On October 4, 1957, 10-year-old Stephen King, the future master of horror, was sitting in the movie theater in downtown Stratford, Connecticut. He and his friends were watching that fabulous 1950s sci-fi flick, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. A few years later I enjoyed the same movie at the Uptown Theater on the north side of Indianapolis. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is… Read more »
As the world continues to react with anguish concerning Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, how should we pray? Jack Knox, pastor of the Salem (Oregon) Mennonite Church, has offered the following: Gracious Lord, we dream of a world free of poverty and oppression, and we yearn for a world free of vengeance and violence. We pray for your peace. When our hearts… Read more »
Each year we pause to address some of the questions associated with this day, Ash Wednesday – the first day of Lent. What exactly is Lent? The word comes from the Old English term for “lengthen.” As Easter approaches, the amount of daylight grows longer. More than a thousand years ago, followers of Jesus began to set aside the 40 days… Read more »
Bobby Leach yearned to be the first man ever to survive a plunge over Niagara Falls. In 1911, the 53-year-old British stuntman, who had once made his living performing with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, created a special “barrel” – actually a metal tube with a removable hatch – that he believed would take him safely over the 167-foot precipice of… Read more »
It is finished. Those are words that a driven, task-obsessed person can never imagine saying. “It is finished” would mean there would be nothing left to check off the list of things to do. No more sweaters to arrange according to color and style. Every conceivable thank-you note written. Nothing left to haul off to Goodwill from the attic or the garage. But… Read more »
“Well, bless your heart.” What a wonderful thing to hear. Someone wants to impart a blessing upon your inmost being. But before you begin to savor that inward rush of joy and gratitude, it’s just possible that those words mean something else. “Bless your heart” – especially if you’re in the American South – can fall anywhere along a spectacular range of… Read more »
Right now, according to the Doomsday Clock, we’re just 100 seconds from Armageddon. A group of researchers established The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 to help alert humanity to the perils of atomic age weaponry. Very few people paid attention until 1949, when the group invented the metaphor of a clock ticking ominously toward the extinction of human… Read more »
Across the spectrum of global spirituality, is there anything unique to the Christian faith? Those attending a British conference on comparative religions in the middle of the last century debated that very question. When all is said and done, is there anything associated with following Jesus that has no parallel? How about the Incarnation? That didn’t fly, since other religions include stories… Read more »
Dee Dee Kuruneru pointed to the grayish line permanently imprinted eight feet up the wall of his nearly demolished seaside house. “That’s how high the water was,” he said. “It stayed there for ten minutes.” That extraordinary watermark was the legacy of the tsunami that overwhelmed Dee Dee’s hometown of Galle, a bustling community on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka, the… Read more »
Zachary Taylor never voted in a U.S. presidential election until he was 64 years old. That’s when the career military officer cast a ballot for himself in the 1848 election that sent him to the White House as America’s 12th chief executive. But the record for a presidential candidate voting late in life for the first time is probably held by Nelson… Read more »
