Wade Poe

It can be hard to focus.  Some days, especially if you are someone like me who has to choose intentionally what you think about and focus on, you can spend several minutes chasing a spaghetti noodle around the sink with the sprayer hose.  Or on social media.  Or whatever. Nothing wrong with mind numbing or spacing out occasionally.  We all need to take our foot off the gas and coast every now and then. But in times like these with what's going on now with an election coming soon, floods in the South East of the US, war in Russia/Ukraine, whatever is happening with Diddy, and just about a zillion other things - I know some people get really distracted.  Really distracted. __________ What do you do as a believer?  What good things does God offer or promise that can be what we can chose to focus on rather than allowing the fear of all that stuff get to you and make you feel hopelessness, fear, or other awful things? Well, he offers a lot of things!  NONE ...

I woke up this morning with “Cake By The Ocean” playing in my head. Ever had one of those days? Where a song just pops in your head and keeps coming back up? Like Rhinestone Cowboy or something similar?  Ear worms we used to call them. A catchy, contagious sound that becomes our soundtrack for an hour or a day. Harmless and occasionally annoying, but a part of life for many. ________ A contagious idea is an idea that seems to spread around like a cold or the flu. Not everyone catches it, but it's definitely "out there" and influencing behavior. Just like a virus, it will affect everyone a little differently, with some apparently "not catching it". It's one of the reasons people are careful in working with young people after a classmate or anyone their age is reported as having committed suicide. There's a fear - a real one, that it will give other young people the idea to follow suite. Call it societal peer pressure or whatever, there is an impact. Other...

There was a time when people used to "bleed" those who were sick because that's what you did to help them get better - you drained them of their excess blood and/or "bad humors". There was a time when people used to look at early automobiles and say, "That will never replace a good horse or horse-drawn wagon", it's just too impractical. There was a time when people would capture, enslave, and sell their fellow countrymen to foreigners from distant lands for money because that's what you do for money. People used to do a lot of things that we accepted as perfectly normal that we look back on as being way off base, short-sighted, or just completely wrong. For me, the way we "do church" is not too different. It's something we've learned to do over time that is disconnected from what God was and is doing with humanity through Jesus. I don't believe God replaced the temple sacrifice/worship system with the local church sacrific...

With increasing distance behind us, one of the things I've noticed is how foreign  some "church" things are in light of not being "at church" services regularly, but instead hanging out with other believers having conversations, encouraging one another, discussing the way of life, etc. Singing or church music, for one, is an interesting thing for me.  In a recent visit to a local church service, I was moved  emotionally by a couple of songs - you know, the tunes and the words - and for a brief moment, I remembered that I'm also moved emotionally in very similar or even stronger ways by secular music, at times. When I think about how we "do singing" or music in churches, it really is interesting in light of church history and history in general. What we do in most churches today is nothing at all like what was likely experienced in the Old Testament, under that older covenant, nor the New Testament, under the new. Up until the time of Jesus, people ...

"When I criticize the system, they think I criticize them, and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it." - Thomas Merton It's easy to take things personally when you feel very deeply that you are being devalued. Sometimes it is valid and you are being devalued.  But sometimes we take things personally that are not necessarily aimed at us, but they feel aimed at us because we own those "things" so deeply as a reflection of ourselves. If someone critiques family, religion, politics, or anything thing or any version of such that we embrace, we can take it personally as if our choices or our inherited place in life as being under attack. And that's normal and fine.  One of the features of deconstructing and rebuilding I've struggled with and still are working through is this dynamic of learning to step outside yourself to attempt to see your place and your "self" objectively. I'm guessing it's...