The Olympic trials have gotten under my skin. Love watching the exhilaration of those who win a ticket to Beijing. Hate seeing the disappointment of those who lose a coveted spot on their national team by a few points, an untimely injury, or some other twist of fate. Keep thinking about how much these athletes […]
A caricature of God that many of us shed in our early-teens is that, if we do something really bad, we’ll get struck with lightning. We soon discover that it’s more likely for that to happen if we challenge a thunderstorm with a golf club, fishing rod, or umbrella. I remember the day my daughter […]
Memories can haunt us. I was listening to a story on NPR’s StoryCorp recently and heard a tender conversation between an aged father who told his adult son that, all of his life, he regretted a moment when he had abusively beaten him in a moment of frustration. The son was moved by his father’s […]
Is there a difference between being born into the family of God and becoming a disciple (student) of Jesus? Or are these just two different ways of describing what it means to come into the family and kingdom of God? The way we answer this question will determine how we interpret the New Testament, and […]
One of the characteristics of our human nature is that we spend a lot of time reacting to, and trying to distance ourselves from, the sins of our fathers. As we react, it is as though we were jumping up and grabbing a great pendulum as it swings away in the opposite direction. In the […]
An article in the New York Times says that “People-watching is to New York City what vista-gazing is to the Grand Canyon.” It suggests riding a subway from one end to the other to… “Watch the ethnicities change, and the reading material – from Bibles to library studies textbooks to ethnic newspapers. Are the smilers […]
If I could write an open letter to some of the friends I’ve had who didn’t buy my reasons for faith in Christ, I think I would imagine them as a person I’ll call Aaron and write something like this. “Dear Aaron, I hope you are doing well. I miss our conversations. Even more, I […]
Earlier this morning I bumped into a friend at the coffee shop. Asked me if I had a couple of minutes. Told me that his wife was diagnosed last week with brain cancer. Said they were praying for a miracle. As I replay the brief conversation in my mind and try to imagine what he […]
Was ready for the return flight from Tel Aviv to the US, even though any trip to the land of the Bible seems like an undeserved chance of a lifetime for me. Once home, was also more tired than usual. After a week of fighting a “travelers’ bug” and working under a hot, June, Israeli […]
As the Jewish people enter the evening of their weekly Shabbat (Sabbath), our team is heading for Ben Gurion airport–tired, and ready to go home. Our last meeting with a group of scholars involved a conversation on the northern lakeshore of Galilee. Together with the eight professors pictured with me here, it was pretty amazing […]
