John Donne, the English poet, wrote of the core hope of our Christian faith. In language typical of the time (1600) he reminds us that death is a defeated foe. I borrow his words to comfort my heart and renew… Continue reading

Recent history is full of ‘spiritual’ leaders who were truly ‘the blind leading the blind!’ Some made tragic headlines. Remember the Rev. Jim Jones, the fiery orator and community activist from San Francisco who took his congregation to Guyana and… Continue reading

Some people just ‘go to work.’ Others anticipate doing what they do. Speaking with a young business owner this week, he talked about the long hours he puts into his enterprise, but not with complaint, not bemoaning the time. He… Continue reading

Monitors blinked the stats of life – heartrate, blood pressure, respiration rates. Tubes carried various medications into the still form of my friend, who was standing at the edge of this life and eternity. His family stood round him, some… Continue reading

One incident, two reports, very different in the details. Who do you believe? In those ‘he said, she said’ situations; we look at the past credibility of the reporter, we ask about motives, we consider who has what to gain,… Continue reading

Leonard Sweet writes, “Is yours a low-profile, don’t-rock-the-boat, show-up-on-Sunday kind of faith? Or are you a “fan” for the Lord? We have no trouble at all dealing with the crazies, the over-the-top, the out-of-control behaviors that die-hard sports fans exhibit.… Continue reading

Nobody (at least, nobody I know!) is eager to die! When a person gives up on life and sets about seeking a way to end his life, we know their state is abnormal, a illness of mind and/or spirit that… Continue reading

The classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, takes a turn when Toto, Dorothy’s little dog pulls back a curtain and reveals that the Great Oz is a fraud, just a man pulling levers on a machine. There’s no magic, at… Continue reading

When I researched my family lineage, family lore took on specific names and I was able to trace, through my paternal grandmother, a line all the way back to the Cornelius Van Wyck of 17th century New Amsterdam (now called… Continue reading

Sunday night church gatherings often include something called ‘testimony time.’ In the churches of my childhood, there were always two or three people who could be counted on to stand up and tell the same stories. When I was 12… Continue reading