God called again, “Samuel!”—the third time! Yet again Samuel got up and went to Eli, “Yes? I heard you call me. Here I am.” That’s when it dawned on Eli that God was calling the boy. So Eli directed Samuel, “Go back and lie down. If the voice calls again, say, ‘Speak, God. I’m your…
Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets and one of my heroes because of the way she wages peace with words. When I found a book of her poetry I did not have, You & Yours, I whipped out one of my Christmas gift cards and gave it to myself. This was the…
I opened one of my Christmas presents yesterday. My friend, Lance, gave me a gift certificate to Calabash Music, a global music web site unlike anything I’ve ever seen (or heard). Here’s how they describe themselves: Calabash Music™ is the ultimate global music destination giving easy access to all the great, but hard-to-find, music from…
There’s the theology you discuss late at night over coffee or beers and then there’s the theology that gets lived out. The challenge, for me, is for the two to be quite similar. In coming to terms with my job situation, I turned to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: Therefore I tell…
Ginger and I were watching something on TV on New Year’s Eve when one of the characters said something that gave me my watchword for 2007. I told her I had decided that, when someone asked me how I was, rather than saying, “I’m fine,” or “I’m doing well,” I was going to answer, “I’m…
Ginger told a wonderful story for the children’s message yesterday. A second-grader was having trouble with his writing assignment and kept making mistakes. Each time, he would erase what he had written to the point that he tore a hole in his paper. He went up to the teacher unsure of what to do. She…
My beautiful lapis blue 1997 Jeep Cherokee Sport turned 166,000 miles today and it’s still going strong. Watching the odometer flip made me think about the waning days of this year and what awaits us in the next. Is this an ending or a beginning? For my car, on a day long before it became…
don’t eat alone is one year old today. Corndogmatic mentioned a meme that’s going around where you post the first line of the first post of each month as a way of reviewing your blog for the year. I’ve altered the idea a bit, going back to pull out some quotes along the way that…
Mary rose before sunrise;The baby was still sleeping,As was Joseph and most ofThe animals, except for one cowWho looked a little sheepish. The shepherds were long gone.In their excitement, they had notCleaned up well after themselves.The Magi were resting somewhere,Waiting for night and the Star. But Mary did not yet knowOf gold and myrrh and…
My favorite caroling memory happened when I was in fifth grade in Lusaka, Zambia. Christmas came in the summer there, so we sang in shorts – actually, our Wolf Cub uniforms. Our den mother announced that we were going caroling at State House, the presidential residence. We practiced hard to sound good. None of our…