Living Stones
One of the things you notice as you walk through the various cathedrals and abbeys in Europe is that there are a lot of people buried under the floors — thousands, in fact. Westminster Abbey in London, for example, is essentially an indoor graveyard with the remains of dozens of famous and infamous people tucked…
Read MoreThe Cross Checkpoint
Not long ago, I returned from a two-week trip to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank with our youngest daughter, Deborah. She had never been to this part of the world, and it was my fifth trip, so naturally, she thought I’d be the perfect person to show her around. While there, I was able…
Read MoreWhen Holy Communion Isn’t So Holy
One Sunday recently, a youngish man, thirtysomething, father of two girls, asked me if the communion bread had any nuts. “We have some nuts in the congregation,” I said, “but not in the bread.” He smiled graciously at this lame attempt at humor. I went on to say that I would confirm this and would…
Read MoreJust Play, Man!
Playing the drums has been a lifelong passion of mine. From the time I picked up my first pair of sticks and a rubber practice pad in elementary school, I have been fascinated with making the sticks bounce, learning the rudiments and eventually transitioning to a secondhand drum set my mom had purchased from a…
Read MoreTree of Life Synagogue Shootings: So What Now?
The shooting that took place Saturday, October 27, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was, like all of the mass shootings we live through, an assault by hatred upon hope. I say hope, because most people of goodwill, and certainly people of faith, live with hope and by hope. Every day in Pittsburgh…
Read MoreFamily Stories
As someone with a passion for history, I’ve always been interested in genealogies. Maybe it’s because as an adopted child with no knowledge of my birth parents, I’ve always been chasing my own history —where my family originated, what the stories are, etc. Some recent developments have helped, however. I managed to get a copy…
Read MoreGratitude in a Culture of Outrage
We’re coming up on the two months of the year which unequivocally call for more gratitude, rejoicing and celebration than any other 61-day period on the calendar: November and December. The clarion call to be grateful is issued on Thanksgiving Day, and thereafter we’re reminded of the arrival of the transcendent, ineffable God in human…
Read MoreGetting Things Done – Interview with David Allen
This interview was from the March-April 2006 Issue of Homiletics David Allen is an international author, lecturer and founder and president of the David Allen Company, a management consulting, coaching and training company. In the last 20 years he has developed and implemented productivity improvement programs for over a half-million professionals in hundreds of organizations…
Read MoreChange of Scenery
Every season has its own particular glory, and with that, downsides, too. Summer has so much to commend it that there’s no need for me to restate the obvious. But there are negatives that deserve mention. In the summer, wrote the Bard, “sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his…
Read MoreAnd Now for These Commercial Messages …
During my days as a youth pastor, I worked at a camp each summer where every time the camp director rose at the end of a meal to give the campers some new information for the day, the kids would break out into a song: Announcements, announcements, announcements: A terrible way to die, a terrible…
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