“I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

We are loved. We are winners.

“I’m me and that’s good. Cause God don’t make no junk.” –from a poster by a child in a ghetto.  (source unknown)

The man said, “I think my wife’s health problems go back to something in her childhood, as to how she was treated.  She seems to have trouble accepting who she is in Christ.”

It’s always fascinating to consider what gives us our identity.  And what conditions robbed us of the same.

“Smart Aleck” is the biography of Alexander Woollcott, drama critic for the New York Times a long time ago.  Published in 1976, the book has been gathering dust in my library waiting for me to get to it.  I started a few days ago.  Woollcott is said to have been a master wordsmith, which is what made me order the book in the first place.

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“Not responsible for broken windshields.”

We’ve all seen that sign on the back of large trucks on the highway.

But if the rock hitting my car flew out of that truck’s unsecured load, the driver is responsible, regardless of the sign.  The lawcourts have established this, and lawyers get rich making the point…again and again and again.

I write on this website for pastors and church leaders.  We try to encourage pastors to faithfulness and greater effectiveness, and to lift their spirits when circumstances crush them.  As a result, I sometimes receive critical notes from those who have been abused by pastors.

My pastor husband divorced me and ran off with the secretary.  The church supported him and kept him on.  The children sided with their dad and now will have nothing to do with me. Where is God when this happened?  I’ve quit going to church and question whether God really cares.

I hear from the adult children of ministers who were mistreated by their churches:

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“…you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold…” (Revelation 3:16)

Mediocrity is a warm blanket.

Mediocrity is remaining with the bunch that finishes neither early or late, that turns in work much like everyone else’s, that is satisfied with pretty good.

Mediocrity is the head in the sand when the storm is raging around us.

Close your eyes until it all blows over.

Mediocrity is the coward’s way out when life-or-death decisions are being made.  “Well, let’s give this some more thought.”  “Let’s not be too hasty here.”  “We don’t want people to think we’re extremists.”

There’s safety in mediocrity.  We’re like everyone around us.  We don’t stand out.  No one criticizes us. They don’t even see us.  We blend into the landscape.

Our English word mediocre comes from two Latin words, medi meaning “halfway,” and ocris meaning “mountain.”  Somewhere there is a list of everyone climbing to the crest of Mount Everest.  But no one ever bothered to note those who got half way up and turned around for home.

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