For more than 17 years I served on the same church staff as fellow pastor Scott Shelton. One day I noticed a sharp-looking navy blue blazer hanging just behind Scott’s office door. At the time I owned a navy blue blazer, too. I pointed out that mine had definitely seen better days. “You can borrow mine any time you want,”… Read more »
In the musical The Sound of Music, the Von Trapp children beg Fraulein Maria to teach them how to sing. She insists that it’s easy. She introduces the basics of harmony, rhythm, and tonality – the building blocks of Western music for the past thousand years. Maria teaches the notes that make up the classic octave. We begin at Do. … Read more »
The “Second Temple” of Judaism – the magnificent center of worship that stood in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus – represented an architecture of exclusion. A few people were in. Everyone else was out. Around the perimeter of the Temple was the Court of the Gentiles. A few decades ago archeologists excavating the site found an ancient sign that… Read more »
Today’s post is a bit different. Since we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the launching of this ministry of morning reflections, I’d love to address some of the questions I hear most often from readers. How many people are on the receiving end of the reflections every morning? It’s impossible to say with precision. But the number seems… Read more »
There’s a reason it’s called Thank God Ledge. By the time rock climbers have scaled most of Yosemite’s massive geological feature called Half Dome, the narrow ledge near the top is a welcome relief. Before the 20th century it didn’t seem possible that anyone could go straight up the granite face. Three climbers – working together and using all the… Read more »
Pi is the world’s most famous irrational number. It can also prompt people to do some pretty irrational things. February 6, 1897, was not the brightest hour for my home state of Indiana. That was the day our House of Representatives approved Bill 246, which declared the legal value of pi to be 3.2. Incredibly, the proposition was titled “A… Read more »
It was a sign of the times. Almost 20 years ago, former Major League Baseball star Dale Murphy – one of the “high integrity” players of the 1980s – urged the creation of a patch that could be worn by participants in the annual Little League World Series. Every August, 16 teams of 10-12-year-old boys from around the United States… Read more »
Mary Ann Bird grew up feeling unlovely, unpresentable, unloved. From birth she had been afflicted with a variety of disfiguring features. She recounts her feelings – and the moment in which everything changed – in her book The Whisper Test: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when… Read more »
I have never learned to drive a standard transmission car. Since futurists keep insisting that the age of autonomous (“driverless”) vehicles is just around the corner, the window to address this gap in my life is rapidly closing. My associations with standard transmissions are comically traumatic. Shortly after my 16th birthday, my father insisted one Sunday afternoon that I join… Read more »
In the Bible’s four biographies of Jesus – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – exactly one person declines his invitation to “follow me.” What could possibly be so powerful or insidious that it would compel someone to walk away from the chance of a lifetime? That would be money. We should pay close attention. The Gospels describe… Read more »