Wade Poe

I did the funeral for this sweet lady a few years back and one of the favorite stories her family shared about her was a time that she and a friend took a trip during which they would be passing through Tennessee and on to Alabama to visit relatives.  On the way, they decided they’d try a side trip to see the home of Johnny and June Carter Cash, which they heard was near the main highway.  They followed the directions they were given -- this was way back before GPS -- and when they arrived they stood outside the gate that led to the driveway up to the Cash’s home. They were snapping photos when a beat up looking old pickup with fishing poles hanging out the back pulled up.  The driver was a “caretaker looking man” dressed in cutoffs and an old shirt. He kindly offered, as he opened the gate, to take them closer so they could take pictures on the porch of the house.  They jumped at the chance and, after taking a few pictures of the house, the “caretaker looking man” w...

"God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good." It usually depends on how we define "good".  Not everyone sees good the same way.   Good these days usually means that you need to agree with me and disagree with things, points of view, or other things that I disagree with. When my kids were small and they wanted ice cream or some other junk food all the time, they would not have thought that my wife and I were "good" for telling them "no" so that they would have a balanced diet and would have treats as treats and not as their main food source. A lot of people want a "nice" God who doesn't contradict our wants, desires, and dreams. But if scripture and history is to be trusted, God isn't that way.  He's good in the ways he defines good, but not in the ways that we'd always like him to be. This small variation in how we define good and nice is a giant wedge that drives a lot of people away from religion or church p...

Most everyone wants to be happy. But many are taught happiness comes when you get to a certain goal or accomplishment in life, so happiness is always "out there, someday". In the meanwhile, people try to sneak a little "me time" here and there. Maybe at work they take a longer break or just don't do anything for a while. Maybe instead of listening in class, they daydream. For a lot of reasons, we learn not to enjoy the journey we are on.  We don't enjoy the work we're doing or the studying we're supposed to be doing.  Happiness becomes something that is only achieved when we're gaming the system we're in for a little bit of personal choice and fun.  And, very importantly, when we're not doing what we're supposed to do. That's a little bit of an overstatement but it's generally true in our culture. Many decades ago, people were happy when they could find work to do that paid them so they could have a place to stay, food to eat,...

Church hurt.   It’s a thing.  It’s pain caused by something related to and identified with a local church or even religion in general. Early on in deconstruction and rebuilding, it was something I “pulled out and set to the side" as a separate thing to look through. It didn’t take long to realize that it is, for many, a key feature of deconstruction since it’s often “the thing” that influences people to do a double-take at what they believe and to begin questioning. After I quit working for a church, the number of people that approached me with their church hurt was almost overwhelming.  Probably not almost.  It was overwhelming at times. I have heard stories of church politics, betrayal, deception, control, narcissistic leaders, sexism, ageism, racism, abuse of all kinds, and just about everything in-between. It’s a real thing and it comes in different forms and hits people differently.   There’s a LOT of info online about it – some of it really ...

One of the saddest things to me when we were growing up was whenever there was a new herd of pigs born on our little farm in southern Missouri, you would occasionally find one or two of the baby piglets who had been scared by something and ran into the corner of a building or into a loading chute and suffocated themselves in their attempt to get away from whatever had scared them. It made zero sense to me. It made me sad to see such fragile life snuffed out so easily. My grandpa would just bend over, grab them by the hind feet, and throw them on to a burn pile. It was just part of the circle of life that we were part of. ———————- The thought of being herded into a place that I would not have chosen otherwise is a disturbing thought. But it’s the kind of thing that happens pretty constantly.  I think we see it constantly on the television, we hear it on the radio, and we see it all through social media.  Over the last several years, the margins of what is considered to be norma...

  Just recently a social media ad series has been promoting something they're selling so you too can learn "how to heal the sick in 10 seconds just like Jesus did" .   And the subtitle on the promo on this fine piece is " How we went from 25% healed to 90% instantly healed and you can too. " Most likely, this is from someone who is just trying to make a quick profit off of desperate, hopeful people who are easily tricked into buying an easy way to get some kind of desired result. It's not real, in case you are tempted to try it - the "healing like Jesus part" that is.  The making a quick profit probably IS real and you could come up with a slick cover and way to make money too, using AI. A lot of things are "sold" to people using hopes, needs, desperation, desires, etc.   The nice thing about God is that he's not charging for any of what he offers. Need grace?  You have it without end, always. Need mercy?  His mercy triumphs over judg...