Dependency is the issue in missions … You Westerners, you know how to minister from strength, but you don’t know how to minister from weakness. So it makes those of us who are weak, we don’t know how to partner with you. When Tim was a young boy growing up in the mission field with his parents, Steve Saint was one of his friends. Have you ever ministered to others from the place of weakness in your... Read more
His isolation. Their inability to distinguish reality from pretend. Those are two of the primary observations that continue to emerge from the devastation of the Colorado shooting. By all accounts James Holmes was a nice enough guy but no one really knew him. He kept to himself. He was smart but a loner. We are the most well-connected society ever and yet, we are increasingly socially isolated. Studies have shown that people who use social networks like Facebook or Linkedin... Read more
Here’s the thing I hate most in the aftermath of tragedies like the one in Colorado: There is no evidence of any military history. He did not serve in the military as far as we know. He was a 24-year-old white male, with no criminal history and no history of serving in the military. I understand that broadcast media is only looking for a soundbite, not a meaningful dialogue about the deeper question of evil. What if James Holmes... Read more
I couldn’t find any surveys or studies to reference but I have a theory about the cult-hit book Fifty Shades of Grey. I have a hunch this book is far more popular with white audiences than black ones. Perhaps the Pew Research Center ought to conduct a study? White people have a thing for ropes and handcuffs. Western whites in particular have had a long history of getting our jollies off of putting others in bondage. Blacks, on the other hand,... Read more
Today is Nelson Mandela’s birthday. The 94-year-old is celebrating with family but all around Africa, and indeed, places beyond, people are celebrating the man who has modeled reconciliation. My friend Captain David Moses told me that it was Mandela’s life-story that moved him beyond the anger he harbored from being tortured as a young boy after he was taken hostage by rebel forces in the Sudan. Mandela’s life ministered to him in that Hebrews 11 way — a great... Read more
A year ago, when I was in my hometown, I stopped by the Starbucks on Manchester Expressway, not far from the junior high I attended. I was there working when I struck up a conversation with a young soldier. You know how I am. We talked about his growing up in Montana, about his being a Ranger, and about the military in general. I had one battered copy of After the Flag had been Folded with me, and I offered... Read more
Whenever people tell me how bad the world is getting, I wonder where they were in 1972. Because that was a pretty difficult year in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. The Vietnam War was raging on. The trial of Lt. Calley for the murders at My Lai massacre had draped the entire town in cloak of shame and anger. Muscogee County School District had been twice sued for running a dual education system– one for blacks, another for whites. The... Read more
By all indications, I was an at-risk child, doomed by an unfortunate fate to end up in one institution or another. I’m just so thankful it was a church and not a jail. Rose Hill Baptist Church in Columbus, Ga., to be exact. Patsy Ward, herself only sixteen, not only invited me to Rose Hill, she drove from her home downtown all the way out Macon Road to pick me up and carry me to church because I was... Read more
I once wrote a story about a man who had his ear bit off by a guy he was tussling with in broad daylight, right in his own neighborhood. I didn’t know the man. Had never seen his ears. Didn’t know if they were big or small, hairy or bald, pierced or had one of those hubcaps in the center of the lobe. I only knew that the man got his ear bit off by a neighbor who wasn’t right... Read more
I still have my Carly Simon and Carole King records. You know. The ones that require a turntable and needle to work. Most of the things of my youth were left behind when I moved West in 1974. But not these women. I brought them with me. It felt wrong to abandon them after all they had sang over me, and sang me over. When my daughter Ashley got her first record player, a Fischer-Price model from Toys-R-Us, I loaned her... Read more
Karen Spears Zacharias
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In