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Monthly Archives: January 2010
In Praise of Wasted Time
My wife and I stopped at our Internet provider to change our service package. We have finally succumbed to the lure of broadband. While we sat off to the side filling out paperwork, a UPS driver bustled in the room … Continue reading
Mid-Life Conversions
Paula Huston on the radical spiritual changes than can happen in mid-life, which she calls the third conversion: Despite my upbringing as a level-headed Lutheran and my later allegiance to a church that locates the source of spiritual growth primarily … Continue reading
Partisanship as Heresy
Richard Mouw on Carl Henry and social ethics: In the months immediately preceding my telephone conversation with Henry, he had taken up this theme at some length in Christianity Today’s pages. In a feature article, along with an accompanying editorial … Continue reading
Presidents Don’t Create Jobs
Neither do Congresses… although they can foster an environment helpful for job creation. And surprisingly, businesses don’t create jobs either — at least, not on their own. So says Mark Lange. Workers create jobs. When we imagine that government – … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events
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Born Again Is Hard
She lies in her bed each day at the care facility, her muscles slowing regaining the ability to move. She’s learned to manipulate the TV remote — a good skill since she watches lots of TV now. Her ability to … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Ministry
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find
A local man went to jail last week for an 11 month sentence. He had confessed to putting a camera in a women’s restroom at work. It is a felony to “capture the image of an unclothed person.” Apparently, he … Continue reading
John Polkinghorne
Tim Stafford first interested me in physicist/priest John Polkinghorne, who turns 80 this year. Polkinghorne has written extensively on the relationship between science and theology. I have finished his book Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion. The word … Continue reading
Sermon On Jesus at the Synagogue in Nazareth
Feel For the Power Luke 4.14-21 January 24, 2010 “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.” He’s been away, starting his new work. Preaching, teaching, healing, calling followers. He’s become famous too. He’s the hot new … Continue reading
Posted in Jesus, Sermons
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Gunsights
Lots of religious folks are up in arms over biblical references on gunsights used by the US military: In a letter to President Obama this week, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance in New York, … Continue reading
Posted in Current Events
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This Strange Jesus
This week a verse from John has been much in my mind: The sheep will not follow strangers. They don’t recognize a stranger’s voice, and they run away. (Jn. 10.5 CEV) For a long time people have tried to get me … Continue reading
Posted in Jesus
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The Gospel and Success
Debra Dean Murphy believes the O’Brien/Leno debacle can instruct us: But the late-night melodrama is instructive in a few important ways. It has reminded us of some correlated pathologies we seem to suffer from individually and collectively: our need for instant success, our lack of patience and … Continue reading
How the Fathers Read Scripture
From David Neff: At a time when many of our biblical scholars have essentially become historians, it is important to recover a theological way of reading Scripture. It is important to study the text in its cultural and literary milieu, … Continue reading
Emerson Is Overrated
I’ve long suspected Emerson is overrated. Two English professors at the University of Hartford have, thankfully, confirmed this view: What a student finds [in Emerson], in fact, is a set of contradictory, baffling, radical, reactionary ideas that offer no practical … Continue reading
Tears and Song
On Monday nine of us took the church van and drove 30 miles to Jackson to visit a parishioner in a rehab unit. Right after Thanksgiving she got an infection, her fever rising to 106 degrees. Doctors and nurses were … Continue reading
3 Steps to Share Your Faith With Others
29And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31And he said, “How can I, unless … Continue reading
Order and Disorder
The interlacing of order and disorder is precisely what seems to be needed for the creative emergence of novelty. New things happen in regimes that we have learned to identify as being “at the edge of chaos.” Too far on … Continue reading
Help Haiti
The United Methodist Committee On Relief is one of many agencies responding to the disaster in Haiti. Click on the link below to help, and give to UMCOR Advance #418325. Know that 100% of gifts given through an UMCOR Advance … Continue reading
How to Write Well
William Zinsser spoke to international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He told them how to write well in English. He urged them to choose short Anglo-Saxon words instead of long words derived from Latin. He thinks Latinate … Continue reading
The Limits of Evolution
Tim Stafford has completed his survey of physicist/priest John Polkinghorne. Polkinghorne accepts evolution, but he believes evolutionists have overreached themselves, much as physicists did in earlier centuries. Polkinghorne thinks that evolution explains a lot, uncovering “an astonishing drive to fruitfulness” … Continue reading
When Clergy Are Like Smokers
These words from Quaker Thomas Kelly are on my mind today: Some of the most active church leaders, well-known for their executive efficiency, people we have always admired, are shown, in the X-ray light of Eternity, to be agitated, half-committed, … Continue reading
