Joseph Andrew Haynie’s eyes were blue. Reading his Army discharge papers fifty-eight years after his death, I learned this simple fact. Joe Haynie married Katie Louise Clyde in the tumultuous year of 1941 – and left not long afterwards for…
Say THIS not THAT: 9 things to edit out of Christian helping speech
Nine Things Christians Can Edit Out of Our “Helping Speech” A few months ago I was really struggling with anxiety and migraines. I felt overwhelmed and and a general sense that life was too much to handle. I called on…
Dylann Roof and the sound of silence
Fools said I, You do not know Silence like a cancer grows. The slaughter of nine innocent people gathered for prayer at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., was horrific, deplorable, sickening, cruel and heartless. It was not senseless.
Something inside
On Thursday morning, 50 of us are jammed into a Sunday school room singing chants. Most of the “us” are scholars — elementary school students — for Freedom School. This is the first day of six weeks that will be…
Does God hate our sympathy? The AME massacre and social media
In the wake of the AME massacre in Charleston, S.C., I’m beginning to wonder if sympathy is a sin. Everywhere I turn I hear sympathy: “Our hearts go out to the victims and their families” or “Lord, have mercy!”
Tragedy of abuse is manifest in ‘Love & Mercy’
Brian Wilson has a tortured soul. Much of his life had abuse from one source or another. His greatest tormentor was his father, Murry. The backdrop of an abusive father informs Love & Mercy, a powerful biopic on the life…
It’s hard to sleep
It is hard to sleep. Tonight, I struggle to reach the land of the sandman because I kept wondering if another scenario like the one at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina was taking place elsewhere in…
Naming the Mother Emmanuel massacre
The nine individuals murdered last night in Mother Emmanuel Church are martyrs. Their lives bear faithful witness not just to a particular faith, but also to a segment of citizenry within both our country and the peaceable kingdom of Jesus…
Phil Lineberger “Through a Glass Darkly”
When the phone rang in my hotel room in the middle of the night, I knew. I’d dreaded this call for weeks, begged God that it would never come. Becky, more than a thousand miles away, wept on the other…