A few minutes after I hit Send on yesterday’s reflection – the one concerning sports mascots, which included the point that no major school’s team is represented by sheep – I myself was taken to school by several readers. The “Dirtbags” are the mascot of Cal State Long Beach, not Cal State Fullerton (which I now know to be… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here Universities and professional sports franchises are famous for picking tough-sounding nicknames for their football teams. That’s why this fall the Wolverines, Badgers, Jaguars, Tigers, Panthers, Cougars, Bears, and Lions will all take the field. Those are some pretty fierce animals. There will also be some angry birds: Eagles, Falcons, Ravens, Warhawks, Skyhawks, and Seahawks, among… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here Contrary to the popular marketing slogan, one size usually doesn’t fit all. Oh, that may be true of wristwatches, neck chains, bicycle helmets, T-shirts made of certain stretchable fabrics, and baseball caps with adjustable bands. But it certainly doesn’t apply to suits, dresses, shoes, and just about every aspect of… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here People make sense of their lives by means of the stories they believe. Those narratives can spring from many sources: parental guidance, childhood experiences, religious instruction, favorite teachers, friends’ ideas, and earnest personal study. If you toss in a few favorite books, some videos on YouTube, and all the stuff that “everybody simply knows… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here It’s tempting to assume that America’s current election cycle has set new lows for rudeness, incivility, and slander. Most historians, however, would suggest that our country’s darkest political hour came in the year 1800. That’s when two of the original “founding brothers” – titans of the American Revolution who had… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here The Bible brims with hope and encouragement. But embedded within that Good News there are stories that do not make easy reading. Such is the startling tale of the transporting of the ark of the covenant in 2 Samuel 6:1-15. The word “ark” means chest or box. Two arks appear in the Bible. Noah’s ark… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here Seven years ago this summer, Omran Daqneesh became known simply as the Syrian Boy. Dazed, covered with dirt and blood, the five-year-old sat in an ambulance after an August 17, 2016, airstrike reduced his home in Aleppo to a heap of ruins. Omran gave the world a face to remember… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here Nancy Guthrie had never given much thought to the subject of grief. She and her husband David were excited about the arrival of their first child, a little girl named Hope, who came into the world in November 1998. Then everything changed. As Nancy put it, “Grief barged through the… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here What’s the happiest place in the solar system? Disney World notwithstanding, it appears to be the Galle Crater on the surface of Mars. As you can see from the image above, this 134-mile wide impact zone seems to answer the age-old question: Does God communicate with emoji’s? Of course, there might… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here During a memorable episode of his long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor recounts a quarrel in his fictional hometown of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It isn’t a garden variety disagreement. The local pastors have had a serious falling out. The very souls entrusted with bringing peace, unity, and purity to the… Read more »