How to Pray for Rebels

How to Pray for Rebels
EXODUS 32: 1-29

You could say I came to the United States to avoid the responsibility of leadership. I was the head of a seminary and got paid more than my colleagues because it was my job to lie awake worrying about its future. Metaphorically speaking, on my desk sat that notice saying “The buck stops here.” When I arrived in my new post to resume being just an ordinary professor, for the first term I would go to my office and look for the stacks of paper to deal with and find there were none; so I would go off to the library. Occasionally I would be aware that the dean or provost had to deal with some problem, and I would think, “That used to be me, and now it isn’t,” and then I would go off to the library again. In England I remember especially clearly one spring when the number of students applying to begin ordination training was low and our seminary was affected by this. The faculty got concerned about the seminary’s future and their own future and their jobs, and one or two came to confront me in my office. Didn’t I realize there was a terrible crisis? Why wasn’t I doing something about it? I didn’t sleep that night. (Everything sorted itself out okay in the end.)...