Leave the Rest to God

New Testament scholars remind us that the Greek word, "charis", means both "grace" and "gratitude". From the standpoint of the person offering love, it is called grace. From the one receiving that love, "charis" is gratitude. Fred Craddock challenges us by saying that the final work of God's grace is to make us gracious. When I was a child, my parents taught me to say, "Thank you". Then, "What do you say, Chuck," my mother admonished when someone gave me a gift. "Thank you." My mother has died, but I had always wished that she had let me take the initiative. After countless, "What do you say, Chuck?", I could have said it without any prompting. I have been thinking a lot about Bob Payne. I started attending Training Union (which many of you don't remember). Bob was in his mid-20s, a banker and a graduate of Florida State University, where he had been a campus leader. I think Bob started me on th...

When I started attending a Baptist church, I discovered the power of hymns. Songs like "Amazing Grace" and "Great is Thy Faithfulness" became embedded in my memory and helped to shape and strengthen my faith. This is a time when we used hymnbooks, which says something about my age and generation. The important thing is that the words of the older hymns became a part of the fabric of my life. Especially, in difficult times, I would reach into the barrel of my memories and pull out the phrase of the hymn that would give me balance when I felt off-balance. I know that today in many churches, screens have replaced hymnbooks, but as for me and my house, give us a well-worn hymnal and ask us to turn to a song like "Great is Thy Faithfulness". While I thought that I knew the message of this hymn, it was in the fall of 1984, that some pain in my life and pain in the life of my family opened me to a deeper meaning of "faithfulness". In 1984, I was t...