I suppose you could say I “went through the motions” as a shepherd. I did my duty, I showed up and performed my part, I did my time. That particular day we were near Shechem, and it will come as no surprise to anyone that my ambition was far more aligned with the commerce of […]
The instinct to keep the shameful details of my story hidden was very strong. On some level, the decision to reveal the truth was (and is) a mystery to me. Certainly, there are moments when I wish people didn’t know; there are those who criticize and cast scorn, but even in receiving the contempt of […]
The older I get the more I see how hard it is for humans to get along. We fought with our siblings and neighborhood kids growing up, and we thought we’d outgrow our self-serving assumptions and temper tantrums …but as adults we are arguably worse! At least when we were kids we genuinely believed we […]
Excepts from “Expertise v. Wisdom” by Denis Haack We live, it seems to me, in a world infatuated with experts, overwhelmed with knowledge and data, and glad it is all only a click or two away. Wisdom, on the other hand, seems to have receded into the background. For most of human history when people […]
Imagine you are Ethan the Ezrahite (author of the final poem in Book III of the Psalms). …Ethan – that famous sage in the entourage of wise men – along with Heman, Calcol, and Darda – in the days of King David and King Solomon. This Ezrahite saw firsthand the glory of the Davidic empire! […]
Is “Telling the Truth: The Gospel As Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale” by Frederick Buechner. Fred says that the Gospel is “the fairy tale that is too good not to be true.” [Selah] Fred says that the truth is “high and wild and holy, but preachers often reduce homiletics to apologetics. Preachers exchange the fairy-tale […]
I recently traveled back in time (via my imagination) to the days when there arose in Egypt a king who dealt shrewdly with the Hebrew people – forcing them to expose their infant sons to the deadly current and creatures of the Nile (this bit of lethal legislation coming after many hard years of slavery […]
What makes glory even more glorious? …Disney World! All my life I’ve heard the interviewers ask the Super Bowl/World Series/Stanley Cup/Olympic, etc. champions, “What will you do now?” And the perennial answer is, “I’m going to Disney World!” Apparently it is an uncontested fact of life – when you reach the pinnacle, most glorious, moment […]
