To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Israel is a very small nation. All told it is just 10,175 square miles. If it’s hard to make sense of that number, think of it this way: Almost seven Israels could fit into the state of Missouri. Despite its small size, Israel has almost certainly had a greater impact on world history than… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Visitors to the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, have noticed something mysterious over the past 100 years. Rocks have been “racing” along the Racetrack. A playa is a dry lakebed. Its hard dry surface can be as unyielding as asphalt. The strange reality is that rocks of all shapes and sizes – some of… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Automation isn’t just the wave of the future. It’s already here. Extraordinary machines assemble our pickup trucks, sweep our floors, and will soon be driving us around in autonomous vehicles. Now there’s even a robotic, self-cleaning kitty litter box. As someone who shares life with six cats (four in the barn, two in… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What is God’s greatest miracle? Is it the parting of the Red Sea? Feeding thousands of hungry people with a few loaves and fish? Raising Jesus from the dead? Interestingly, we can make the case that the most compelling of all God’s miracles is the miracle of restraint. Why doesn’t… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Just before the 1975 fall semester kicked off at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the dean was literally on his knees. William Kerr was praying that Andrew Lincoln, a distinguished British Bible Scholar, could somehow be granted a visa to come teach at GCTS. A mountain of red tape stood in the way. All of a… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Here’s a riddle: Fifteen turtles are sunning themselves on an old log. Six of them decide to jump into the water. So how many turtles are still sunning themselves on the log? That’s easy. The correct answer is fifteen. Wait: Didn’t we say that six of them decided to jump into the water? We did. But as leadership gurus Barry… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What swept the dinosaurs from the face of the Earth? That question has puzzled paleontologists for a very long time. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the arrival of every school child’s favorite critters onto the international stage. In 1824, Oxford geology professor William Buckland declared that a set of fossilized bones… Read more »
Words cannot express what a privilege it has been to be part of your mornings the past twelve months. As in past years, I’m going to step back this week and take a five-day “Sabbath rest.” Morning reflections will return next Tuesday, January 2. Until then, may God bless you as you ponder his gifts of grace during the past year, and the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Stephanie Fast never learned the date of her birth. To this day she doesn’t know the identity of her parents. She does know that she was the child of a Korean mother and an Anglo father, one of many biracial children left behind in the aftermath of the Korean… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here A Festivus for the rest of us! If your heart isn’t stirred by that passionate cry, and if the aluminum pole pictured here makes no sense, you’re probably not a Seinfeld buff. In December 1997 the sitcom aired what became one of its most famous episodes. Jason Alexander’s character, George Costanza, reveals that… Read more »
