To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What happens when children talk to God? If the missives found in Children’s Letters to God (Workman Publishing, 1966) are any indication, what we get is a good deal more honesty that we generally hear in prayers offered by adults. Cartoonist and playwright Stuart E. “Stoo” Hample collaborated with Eric Marshall… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The Hasbro toy company hoped to make a new product splash at the 1964 New York Toy Fair. What they ended up doing was introducing an entirely new kind of toy. It was a doll for boys – a human form, fully 12 inches tall, that could bend at every joint… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here For ten long years, the greatest hero of ancient Greek literature tries to find his way home. Odysseus has led the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War. He now longs to head west, back across the Mediterranean, where he can finally rejoin his wife and son at their home on… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev agonized for days over the puzzle of how to arrange the known elements. Sleepiness finally overcame him. When he awoke after a few hours, the solution suddenly presented itself. “I saw in a dream how to arrange everything.” It was the world’s first rendition of… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Pastors sometimes get surprising questions. In his book The Good and Beautiful God, James Bryan Smith recounts a story he heard from his friend, Pastor Jeff Gannon. A young woman called Gannon out of the blue and asked, “May I come to your church?” What a question. “Of course,” said Gannon, who was surprised she… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here On this Election Day in the United States, it’s clear that no matter who receives the most votes, the path ahead of us is going to be steep. Is there a word of encouragement that all of us can affirm during the climb – one that appeals, as Abraham Lincoln put it, to… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What’s in a name? More than 150 years ago, when European surveyors were attempting to map the primary geological features on earth, they did their best to retain the names that locals had historically assigned to particular mountains, rivers, and valleys. The exception was an unusually high mountain in the Himalayas that… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here August 14, 2003, was the night that the lights went out in New York City. A blackout shut down the power grid in eight states, mostly in the Northeast, and almost all of the Canadian province of Ontario. Approximately 55 million people had no air conditioning, microwaves, or cell phones for… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The British press once declared him to be “the wickedest man in the world.” After all, he crossed every line, broke every rule, violated every taboo, and urged others to do the same. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) actually enjoyed calling himself something else. He preferred the Beast, one of the Bible’s designations… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Five hundred and seven years ago, on the day we’ve come to know as Halloween, Martin Luther changed the course of history. The German Catholic priest and theology professor almost certainly had no intention of launching a movement that would turn Christendom inside-out and upside-down. But that was the outcome of… Read more »