No, I’m not talking about that other kind of privilege that people seem to be so concerned with in recent years. Since the Bible has nothing to say about skin color, I think it is absolutely crazy for our culture to be so obsessed with it. Instead, I’m talking about a privilege that is available to everyone and that is far, far greater. It is one that I used to hear described as a “privilege” more often than I do these days, but maybe we need to get back to using that description. In fact, this privilege provides doors of opportunity and communication that nothing else can. Do you want…

Having lived on my own now for almost 2 years, I am convinced that there is no more difficult task than keeping a desk clear of clutter for more than about 2 days. This is something that anyone who has seen my desk at the church office or (especially) my desk at home knows about me. I am writing this just after making yet another attempt to clear off the church desk; it’s still not totally clear, but it looks much better than it did before. It’s not that the clutter doesn’t bother me – believe me, it does. It’s just that every time I have a chance to clear…

I recently adopted an Aussie lab puppy named Baxter. At three months old, he is a bundle of energy and has been a great addition to my house as well as an occasional terror. We had a few pets over the course of my childhood, but Baxter is the first dog I have had on my own. As such, while I am training him, he is also training me in some significant ways, many of which have biblical parallels and spiritual implications. To create an exhaustive list would take much longer than one article, but there is one that has stood out among the rest in these first few weeks…

A recent Bible class I attended prompted this post. There was some discussion about what kind of understanding – if any – Job might have had about his (or our) existence after death.  As I listened to that discussion, I thought about a subject for what might be the shortest post I will ever produce. I hope that you will not mistake being brief for being inconsequential or unimportant. I think that what I started thinking in that class and have been thinking a lot about since then is neither of those two things. Since my first career was that of a school teacher, I will go back to those days and…

By the time you read this, I will already be a few days into a practice I started a few years ago. I am not really sure about the number of times I’ve read and/or listened to the entire Bible in a year. When I began that again a few days ago, I was, as you might expect, reading the biblical account of creation. Coincidentally, a few days earlier I was thumbing through the pages of a Bible that belonged to my late father. He had made a practice of writing notes in the margins of the text of scripture, but he also used just about any space he could…

Today’s post is short, but I hope it hits you as hard as it hit me. In our Wednesday evening devotional, the speaker talked about the account from Matthew 8 where the centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant. When Jesus offers to go, the soldier shows both humility and great faith in his response.  What stood out to me was Jesus’s response in verse 13: “And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed at that very moment.” As you have believed. What if the centurion hadn’t been sure? What if he thought Jesus could only…

I understand that most of us are fairly (or quite) busy this week. We are doing things that, hopefully, will enable us to enjoy the day on our calendars designated as Thanksgiving Day. For that reason, I won’t write something here that will take much of your time to read. It might suggest something to all of us, though, that we might want to take some time to consider. The phrase I have in mind and which shall serve as the concussion to my thoughts is included in some very direct statements found in the Bible. None of them appear to be suggestions. During this time of the year, we…