From the outset, let me say that I have been as guilty as anyone for saying what I am going to write about. I used to say it quite regularly. After some time and thought, I would still say it, but I’d feel like I had to qualify it. Now, I do my best to avoid it. And it’s because I spent some serious time thinking about Cornelius. So, what is the saying? It is when we are talking about someone who has lived a pretty good life, but has never been baptized, and we say something like this: “He wouldn’t have to change much.” Now, having been someone who…

Now that the college basketball season is over, I heard somebody describe this time of year as Talking Season. There are a variety of things going on about which most of us know very little or anything. Some of those things may make the news. The casual sports fan may know something about coaching changes, recruiting news, etc., but even a very ardent fan probably has no real idea about all that is going on behind the scenes. About all that most college basketball fans can do for the next few months is talk.  A part of the vocabulary of Major League Baseball is the term Hot Stove League. As…

For some time now, and most famously during the Super Bowl, an ad campaign has captured the attention of a lot of people. The ads feature people in various negative and hate-filled situations, but having their feet washed. The overarching message is that Jesus did not teach hate and then we see the famous tagline “He Gets Us.” To be fair, I have a certain level of appreciation for ads like these. They may not tell the entire story, but they do at least have some semblance of a message that points people to some aspect of the Christian faith. And, of course, there is no way that a few-seconds-long…

A few weeks ago I needed to return something to a company and was advised to do so at a FedEx dropbox. The instructions I was given informed me about the location of the specific dropbox which was to be used. According to those instructions, the dropbox was in the parking lot of a small shopping center with which both Donna and I are very familiar. It is not at all unusual for one of us to “make a run” to a Kroger store which is in that shopping center.  With all of that being true, neither Donna nor I could remember ever seeing a FedEx dropbox anywhere in that…

A few months ago, an entirely new and different world was opened up to me. I learned from one of our neighbors that I could “borrow” audiobooks from our local library and listen to them for free. Since then, I’ve “read” about twenty-five books. I have found this practice to be much more informative and interesting than what I did previously while I was driving, doing odd jobs around the house, etc. The time spent on listening to political commentators with whom I already basically agreed or music I’ve known for a half century or so now occupies very, very little of my time. I am particularly drawn to books…

I’ve never lived in a major metropolitan area. I grew up in a rural area outside the city limits of a town that, according to the latest census figures that I could find, has about 6,500 residents. After Donna and I married, we actually lived in that same town for the first eight years of our marriage. Since then, we have lived in (or just outside of) towns with populations of about 1,500, 8,000, and 27,000. That last figure is the population for Paducah, Kentucky, where we presently live. That figure may be a little misleading, though. That is the population for people who live within the actual city limits. There…

As this post is being released, the first true results of the 2024 election cycle will be in. Iowa held caucuses and people let it be known which candidate they preferred. But this is not a political article. It’s about how the coverage of these events always works, and how we can’t let it infiltrate a congregation’s evangelistic efforts. Huh? Here’s what I mean: every four years, when these first-in-the-nation events happen in an election, there will be wall-to-wall coverage. We will hear about how long candidates have been in the state. We will hear about the tremendous amount of work they have done. We will hear about how much…