To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In the 1986 film The Mission, Robert De Niro plays Rodrigo Mendoza – a mercenary, slave trader, and murderer in 1750 South America. Mendoza has brutalized the Guarani people who live high above the waterfalls that border Argentina and Paraguay. They have long wanted to get their hands on him. Suddenly they get the opportunity. In… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here No one who had a church leadership role on September 16, 2001, will ever forget that day. It was the first Sunday after the 9/11 terror attacks. For five days, America had been reeling. The shock and horror of what happened in New York City, Washington D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania plunged the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1842, French philosopher Auguste Comte probably thought he was on safe ground when he predicted that humanity would never learn anything of significance about the stars. Those twinkling lights in the night sky were simply too far away – far beyond our capacity ever to see and appreciate “up close.” But all that… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What language did Jesus speak? For Bible scholars, that’s always been an interesting question. We know that Judea in the first century was a tri-lingual culture. Hebrew was the “official” language of Israel – the mother-tongue that would be heard in the synagogue and in the prayers of God’s… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here A few years ago, a newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, noted that a local basset hound named Tattoo had gone for an evening run. That may not sound like front page material until you consider the unusual circumstances. As John Ortberg reports in his book The Life You’ve Always Wanted, Tattoo’s master had accidentally closed… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Years before Stephen King was crowned king of literary horror, Shirley Jackson wrote what many readers consider the scariest tale of all. “The Lottery,” published in The New Yorker in 1948, vaulted the 32-year-old author into the national spotlight, and has since become required reading for generations of high school… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here According to the Jewish Scriptures (Deuteronomy 22:12), men were required to wear fringes along the edges of their cloaks. Traditionally, these fringes ended in four tassels of white thread, with a blue thread woven through them. The tassels were to serve as reminders, every day when getting dressed, of the high call to obey… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The world of TV sports provides a window into a fascinating sociological phenomenon. The parents of younger American generations are going out of their way to give their kids distinctive names. We’re talking about Millennials (children born 1980-1994), Gen Z (1995-2012), and the newly dubbed Polars (2013-2029), who won’t be… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here It’s one of those stories that inevitably comes up in the ongoing harangue between Science and Christianity. It’s called the Copernican Revolution. The story is usually told like this: Simple-minded Bible readers declared that the Earth sits at the center of the universe, proving the cosmic significance of the human race. Polish astronomer Nicholaus… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Some of the most celebrated names in spiritual history are martyrs – men and women who surrendered their lives instead of surrendering their faith. Church tradition suggests that 11 of the original 12 apostles met violent ends. Courageous martyrs also figure prominently in the stories of Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. In the Middle… Read more »
