In my pre-teenage and early teenage years, I lived on a dead-end street in the West University area of Houston. On our one block, there was a vacant lot, owned by the man who lived next to it. One year, after Christmas, he gave us permission to build a Christmas tree fort on his lot. The five boys…
Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. As further proof of this, another baseball fanatic/friend sent me a copy of “Identifying baseball pitch types in 2023: A modern field guide to MLB’s diversifying arsenals.” The article included discussions on various weapons of a pitcher: Fastball (four seam and two seam), Cutter, Slider, Sweeper, Curveball,…
Giving or Investing? The most dreaded sermon a minister ever preaches is likely one on money. Listeners don’t like hearing it and most don’t comment to the preacher following the sermon with an, “Enjoyed your sermon” favorite. So, I didn’t preach on money yesterday. I preached on investing and used as an illustration from Mark 12:41-44,…
Today is Memorial Day. Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across…
Several weeks ago, we celebrated National Superhero Day, which made me think beyond my more recent selections, to biblical possibilities. Who is my biblical hero? There are many, but I keep being drawn to a little-known prayer-warrior mentioned only once in the Bible. The Apostle Paul describes Epaphras as, “one of you, a bondservant of Christ . . ….
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I had an earthly mother for fifty-five years. She has now been in heaven for twenty-seven years. She was a survivor of tuberculosis when most who had it died with it. Called to be a medical missionary, she earned her Registered Nurse degree and studied at Southwestern Baptist Seminary as the Seminary Nurse….
This is Teacher Appreciation Week. My education came in six phases – elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, seminary, and doctoral work. Much appreciation goes, not so much to those who taught me the most, but to those who made the greatest impact on my life. Elementary School is a no-brainer, partly because of frequent…
April 28 was National Superhero Day, instituted by Marvil Comics and first celebrated in 1995. The day is all about celebrating heroes who inspire others to be better. Now deceased, I had to celebrate mine in absentia. Growing up my superheroes came in two categories: baseball players and preachers. My superhero baseball player was Shortstop…
In 1940, Thomas Wolfe wrote a book entitled, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” He was both correct and incorrect. My first full-time ministry assignment was as the Director of Baptist student ministries and instructor of Bible at Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas. For six wonderful years our home was the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas….
In the years since our marriage, Joanne and I have been members of twelve churches. Each one was unique in its contribution to our family. Each one was unique in the contribution we made to it. We watched our two children grow up in five of them. I baptized our daughter at one, watched our son get baptized…