Gifts for Everyone

I love the distance between my birthday and Christmas, it’s perfect.  It divides the year in half, when I was a kid I knew that I would get gifts in June and then again in December.  I always felt sorry for the kids whose birthdays were close to Christmas, not just in December but in…

Gottca

They think they’ve solved the Jack the Ripper murders. After 126 years,Russell Edwards, a scientist in Liverpool, has claimed he has solved the murders that terrorized London in 1888.  DNA from a shawl worn by Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been matched with a descendent of Aaron Kosminski, an original suspect in…

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

He knocked on the door wondering how he’d be received when the door was opened.   His name was Onesimus and he was a slave who had run away and was now returning, returning to what he wasn’t sure.  We don’t know a whole lot about what happened between the time Onesimus had escaped from slavery…

What me worry?

It was 2:17 in the morning when it happened.  I woke up.  But more than that, I woke up and it was pouring out, and my first thought was a question.  Did I put the roof up on my car when I came home?  The obvious answer was, yes.  I have been driving convertibles since…

What’s Special about Scripture

There is normally a sense of urgency to people’s last words.  Last week as we finished up our Down the Road Series I mentioned that the last letter of Paul’s that we have a copy of is 2 Timothy, and the scholars tell us that it may have been written just weeks before Paul’s execution. …

Best of intentions, but. . .

I was at the beach, but I had no intention of getting wet.Last week Angela and I decided that a picnic with the grand kids would be fun while the weather was still warm so we arranged to meet our daughter and her family at the lake.  My plan was to read and watch them…

Down the Road, Paul and the End

A hanging always attracts  a crowd.  And I would suspect that a stoning was no different.  That’s where our journey began back in June when we discovered Saul of Tarsus witnessing the brutal execution of one of the leaders of the early church.  A man named Stephen.  We don’t know that Saul actually threw any…

It’s Just Ten Bucks

Lou Gehrig ’s disease, that’s what we called it when I was growing up.  I’m sure that some folks actually referred to it as ALS but I was an adult before it was anything but Lou Gehrig ’s disease to me. I was just a kid when I saw the movie “Pride of the Yankees”…