Month: March 2025

Thoughts from here and there…Religion and Soap

A rabbi and a soap maker went for a walk together. The soap maker said: “What good is religion? Look at the trouble and misery in the world after thousands of years of religion. If religion is true, why should this be?”

The rabbi said nothing.

They continued walking until he noticed a child, filthy with mud and grime, playing in the gutter.

The rabbi said: “Look at that child. You say that soap makes people clean. We’ve had soap for generation after generation yet look how dirty this child is. Of what value is soap?”

The soap maker protested, “But rabbi, soap can’t do any good unless it is used!”

“Exactly,” replied the rabbi.

Religion is like soap. This is an excellent illustration of the need, but, you ask yourself, what about the results?

What can faith help us to accomplish that cannot be done in no other way? I remember a story that is often repeated about a little boy was in the hospital, unwell and very unhappy. He wanted to go home.

To cheer him up, his nurse gave him pen and ink to draw a picture, with strict instructions not to soil the bed- clothes. He completed his picture, but then the nurse found him crying. He had dropped a great blob of ink right in the middle of his picture.

She looked at the mess and then with deft strokes drew around the blot a dog and called it Spot.

“Oh,” said the little boy, looking up into her face, “that’s just like my dog at home.”

She had done something with that blot that God can do in all our lives if we’ll let Him.

God has the resources to take away the bitterness and strife of life.

God will share divine power with us so that we can overcome the temptations that confront us with successful living.

There is nothing that we can do on our own. It takes two. If we will let him, God will help us.

Thoughts from here and there…How much time do you have?

I was deeply impressed with this story. Mary Ann O’Roark in an interview with Anne Lamott talks about her friend Pammy and herself.

“I was raised to keep all the family secrets and present myself in such a way that people would be either envious or approving. But keeping up a facade like that takes so much energy.

“When my friend Pammy was going through chemotherapy, and I asked her if the dress I was wearing made me look fat, I was making a fuss about the dumbest things, and Pammy looked at me and said, Annie, you just don’t have that kind of time. It was so profound, it was like I was in a cartoon and somebody conked me over the head. I got it.

“Pammy died seven years ago. But I still live by her words: You don’t have time to live a lie. You don’t have time to get the world to approve of you.

“You only have the time to become the person you dream of being. You only have the time to clean out your mean and ugly spots, areas that drag you down and hurt other people. You only have the time to accept yourself as you are and start getting a little bit healthier so you can be who God needs you to be.

“In a way, it’s exhilarating to say, This is really who I am, and I’m not going to pretend just because I have the sneaking suspicion I’m not good enough. God meets you where you are.”

God meets us in so many ways and in so many places. God meets us during Lent to reminds us of the brief nature of life and on Easter to loudly declare that there is life after life. Get the message?

Mary Ann O’Roark, an interview with Anne Lamott, reprinted from Clarity magazine.

Thoughts from here and there…Readiness

Readiness is a common everyday process that we use. Readiness implies how you dress for the events of the day Readiness takes in the food that you might eat for breakfast or for any meal, whether it is at home or in a restaurant. Readiness covers the preparation that is needed when you are planning a trip. Whether we acknowledge it or not rediness is an important process. It eould be sad and embarassing if you were not ready.

The season of Lent is time for getting ready.

Readiness invites us to take a long view of Jesus Christ as he prepares for the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and the resurrection on Easter morning.

For us this ought to be a deeply humbling experience. We are to take what Jesus did for us personally. It is for you and me.

You recognize the substitution of Jesus for you not only intellectually, but you feel it emotionally. Johann Christoph Arnold in his book, Seeking Peace writes:

“Humility is not just gentleness or meekness. It demands vulnerability, the willingness to be hurt. It is readiness to go unnoticed, to be last, to receive the least. Humility offers nothing in the way of peace as the world gives–and plenty that destroys it. Yet it describes the way of Christ better than any other word. It is the way of Christ. And as such it brings the deepest and most lasting peace.” (Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace(Farmington: The Plough Publishing House, 1998), 123.)

To find the peace of Easter, we ought to go through the humility of Lent.

May your journey through Lent be a productive one.

Thoughts from here and there…God’s Immune System

Your immune system is a complex defense system for suppressing and eliminating infections. Agents that can invade your body live everywhere—in the air; on dust particles, food and plants; on and in animals and humans; in soil and water; and on virtually every other surface. They range from microscopic organisms to lager parasites.

The vast majority of these organisms do not produce disease, but some do. This majority is usually kept under control by your immune system but, if that system becomes weakened or you encounter an organism to which you have not built up a resistance, illness results.

We live with the constant battle that is going on between the body and infection—a battle your body usually wins, but not always. We don’t have to be told how important our immune system is for our good health. A strong and healthy immune system protects us from disease.

We know how important it is that we pump–up the immune system with vaccinations, injections or oral immunization agents. We can be immunized for the flue, measles, chickenpox, diphtheria, mumps, smallpox, and many, many more threats to health and life.

It might be well to think of the Christian religion as an immune system that protects us from dissolution and death. But the benefits that Jesus Christ offers us include much, much more than immortality.

The great plague that, more than anything else, infects us and inhibits us is selfishness. The selfish need an immunization of love. Harry Emerson Fosdick in “Riverside Sermons,” wrote: “Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.”

Bitterness is the end result of selfishness. It is a deep feeling of anguish created by anger, resentment or animosity to people or life. Life owes us and it has not paid off. Only the application of the therapy of love can gradually wash away the fruits of bitterness.

Thomas C. Oden speaks of an immune system for heresy. Heresy is like an infection. Heresy can be understood as an opinion or doctrine that is not in line with the accepted teachings of Jesus Christ. It is more than false teachings; it also has to do with improper attitudes.

The siren call of the heretic enters smoothly into the ear and mind. The message is one that supports our own personal gods, whatever they may be. The message infects our morals, our ethics, our values, our attitudes, and our relationships. We are victims. We are bound by unnecessary restrictions. We do not allow ourselves to experience the pleasures of life. It is an old song which reverberates from Eden to the present day.

There is a vaccine which we can take that helps the immune system resist heresy. It is the good news taught by Jesus Christ. There is a clinic which dispenses the vaccine, it is called the church. The clinic is open seven days a week to provide the information and use of the antitoxin that saves us not only from the heretics but also from ourselves. The invitation is open. It’s up to you.