Bet you haven’t heard of Joseph McGrail-Bateup. He hails from Canberra, Australia, which I’ll bet you also didn’t know, is the capital of Australia. And even if I told you he held a Guiness Book of World Records title, I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me for what. (A lot of bets here for a non-betting man!)

Anyway…Joseph McGrail-Bateup makes his living in the air-conditioning world. He should come to work for Lindstrom, “I love those guys!”  Air conditioning has won him no medals. Turns out he can shout louder than anyone else. He already holds the honorary title of Town Crier in the capital city, but now the record books show no one can cry better, I mean louder, than he. At a record of 122.4 decibels. Think standing right behind a Spirit jet plane taking off. Oh wait, you can’t do that anymore. OK, like cutting down a big tree with your big old honkin’ chainsaw.

He broke the record by crying out the word “Now,” which wasn’t as funny as the previous record holder, a woman who cried out “Quiet” at 121.7.  Bet she’s a librarian. He has tried six times to break the record; he gets hoarse for a week every time he tries. I can’t imagine.

In these articles, I try to write about something that happens in real life, and try to apply it to Scriptures, or look to the Scriptures for guidance on how to think about that occurrence (in contrast to preaching where I try to go from the Scriptures to real life.)  But this one has stumped me because I think the Scriptures, both teach us to be quiet–think “slow to speak” in James chapter 1; or “shout it from the mountaintops” in Isaiah 40. Which is it? What Biblical application do we find from this?

I think volume implies intensity. On Good Friday, we remember that Jesus cried out in a loud voice “It is Finished” when he died. He also cried out in a loud voice for Lazarus to come back from the dead just a few days earlier. The angels in heaven cry out in a loud voice “Holy! Holy! Holy!” There is room for volume in the Bible. In college (a Christian college) one day, a friend of mine was mad at me, and he mailed me an insult. It simply said, “Job 13:5.”  I’ll bet you don’t know what Job 13:5 says off the top of your head. I didn’t either. I had to look it up. It reads: “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.”  I chuckled even though he was fuming.

So, what is it? Nobody likes a loudmouth, Lord Joseph (as he’s affectionately known in Canberra) notwithstanding. And “Silence is Golden” as they say in the movies. But there are times to cry out. Like when somebody is headed towards trouble (think a child running into the street.)  Or when singing praises to God–we can’t sing loud enough for that. Saint James, in that verse I alluded to earlier said: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. (v.19). There’s something about emotion that matters in this. “Loudmouths” talk at inopportune times and for too many people to hear. A word spoken in anger, regardless of volume, can be destructive. A loud word gets attention, whether good or bad. A good word, on the other hand, can be transformative.

So, let’s choose our words carefully. Now!!!

Says the preacher.

Craig

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”  Proverbs 25:11 (MEV)

                 We buried my mom on Monday. (I’ve stared at this sentence for a bit – that’s a big statement! You only write that statement once in your lifetime.)  Spending the day with family kind of meant the whole day was a prolonged service with story after story emerging, different facets of my mom emerging from each person. I will treasure the day as a day of closure for sure, but as a rich day of family connection, of personal connection with the past, a clarifying day of family history.

                      At the end of the day, I took my brother and our wives, to a little beach on a little extension of land that protrudes into Tampa Bay from the banks of the Manatee River. It’s a place where my brother has received many a sunset picture but had never been. The stories of the day continued there as we enjoyed a picnic supper in our beach chairs. God put on a wonderful master’s painting class as we watched the colors of the sun change in rapid succession.

As we talked and watched, mullet jumped here and there, but a lone dolphin stole the show, gently patrolling the beachfront, I imagine fishing for the same food that fisherman way out on a sandbar were seeking. The dolphin came from the left, swam past us, and then almost immediately turned around. Some might suggest that was my mom waving goodbye — I don’t think so, I don’t know that I’ve seen that dolphin before, but dolphins passing by there at that time of day happens often. It’s a thing.

But it was a blessing. I was so happy to have it go by so my brother could see it. There’s something wonderful about the big animal passing by so closely and with such grace. I did thank the Lord for blessing us with that image – like my mother, the people of our lives pass by closely and with grace, and as quickly as they come, so they pass. God’s mercies are new every morning (says Lamentations 3), but they must be savored and given thanks for quickly, because they fade quickly, too. Isaiah 90 comes to mind:

Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death —

they are like the new grass of the morning:

In the morning, it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.

The most significant of the natural signs that evening come in the sunset itself. When there is not a cloud in the sky, the colors change, uniformly, but without much flare. Too many clouds and you can lose the sunset altogether. This evening, many clouds, and different kinds of clouds, enriched the sky. It was a complicated and nuanced canvas that God painted that evening. And full of symbolic meaning for us.

My brother told a wonderful story about a group of kids that came from the US for a missions trip to Costa Rica that my dad and he were helping. At the end of the trip, they took them to the Pacific side of the country, and they watched the sunset. Some pubescent (and not bright) boys loved the sunset so much that they resolved to get up early and watch the sun rise. To their credit, they woke before dawn, sat down at the beach where they had been, waiting for the sun to rise. It started to get bright, they got excited, but they never saw the sun. Until it was visible through the palm trees behind them, that is. You may be laughing, as I was when he told the story. Why?

Because you know that from the beginning of time, until it someday comes to an end, the sunrise is as predictable as the sunset. It happens every day. Without fail. But yes, one in the East and one in the West. And that evening, the evening of the day we buried my mom, the sun set on the life that we knew with her, her presence as regular as the sun’s rising in the morning but not anymore, punctuated by the beautiful sunset. The complexity, and the beauty, of the sunset that evening, and the promise of the sun rising tomorrow (always a symbol of resurrection) put an exclamation point on the day, on my mom’s life, on the grace of God though it all.

Grateful,

Craig

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3 (NIV)

When you walk the same path over and over, you get to know the terrain pretty well. You know where the path dips, or turns, where a downed tree has been left to rot, what street is coming up, etc. Sometimes you notice something for the first time (like the etching of Glades Rd.); even though it’s been there a long time, sometimes you notice something new (and wonder if it had been there all along).

This sign falls under the latter category. When I go for a longer walk, I aim for Delray Oaks Natural Area Park. Delray Oaks doesn’t boast much acreage, doesn’t offer (I was going to say many) any amenities. Off a small parking lot, a paved path meanders into the woods. And that’s it. Oh, and a slender vertical sign about as tall as I am. You can’t read what it says on this page, so I’ll tell you what it says: No pets, no bikes, no collecting, no fires, no camping, no animal feeding, no drones. Could they have not made the sign longer? It doesn’t say no littering. Can you do that? It’s quite a welcome sign, isn’t it? I carried no pet or bike or drone, intended to do none of things it said I couldn’t, but it still felt off-putting. It almost said No Entrance.

I wonder what kind of signs we post for the world to see. In our personal lives do we have a bunch of “no’s” that people have to penetrate before they get to know us? “No, I won’t meet you for lunch. No, I don’t go out much. No, I’m busy with…” Do our personal lives look like the welcome sign at Delray Oaks? What about our spiritual lives? “No, I don’t have time for a Bible Study. No, reading the Scriptures in the morning doesn’t interest me. No, serving at a food kitchen isn’t my thing. No, church is too early, too long, too hard to get dressed for, too…”  And what about our church? “No, we don’t need any help. No, you can’t sit here, or bring that in or…” What are the invisible signs we post at the entrances of our lives? I could probably go on to wonder the same about our professions, neighborhoods, etc.

I really like Delray Oaks Park. It’s an oasis of shaded walkways in an otherwise completely urbanized concrete and asphalt slab. It gets hot on the sidewalks of Congress Avenue, and Delray Oaks feels great to the urban pedestrian.

Likewise, we, as people, have a lot to offer the world. Each one of us has unique gifts to offer the world if we allow the world in. And God has a lot to offer if we say yes to His invitations to know Him and His will better. And our church, my goodness, our church has a lot to offer to any who might test the waters and come in. In each of these cases we need to be careful to not don the Delray Oaks sign but put on God’s “YES!” sign. God’s grace starts with acceptance, a divine “Yes” for any and all.

Do you want to know God better?

Back from the hike,

Craig

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.

And so, through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV)

In Coral Gables, FL, where Janice and I lived on two different itinerations of our ministry in the United Methodist Church, the street signs are like “L” shaped cemetery monuments.  One side of the monument has the street name, and on the other side the avenue’s.  Interestingly, during the day these white-washed street markers make it easy to know what town you’re in, if not what street you’re driving on.  We kind of had a love/hate relationship with the things.

The other day, while on a long walk, I found the name of the street etched on the curb.  In very elegant etched letters it said “Glades Rd.”  I won’t tell you what cross street this was to see who might be able to identify the location (or locations – I have looked for a couple of days and not replicated this sighting).

Why did they do that?  Does Boca want to compete with Coral Gables for the most illegible street signs?  Do they want to provide some backup when a hurricane blows down all the street signs? (This doesn’t make sense – if you can’t figure out you’re on Glades, you’re not going to find any smaller streets!) This particular location did not seem central enough to merit that.  Somebody took some time and energy to put this very unpretentious name into the concrete of the gutter.   Why?

I think it almost poetic to inscribe the name of the road on the curb.  Amidst the majestic fountains and signs that serve as markers for neighborhoods around Boca, the street that connects many of them pronounces itself with a certain humility, and at the same time permanency.

And maybe not with poetic flair as much as kindness—it greeted me, the pedestrian, in a way that only those who go slowly can receive it.  I’ve crossed Glades many times, and yet only last Friday did I see it.  Have you ever gone unnoticed?

I think the world is full of what (in the car world at least) are known as Easter eggs.  In the car world this idea points to little design elements that the casual observer would miss, but not the enthusiast.  I don’t want to go through this life as a casual observer, glossing over the finer details that our Creator has planted in His creation for the enthusiast, or “devoted” as we would say in religious parlance.  I want to see the smallest flower or the flower that only blossoms in the canopy of the jungle, or the delicate coral that only fish or those with B/C’s can see. Or the homeless guy that nobody has talked to in a week, or…. the list goes on.  These little gems come in as many forms as the creativeness of God allows.

I think that universally I have noticed these little forms of grace when I am moving slowly, or not at all.  It’s when you stand long enough at the edge of the water that the fish start venturing out.  It’s sitting by the side of the woods long enough that the elk come meandering. (Have you been to Cataloochee?)

And the nuggets of the spiritual life can only be found when we take time to notice.  Or inquire.  It is in prayer time that God speaks.  Too often, we have the music, or the sound track of life, blaring so loudly that we miss the smell of the roses.  We miss the spiritual nudges.  We miss the voice of God.

Take time to listen and to watch this week.  And let me know what you find.  Including the etching on the curb.

Back home,

Craig

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” 

Psalm 62:5 (NIV)

     You learn something new every day. I recently learned (I’m sure you already know this from science class in Middle School) that Mars has polar ice caps. I simply don’t remember learning that somewhere along the way.

So why this, why now? Well, a couple of weeks ago a little spacecraft called Psyche did a loop around Mars to gain momentum as it aims at its eponymous asteroid. As it circled around Mars, at a similar height to the Artemis astronauts circled the moon, it took closeup pictures of the Red Planet. Some of the pictures I saw looked blue – don’t know what that means.

But one of the pictures included a mostly brown spherical picture with a white blob on it. The white blob is ice. Now, as it turns out, we already have close-ups of that picture. It doesn’t look like our polar caps necessarily, but it’s interesting all the same, and well, conjures up some questions in my mind.

Questions like…How did that get there? Why is it still there? Why didn’t they film the movie “The Martian” there? Couldn’t Martians live off of that water? Inquiring minds want to know.

Deeper questions emerge, wonderings about the potential this reality presents. “Potentially” there was life there. Potentially there could be life there. I think potential is all about hope. We see potential in children. We see potential in relationships. We see potential in some business proposition. Any “potential” is a good thing. All good things come from God. So, potential is a gift. Here, on Mars, wherever.

Our polar caps are dynamic. They seem like monolithic desolate wastelands, but they’re not. Certainly, with global warming we see a lot of change in them. But and this is part of the “potential” thought, there is a lot of power under that stillness. In days of old, life was not as immediately evident, and it moved at a slower pace. (What do they call it- “at a glacier pace”?) But what power lies there? Have you seen ice fall from glaciers?

I think of God in that way sometimes. God is huge. And sometimes He doesn’t seem to move. God doesn’t seem to interact with me… (namely answer my prayers!)  But that doesn’t mean that God is not there. It does not mean that God does not move or have power. It just means that His power moves at a different speed than what I want or even perceive. Just as I wonder about the power that is held in reserve there on the caps of Mars, so I wonder about the power of God that I perceive to be inoperative, but maybe isn’t moving, simply because I don’t ask (James 4:2) or because I perceive God to be farther away than those little caps on Mars (Acts 17:27).

Finally, I think I like this new idea of Marcian polar caps because it offers something similar to what I know here, way out there. For example, I’ve been to Meteor Lake in New Mexico. It felt like the Moon, and in fact astronauts trained there many years ago. There are similarities between the Earth and the Moon there which are endearing. And likewise, the Earth and Mars have polar caps (and meteor craters). I see the signature of God in the universe when I see those similarities. I think that’s why I hope they find life elsewhere in the universe – that life will reveal more about God than anything else. Learning about God is the ultimate human endeavor.

Still grounded here on Earth,

Craig

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not far from any one of us.

Acts 17:27 (NIV)

       My grandmother had a bell collection on her hallway wall. Over 100 bells, from all over the world, hung on strings hanging from what looked like a curtain rod adorning the hall in a most unusual way. My great aunt collected spoons displayed in a nice wooden case. My Mom ended up with that and now I have the case and a bag full of discolored spoons. I have a collection of Matchbox cars from my childhood. We all have collections of something, I guess.

     The other day I read about a group of people who “collect” sightings of replicas of the Liberty Bell. They set out to find a replica of the Liberty Bell in every state. There’s a long story about how the Department of Treasury gave one to each state years ago, but that’s a story for another time, or for you to google.

     People still collect stamps and coins and Hess trucks (even though the Hess gas company has long gone out of business). Some people collect stickers with the names of the states they have visited and paste them on their RV’s. I too have “collected” experiences, like driving all of Route 66 and US1 (on the East Coast so far). We all collect things.

      To collect anything requires intention. It was widely known that my grandmother collected bells, and so she was always looking for them and receiving them from other people (my parents gave her one with my name on it, for Instance). Driving US1 took me four years (I have a REALLY slow car). Hess trucks used to appear only briefly at Hess stations around Christmas time.

       Collections reflect what we value. I still have the first Matchbox car given to me (a truck actually), and those toys filled much of my childhood – my collection reflects the idyllic childhood that was offered to me.

        Collections grow. In adulthood I collected the few Matchbox cars that were missing from the full production of Lesley Matchbox cars in 1969. The number of roads that I have driven from end to end is getting longer (Route 41 may be my next one). Now granted, collections can get out of hand – go to the Flagler Museum in St. Augustine to find this condition amply illustrated. But that too is a story for another time.

        What do you collect? As I think about our church gathering on a Sunday morning, I hope that we are collecting, with passion, spiritual experiences that make us grow. If collections require intention, how intentional are we on finding the Lord in our worship, our service, and our giving? Collections reflect what we value – where is our time spent, our treasure used, delight displayed? And collections grow, in some cases one little car or spoon at a time, in others, one mile or Liberty Bell at a time. Likewise, our Christian character grows one experience, one Bible reading, one prayer at a time. The Apostle Paul said that we “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). That transformation happens one little bit at a time.

       I come to church, I lead Bible Study, I pray sort of as a collector of the grace that God offers us in those experiences. I find my treasures in those times, and I not only value those experiences, but those experiences mold what I treasure. All of our treasures grow as we gather together in His name. I’m glad you’re here.

Back in church,

Craig

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21 (NIV)

       It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, not the Bible, that said “Change is the only constant in life.” He said that in the time of Isaiah! That was 500 years before Jesus, when, in my mind, things didn’t change that much. We quote Heraclitus nowadays because so much changes. And in a post-Einstein world, we kind of think that everything changes, even our understanding of the truth, that everything is relative. And that everything changes. There are no constants that we can count on.

But even Einstein believed in constants. Remember that famous equation E=mC2? The C of that equation stands for Constant. Light, as far as Einstein was concerned, is constant. The Bible nods its head at that idea too.

Physics suggests that there are several constants. Look up Planck’s Constant – it’s fascinating. And incredibly precise. The constant speed of light is likewise precisely measured: 186,000 miles per second to be exact.

    The pull of gravity is also understood to be constant, but that figure has been elusive. A physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland by the name of Stephan Schlamminger has spent the last 10 years trying to ascertain that number, and the number he has come up with is different from everybody else’s ideas. Even the experiment that he was trying to replicate. Bless his heart. He called his endeavor “life-sucking.” You’ve got to feel sorry for a guy that spends 10 years of his life on an experiment that essentially failed.

      If something is constant, how in the world can you not measure it? I’m sure Dr. Schlamminger has asked himself the same question for the last 10 years. I don’t have the answer to that; he suggests that gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, and… yeah, it got a little foggy for me after that.

      I don’t think, as he does, that just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Just because you can’t figure it out doesn’t mean it’s not true. Wait. Say that again…. Just because you can’t figure something out doesn’t mean that it’s not true. That is true for the tests and measures around gravity, but it’s true in the spiritual life as well. I will never understand how my mom lived as long as she did without food and water. Nor how her illness did not cause her pain. But her life during those months was real, and redemptive for me, and for many. Incredible, real things happened in those days.

      The inability to figure things out does not equate to failure. Schlamminger described his testing as a long walk through a dark valley (which has echoes of Psalm 23). Life leads all of us through some “valley of the shadow of death.” Those valleys feel like failures, and very well may be, but they do not mean the end, or that God is not with us. Psalm 37:23-24 says: “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he falls, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.”

     I can give witness to that truth. Not all has gone well for me. My body has failed in rather catastrophic ways, for instance. And yet I can say that the Lord has made firm my steps, and though I have fallen, the Lord has been graceful to let me get up again, and again. A failed 10-year endeavor to come up with a number has to be tough, but not the end.

      And one last word. My experience of, and my trust in, gravity is unaffected by Schlamminger’s testing. When I put my cup down on the table, it still stays there, even if we don’t know precisely the force that keeps it from floating away. The constant is not invalidated by the lack of measurement. God told Micah: I the Lord do not change (Micah 3:6). Even though Heraclitus’ dictum seems true, it ultimately is not. God is constant. God does not change. God will always be faithful. You can count on that (pun intended).

Craig

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 (NIV)

  Trying to sleep at the end of a Hospice bed is kind of interesting. At least with this bed that they brought into my mother’s house, they install an articulated blue air mattress and then hang its pump on the end of the bed. Her comfy recliner ended up at the foot of that bed.

      As pumps go, it’s fairly quiet, but in the dark corners of the night you can definitely hear it. The perpetual drone of the pump can serve as white noise, a constant hum that nullifies the creaks and the cracks of the home settling for the night (and maybe some lingering conversations in your head).  But the mattress itself makes its own sounds as it pumps up or releases air, that brilliant breathing-like design of this hospital bed.

      If you’re sleeping at the end of the bed, it means that they didn’t bring the bed for you, and you are probably there because you love the person who is in it. For me, that would be my mother. My mother has moved with the ebb and flow of this mattress for three weeks now, three weeks longer than any expert (or amateur) ever thought.

       Somewhere near that end of the hospice bed your prayers change. You stop praying for that person, whom you love dearly, to get better, and you start praying that the Lord would let them go. In my mother’s case, that’s all she wants. All she wants is to go be with her Savior, a God that she has served all her life, a Lord that she firmly believes in with every now small inch of her being.

       At the end of the hospice bed, now with the sun shining through the living room window, conversations happen. Family gathers. Stories are told. Family stories are clarified and refined. Past blessings and hurts and questions get rehearsed and, again, clarified and sometimes healed. Forgiveness and perspective are given and received at the end of the hospice bed.

      There’s nothing decorous about the end of the bed. It’s not a desirable piece of furniture. But I’m glad it’s here, and that I am here. The comfy recliner next to the droning pump has been a place of conversation, but also of observation of my Mom. There I have sat and looked way beyond the now glassy eyes on my mother’s face, and into the collective memories of a mother and her son.  Like the rituals of having dinner every night with my Dad, but then just her and me doing the dishes. Every night, all week, every month for all the years that I could reach up to get dishes out of the stainer to dry, we talked and processed and bonded. I can’t say that I miss doing the dishes, but I now will forever miss those conversations that wiped clean more than dishes.

       It was at the end of the bed that I stood and prayed and said goodbye for the last time. There were tears, the tears of two brothers now hugging each other for consolation instead of her, and it was at that moment, when my brother leaned over to kiss her, that she produced the final liquid her body had, a small tear in her right eye. For all the sedation and the decline of all her abilities, her last gesture, without being able to talk or to move or even see, was to share a tear. One tear that became a torrent for me, tears of grief, but now that she’s finally let go, of gratitude. I am eternally grateful for that little girl from Altoona, PA who became a wife, then a missionary, then my Mom. She ended well. I will strive to do the same.

Carol Emily Nelson October 13, 1938 – April 25, 2026

                    If you wander about these parts we call downtown Boca much (which if you read this article, you probably do), you know that we have railroad tracks. Unfortunately for me, we, like the majority of people that call Boca home, live “on the other side of the tracks.”  Now, Old Floresta and Boca Winds and The Shores hardly qualify for the traditional understanding of “the other side of the tracks,” but, we do have to cross them. And since the advent of Brightline, the odds that you will be stuck waiting for a train has gone from “probably not” having to stop to “probably so.”  Particularly if you add the myriads of “ghost” trains that go through – the times the gates go down but nothing goes by. That’s a new rendition of “the lights are on, but nobody’s home.”

      The other day I saw something new waiting at the railroad tracks. Right there on Palmetto Park, a Brightline train roared northbound (I don’t think it was stopping in Boca), and a Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) freight train rumbled south. It was kind of exciting and interesting to watch them barrel past each other, a blur of color and light. It reminded me of a time Janice and I were riding a high-speed train in Spain, barreling down the tracks at 120-plus mph, when a train doing equal or greater speed passed us going the other direction. Blur doesn’t begin to describe that passing!

      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s image of two ships passing in the night conjures a much more romantic image than the freight train in Boca. But that sense of missing connections still remained for me as I watched these two trains. Our lives get so full of demands (or perceived demands) on our time that we rush past a lot of beauty, goodness, and truth (to cite the transcendentals). We rush from one thing to another, yes trying to “stay in our lane” (two trains crashed on that same line Janice and I were on in Spain a couple of months ago), but in so doing we miss visiting with people, enjoying things that God has placed along the way, and losing ourselves in our own truths, instead of The Truth.

       In traffic, in the isles of Costco or Publix, in life, like the two trains at the RR crossing, I rush past too many people, too many opportunities for God to pour into me, and maybe pour into others. In slowing down, the transcendentals can pour in. Can we go slow enough to at least say hi to each other?

Waiting for the gates to go up,

Craig

Those who are kind benefit themselves,
but those who go too fast bring ruin on themselves. Proverbs 11:17

                     If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you know that I grew up in Costa Rica, and that I am partial to that country. I had a great upbringing there. So, when Costa Rica hits the news here in the States, I naturally gravitate towards it. And Costa Rica made the paper this week.

     It was an immigration piece. It turns out that among the many countries the US is farming out its immigrants to, Costa Rica receives 25 a week. And from all over the world. What does a small country like that do with all of them? Well, some get repatriated, but recently they have been released into the general population to mostly fend for themselves. And in this article, the writer highlighted a particular group that is reaching out to those folks.

     As a young boy growing up, we had the choice of two brands of cheese. One was from the company that kind of had a monopoly on milk. Ice cream, sour cream, yogurt, and yes, cheese, mostly came from this company. But then came along this other product called Monteverde (“Green Mountain” in Spanish). It was a little more upscale, and very good, and so I thought it was really cool when my Dad told me, as a teenager, that we were going to go there. Well, that trip was a car ride, a bush plane ride, and then a long horse ride to get to our first destination. Somebody was trying to bamboozle my Dad into buying some incredibly remote land… that’s another story. But we got to Monteverde via the back mountains, and there I found an English-speaking community of farmers, beating back the forest enough to feed cows and make this delectable cheese. 

     These were Quakers. Not Amish. Not Mennonites. But Quakers, who are fiercely independent (fierce is not a good adjective for this group, but descriptive all the same), and deeply committed to their expression of Christianity. Their faith calls them to a simple lifestyle, deep pacifism, and quiet worship. I learned to admire them as a kid. And I still do. Those people, recognized in the article I was reading as Americans deep in the mountains and committed Christians, had opened their homes, their community, their hearts to these sojourning strangers who were rejected by the US, and in many cases their own countries. I found this gesture to be awesome, but not remarkable. I found it to be incredibly consistent with the people I met so long ago (and have visited since – including a Friends Meeting on Sunday morning). I admire them for a lot more than the great cheese they continue to make.

       How does that spiritual go? And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love…. I want to make sure that I am known as somebody who loves the homeless person walking Mizner, for loving the young person who walks through our doors on Sunday, for loving the person with a flat tire on the side of the road and the one fleeing their home country because of one reason or another.

       Jesus modelled that for us. As did those Christian Americans up in Northwest Costa Rica.

Mine is to follow.

Let us walk with each other, let us walk hand in hand…

Craig

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for  one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’  Matthew 25:44,45 (NIV)