by Andy Wood on February 5, 2010
I want to take you to a place where, frankly, we aren’t invited. For just a minute, let’s be one of “those” people we often gripe about – those rubberneckers on the highway, who seem fascinated with somebody else’s messes.
In this case, we’re creeping up to a closed bedroom door, where on the other side, we can hear muffled sobs.
A man’s sobs.
A few days ago, somebody from home had rocked his world. The news was bad, and every ounce of optimism he once had was crushed.
You should have been here yesterday. He was really blubbering then. And he will be again tomorrow. Fasting, too. And praying. Lots of praying.
But as he cries and prays and cries and fasts and cries some more, something happens. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on November 7, 2009
“It seems plausible that folly and fools, like religion and magic, meet some deeply rooted needs in human society.” -Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter
At a convention, filled with pastors and other very religious people, I was sitting on a shuttle bus going from the parking lot to the convention center. The bus made a stop, and on hopped Dennis Swanberg – comedian, and then-pastor. I recognized him, because we’d recently had him as a guest in our church. Somebody else recognized him too. A good ol’ boy hollered from the back of the bus, “Hey! Aren’t you Dennis Swanberg? Say sumpthin’ funny!”
Dennis smiled good-naturedly, but the look in his eye said it all: Seriously?
I joked with him about the cluelessness of the request. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s sorta like saying to a doctor in public, ‘Cure something,’”
One Planet, Two Kingdoms
Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Where are the clowns? [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on October 30, 2009
Laura Kate Wiley is finding her voice.
At 17 months, she’s off to a good start.
With safe surroundings and a fearless heart,
A free spirit and a supportive family,
She plays and rests and dreams and wants –
Sincerely believing that what she has to say actually matters.
She will need these things again and again,
As her world evolves and her voice is threatened.
Nobody can sing the songs meant for her alone.
Again and again, she will have to find her heart with clarity,
And express her mind with grace and courage.
So will you.
Find your voice.
by Andy Wood on September 7, 2009
I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind”
He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job’s a hassle and kids have the flu
But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad
It’s been sure nice talking to you”
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He’d grown up just like me
My boy was just like me
-Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle”
He’s an old man now. His physical vision is virtually gone; his heartbeat will soon follow. His spiritual vision? That’s another story. It’s still bright and filled with fire and hope. But it’s a vision that now sees through the eyes of other men. He has no children of his own, but does have a relationship with a man who may as well be. He’s one of those blessed individuals who knows his time is up, and who faces eternity with no regrets. And now he writes the man he calls his son in the faith. His future looks bright; he can only pray the same for Tim.
Stand steady, and don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Bring others to Christ. Leave nothing undone that you ought to do. I say this because I won’t be around to help you very much longer. My time has almost run out. Very soon now I will be on my way to heaven. I have fought long and hard for my Lord, and through it all I have kept true to him. And now the time has come for me to stop fighting and rest (2 Timothy 4:5-7, LB).
A decade before I became a father myself, Harry Chapin sucker-slapped dads everywhere. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 13, 2009
It was, without a doubt, one of the lowest periods in my life. I was broke and jobless, living in the wake of my own failures. My whole world had turned upside down. I was torn between two directions – to stay in that part of the world that I had always considered home, or to venture out to a place I had only seen on trips to my in-laws’ house.
My wife wanted to be near her parents during that season. I wanted to live in Anywhere Else, USA. “If the world was flat,” I said, “Lubbock would be on the edge of it!”
But my world was flat. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 2, 2009
I had an experience a few years ago that moved me more than anything had in months or years. And to this day, I’m still not sure why, and/or why it moved me on that particular day.
It was a Sunday afternoon. The house was quiet and I was alone. I lay down on the bed and started watching a rerun of “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” I’d seen the movie several years earlier, and for whatever reason, decided to watch it again.
I had already gotten pretty weepy at a couple of places in the movie. But at the climax of the film, when Mr. Holland sees the lives he has impacted, and hears the governor, once his student, say, “Mr. Holland, we are your opus,” my guts turned inside out. It hit a nerve – a deep, raw nerve – like nothing had in years – perhaps ever.
By this time I was sitting in the den, alone in the house, sobbing. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on February 7, 2009
(Note: This is out of sequence, but I couldn’t pass this by. I’d like to know your thoughts.)
First, read this:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)
Then read this: A Botched Abortion in Mother’s Own Words
Then read this again:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)
Please tell me you feel at least a little outrage.
Please tell me that you haven’t lived so long in a culture of death that this leaves you untouched.
But while you’re at it, please give me something better than violence or political rhetoric. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on August 22, 2008
John W. Drakeford
Dr. John Drakeford had an open-door policy. Yes, the counseling icon, who pioneered a Christ-centered approach to psychology and counseling, had a rule that whenever his office door was open, any student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary could walk in.
But that’s not the open door policy to which I refer.
Dr. Drakeford also had this thing about the door to his classroom. He saw to it that it remained open at all times, propped so by a chair. Without fail, when a student arrived a bit late to class, he/she would grab that available chair, and the classroom door would swing shut.
“Suh, suh!” Dr. Drakeford would say in his beautiful Australian accent. “Could you choose another seat? I like to keep the door propped open in case of fire or something.”
I don’t think anybody else in the room believed that propping two swinging doors open would stop any of us from getting the heck outta’ there if the building was burning down. But who wants to argue with the author of Psychology in Search of the Soul?
One day, right in the middle of one of Drakeford’s fascinating lectures, somebody nabbed the empty chair and took off down the hall. I believe to this day it was a prank. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on June 5, 2008
I never knew Bill Hyde.
I will one day.
Bill was a church planter. I know a little about that; I planted a church five years ago. Bill planted six hundred, and just before he died, he hosted a then-record 3,700 participants in a Pioneer Evangelism conference. His vision: to plant 3,000 churches. He took what people were adding in the Philippines, and began multiplying their efforts ten-fold.
I never heard Bill’s deep bass voice, singing or otherwise.
I will one day.
Bill gave up a career in music or teaching because, as one person put it, he wasn’t content leading a quiet, happy life teaching music. Instead, he and Lyn, his wife, chose the frontlines of the battle. They were appointed as missionaries in 1978.
I never hung out, played golf, argued, or even shook hands with Bill. I sure hope I can one day.
Jim Cox, his former co-worker, said that Bill was a big guy:
Big in stature, big smile, big laugh, big hands, big heart. Bill was a musician, a teacher, a planner, an organizer and a doer. He had strong opinions, enjoyed a good argument and a game of dominos. Bill and I played golf together weekly. He was my perfect golfing companion because he was as bad a golfer as I—not that we kept score anyway.
Bill and I have met in one way. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on December 18, 2007
I’ve done reunions badly, if at all. Never went to a high school reunion. And while I do have my share of sentimentality, somewhere in my brain is a switch that flips with life changes. “Move on,” it says, and typically I do.This year was different. Somehow in one of those once-in-a-lifetime periods of alignment, I had two reunions in exactly the same location within a week of each other. [click to continue…]
