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Grace

Gary Furr

I live in the vulnerability of my need for grace.  Grace I ought to give, grace I hope someone else will extend to me. Undeserved kindness, mercy, love. Most of all, the grace of God. Pure, unmerited, unsettling grace.

Grace, finally, is not dependent on anything more than the nature and reality of God. It is not what this or that preacher says it is, or what some friend tells us that comes out of their own need.

God is love.  This is the highest statement of the revelation of God’s being in the New testament. Count on that more than any other statement about the Christian gospel. It does not free us to live as we please.  Damage comes from our refusal of grace, consequences to our self-destructive alienation. But if the gospels are right, grace can restore a prodigal who had wasted everything, a woman with five marriages, a tax collector who was a traitor to his people, a murderer like the apostle Paul, and a woman caught in utter shame of adultery by a group of lascivious onlookers. It can reclaim even a thief nailed next to Jesus who barely knew his name. And if this is so, then there is hope. Continue reading “Grace”

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The Rememberers– for Mothers’ Day

Gary Furr

Mothers Day is a happy day, and also a sad one for many.  Mothers are both biological and spiritual. They find us as divine grace in life. If we lost one too soon, God seems to put strong, caring women in our lives somewhere to help us survive and grow up into life.  I have been blessed with a loving Mom who loves her children and stood by the four of us as we meandered toward adulthood. I am grateful. But I have known extra mothers–my wonderful mother-in-law, teachers, mentors, and an unfair overabundance of wise older women because of my vocation as a pastor. My wife is the greatest mother on the planet.  I still learn from her.  I am grateful for them all.

As my mother has battled cancer (and is now in remission, thankfully) this last nearly two years, I have become more grateful for the journey with mom and moms everywhere.  For all of us, thank you.  And so, a poem I wrote not long ago while thinking of my mom as the “teller of stories,” and women in churches who keep the stories that Continue reading “The Rememberers– for Mothers’ Day”

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The Harrow

Gary Furr

The Harrow Gary Allison Furr   In the years I lived among the peanut farmers, I breathed October dust and prayed for their harvests. The church and all of the town waited for the yield, To tell us what sort of year it would be. Only a few restaurants, drugstores and movie rental places No movie theaters, theme parks or malls, But we had a John Deere tractor dealership out on the bypass Where the farmers’ trucks had to pass by. On the most prominent corner, right by the road the latest double wheel model with the air-conditioned cab and … Continue reading The Harrow

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Spy Wednesday

Gary Furr

This is a poem I wrote two years ago.  During National Poetry Month, my youngest daughter, who teaches middle school in NYC, and I write poems to each other.  Many of mine should never see light of day, but that year I wrote poems each day of Holy Week about the events of that day.  I stumbled across the tradition of calling this “Spy Wednesday,” after the plotting that was going on that day.  Treachery, using, selling out–they are the deepest pain that wells forth from human beings. The deepest pain of Holy Week is the revelation of betrayal of … Continue reading Spy Wednesday

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Callings That Find Us: Dan Haseltine

Gary Furr

This Wednesday evening we come to the final of four outstanding speakers in our 2019 Speaker series.  Each week, a speaker has taken us inside the journey of Christian calling.  Too often we have turned the Christian faith into a series of ideas or reduced it to a buttress against our fears and anxieties rather than what Jesus revealed it to be: a dynamic and life-changing adventure.  Our final speaker is Dan Haseltine.

For more than two decades, Dan Haseltine has been the founder and primary songwriterPublication1 for the Grammy-winning music group, Jars of Clay.  From a band formed among college friends in Illinois, they skyrocketed in the mid-90s to crossover fame.  Their self-titled debut was released in 1995. When the single “Flood” began to climb the charts on mainstream radio stations, Silvertone Records started to heavily promote the song, turning it into one of the biggest mainstream hits ever by a band on a Christian label. The album has since reached multi-platinum certification according to the RIAA. Over the next decades came touring, more Grammys and successful albums. 

I met Dan a few years ago while on an interfaith advocacy effort in Washington.  We were paired together to talk to congressional leaders about the importance of global health and hunger funding, so we spent a day together. He is one of the most engaging and thoughtful, down to earth people I have ever met. Many years ago my youngest daughter, then in high school, pressed me to go down to the old Boutwell Auditorium, May 2, 1998, to hear Jars of Clay. I had never heard them, pretty well being into acoustic music and bluegrass then, but I went along.  I liked them. I didn’t know I’d ever end up walking around DC with that young singer someday.

Dan visited Africa in 2002, which in turn inspired the founding of Blood: Water Mission, a non-profit organization created to raise awareness Continue reading “Callings That Find Us: Dan Haseltine”