To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here One of the vivid memories I associate with being nine years old is hearing my mom say to me, seemingly out of the blue, “Good news! I’ve signed you up for piano lessons, beginning next week.” I did not in fact receive that as particularly good news. In fact I fought my… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here For thousands of years, people have looked to the stars during troubled times. From ancient Mesopotamia to the dawn of the internet, astrology has been a source of reassurance and guidance. Astrology’s staying power into our own time has frankly stunned the world’s academic community. The notion that it’s possible to… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here When we decide to follow Jesus, we won’t necessarily begin to do a lot of new things. Our call is to do the same old things in a whole new way. In his book Reaching for the Invisible God, Philip Yancey tells us about one of his friends – a hand… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Some people are inspired by Peter Singer. Others think he is the most dangerous intellectual in America. Everyone at least agrees on this: The Australian-born Princeton University emeritus professor is never boring. Singer is a bioethicist. He specializes in how scientific principles should lead human beings to think and behave. He wrote the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Students in a class taught by Dr. Dallas Willard remember the day that one of their number was moved to a display of sheer arrogance. Until his death in 2013, Willard – a professor of philosophy at USC and the author of a number of books on Christian spiritual formation –… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Sociology professor and author Tony Campolo once attended the wrong funeral. His mother had called him and said, “Mrs. Kirkpatrick died. You need to pay your respects.” As Tony puts it, “My mother, like all Italians, was big on funerals.” So he hurried to the mortuary, where the service would begin at 2:00… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Sex is big business. It’s hard to comprehend, but the combined receipts of every live stage production in America – including symphonies, musicals, plays, and pop concerts – is exceeded every year by the revenue generated by strip clubs alone. According to a cover story in Time, the annual profits of… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here A few years ago, when I was serving as a workplace pastor for a healthcare company, one of our Black associates, seemingly out of the blue, asked me a question. “Are you planning to write a morning reflection about Juneteenth?” “I’d be glad to do that,” I answered enthusiastically. Then… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In the movie A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe plays Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash. The film recounts the true story of Nash’s descent into schizophrenia, followed by his agonizing attempts to regain something of a “normal” life as a Princeton University professor in the middle of the twentieth century. But the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Someone asked me a while back about my taste in music. “ABC,” I answered. Anything But Country. I love classical symphonies, electronic big beat, bluegrass, rock and roll, jazz fusion – you name it. I’ve just never been able to resonate with mournful tunes about breakups, bankruptcies, “She got the gold… Read more »