Category: Theology and Life

Cancer, Death, Faith, Forgiveness, Holly Week, Hope, Jesus, Love, Suffering, Thankfulness, Theology and Life

The Four Things That Matter Most

Gary Furr

  Please forgive me.  I forgive you.  Thank you.  I love you. The wonderful New Testament scholar George Beasley-Murray once wrote that what the gospel of Mark imparts to us in nine verses, the gospel of John spends five chapters.  John 13-17 is the home of some of the richest, most direct and powerful sayings of Jesus.  It is called by scholars, “The Farewell Discourse.”  Words from a dying man to his beloved friends.  He says, “I love you,” again and again in many ways.  He tells them things that need saying.  Death concentrates the mind and focuses life. My … Continue reading The Four Things That Matter Most

Family, Ministry2 Comments

Coming and Going: Spring Break as Holy Hiatus

Gary Furr

There’s a time to stay, and a time to go

This week has been Spring Break week for us—others are about to have theirs.  For preachers in churches of any size, it is a thrilling time, a high holy day, whether you leave or stay.

Resting at the beach...

Holidays for ministers always include times when large hordes of our parishioners go somewhere else and we stay behind in quiet offices and can only pray for them until they return.  Or, in occasional cases, along with the ancient eastern prayer, “Lord, have mercy,” we toss a few prayers from Jackson Browne, “Why don’t you stay…just a little bit longer…”   Continue reading “Coming and Going: Spring Break as Holy Hiatus”

Bluegrass, Country Music, Death, Environment, Ethics, Music, Old-time music, Technology

Weather or Not

Gary Furr

Weather.  Someone said to me not long ago, “It is humbling to consider that when you come to die, the crowd that day will be determined by the weather and they’ll sum your life up in twenty minutes or less.”  Humbling. “Shelter” is such a “taken for granted” in America that we live more disconnected from the fragility of life as it is exposed to the elements.  It breaks in on us now and then—in California, by earthquake, in other places, snow or tsunami.  Here in the South, we live chronically subject to the tornado and hurricanes. Hurricanes are different … Continue reading Weather or Not

Children, Ethics, Hope, Love, Music, Theology and Life3 Comments

Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Gary Furr

Watched “Moneyball” Sunday night.  I liked it.  It surprised me.  I wasn’t sure that it could be faithfully made into a film worth watching, but, as usual, I know little about the art of that.  Brad Pitt is a great actor, all of the fluff of paparrazinsanity aside, and he hit a homer again.  It’s an interesting story about baseball, change, and the resistance to new things that always comes.  It doesn’t end with exploding lights, a la, “The Natural,” but with the gentle irony that success leads Billy Bean to a fateful choice between one vision of “success” and … Continue reading Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Art, Christianity, Competition, Culture, Death, Fame, Hope, Love, Music, Perfectionism, Pop, Suffering2 Comments

Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil

Gary Furr

Whitney Houston made your heart soar with that magnificent voice.  You kept hoping for her—so lovely, so achingly vulnerable, so fragile.  “Come on back, girl,” you hoped.   In the end, she didn’t.  There will be moralizing—drugs, bad choices, all the rest.  But such times are wrong for moral lessons.  There is a time to criticize, and a time to refrain from criticizing.  A time to learn a lesson, and a time to let the dead alone and mourn. The story of Whitney Houston makes me think how hard it is to care for one’s own soul when there are so … Continue reading Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil