Sign up for our free newsletter:

Who Said It
Donald McCullough

Two earthquakes mark Donald's life. As San Francisco Theological Seminary's president, he led a successful capital campaign to repair the school's buildings, damaged by the 1989 quake. Then in 2000 he experienced a personal quake when earlier marital infidelity was uncovered by his presbytery. His ordination was suspended, and he resigned his post. Donald's book, The Consolations of Imperfection (Brazos, 2004), shares hard lessons he's learned about himself.

What He Said
Light and Shadow

We're a confusing mixture: loving and selfish, generous and stingy, encouraging and envious, hardworking and lazy, angelic and devilish; we're both light and shadow. Who can see into the depths of the shadows? Who can name all the cantankerous, aggressive troublemakers out of sight and out of mind in the cellar?

This is more a wading through sorrow than a wallowing in it. Admission of wrongdoing should have a matter-of-fact quality to it. It says, "Yes, this is who I am. It's not all I am, for I've written some good parts to my story, too. Yet I can't deny my failure (and my propensity to further failure) any more than I can deny my blue eyes."

As someone who's had to do more than his share of this confession, I can testify that it's liberating. As we pray for courage to see ourselves as we really are, we find ourselves—somehow, surprisingly—lifted above it. We're actually being raised by the updraft of grace.

Adapted from The Consolations of Imperfection (Brazos, 2004) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Lord, help me to stop kidding myself about what I'm really like. Thank You for loving me even though You know the worst.

				Try an Issue of Men of Integrity Free! Name Street Address City/State/Zip E-mail Address No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. Click here for International orders. If you decide you want to keep Men of Integrity coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive five more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless. Give Men of Integrity as a gift Buy 1 gift subscription, get 1 FREE!

FREE Newsletter Sign up for the Men of Integrity Newsletter    RSS Feed   RSS Help