For my whole life I have successfully avoided quicksand. What happened to all the quicksand? I have never even seen a quicksand pit. My mind went down this profound rabbit hole while studying for last week’s sermon based on Psalms 9 and 10. In those psalms, David writes of falling into a pit set for the prey. I grew up in a time where quicksand was everywhere, according to movies and tv shows. There was quicksand in the jungles, on tropical islands, in the desert, in the deep woods and in the old West. I think even Lassie had to rescue Timmy from the quicksand once. Someone should have kept a better eye on Timmy. The plot was always the bad guys would stumble upon some quicksand and use it to catch the good guys, or for a damsel to become distressed. Someone always showed up to pull them out of the sinking sand. The damsel was always rescued, and the bad guys were trapped in the quicksand until they were arrested or drowned. 

While I’ve never seen quicksand, I have seen sinkholes. Sinkholes and quicksand sort of work on the same principle—agitated water undermines the ground soil. I have also learned that quicksand, sinkholes, and pits are metaphors for the traps we get ourselves into. Take social media, like Facebook and Instagram, for instance. We join in the fun of seeing family and friends, but we can quickly find ourselves sucked into the sinking sands of reposting sort of funny stuff. If we are not careful, we may find our selves “doom scrolling” through some dark alleyways, ridiculing embarrassed people caught (or set up) for shame, or just plain gossiping about people, whether they are famous, family, or friends of friends. Many of those pithy, satirical political posts, and artful humble brags are really designed to undermine other people’s self-esteem and tangle them up in faulty logic and false equivalencies. 

Any time anyone posts something that begins, “I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is…” is gossiping. Clever gossip is still bearing a false witness. Paul reminds us that we are to be careful (even on social media), for we are witnesses to God’s truth. Read Ephesians 4:25-32. The old hymn reminds us every time we hear it, “From sinking sands He lifted me. With tender hand He lifted me.” 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Be careful around quicksand. And let’s experience the love and power of God together while we are apart. 

. Bro. Darryl 

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In Psalm 3, King David is upset with his son Absalom for staging a coup to dethrone him. David had to flee for his life from the palace in Jerusalem. David prays, Deliver me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. He was upset. What a painful thing to pray, even if the wicked deserve it. Broken teeth are no laughing matter. 

When the missionaries learned that it was my 50th birthday weekend, they took me to a moderate restaurant near downtown Ndjamena in Chad. They ordered pizza and cautioned me not to eat the salad. During the dinner conversation I cracked a tooth on an olive pit. It was Saturday night. I was upset. I was scheduled to preach the next morning in the largest church in that capitol city. With much prayer and a couple of aspirin, the service went well. After church they drove me to a small village where they asked the American dentist to have a look. He took me to his small house where he had a vintage 1960’s dental office. He patched up my tooth and sent us back to town. I was thankful. I had to have a crown on the tooth after I returned to Tulsa. One stressful year I told my dentist that I was resigning from his “crown of the month club.” I had four crowns in five months that year. He told me my teeth were getting old. 

During this year of COVID-19, dentists are reporting a major spike in cracked and broken teeth. Not only are their patients not having their regular appointments (and they can understand why), but people are clenching their jaws so strongly, day and night, that their teeth are breaking. People are upset. We are upset with our circumstances, cancelled plans, the state of our politics and the condition of some of our relationships. 

David was honest when he prayed. God can handle our emotions, clenched teeth and all. There are so many of these prayers in the book of Psalms that scholars have given them a name—imprecatory prayers. The name comes from imprecation—to call down a curse, misfortune, or judgment upon someone. Jesus came to show us a better way to live, act and pray. Read Matthew 5:33-48 and trust His way. 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Relax your jaw. And let’s experience the love and power of God together. 

Bro. Darryl 

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I had a recent conversation with an acquaintance who shared her feeling of great loneliness during these months of coronavirus. She lives alone and was used to having a full routine of places to go, things to do, and people to meet with. She said she did not mind the break of routine for the first few months. As a senior adult she has some moderate health risks. She also has a lake house that she can go to when she needs a change of scenery. She does not understand why there has not been an all-out effort to help keep everyone safe with enough medical supplies for our seniors and those who have to go to work every day. She has some friends who are out and about as if nothing is different than before. She worries daily about them. She said the one thing she has learned from this experience is that she is comfortable with herself. By that I take it that while she misses others, she does not mind being alone with herself—she likes who she is as a person. 

I think it is unconscionable what has not taken place to keep the people of this nation safe. Take, for example, the Greatest Generation, a term coined by Tom Brokaw in defining those born in the 1920’s and early 30’s. They suffered the hardships and poverty of the Great Depression yet answered the call to serve and sacrifice for their country during World War 2 and the Korean War. They created the American Dream. Yet today, many are on lockdown in nursing homes and assisted living centers, unable to have their loved ones near them. A full 40% of the COVID deaths in Oklahoma have come from our nursing centers. Our nursing centers are undersupplied in medical equipment and understaffed with nurses, aides, and support personnel. The residents and staff are rarely tested, and only then after someone reports a contact with someone else who tested positive. There should be a great mobilization effort on our part as a tribute to and for the sake of the Greatest Generation and their children. What happened for it to be perfectly acceptable for elected leaders to take no personal responsibility for the health and welfare of our citizens? Waiting for a magic pill or vaccine to make it all go away is not acceptable. The Greatest Generation is having to spend these precious days in enforced loneliness. 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. We can do better. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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The whole world is grieving under the weight of the losses of this year. The coronavirus has reached every place on earth except Antarctica. In our country, it is the 3rd leading cause of death, with about 1,000 souls a day. Millions of acres of forests, farms and towns are burning in California, Oregon, and Washington. Hurricanes and repeated flooding threaten even more people. Financial, racial, and political tensions have up-ended families, churches, and communities. So much grief, and no real opportunity to properly mourn together. I came across this poem this week by Maya Angelou, who was raised in Sparks, Arkansas.

When Great Trees Fall 

When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.  Copyright © 2015 by The Estate of Maya Angelou.

Isaiah reminds us that our Messiah “is a man of sorrows who knows our grief.” By faith I believe that one day we will gather at church again to worship, pray, sing and even share our accumulating grief. Until that day, weary as we have become, we press on, step by step. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. You are a great soul. And let’s experience the love and power of God together while apart.

Bro. Darryl

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