walmart tee shirt now dotted with blood and smeared with a dirt/tree bark blend.  The old sneakers I had worn were now certifiably filthy.

Everyone was OK.  The dog was oblivious, simply delighted to prance in and out of the stream along the path.  But I was bleeding and sore, and pondering the value of staying alert and recognizing personal limits.  There was a parable here, and it was already formulating in the head under my Dog Mom baseball hat.

My oldest son asked me before I even got in the car if I was going to be OK alone with the dog.  After all, he’s getting bigger and stronger.  (And unspoken, I’m getting older and weaker).  I’d never really taken him out alone with the extender leash before.  I poo pooed my son’s caring caution. 

When I arrived at the trailhead I noticed the muddiness, and actually slipped once.  But I dismissed the wet environment even as I thought for a moment that I should have brought my hiking boots.

I’d like to share 3 points in my parable that apply to the disciple of Jesus on life’s pilgrimage to the City of God.  I’m the first person who needs to understand these truths (clearly!) since I got the message through blood, mud and the powerful workings of gravity.

Listen to the warning.

The Word of God is replete with soundings and flashing lights that indicate spiritual danger on the horizon.  Sometimes, God makes use of human beings to sound the alarm.  Sin is a subtle, cunning enemy, grasping self justification in one hand and self deception in the other.  By listening to the voice of wisdom the traps of the world can be identified and avoided.  A good part of victory is recognizing the world, the flesh and the devil, and staying clear.  

Discern your environment.

Where are your feet?  Are they on the solid ground of the Gospel - not the shaky, muddy foundation of religious “goodness”, but the rock solid, dry ground of the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ alone?  (I love preaching to myself!)  Are you depending on Jesus, the Cornerstone for your righteousness, or the slippery mud of your own power to keep life in control?  Jesus is the steady-on companion through the wild, brambly places of this present darkness.  He knows the hills, valleys, rocks, and as John Newton so perfectly put it: the “many dangers, toils and snares…”  

Understand your limits.

We are a vapor.  None of us is a spiritual Hercules.  We require rest, Sabbath, a time to slow down.  We have areas of weakness in our make-up that will make us ever-dependent on Someone stronger. It’s painful to say I’m not strong.  It’s hard to accept our inability to change other people or difficult circumstances.  But it is critical to understand our weakness. Or we will end up bloodied, muddied and shaken.  The Kingdom of the Apprentices of Jesus is very different from the kingdom of this world.  One of our upside down mottos is the great truth: “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

My parable spoke to me.  My scratches healed, but I learned to bring the short leash when walking the pup.  I gained insight into the proper footwear for muddy terrain.  Most of all, and most difficult: I’m aware of my limitations.  And I’m more mindful of what’s up ahead on the trail now that experience has worked her magic.

Life is full of parables.  My minor but painful injuries gave me ears to hear.  Let it be so where it really counts.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann Smith

"You May Be Right": Laying Down the Need to Come Out on Top

Four words might possibly change the tenor of your whole day…perhaps, in time, the climate of a whole culture.  Those words: “You may be right…”

As the consummate first-born, bossy big-mouth, I can- with authority - speak to the foolishness and pride of wanting the last word, thinking I know the correct way to go, pressing forward with all dispatch to “fix” other people and their opinions.

This character defect has brought me no peace, and a great deal of trouble over these many years.  Through many encounters involving dimwitted, know-it-alls (me being the aforementioned head dimwit) , I have in time come to learn the value of the 4-word phrase that circumvents a great deal of blow-hard stupidity and fosters the Jesus-like character for which I yearn and strive.  But oh, how hard it can be to choke out those deferential syllables…

“There’s a right way to load the dishwasher…” “You may be right.”

“Climate change is destroying America’s forests.”  “You may be right.”

“Masks are the best way to stop the transmission of Covid 19.”  “You may be right.”

“Cats are 10 times better than dogs.” “You may be right.”

It’s a simple matter of giving some ground where there is some leeway of ground to give.  For the sake of courtesy, for the sake of tolerance, for the sake of not having to have our own way, we can use the magic phrase.  This quad of words can stop a pot from boiling over and ruining the stovetop.  It can stop a train that could easily go runaway.  It’s the bullet proof vest for the drive by killing of human discourse.  By employing “You may be right” at the apex of your desire to spell out your opinion of the error of another person’s opinion, you not only leave the door open for the beauty of acceptance.  You yourself change.  The effort of the dialogue melts into wonder that it really doesn’t matter that you are understood or that you come out on top.  What matters is that you are making a real effort to allow for the thoughts of another person to be heard.  As St. Francis of Assisi penned many years ago:

Lord make Me an instrument of Your peace

Where there is hatred let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine master grant that I may

Not so much seek to be consoled as to console

To be understood, as to understand.

To be loved. as to love

For it's in giving that we receive

And it's in pardoning that we are pardoned

And it's in dying that we are born...

To eternal life.

Of course, there are some things, (but probably far fewer than we think), where we simply cannot tender this helpful phrase.  Some ills fall clear into the realm of evil or calamitous ignorance, and as Christians those are clearly defined by scripture.  On those points, where human souls are at stake, and ultimate human meaning and happiness are on the line, there can be no compromise. 

“Sin won’t kill me, I don’t need salvation…it’s just the human condition.”

“Pornography is a victimless vice.”

“Jesus is one road among many to God.”

There are razor’s edges on this narrow path that cut clean through with no room for compromise.  But they are few.  And the non-negotiables will ring with more truth if we don’t insist of having our way in the places where there edges allow for filing down. 

Give it a try. Just say the words: “You may be right.”  No one needs this admonition more than me.  Down to my bossy bones.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann Smith

Holy Week Friday - Why Good Friday and Easter Sunday are Better than Christmas

Before all the Christmas elves get mad, I begin by saying the celebration of the Savior’s birth is a joy and delight to me and my family.  Even the American Christmas culture, though much of it misses the whole point of the holiday, is delightful in many ways.  Music, decorations, special foods - these are all so very good.

But if we want to climb to the pinnacle of high holy days as Christians, we will reverently bear ourselves over the incline of the incarnation to the mighty heights of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  It is here where the birth of Christ finds its fulfillment - the very reason for the manger in Bethlehem.

Perhaps we’ve prettied up Christmas too much.  In reality, a poor, young frightened couple are in a terrible fix, with labor pains coming and not a bed to be found.  God providentially provides an animal’s shelter.  This is not a clean, sanitary, comfortable place.  Silent Night is not playing in the background.  There is no hospital, doctor or even midwife available.  And if you’ve experienced birth, you know it’s messy, difficult business in the best of conditions.  This is the glorious palace into which our God descended as a fully human baby boy.

He grew up, and walked this earth, and the loveliness of His ways and His character could not be contained if every book in the world and every inch of the internet were engaged for that task.  Yet His purpose was not primarily to teach and heal and show the way, but to die.

Good Friday is the holiday that provides the richest gift to the poorest beggar.  The good news Jesus came to tell, He then demonstrated when He willingly gave up His brilliant, perfect life for the likes of us. To be the One to take on himself the penalty for our sin.  Heaven thundered and roared and the sky darkened in the middle of the day when the Savior of the world offered up the gift so great the whole world can’t contain it.  It is wrapped in the red blood of Christ, and sparkles with the gold of redemption for every soul that simply believes, from the beginning of time to the end.  

Good Friday is better than Christmas.

In the treasure of the gift of Christ, we find not a lifeless salvation.  If Jesus is dead, Christianity is just another religion, with a great teacher-prophet, who is not mighty to save. As the bible declares through the pen of the Apostle Paul:

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins”. ~ 1 Cor. 15:17

But Christ is indeed raised.  And by many historical evidences, as Pastor Tim Keller says:

“The resurrection of Christ is both intellectually credible and existentially satisfying.”

And so, this magnificent present of the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is teeming with life.  The box, so to speak, is alive and bursting to be opened.  God’s Easter gift is freely given to all who will come to the tree on which Jesus died, and the tomb from which He emerged to devastate death and hell - and believe.

Easter is better than Christmas.

Have a very merry Easter.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Thursday - Gethsemane, History's Lynchpin

The Garden of Gethsemane is Holy Ground.  As we consider the agony of  our precious Lord in the garden, we may want to kneel, and in a quiet, reverent tone, repent in dust and ashes.  Poetry speaks when regular prose will not do.

Gethsemane: The Linchpin

In Gethsemane

You wept for sin's sure toll on all things good.

Struggled, in clean white beauty 

the filthy horrors of perdition...

striving to destroy you, striving to destroy yours.

Your Father, firm to keep light for darkness.

Relentless with His "no" to your plea:

"Let this cup pass."

You bled through pores your own hand formed for cooling

While white hot fire from ugly death pressed, burned

shaking all your primal, human flesh.

All God, all man in the valley of decision...

The fate of every man

on One man.

Who can bear such loneliness?

"Let this cup pass."

The acid of distress, scalding, ablaze in your chest, your heart.

Fear, rage, murder, envy...all OUR vice laid hard on you.

Gethsemane, the linchpin of the ages...

where God meets God and all hope rests on this:

"Let this cup pass...

yet not my will, but Thine be done."

Onward to Calvary.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Wednesday - Why You Want a God of Wrath

The idea of a wrathful God makes people angry and upset. If you find yourself in a conversation with an agnostic or a nominal Christian about the nature and character of God, you’ll probably hear some rendition of the following:  “I don’t believe in the kind of God presented by some people, an intolerant, demanding God.  I believe in a God of love…”  There was a time I said the same thing, even as a younger Christian.  And for sure, the love of God in Christ is what this week is most profoundly all about.  But I want to spend a few minutes on the uncomfortable subject of the wrath of God.  Because it’s the truth - a biblically sound part of the WHOLE truth, and because it’s a liberating and compelling truth indeed.

For starters, let’s look at a few scenarios:

• Tamar, the young, beautiful daughter of King David, is raped by her half brother and then hated by him, not to mention permanently ruined in the Jewish culture of the time she lived.
• A 13 year old girl in New York state is abducted while riding her bicycle, sexually assaulted, killed and her body hidden by her murderer.
• Black men and women in Africa are rounded up, chained together and stuffed into dark cargo holds, taken from their homes and families and sold like animals into a lifetime of slavery.
• 6 million Jews are starved, tortured and exterminated in Nazi concentration camps in the 20th century.
• A thirteen year old disabled boy from Delmar, NY is smothered in the back of a van by his caretakers.

Of course, the list of injustices in the history of the world, those known and unknown, those great and small, could go on endlessly, the sheer volume of them orbiting around the earth to the sun a thousand times.  

As the Creator, Sustainer, and King of the Universe, how ought a good, loving God respond to these atrocities?  Should He ignore them in the name of being “kind and loving”?  Should He minimize them and give the perpetrators an extenuating circumstances excuse?  Should he shrug His cosmic shoulders and forget they ever happened in the name of being tolerant and understanding?

God forbid.  The New Testament declares:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” ~Romans 1:18-19

It is precisely the beautiful goodness of the nature of God to utterly abhor sin of any kind.  Forget just the obviously horrific sins in the list above. Would it be ok for God to wink at people cheating on their taxes, ruining their bodies with drugs, alcohol, food or work addictions?  Can He simply look away from nasty emails sent at work or laziness that impacts the flourishing of a family?  Can He stand by while the dug-in, unrelenting selfishness of every human being goes about the business of destroying all that is lovely and precious in the world He made?

If God were to dismiss without a peep any sin, he would no longer be a good, righteous and just God.  

“God is light.  In Him there is no darkness at all.”  ~ 1 John 1:5

God has powerful, perfectly just wrath against any unrighteousness, and I’m glad He does.  You should be too.  We want a God who hates darkness.  Who hates double-crossing and racism and murder.  Who hates everything that perverts and twists and ruins us and those we love.  Those HE loves.

You see the problem, don’t you?  Of course you do.  You and I, we aren’t the heroes in the stories of the bible.  More often than not, we’re the villains.  We are the bad guys.  We are lost and justly under the wrath of a good and lovely Master of the Universe.  

Ah, but here’s the genius of the gospel… God must punish and take vengeance upon sin, or He ceases to be just.  And so He holds court as the righteous judge.  And you and I and every person ever born, save One, are found guilty. Then, from the back of the courtroom, comes a man.  A God-man, with spike holes in His hands and a spear hole in His side. A man who was dead, but now is alive. That man holds out those hands to His father, the judge.  And His father is glad, knowing that the full fury and wrath of His righteous judgment have already been satisfied.  The typhoon of light that burns and kills darkness has been unleashed on the Righteous Son of God, who alone could bear the sin of all men on this third rock from the sun, this home of the people He made for relationship with Himself. And the gavel comes down with a shocking verdict…”not guilty”.  The sentence of death was already meted out to Another, and with God there is no double jeopardy.

Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century preacher put it this way:

“In the gospel, God never trifles with human sin; we proclaim full, free, immediate forgiveness to the chief of sinners, but it is not in a way that makes us think the sin is trivial in God’s esteem.  By the sacrifice of his Son, God renders it possible for him to be merciful without being unjust.  In the substitution of Christ Jesus, we see justice and mercy peacefully embracing and conferring double honor on one another.”

So like the first day of spring, God in his son Jesus brings hope. He comes and saves us to the uttermost:

“Therefore he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. ~Hebrews 7:25

And God the Father, perfect in light and life, has HIS reward.  He’s the very One who sent Jesus into the world.  For this very reason.  That all who believe upon Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.

So you see, you want a God of wrath.  Who is also a God of unrelenting, unrivaled, justifying love.  Repent, believe and be saved.  Then go, and make disciples of the wonderful Jesus, who with His father and the Holy Spirit devised the brilliant plan to be both just and the Great Justifier.

Blessed be His name…

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Tuesday - Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: John Newton and Amazing Grace

There may be no better song as an anthem for Passion Week than the most famous hymn ever written in the English language - Amazing Grace. The lyrics of this masterpiece of gospel truth were penned by a sparsely educated British sailor-turned-pastor, who elegantly communicates (with mostly 1 syllable words) the profound beauty and power of the grace of Christ.

As western culture moves with exponential speed away from a shared understanding of our human limits, the concept of the need of grace becomes more and more foolish to modern man, if considered at all.  Despite the overwhelming evidence of the reality of the sinful nature, and the failed attempts of mankind to “make a better world”, the resistance to the need of a Savior remains.  It is in this moment in modernity, when personal freedom is elevated to the pinnacle of virtue (how’s that workin’ for us?), that the lyrics of Amazing Grace and the story of the man behind the song are an oasis in a desert of self absorption and bad theology.

John Newton’s story is a textbook example of the adage “truth is stranger than fiction”.  This forum is too brief to outline the whole drama of Newton’s life, but I recommend going deeper with him, especially through the letters he wrote (which were the social media of the the 18th century).  In light of the topic here, suffice it to say that through a series of circumstances John Newton found himself occupying the position of captain of an African slave trade ship, where he witnessed and was party to the great evil of the capture, torture and sale of human beings.  This wicked era of human history created a hurricane of inhumanity so malevolent that the calamitous winds of that social villainy continue to blow today.  

But through the unbounded grace of a  Greater Wind -the convicting power of the Holy Spirit - John Newton recognized the absolute corruption of the human heart - especially his own- and the impossibility of cleansing the stain of sin from his soul. No hope could be found in good works, in self awareness, in charity. Here, in this place of his soul’s ruin, Newton discovered that most needful truth, indeed the only rescue for the disastrous shipwreck of sin:

The unmerited grace of Jesus Christ in His death on the cross.

John Newton repented of his sin and placed his trust in the atoning blood of the Son of God.  Period.  That is amazing grace.  There is nothing that can add to it, and nothing that can take away from it. 

And out of this conversion came not only a hymn that will likely be sung in heaven, but a providential earthly good as well.  John Newton became a mentor to William Wilberforce, the great British abolitionist who fought relentlessly for his entire career in Parliament to end the slave trade in his nation.  Newton advised Wilberforce to enter into politics instead of the pastorate when he was a young man deciding on a career path.  And in an ironic turn of the wheels of divine superintendence, the words of a redeemed slave trader played a critical role in the eventual abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom.

Though not popular and not pleasant, the bible says two things we need to hear as we approach Good Friday:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

~Jeremiah 17:9

AND

“…for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

~Romans 3:23

None of us have captained a slave trade ship.  But we have by our very  nature rebelled against God and His perfect, beautiful justice and righteousness.  The only hope for you and I is the amazing grace of God.  We cannot fix ourselves.  That’s why this coming Friday is called good.  The best.news.ever.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,

His Word my hope secures;

He will my Shield and Portion be,

As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease,

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who called me here below,

Will be forever mine.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’d first begun.

John Newton

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Monday - There's No Vaccine for This

There is no lack of uncomfortable subjects for conversation in 2021.  Vaccines, mask mandates, the last election…any of these can turn a polite communication into a dog fight in mach 2.  But if you really want to clear out a room, bring up that age old killer subject that makes the most loquacious of men suddenly mute and sends a natural born gossip hunting for the back door out.  

Death is the most inevitable, dependable, solid truth in each of our futures.  It’s not up for dispute, has no controversy to come up against, and cannot be foiled by great virtue, great intellect or great strength.  The bible calls it “the last enemy”, and indeed it is - completely undefeatable by all the powers of man.  It is as sure as day turning to night.  And it is the most off-limit topic of human discourse.

Lent is the great reminder, the bell ringing in the tower to sober up mankind to the brevity of life and the certainty of death.  In all the beautiful, horrible passion of holy week, there is no avoiding the ultimate truth.  Only One man defeated death.  And only He is its remedy. 

John Donne was an English poet who lived around the turning of the 16th century.  In those days before antibiotics and RNA vaccines, sickness would pass through a town and wipe out large swaths of a population swiftly.  Donne was lying on his bed, listening as the church bell rang out for each death, ring, ring, ring.  And it was there he penned the poem that included the famous line:

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

He survived that particular plague (and graced the world with works of profound and beautiful poetry).  But death did ultimately come to John Donne, as it will for you and me.

Here on the solemn ground of Holy Week, where we remember the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps a wise first step in our meditation should be to listen to the bells ourselves.  It is not morbid or brooding to consider daily the words of the brother of the Son of God, recorded for our good:

“For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, then vanishes away.”

~ James 4:14

I squirm under this serious question that drives me to repent of the wasted time in my life, and to reorient my days toward the thing that really matters.  In this week especially, the bell tolls loud for the waking up of souls to the great reality that life is brief.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls, my friend, it tolls for thee.  And for me.

How much greater, then, the truth that sounds louder than any death nell. As we “proceed to the route” as GPS advises, we will find on Good Friday the hope that makes this short stretch meaningful and hopeful.  The bell tolled for Him - even though He was God.  His death bought us life.  Not a stingy 80 years of toil and trouble, but an everlasting spring in the Kingdom of Love.

Today, don’t avoid the reality of your mortality.  Let it sink in.  Let it drive you to the cross of Christ, for whom the bell tolled.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann