To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Most people agree on the basic facts of Jesus’ life. He lived in Judea during the opening decades of the first century. He became known as a prophet, teacher, and miracle-worker. He died on a cross by order of a Roman procurator. There’s not nearly as much consensus, however, about what… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here So why are cemeteries such scary places on the last day of October? Historians believe that Halloween is the semi-Christianized version of an ancient Celtic festival that spanned October 31 and November 1 called Samhain (pronounced SAW-win) which marked the beginning of winter. Celtic lore suggested that during Samhain the boundary between the world… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Sir Winston Churchill lived what was arguably the most remarkable life of the twentieth century. He was an unrivalled public speakerA skilled oil painterThe winner of a Nobel Prize for LiteratureAll despite the fact he had been a mediocre studentHe struggled to please his distant, demanding fatherAnd his socialite mother rarely gave him… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. During the first half of the twentieth century, Josef Stalin relentlessly tightened his ideological grip on the Soviet Union. Stalin subscribed to the view that religious thought and freedom were obstacles to the birth of the “new man” promised by Marxism – obstacles that could be ground to powder by government intervention. Churches… Read more »
Throughout the month of August, we’re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament. They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible’s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be “in Christ.” Shortly before his death in January 1924, a feeble and incapacitated Vladimir Illich Lenin made it clear that he… Read more »
You might say that I married into Daffodil Mania. My wife’s mother, Phyllis, was joyfully fanatical about those perennial bulbs – whether white, yellow, orange, or pastels – that are currently blooming in many parts of America. She once served a term as president of the National Daffodil Society and routinely jetted to various cities to judge flower shows. Gardeners… Read more »
