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Another Masters tournament has come and gone. Inherent in this rite of Spring is a truism. No matter the calendar, the week before finds Winter lingering like a bitter herb, but when The Masters comes, a flood of good feeling washes over every golfer, every fan, every azalea-loving botanist tuning in to watch. The opening tee shot signals Spring has begun. The week unfolded with the rising and falling of our golf heroes alongside the ebb and flow of birdies and bogeys. Media

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24, NKJV). Traversing this ravine called life confronts the rushing rivulets of time rippling over and between life’s rocks of hard testing. But we walk on, climbing from who we were to whom we are to become, wrestling life’s bothering rocks and crevices. Always the journey is outside of us an

Dear Reverend Counsel, I wish to deepen my relationship with Christ, but I find in every devotion a thread I think is part and not the whole of scripture. I find this confusing. Can you recommend a way to read scripture, as I earnestly desire to know and do God’s will? Sally   Dear Sally, Yours is a good question. I will do my best to frame it. I concede seeking God can sometimes be like attempting to find a misplaced object that you left in a room. You know what you are look

Johnny isn’t from Four Holes, and he doesn’t live there. But, he could be, and he could. Johnny is the gatekeeper up on the mountain, and this means letting you in or keeping you out, but mostly it means to stop and listen to the wisdom of his years. He possesses a particular knack for reading nature, things like tasting direction and smelling time, reading the width of the wooly worms band, and how a tree will grow when buffeted by the wind. Johnny knows nature’s signs and p

Meanwhile, back in Four Holes signs of an early Spring appeared. The Tupelo gum trees in the swamp showed flowers at the base of the leaves. Of course, those good folks knew these old trees could not be fooled. Blackberry Winter almost always came despite all the global warming talk. But no worries, Tupelos had deep taproots and thick leaves. Billy Cowan was having his own crisis. He belonged to a community group named “For Four Holes” or FoFoHo for short. Each member had bee

Peadar woke early. The day held much ahead, and he knew all he had to accomplish required skill and centered attention. If all were to be done, he could not entertain any distractions. Following his morning routine and his mind already anticipating the day, he drove down the driveway. Leaving, he barely noticed the man on the street. Besides, there wasn’t enough room in his mind to attend to anything but what was before him. The day’s thoughts filtered out anything else in hi

Are you the same person today as yesterday? Such a question conveys a common understanding, or a misunderstanding, that any answer refers to the self, that in some psychological context, this self, is either better or worse. If all that is relatable, in other words all that we see and experience, the life outside of us, this question places limits upon us. The result of asking whether we are better or worse suggests we remain standing where we are, where we have always been.

So, what is it about gratitude? What is it Mrs. Simpson introduced to our spiritual life? The suggestion is but a beginning to a deeper and more intimate life with God yet frightening because of the implications to an ever-present desire to remain where we are. God calls His children to movement. If our moment of belief is like standing on a dock waiting to board a ship that will set sail on the open and uncharted sea to some unknown destination, the dock is the safest point

While Young Billy went outside to play with his friends in the neighborhood, he entrusted Mrs. Simpson with his prized Ohtani baseball card. When dark ceased their play, Billy went to Mrs. Simpson to retrieve his card. Now in hand, he turned to go home. Then, he heard her voice. “Billy, did you forget something?” He returned the words with a blank stare. “Billy, you must always say ‘thank you’ when someone has done something for you.” Perhaps we have traveled too far for grat

Like most folks in Four Holes, the days were molasses—sweet, slow—but mostly with the lid screwed tight and sitting on the shelf. The residents moved at the speed of mosey and their excitement came by biting into a good ham sandwich with Durkee’s mustard, a satisfying mellow twang spread on Sunbeam bread—only Sunbeam. A day in Four Holes dripped and never poured. Seems they just knew better and were content with life. There was one anomaly in Four Holes no one could explain.

Oh, that we should ascend to God in prayer becomes the way we place ourselves before Him, the way in which we plead, and in the pleading admit our need, our lack, our desire to become whole. Our prayers offer a revelation, though not always at the moment of praying, that He should answer in His time and in His way. This sojourn we are on, this desire to know Him and understand, this apparent silence of this seeming unanswered prayer, must mean our Lord wishes to reveal someth

Of all the challenges a Christian will face in life, what he perceives to be God’s silence may be for him the most troublesome. God’s silence, at times, particularly those times when life challenges our strained desire to hear Him, is the most difficult to abide. Such a silence calls us to listen, to hear the Spirit’s whisperings, to still our lives and grow deeper in our faith. Yet, how do we respond but with an all-too-present willingness to fill the void with anything and

There was once a man who lived in the countryside of a certain region. Every day he rose to tend the field so he could eat. When the yield was good, he would take and sell a portion of his harvest and store the rest for the time when the yield was less plentiful. He came to rely on his skill as a farmer because he knew no others would do for him what he could do for himself. Then one day, a great famine plagued the land. The soil did not yield. The rain did not come. The land

Rain weaves through the forest this morning. Whispering their silence in the breeze, the mountain laurels seem to say we were here before you and will be here after. Outside the window, the creek dances with ripples joyfully etching the landscape in time. Seeking refuge and rest, the squirrels chose not to come out to play in the rain. Creation is renewing this morning and one can only sense God saying, “Be still. See what I am doing in you.” Abiding God’s hand, nature only k

A man once said to me, “Do not let your intellect interfere with your intelligence.” This missive has never left me alone. Imagine if Chicken Little had heard this and adopted it as his mantra. The sky would not have fallen, and Chicken Little would not have wasted all that worry. Sometimes I think our approach to the Christian life is the same, too much intellect and not enough intelligence. Perhaps too much has been written about the meaning of this or that verse and chapte

The wearied soul tires from the burden he contemplates, this burden of knowing the love and peace his Lord has granted him yet evading his neighbor who goes on wishing for proof that God lives and loves. Even his Christian brother engages by the reasoned argument, an ever so subtle means to confine his Lord, though he admits to himself the reasoned why  can be light to an otherwise lost soul, a segue to opening a hardened heart. What tires him are the echoes from the clamorin

Junior just couldn’t shake it, this idea about leaven being evil that Preacher Pat planted with the congregation. The thought just didn’t resonate, but then, he was not Jewish and life in the first century was foreign to him. He understood a little more about boll weevils because around Four Holes it seemed like recent history. He came from a line of cotton farmers, and the family stories were filtered through the War of Northern Aggression and the boll weevil. Still, leaven

Junior Bradshaw steered his truck toward exit 156 on his way home to Four Holes from an overnight business trip. As much as he disliked being away, comin’ home made it palatable. Although Four Holes didn’t offer much like bigger cities, the people living there loved the quiet when the crickets weren’t chirping and the slow pace of life there. Driving home gave Junior time to contemplate life and he often had deep thoughts. Junior was capable of contemplation whereas most in F

The drive up the mountain this morning brought a smile to my soul as the sun’s rays danced through the trees and a canopy of autumn colors filled my senses with every thrust of exuberant orange, red, and yellow. This multi-colored coat embraced me around every curve, returned to me her eager expression. Rolling up the mountain was an Eden’s delight.

Perhaps this all began with Cain and Abel, this us and them prism by which we live and think and see and do. Folks in Four Holes aren’t any different. Down here in Four Holes, where my friend Mary says we’re just a screen door from hell, where the heat and humidity can make a man known and prominent by the way he sweats and will drive him to drink iced tea by the gallon, Fern Campbell had what is referred to in Four Holes as an “insah-dent.”