A Shepherd’s Thoughts by Stan Johnson
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For our three prophets, life was stripped of its illusions—unvarnished, nitty-gritty, and real—and so too was the life-journey of Mary and Joseph.
“‘The great sadness,’” my friend said with gentleness, “is a lens through which the world ... and life ... is seen as fundamentally, even deeply flawed.”
Thus for my pastoral sisters and brothers of Lira, Uganda, our present study in Mark’s Gospel is koptek.
In truth, those of us who should be most open to receiving a “quiet nudge,” “a thoughtful word,” “a spiritual idea” might be very prone to resisting those promptings of “faith, hope, and love.”
Please don’t misunderstand me: these discoveries have been marvelous in so many instances, and yet each has brought with them an underlying foreboding:
Am I more concerned about monster grass than I am about the billions on earth—those I’ve seen and their pastors—who daily wage an often-losing war against starvation and disease?
“Home forms our identity; it’s where we belong; it is the source and place of our heart; and it is where we part this life.”
The wisdom of “this generation” would be manifest in their children: “We choose to live neither by law nor by love.”
Admittedly, some of our American differences are “better,” and yet, in truth Nathaniel Hawthorne was echoing that Old Testament cynic: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)—and Washington D.C. regularly displays this Old Testament perspective.
I am reminded that our human history is replete with our attempts to build a stairway to heaven, only to find that confusion, isolation, and destruction result—only to find that we’ve built a stairway to hell.