“In a perfect Friendship…each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the…
I confess. I love shoes. They were the last thing I bought before the pandemic hit. But they were bought in secret. With a credit card. An expensive pair of sandals I had been eyeing for a while. While on vacation in a city with my favorite store, I caved in. It was the last pair…
As a physician-in-training in the late 1970s, I rotated among a variety of inner-city public hospitals, honing clinical skills with patients who were grateful to have someone, anyone, care enough to take care of them. There were plenty of street people who needed to be deloused before the “real” doctors would touch them, and there…
I was led into the conference room and seated at a massive table that filled most of the room. The solitary item on the table, a tissue box, was the first thing to catch my eye. Foreshadowing shows up in real life too, not just the movies. I didn’t want to be sitting in this…
Confession is something I used to do only in private. While I publicly confessed “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” when I was baptized and occasionally confessed to another person a sin I’d committed against them, I otherwise considered confession to be a purely personal matter. Oh, I confessed my sins…
My Christian upbringing taught me the gravity of sin. I knew I was a sinner. Knowing the joy of forgiveness, not so much. My parents herded me and my four siblings to church every Sunday, usually twice. I attended Sunday school where my aunt lined up her pupils against the wall and instructed us to…
Confession is humbling, embarrassing, and at times, even mortifying. So why bother? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply hide our sins and pretend all is well? Denial might be easier, but if we want to get free from sin, confession needs to become a regular part of our lives. Confession helped me break my 40-year…
I remember the day I met Jesus. It was in a basement in Chicago. I was invited by a friend and when I got there and swung the door open I saw other 20-something people like me. They were sitting around long tables that had Bibles piled on the ends. There were bowls of snacks…