Two Oars

An old Swede operated a little rowboat for transporting passengers. One day one of the passengers noticed that the good old man had carved on one oar the word “Faith,” and on the other oar “Works.” Curiosity led him to ask the meaning of this.
The old man being a well-balanced Christian and glad of the [...]

Bible In A Minute

Getting it Right…

With hypertext, having the correct Web address is everything.
It can be important to have the right “address” in reading the Bible, as well. Nowhere is this more true than the old story about the woman who ordered a wedding cake for her daughter, instructing the baker to decorate it with the words of 1 John [...]

Shaken

I’m glad I don’t live in Southern California.  The place is also a bit nutty.  The cheese is sliding off their crackers.  The other day the earth moved under their feet but it wasn’t an earthquake.  And they are all wondering when the “big one” is going to come and break the state off so [...]

Weirdness

Dear faithful blog reader:  The world is going screwy. Just plain bizzaro.  
I just read a story about a funeral.  During the visitation a woman walked in to the church.  She went up to the closed casket did a little dance waving a wand around.  Then she opened the casket put her hand on the [...]

Preference?

When the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci went to China in the 16th century, he brought along samples of religious art to illustrate the Christian story for people who had never heard it. The Chinese readily adopted portraits of the Virgin Mary holding her child, but when he produced paintings of the crucifixion and tried to [...]

Where on the “Belt” are you?

According to World Net Daily, a recent poll of more than 350,000 Americans on the importance of religion revealed that the nation is separated into enclaves of widely divergent viewpoints on faith, with some states and regions clearly religious and others significantly secular.
Gallup conducted a telephone poll of 355,334 U.S. adults, asking the question, “Is [...]

Has the Word “Sin” lost its meaning?

James Emory White is a pastor in Charlotte, NC and was former President of my seminary. I liked his take on this one…

“Whatever Became of Sin” Redux

In 1973, psychiatrist Karl Menninger published a book with the provocative title, Whatever Became of Sin? His point was that sociology and psychology tend to [...]

Biblical Love

Luke 6:32
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ love those who love them.
Luke 6:31-33 (in Context) Luke 6 (Whole Chapter)
1 John 4:7
[ God's Love and Ours ] Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has [...]

Anxious Times

Yesterday I learned a lot from another all day workshop: “Leadership in Anxious Times.”  Our leader was Peter Steinke, a church consultant.  He gave us a quick lesson on “family systems” theory and applied it to local churches.  I also learned quite a bit about how our brains are wired.
What did I learn?  People in [...]