As the Jeopardy! Greatest of all Time series has unfolded I have been reminded of all the good questions that could be asked – and of the ways in which we trivialize many things of great significance. I was also reminded in a conversation this morning that sometimes the question Jesus would be asking is […]
Like everyone, kids will hear horrible news today that can be scary. They will hear about wars and rumors of wars. They will hear that after the United States killed a bad guy named Qasem Soleimani, his country retaliated by bombing a place where U.S. military personnel live in Iraq. Depending on which station you […]
As we look back over 2019 there are trends we observe in hindsight but what can we see if we seek to see what’s ahead? Only hindsight is 2020 but here are my top 20 trends for Christians to watch in the year ahead. Persecution. As the world devolves and more and more people set […]
Think of this as an exercise in taking a year-end inventory of your life and cultivating the spiritual soil for an abundant harvest in the year ahead. Taking stock of your spiritual life Get out your 2019 calendar, your journal, your Bible and your check register. Slowly, soberly look through them and take stock. Bible […]
It’s Advent. What are you waiting for? Better said, why do we wait? We wait to remember. The word “advent” comes from the Latin adventus meaning “coming, arrival or visit.” The Greek word is parousia and is most often associated with Jesus’ promised second coming. As Christians we know and celebrate that which has come. […]
(Re-upping this post from a few years ago as we approach the season when the empty chair at the table seems to loom larger than life. This was originally posted January 11, 2016) For his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama plans to feature an empty chair to bring attention to the […]
He wasn’t exactly looking at the paper he was holding. He was really looking over it. I couldn’t help myself. We were in the lobby of a hotel in New York and I’d been watching him NOT read his paper for several minutes. I moved to the chair nearest the couch where he was sitting. […]
I didn’t need to see the other person’s face to know they were wounded by the words. The tone and words cut deeply. They always do. “Who do you think you are?!” They are almost always words spoken at a volume and in a tone to which almost no one can respond. But if we […]
The story isn’t just click-bait, it’s a tragic true story stranger than fiction. Everyone assumed the man lived alone on the Dutch farm near the canal. He was the only person anyone ever saw. He worked a garden and milked a goat. No one knew he was keeping his family in the cellar, waiting for […]
People are the problem. Well, prospective people. That was the message from Bernie Sanders and others at CNN’s Climate Town Hall. There are too many people. How to solve the problem? Kill off the children of the poor before they’re even born. Bernie Sanders presented a climate change plan which, he admitted, would cause “some […]