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I realize it has been a while since I've posted anything new here. Life has been very busy and hectic the last little while, and may become even more so for awhile. More on that another time!
For now, I do have another illustration of a Bible principle. The principle comes from Matthew 15:11, in which Jesus talks about what defiles a man.
For a change of pace, I've posted this one over on my creative writing website: Fifteen Minutes of Fiction. It can be found here: A Clogged Drain.
In our "pluralistic" society, people seem to be very comfortable with the idea that no one religion has the corner on truth, and that there are many ways to get to heaven (if heaven does, in fact, exist). As a consequence, members of any one religion are made to feel as though they are being arrogant and narrow-minded if they suggest that their religion is "true." In the midst of all of this, Jesus's statement found in John 14:6 makes people feel very uncomfortable.
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Jesus says, and you can almost hear the...
When it comes to Jesus's disciples, Peter has always been the one who most interests me. Peter is the first one to come up with the most outlandish, inappropriate statements, but he's the one who comes up with the most insightful statements as well. One of my favorite "Peterisms" is in John 6, when Peter basically says to Jesus, "Leave you? We don't have anywhere else to go! You're the only one who has words of life!"
But, as interesting as Peter is, I would have hated having him in my classroom. Actually, now that I think about it, I've...
I love thunderstorms. I love to sit and watch the bolts of lightning that streak downward in stunning displays of light and power. But after yesterday, I don't think I'll ever look at lightning the same way again.
I was driving down Route 3, on my way home from a week as the Bible teacher at Camp Fairhaven, and the thunderstorm warnings came on the radio. I smiled. Then I watched as bolt after bolt of lightning flashed across the sky in the distance. The stikes were quite far away.
Or so I thought.
Then, suddenly, as I was zipping...
In a previous entry, I wrote about chess, and compared the universe to an enormous chess game. An excellent chess player makes moves that are incomprehensible to me because I don't understand all the complexities of the game. The universe is infinitely more complex than a chess game, but fortunately, God is infinitely wiser than the best chess player, and we should not be at all surprised when we don't understand the "moves" He's making.
As I think about chess, and how a novice plays it (and when I speak of novices, I'm thinking primarily of myself!), a novice...
If you've ever played chess, you know it's a very complicated game. If you want to be good at the game, you have to be able to look at the entire board, recognize a variety of possibilities, and see several moves ahead. An excellent chess player has to see all sixty-four squares and all the pieces on the board.
An excellent chess player won't move their bishop and think: "I moved my bishop there because it puts his king in check." Instead, an excellent chess player will be thinking: "I moved my bishop there because it puts his king in check,...
Last week I did something I never do: I turned on my television in the middle of the day to see what was on. Now I remember why I never do that.
Although, as I was flipping through the channels I saw a face that was very familiar from my childhood: Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was one of those shows I watched faithfully when I was a little child, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it's still being aired after all these years.
So I decided to sit down and watch it, and see how my perceptions...
Celebrity death has been in the news quite a bit lately, with both Brad Renfro and Heath Ledger dying in the past week. Two very young actors. I think it's interesting that the Associated Press and other news services have pre-written obituaries for a handful of very famous people.
They are mostly well-known people who are either quite old or quite ill, and whose lifetime accomplishments are mostly behind them. If the obituary is pre-written, then when they die, AP can just write one last paragraph with death details, and then post the whole thing online. Of course, it's not...
If moral values don't begin with the small things, they never go anywhere.
I begin my story today with three parties who shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty. I shall refer to them as Mr. X, Pastor Y, and Organization Z. Mr. X is running for a political office in the state of Maine. Pastor Y is a pastor here in Maine, who apparently runs an organization (Organization Z) devoted to conservative Christian values and social/political action.
Pastor Y is also a spammer. His organization sends me spam on two of my e-mail accounts -- both of which are publicly...
A few years ago I had an interesting incident occur at our youth group. One night while the teens were playing a game out in the field, two of the girls decided to go visit a relative who lived within walking distance of the church. And they left without either asking permission, or telling anyone they were going.
Now, we have a policy that we don't permit teens to leave youth group unless they have permission given by a parent/guardian or the parent/guardian comes to pick them up.
So I wasn't happy when I realized these girls had taken off....