While I was in my peaceful office this morning, minding my own business, thinking hard and then trying to write down what I was thinking for an upcoming Classic State of Mind segment, the electricity in our building suddenly went off. My internet stopped. My monitor went dead. The lights in my office, the lights…
As a pastor, on Sunday mornings I often greet folks as the service begins, with a rhetorical question: ‘How was your week?’ Of course, when you ask a question like that of a large gathering of people, you’re not expecting all of them to answer in a way you can actually understand. It’s just a…
Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Matt. 5 and what we call The Sermon on the Mount begins this way: “When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions.” The…
In my younger years, I served with an older and more experienced pastor who once said something that stuck with me. He said, “I think one of the most creative things God ever made was a human face.” I am inclined to agree with him. For the past several years, Dr. Edward Tronick, at the…
It’s a habit of mine to pray for people I love, at the end of every day. I’m sure many believers do the same. Before my eyes close in sleep every night, I do my best to recount in my mind the names and faces of all my children, my grandchildren, other family members, loved…
I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve needed to be rescued? I stepped off a curb once, and my best friend grabbed my shirt and pulled me back out of traffic because I was about to be hit by a car I didn’t see coming. And once, when I was about 11…
I asked a friend the other day a question I’ve been pondering about a word. I asked, “What’s the last thing you ate?” He didn’t have to think about it. ‘Oatmeal,’ he said. And I said, “How do you know? Was oatmeal the ‘last’ thing you ate, or the most recent thing you ate?” His…
For the past six weeks or so, we’ve had rain in our area nearly every day. Sometimes it rained all day long and into the night. Some nights, it started raining in the early evening and didn’t stop until late in the evening the next day. And that kind of incessant rain for so many…
No matter what else happens in my life Today, this will be the shortest day I will ever live. The length of Yesterday grows with each passing moment in time. And, for certain, the certainty of the day called Tomorrow may never materialize. But Today? No matter what else happens, Today will be twenty-four hours…
Yesterday is the longest day you will ever live, and it’s getting longer all the time. No matter who you are, no matter the number of days the expanse of your life will ultimately contain, Yesterday happened. Of all the days God has given us, Yesterday is the only one that grows with each passing…