I enrolled in my very first college class, Speech 101, in the summer of 1979. Many people dread speaking in public, but I liked it, and I was looking forward to this class. One of our first speech assignments was an informative speech, and I chose “How to bag groceries properly.” (Cute, huh? It …
We were looking forward to a fun night together with our new friends, a pastor and his wife who lived in the town where we’d moved to start a church. We’d visited their church to learn more about the area, I’d chatted with him a bit, and my wife had connected with his wife. …
Thomas Jefferson. Robert E. Lee. Thomas Yawkey. What do those three men have in common? Besides being dead? Well, in 2017, they spent some time in the news. Jefferson, the slave owner. Yawkey, the Red Sox baseball owner who adamantly resisted integration. Lee, a general in the Confederate army. Deceased, their names were resurrected in op …
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Nashville Statement. It’s not a tourist brochure. On August 29, 2017 the document was released by a group of 150+ Christian signatories as a “statement of the core Christian position regarding human sexuality and gender,” expressed as 14 affirmations and denials. As you’d expect, there was an immediate social …
You and I were born into a grand love story. An eternal God—Who has always loved as Father, Son and Spirit—created a magnificent universe and then made humans to love Him and each other forever. Made in His image, we’ll never not exist. In order for us to love, the Father gave us choice, …
Every person on the planet needs the life and grace and peace and joy and hope and instruction of Jesus, and we who’ve found that in Him should tell others about him. I mean, how do we not talk about the best thing that ever happened to us? How do we not share good …
On a recent morning beach walk in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, I came across the fresh marks of a sea turtle which had, overnight, come up the beach to create a nesting area for her eggs. It was the most odd, meandering route I’d ever seen a turtle leave, as if the turtle …
Scott Adam’s Dilbert cartoons are brilliantly funny because they’re so true to life. In a February, 2013 cartoon, he offered this classic exchange between an employee and the Pointy-Haired Boss: Employee: “The CEO of Apple says we should admit when we are wrong. That won’t work for me because I’m never wrong. The best …
The act was brutally evil. Drunk and high, Rusty Woomer and a friend went on a terrible rampage. As part of multiple robberies and murders, they raped and killed a convenience store clerk, Della Summers. Her murder landed Rusty on South Carolina’s death row, where he languished, zombie-like, in a filthy, roach-infested cell. A …
Repent. This is a word we don’t use very often. Yet it was one of the first instructions Jesus ever gave. From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 4:17 So, what does it mean to repent? It means to change your thinking and …