Hopefully, the admonition given to some preachers will hold true as I type these words. When commenting on the length of sermons, sometimes they/we are told, “A sermon does not have to be eternal to be immortal.” The “meat” of this post is actually one sentence. A friend of mine who is also an excellent Bible student and teacher has said it many times.  After you read the sentence, I challenge you to think of one exception to the “rule”stated in it. I think that you will have a very difficult time finding one. In fact, I think that you will find that it applies to every facet of our…

There have been nineteen presidential inaugurations during my lifetime. Of course, some of those were for second terms of sitting presidents, but that is still a lot of them. I was only about four months old when it happened for the first time in my lifetime, so I don’t remember anything about it. The same goes for the second time when I was only a little over four years old.   It really wasn’t until I was a little over twelve years old that I sort of got “plugged in” to what was happening. I was intrigued with all of the pageantry that went along with a presidential inauguration ceremony.   While…

For the past couple of years or so, it seems that we’ve been consumed by statistics. This is particularly true with regard to the seemingly endless variants of the virus that people all over the world are dealing with.   Our interest in and often our reliance upon statistics is not limited to the medical field. It is difficult to think of an area of our lives that is not affected in some way by statistics. We can find information about everything from our expected lifespan to the chances that our favorite athletic team has to win a game by using statistics. Both the weather report and the stock market report…

A lot of people with whom I worship are involved in a training program for young people called Lads to Leaders/Leaderettes. As I type these words, we are in “full swing” in an effort to prepare for this year’s annual convention.   My role in this is to help some young men prepare and present speeches. Most of what I’m doing could be identified as coaching. I am not there to write their speeches, but to suggest, encourage, critique, etc. Very early one morning I woke up with an idea about something “concrete” I could give them that might help. With a couple of exceptions, what follows is the material I…

I’ve read or listened to more of them than I care to count. Each one is instructive in its own way, but all are equally heartbreaking. They are often referred to as “deconstruction” stories. While there are other terms and descriptions, they are essentially the same things. These are personal accounts–often done on video through YouTube, or in written form through blogs or social media posts–in which a person shares that they are (or have) “deconstructed” their faith and are forging a new spiritual path. While each is different since it they are individual stories, it is remarkable to me how similar the ones I have seen or watched are.…

Jim and I helped our daughter and her children move a couple of weeks ago to a new (to them) house (see last Thursday’s Legacy post). We had several days of hard work, but nothing from which we couldn’t recuperate. She had hired movers to take care of the heavy furniture so we thought there wouldn’t be much for us to do. Before a move, as you sit and look at your belongings in the house, you really don’t think it will be that hard – especially if strong men with a big truck are coming to lift the big stuff! And then you begin opening the clothes closets, the…