To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn. If you live in Kentucky, Ohio, or Indiana and have watched at least one hour of TV during the… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here If you’re a chess player, you have probably experienced something of the despair depicted in this painting. The young man on the right is contemplating chess catastrophe. His remaining pieces are surrounded. His opponent appears to have just captured his queen. But there’s a good deal more happening here than first meets… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here He spent 20 years of his life screaming his head off. As a drill sergeant, he was (in his own words) “the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work.” So when he… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here If you’re a high school youth group leader in Indiana, there’s one event every year that is guaranteed to be a hit. Take a winter ski trip to Michigan! It’s not that Michigan has a mountain range or world-class slopes. But it does sit far enough north to receive generous quantities… 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 this reflection as a podcast, click here. There’s something about the earth’s most dramatic geological events – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis – that make people want to fire God. A few weeks after the December 2004 earthquake that sent mountainous walls of water crashing onto beaches around the Indian Ocean, taking more than 225,000 lives, Ron Rosenbaum of the… Read more »
“You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, punk?”(Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry) San Francisco’s famously unhinged police inspector isn’t typically a source of theological insight. But his quotable quote spotlights our culture’s fascination with what can only be described as one of the most unreliable sources of human guidance: luck. People who think luck is… Read more »
Throughout November we’re taking an in-depth look at Ruth, the little book that helped pave the way for God’s Messiah to come into the world. “There’s good news and there’s bad news.” That’s the premise for a number of classic jokes, including the one about the two best buddies who spent a lifetime enjoying baseball. They both wondered if there… Read more »
Throughout November we’re taking an in-depth look at Ruth, the little book that helped pave the way for God’s Messiah to come into the world. Eleven years ago this fall, the Buffalo Bills – at that time one of the least competitive franchises in the National Football League – had a golden opportunity to defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of… Read more »
Throughout November we’re taking an in-depth look at Ruth, the little book that helped pave the way for God’s Messiah to come into the world. According to the principle of Chekov’s Gun, there are no extraneous details in great stories. The Russian writer Anton Chekov (1860-1904) advised young playwrights, “If you reveal in the first act that there is a… Read more »