The bumper sticker of a pick-up truck on a rural road testified to the driver’s intentions: “Due to the rising cost of ammo, do not expect a warning shot.” When you earn negative consequences, how many warnings do you think you deserve? Fortunately, for those like Paul’s readers in Colossae, teaching accompanied warning. “Him we…
It was my first semester as a seminary student and I had a new professor. How could this happen to me? In a faculty full of distinguished, tenured scholars, I had a rookie, teaching evangelism, no less. He had no notes. He just told one story after another and threw in a few sermon outlines….
An administrator said to me, “When you’re gone, the only thing you leave behind is what you’ve written.” My reply: “With all due respect sir, I disagree with you 100%. I’ve got books in the Library whose pages are turning yellow, and whose check-out record is empty. On the other hand, I’ve got former students…
I’m always challenged (if not always happy) when someone invites me to speak, then, after I’ve accepted, gives me the subject of my presentation. A friend recently invited me to preach in his absence at the church where he is Pastor and assigned me a theme, for which I was both happily challenged and appreciative….
Aging is both a blessing and a barrier. (I confess to a different “b” word when I first had this thought, but for this means of communication, I’ll go with “barrier.”) Having reached the biblical standard of “three score and ten” (Psalm 90:10, KJV) I feel qualified to comment on this subject. One blessing of…
I’m a sucker for catchy quotations. They stick to the shelves around my desk. There is one that I keep seeing on cards, in videos, on T-shirts, in frames, quoted by politicians and ministers alike. Supposedly, in the mid to late 1970’s a university student wrote a line for Carleton Cards, a Canadian card company….
Why I never knew, but Psalm 121 was scripture we had to memorize as boys involved in Royal Ambassadors. No one told us what it meant, so I grew thinking it meant “I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.” Meaning the help comes from the hills. Not so….
American Olympic gold medal winning gymnast Gabby Douglas expressed thanks to God last week for the ability to compete. So far, nothing much different from what a lot of athletes say to reporters these days. But then she added, “It’s kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall…
In recent days, I’ve lost a few of my Facebook friends. No, they didn’t “un-friend” me nor I them. God called them home. As much fun as Facebook is and as rewarding as it is to re-connect with long-lost friends via Facebook, there is within the social network a subtle reminder that as precious as…
Emotions felt in certain traumatic events never go away completely. Similarity brings back a flood of feelings. Such was the case this past week. It will soon be thirteen years since the September 15, 1999 shooting at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Many of the emotions of that night returned last week with…