Happy Birthday to the Church. That Jewish "Feast of Weeks" which occurred fifty days after Passover each year on the Hebrew calendar found Jesus's friends all gathered together in Jerusalem awaiting further instructions from their leader.
I bet most of them thought they would see and visit with their friend and rabbi that day. Surely no one was prepared to have their hats blown off and tongues of fire on top of their heads. They didn't forsee they would be speaking in tongues, or that goofy Peter would finally attach his tongue to his heart and brain and deliver a powerful sermon that moves believers to this day.
I'd say it was a "surprise birthday party!"
Seriously, I would like to give a gift of true repentence to this party this year. Over the years as I have searched for the truth, I have made Peter's worst blunders look brilliant. I have offended people in Jesus's name for all sorts of reasons. I am truly sorry for my lack of wisdom, my narrow vision and my limited trust in God.
If Christ can use this gift, I am glad. It's probably one thing that won't ever get regifted!

I just spent one uncomfortable post-surgical night trying to find something decent to listen to on the radio. All I could find to listen to were people who could find no moral difference between the U. S. and Al Queda.
More than I have ever seen in my life, it seems that spokespeople from government and intellegentia see our country as an entity with no intrinsic moral purpose. The conflicts we find ourselves in seem to matter no more to the commentators on the radio than where the line is drawn down the middle of a bedroom shared by two selfish brothers.
Islam, the religion of peace, and Christianity apparently enjoy moral equivalence, but Judaism seems to have slipped further back in the pack as a respected religion, somewhere behind the animism that is the philosophical underpinning of the green movement. Every channel I heard, every article I read last night was no more than starkly cynical.
This is not the truth about the United States of America.
The fact is, this nation has been a unique and successful attempt for mankind to be its best.
This nation was built like a pyramid with one strong intellectual or moral value stacked on top of another.
This nation was born of the great idea that educated, free people could rule themselves. The ideas, which began with the great Greeks and Latin thinkers, were enriched by the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we are created in God's image and were charged to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Judaic God of the Word and Law allowed our thinkers to look for patterns in the universe. Science was born. Science working with the nobility of human life gave us the practice of scientific medicine and the ability to improve agriculture and manufacturing. Ideas were leading to longer lives with increased meaning. Beautiful art expressed belief in symetry and reason.
Reading the words of the founders, we are always struck by how generous they were. The shame of slavery contrasted severely with the rest of the noble ideas our ancestors had, and eventually we conquered that shame.
George Washington is not thought of as a great hero today to many people, but he is one to me. He threw away a kingship to set the course for the future where all men would become equal.
No country's founding is perfect. However, I believe this nation's founding is the noblest undertaking in the history of the world. It wasn't just the Presbyterians for the Presbyterians. Our founders stretched their hearts and minds to their very limits in the pursuit of the idea that given freedom, education and the chance to work hard, the human species could rise not to the lamentable lust for power and wealth for its own sake, but for the beautiful idea that individuals and families could select meaningful lives in the service of others or in making new and better ways to live, socially and in agriculture and in the life of the mind. The common man would not be so common any more.
It is so degrading to see our forefathers' great struggle for achievement spit upon for its shortcomings. Truly great shifts in moral thought stretched us and grew us and through great struggle and growth, we have become better people, generous to our neighbors foreign and domestic.
Our moral struggles do continue, but without the understanding of the suffering and sacrifice made by individuals for the uniquely great ideas that founded our country there is little chance for great strides in the future like the ones we have accomplished in the past.
This is Memorial Day. Toward the end of the Civil War, my grandfather's father sat by the sides of sick and dying soldiers and helped them write letters home. In his own writings, he noted how moved he had been that idealism for a better world drove simple farmers to suffer and die so that even more people could enjoy the fruits of freedom.
I heard one Baghdad chieftain's words to my son, as he translated the arabic words under a photo of this man's beautiful brown-eyed children. "These are my boys--I hope they grow up like you."
We are the good guys. The bodies lying under the crosses and stars across the vast veterans' cemeteries stand for a long, vigorous line of men and women and their families who lived and died for the greatest idea in history--that given freedom, people will do good things with it.
Honor the dead today by studying, truly trying to understand, the great ideas our loved ones have sacrificed their lives to perpetuate.
Our country is a new thing--a good thing. Study what that is, as it may be our world's one and only chance for greatness.

We just finished Armed Services Day and Memorial Day is just around the corner. This is as good a time as any to tell everyone that I am a big fan of the United States of America. I am very grateful to our people in the armed services for their dedication every day. I am especially grateful to those who have given their lives for our county.
Our family goes back to the American Revolution. We have one ancestor who spent the winter at Valley Forge. What a visionary! What a revolutionary idea! To start a new nation with ideas of liberty and personal responsibility! How exciting to have been part of it.
To read what George Washington wrote about his soldiers there that winter, it is impossible for me to fathom how miserable they must have been. They were mostly naked that cold windy winter. They were barefoot. Many deserted and I doubt if they could be blamed.
But to have stuck with it for the idea of a new way of living was to be hopeful and intelligent. Our armed forces have continued to be the best of us throughout the years.
They are us. It isn't just the "lower classes" who have no hope of a future. Many of our presidents have been enlisted soldiers or sailors or Marines. Today, the services reflect the cross section of our population. They are the brave ones of us.
I recently visited Arlington cemetary where our son is a company commander in the Old Guard. His responsibilities include caring for the 52 caisson horses who pull the coffins to the graves in that solemn place.
Each evening, when the horses are washed down, fed and put in their roomy stalls, the volunteer soldiers get to work cleaning the saddles and harness used that day. Every strap must be clean and perfect to be used to bury someone who served our country in the military services. Arlington is a place where we look at the garden of headstones to see our friends and family who died to keep us free.
All men die, says William Wallace in Braveheart, but not all men really live. To live fully is to live for an idea you are willing to give your life defending.
It is sad to lay these men and women to rest, but we can always take heart that they were willing to give their lives for a sacred ideal.
For only when we are free can we truly give our lives for our personal dreams of a better world. Only free people can worship well and love one another to the fullest extent of their potential.
Freedom is a wonderful idea and the folk who have given their lives for its expression have my prayers all the time.
This memorial day I will be thinking of all the people through the years who have served so bravely to hallow our country's grounds with their blood.
I will be thinking of their families who miss them so much and who will never be the same after their death. They are my heroes, too.
With all my heart I thank those who have gone before and those who still serve in discomfort and danger, far from their families in places we at home cannot comprehend.
Thank you, one and all. May we who benefit from your sacrifice take it seriously enough to do our job in keeping our country free.

Happy Mothers' Day, even if you aren't one. Let's just celebrate the system. Hormones flow through woman's blood as she gives birth to her child. Each part of the biological act of becoming a mother sets up the relationship. Mom is going to love that baby for the rest of its--and her--life.
Since I sincerely believe that love makes the world go 'round, and that the unfound force in the universe that makes it all work in quantum physics is also love, I think we have a lot to celebrate on Mothers' Day.
Mother love differs from romantic love, friendship or altruism. Although it is a biological force of nature, mother love has trancendent aspects that give it great dignity.
Mothers will do anything to protect their children. Mothers believe in their children and hope for their future. Mothers would rather gain happiness by way of bringing it to their children, than to chase after it directly.
Mothers love unselfishly. One important example is this is the mother who gives her child up for adoption. The same hormones coursing through other mothers' bodies flow through hers, yet this mother has the courage to have a child she cannot raise, conceived in questionable circumstances, and fight her natural impulse to grasp it to her breast to give the baby a stable, loving home. That reminds me: Mother love is often courageous.
Mothers use every bit of the intelligence, cunning, insight, strength and talent they possess to successfuly launch their children.
Mothers never give up and mothers never quit loving their children.
It may be complicated. Families never seem to understand one another, even though they share history, genes and culture, but mother love is one of the simplest, purest form of love that exists. Everyone is different, and so the basic, true, biological link between mother and child is different in every family. No two loves are alike. Each love is a beautiful entity itself, even if a woman has many different children.
Mother-child love is a wonderful idea. I wonder who thought of it? Well, then, praise Him!