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My father believed in work. By believed in work I mean that he thought my brother and I ought to do a lot of it, starting at a young age. You know - protestant work ethic kind of stuff, absent the goofy theology. My dad didn't think God would love us more if we got up early on Saturday morning to work, but he figured it might make God smile to see it.

So, when I hit the ripe old age of 12, it was time to go to work. My dad printed up business cards, and I went door-to-door in the neighborhood looking for lawns to mow during the summer. I had five or six regular lawns that I mowed each week. I charged $3.00 to mow the front and back yards, edge, and sweep up. I still have a few of those business cards.

So it was that I embarked on a very interesting and colorful work career. Until I finally got out of seminary and started getting paid to be a minister, I was, among other things, a janitor, a security guard, a forklift operator, a warehouseman, a UPS sorter, and a laborer for an industrial pipe company in Houston. (Think John Travolta's job in Urban Cowboy) I sold auto parts, I swung a sledgehammer on a road crew one Texas summer, I delivered and installed televisions, and I even had the classic paper route.

So it is an interesting turn of events for me to write for The High Calling, which is a non-profit organization here in San Antonio whose only purpose is to get this message out to Christians:

True Christianity is not about what happens at church on Sunday morning. Christianity (old school Christianity, mind you) is lived out each day at the High Calling of your daily work.

If you are serious about the Christ journey, then your life will change, yes even at your nine-to-five. I wrote Bible studies for The High Calling last year. You can read them here. It was okay, but not a perfect fit for me. But in a month or two, I'm going to delve into the eclectic vault of my weird work history, and I'm going to write about what I find there. All of these essays will be housed at the new and improved High Calling website. Look for the first one in a month or so.

Creative writing is about tapping into your life and mining it for content and stories. This is a part of my life that I haven't touched yet. I'm really looking forward to this.

rlp

Respect is a word you hear a lot these days. Rich men command it; young men thump their chests and demand it; and old men complain if they don't get it. We need money and sometimes we want power, but our egos crave respect as much as our hearts crave love. Disrespect is so universally hated that the noun itself doesn't carry enough power to satisfy us. So we've made it into a slang verb.

"Don't you disrespect me!"

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

Click here to read other High Calling Bible study/reflections
by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
A wee little man was he.

These are the opening lines to a Sunday school song that I sang many times in my childhood. The story of Zacchaeus—found in the 19th chapter of Luke—is a popular one for children. Zacchaeus was a very short man who climbed a sycamore tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus as he walked by. We like to tell this story to children because Zacchaeus was small, just as they are small, and he wanted so badly to see Jesus.

Isn’t that a nice story?

Unfortunately, like many Sunday school stories, this one has been scrubbed and sanitized until it is hardly recognizable. The truth behind the Zacchaeus story is darker and more sinister. The most notable trait of Zacchaeus was not his lack of height, but his lack of character. Zacchaeus was a traitor. He collected taxes for the forces that occupied his homeland, and he carried out this task with brutal efficiency. He took more than was required and kept the extra. Further, as the chief tax collector, he was the equivalent of a mafia don. Zacchaeus got a piece of all the local action...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

Click here to read other High Calling Bible study/reflections
by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

The opposite of integrity is hypocrisy. Hypocrites will betray their own words and commitments for personal gain. Hypocrites will say what they must to gain a desired position, then do what it takes to benefit themselves.

A person of integrity, on the other hand, will claim only what is true about himself and only do what is right, regardless of the personal cost. This is the bad news about integrity. It often does not pay in the short run....

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

Click here to read other High Calling Bible study/reflections
by Gordon Atkinson

rlp

It’s not hard to find creative energy at work in our world. If you want a real challenge, try to find a part of creation that is static and dead. Try to find something that is not in flux and actively working with God to create reality. Everywhere you look you will find creation in all of its forms, both living and nonliving, working to create the world in cooperation with God.

Every tree grows with compounding, fractal surprises. Branches split and bend toward the light. After a few divisions and turnings, the various possibilities of form are so numerous our minds cannot count them all...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

rlp

This is the third short reflection/Bible study that I've written for the High Calling. I have a contract to write for them once a month for the next year. This writing is a little different from what I do here at Real Live Preacher. It's a little closer to the kind of things I do at church.

The second chapter of Mark contains a fascinating story about four people who brought their paralyzed friend to Jesus in hopes that he would be healed. Unfortunately, there was such a crowd in and around the house where Jesus was teaching that they couldn’t get near him. Undaunted, the four went up on the roof, tore open a hole, and lowered their friend down to Jesus.

It certainly was a brazen thing to do, if not exactly polite. I’m guessing the homeowners weren’t too pleased with their new skylight. Still, we understand the desperation of these friends and give them a certain amount of credit for gumption and ingenuity. Whatever we think of their methods, no one can deny that these four were determined and did not give up easily...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

rlp

One of the things I like most about the Bible is the motley and flawed collection of characters that populate its pages. There can be no doubt that we share a common humanity with them. Here is Noah, lying drunk in his tent and having a conniption fit when his son walks in and sees him naked. There is Abraham fooling around with handmaidens and sacrificing his wife’s honor to protect his own skin. Jacob is one of my favorites, wheeling and dealing, conning people out of everything from birthrights to baby goats.

It’s all there, humanity on display in the pages of scripture: Sampson’s vanity, David’s lust, Solomon’s greed, Jonah’s racism, Herod’s bloodlust, Thomas’ doubts, and Paul’s sermons—so boring that once a young man fell asleep while Paul was preaching and fell out of a top story window...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

rlp

A quick survey of local church signs reveals the usual:

“People Who Care”
“Where God’s People Gather”
“A Light that Shines for God”

Ever wonder if the lives of people who are these churches bear any resemblance to their roadway signs? Because, let’s be honest; church committees meeting to design signs aren’t soul-searching—they’re marketing.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The High Calling.

rlp

Well, I got me a little writing gig, which is good news. I've written hard these last four years, and I have learned a lesson of writing. Writing well takes a big chunk of your life. You either find ways to make money doing that, or you make peace with the idea of living with less. These days I spend about half of my professional life writing. The other half is given to my church. My goal is to string together a number of small writing incomes that will eventually be enough to justify the work.

I am absolutely unafraid of this journey and have no anxiety about it. I have a sense of peace about this. It seems right. So far everything that has happened since I began Real Live Preacher has been an encouragement to keep writing. So I'm just following a path that seems to be laid out before me.

The H.E. Butt foundation owns and operates Laity Lodge, which is my favorite retreat center in the world. They do other nice things, including providing free summer camps for thousands of needy kids. They have contracted with me to write 12 short bible study/reflections over the next year. One a month. Piece of cake. This is the kind of thing I do every week and have been doing for about 20 years. Now it's not exactly Real Live Preacher stuff, you understand. RLP is me with very few limits. And that's good too, in its place.

These will have a touch of my attitude but will be more, well, bible studyish, I guess.

I hope you enjoy them.

rlp