Five senses—to see, hear, taste, touch— and about this time of year the last reminds us that we are not alone. A skunk smells. But what? Itself? Grubbs? Danger? I recently read the words of someone who understood our human inclination to call out the wrongs of others—while giving ourselves a pass, a passing grade, or a […]
We’ve talked in the past about riddles. I think my favorite is: The poor have it. The rich need it. If you eat it you die. What is it? As we all know, riddles work by play on words; by layers of double meaning or ambiguity understood by the speaker but not revealed to the hearer. […]
In the beginning, Genesis describes a God who was mysteriously wonderful, creative, loving, strong, wise, present, personal, and generous. When the son and daughter of his likeness opened the one gift marked “Do Not Open”— only to suddenly feel as if they had been locked out of the house without their clothes on— he came […]
Many of us treasure the Bible as an inspired gift from the Creator who wants us to know his love for us— and our need of him. What is just as clear is that those same Scriptures can leave us with the still unfolding Story of a wonderfully good Servant-like God who is calling us […]
In 1948 the New Yorker Magazine published one of the most famous short stories in American literature. Titled “The Lottery”, and written by Shirley Jackson, it’s about a small town that held an annual drawing in which every family picked a slip of paper out of a black box. As town people look at one […]
Some of us have lived long enough to remember the Russian accomplishment of putting Uri Gagarin in space, followed by the US achievement of landing Neil Armstrong on the moon. Now European scientists have given us a new memory—maybe even more amazing and unforgettable!! Will we ever forget the day this week when we first […]
Astronomers estimate that The Milky Way is made up of 400 billion stars. Yet according to an astrophysicist from the Goddard Space Center, our own universe is only one of hundreds of billions of other galaxies—each being made up of billions or trillions of its own stars. Micro-physicists, on the other hand, looking inward, instead […]
We may remember this kind of comparison from school days. Back then the illustration was something like: As an apple is to a seed, so a thought is to a ___________. (i.e. conversation?) The point is that an analogy compares two things that are similar in at least one way and yet different in others. […]
How long will it be before newspapers of the world announce that a team of scientists has discovered the chemical formula of life? Will they be beaten to the starting line by another group that discovers the mysterious subatomic factor that keeps even non-living matter from self-destructing? As Iranian scientists try to replicate the technology […]
Marcion of Sinope’ was a Bishop of the early Church (2nd century) who had a hard time reconciling the Gods of the Old and New Testaments. Without completely rejecting the Jewish Scriptures, he apparently found a way of seeing the God of the Jews as different than the God revealed in Christ. Like so many […]
