Welcome

Welcome to Randy's Ramblings! Here I will post my deepest thoughts, my intellectual yonderings, my mental walkabouts. Or I'll just spew a bunch of nothing and you can read to your heart's content. Sometimes I'll allow you to respond, sometimes not (hey, it's my blog!). But you can always e-mail me at rambling@randehle.com.

Popular posts from this blog

Permission to Cry

I’d lost my job in mid-November but within just three weeks was talking with a young, growing Christian organization that needed a Chief Operating Officer. The timing, the role, the vision – everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. I was excited, Eiley was excited; there was hope. Then, just two weeks before I was to start, I got a call from the President: “We’re going to stop the process. We don’t think you’re the right fit.” I was crushed. Hope shattered into despair. I lay in the dark on my living room floor. For two hours I cried out desperately to God.  “Why? Am I not good enough? Why? Why? Why?!”  Sometimes words were washed away in a flood of tears and groans. I wept for God’s presence as much as his answers. He seemed silent, distant, uncaring. And I found myself in an unfamiliar place, standing on the precipice of a monumental choice: to abandon the God I’d known my whole life, or to cling ever more tightly to One who seemed to have abandoned me. A fam
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Is Forgiveness Enough?

In Mark 2:1-13, four men bring a paralyzed man to Jesus to be healed. It was hard work (have you ever tried to carry a man on a litter?) and when they got to the house where Jesus was staying, their work got even harder because the crowd wouldn't let them in. So they did what any desperate, loving, enterprising friends would do: climbed the home's outside steps, dug through the thatch-and-earth roof, and lowered their friend down on the mat.  Picture yourself in the house while this is going on: it's small (let's say 25' square) and cramped with people sitting all around - on benches, a table, the floor. It's hot, with the warm stench of sweaty bodies permeating the still air. What cooling breeze might otherwise come through the open window and door is being blocked by the bodies crowding both openings, straining to hear the words of the itinerant preacher/healer. You strain to hear his words over the din of voices outside as they repeat short phrases to b
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Resurrection Stories

He is risen! He is risen indeed! Peter's Story Fear bred denial. Denial gave way to loss. Loss brought forth doubt, disillusionment, confusion. Then, a glimmer of hope…but only a glimmer. Mary came running, breathlessly exclaiming “I’ve seen the Lord!” Could it be? Fear mingles now with a breath of hope, and suddenly, there he is! No turn of the key, no opening of the door – he’s just… there! A greeting of peace; a cryptic breath about the Holy Spirit, and then…more waiting. A day passes. Another. Six days, and we’re beginning to think it was just the shock of the crucifixion; that we hadn’t really seen him at all. But then again, just as before, he’s there with us! Again, the greeting: “Peace be with you.” This time he focuses on Thomas, who didn’t believe we’d seen him – and whose doubt we were beginning to carry, to be honest with you. He invites Thomas to touch his scars; he holds his hands out to all of us, but we believe…at least, I think we do.
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