If you haven't checked out my website in a while, now's the time to do so.  Lots of changes, not the least of which is a growing list of reviews and comments by people already reading my new book, Night Shift: Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom.  Also check out the new blog schedule to the right.  I do post a lot of blog updates on Facebook as well as news updates from the Northeast Emergency Food Program, which I direct.  If you are not on Facebook, you can keep up in three ways:

1. Check this home page frequently
2. Click on a "follow" option on one or more of my blogs.
3. Subscribe to the new monthly e-zine, "Night Shift Crossing."

In case you missed my Christmas/end-of-the-year musings, click here.

As I write this, news of the weekend shootings in Tucson is filling the media and Facebook communications.  People are talking about how fired-up socio-political hyperbole may or may not have caused the shooting.  Regardless of such rhetoric, I am reminded that we wrestle not against flesh and blood and that the weapons with which we fight are not of this world's system.  On the contrary, while others trust in the world's weapons, we are to trust in the name of the Lord.

I'd rather have a thinker's dialog with someone with whom I disagree than a sound-bite, high decibel, slingshot discussion with someone with whom I share thoughts in common.  With the former I can trust they will listen through to the end of what I am saying and actually think with me.  With the latter, no conversation is being had, for listening is two-thirds of any true conversation.  Which is one key reason I wrote Night Shift. 

Some people posture these days that with their slingshots they are really being prophetic, which they say is what the Christian mandate is all about.  There is indeed a valuable role to be played by the prophetic voice, a voice that is all too often muted in the church or that tends to sound more tinny than authentic these days.  In fact, there has never been greater need for the truly authentic prophetic voice.  The greatest prophet who ever lived, Jesus, also happened to be the best listener ever to inhabit this planet.  He saw beyond this world's sound bites and slingshots into the heart of humankind as only God can do.  Jesus did not sling shots at people.  He listened with truth and spoke the truth, a truth that is sharper than any sword ever invented by human hand.

And so I invite you to sit down for a dialog with me.  Read what I've written.  Respond in kind.  And when you find something that speaks to your heart, act on it.  Just remember to make the conversation a four-way listening session - between you and me, and God and our neighbor, who may or may not even know God.  Then we'll have a conversation that is truly prophetic.