Well, there’s no question my last post elicited response! Best of all, I got a phone call from my dear, dear friend who is the one who introduced me to Shorewood in 1991—Daniel!!!! We hadn’t talked in a whole decade (I remember the last time I saw him was at the summer Bible conference at Trinity right before 9/11).

For those old-timers (and he was surprised to hear just how many there’ve been) who still always ask me about him, he is doing fine and is still very much an accomplished student of the Bible.

I have to admit I felt a lot of angst about what I wrote Sunday. It was cathartic, though, and I guess I don’t regret it. As much as I considered asking my friend who does the website to take it off yesterday and the day before, I will just let be what it was.

Daniel even asked me when I expressed doubt about what I wrote, “Well, was it ‘in the flesh’ that you wrote it or was it really just you pouring your heart out?” My answer was something like, “I was just feeling such sorrow and it sort of came out.”

I must say I paid for all the crying I did over the weekend. I have had a bad headache and for awhile my right Eustachian tube making a clicking noise in my ear, if you know what I mean. Thank goodness it went away!

*****

Too bring back some lightness to the site, I thought I would pass on an old sermon passage from Jordan that I’ve kept in a file waiting for the right moment to slip it into any article.

Here it is:

Jordan: “I asked my neighbor who is a Muslim, ‘Do you really fast all day long? Are you sure on Saturday when you’re in there watching the ball game that you don’t absentmindedly go over to the frig and pull out a bottle of water and suck it down? He said, ‘Well, Allah understands.’ Allah understands nothing! He understands you messed up!”

“There was an Italian beef stand (near Harlem and Irving) called ‘What’s U R Beef?’ A (friend of mine) knew the guy that ran the place so he went into the back one day and was going to make himself a beef sandwich and you know who was sitting back there? The Monsignor and you know what he was chawing down on? A big old Maxwell’s. A big Polish.

“In Lent, of course, you’re not supposed to eat meat but there was the Monsignor back there eating that thing. Well, you know, you get to wanting it real bad and 40 days is a long time not to have something you really want. He made it through about 35 of them so ‘God’ll understand.’

“Man, if you can’t even lay off groceries, what about the more weighty matters?! The real sinful things?! Not those cheap little easy things. That’s what religion does. People absolutely confident they can do it and that’s who Paul’s referring to when he says, ‘For as many as are under the law are under the curse of the law.’

“You gotta all the time continue in all the things and you can’t do this little, ‘Well, God will understand.’ Yeah, He understands. Under the law system, He understands you didn’t make the cut.

*****

“I had a neighbor once who was the first Ba’hai I ever met. You know, they got that (architecturally revered) temple on the lakefront near Evanston. Ba’hai is a cult of Islam. They worship the Bob and the Bob is the John the Baptist that Muhammad said was coming. Muslims threw him out, he’s from Persia and it’s a branch off of Islam.

“This neighbor got converted to that from Catholicism when he was in the Air Force in Colorado Springs and they went out into the dessert once and he said he had a religious experience and that he was thoroughly committed to his religion.

“You know, the bottom line to any thing like that for me is how to have my sins forgiven and have eternal life in heaven when I die. I mean, if you got a tape player and it won’t play tapes, you don’t get mad at it because you can’t watch TV; you get mad at it because it can’t play tapes. Because that’s what it’s for! An electric can opener that doesn’t work you throw it away. It’s of no good.

“I don’t get mad at the can opener because I can’t go out and cut the grass with it; that’s not what it’s for. But I don’t just keep it around when it doesn’t do its job. And I look at religion that way. What else would you have a religion for other than to help you get your sins forgiven and tell you how to have eternal life?”