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Random Thoughts in Search of a Common Thread

The best answer to the idea that Joseph had the pyramids built to store grain might be Steve Martin’s classic and hilarious “King Tut. Tut was, Martin sings, buried in a “condo made of stone-a” which is a closer-to-the-facts description of a pyramid...

Testing Students, Evaluating Myself

Though I’ve been teaching and supervising Doctor of Ministry students for more than a decade; and have, as a part of that work, read and evaluated an array of personal exploratory essays, theological reflection papers, and summaries of ministry projects, last week, I...

The Possibility of Change

We all know the overworked cliché which defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  As worn and familiar as it is, we keep proving its essential wisdom.It happens in the groups of which we’re a part. With...

Freedom and the Weather of the Heart

Yesterday’s bright blue sky, streaked with long and thin white clouds, the shimmering sun, and the slight cooling breeze were such welcome gifts after days of ponderous grey air and pouring rain.  With the clinging fog and veiling clouds evaporated from the...

Broken Things and All Shall Be Well

In my dream, I was scheduled to play golf with a friend.  Never mind that I haven’t played golf in over a decade, gave my clubs away a few years ago, and wore-out my golf shoes by using them for yard work (they aerated the lawn while I walked!). I scrambled...

The Challenge and Gift of Time

Many of us have a troubled relationship with time.Carl Honore wrote an interesting book, In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed, the idea for which came to him as he rushed through an airport and saw a book entitled The...

Hope Unlimited by our Limits

Hope is sinewy, tenacious, and determined. It gives us strength when ours is gone, carries us into the future when we’ve been knocked-off our feet by the disappointments of the present, and makes it possible for us to trust that God is with us even when we feel...

Make Haste to Be Kind

Near the end of my morning walk, I passed two men who were ambling in the opposite direction and having a lively conversation with each other.  The street was busy and noisy, but I heard one phrase: “Yeah, he was so unusually kind to me that it made me feel kind...

Feeling Minds and Thinking Hearts

Here’s the address/sermon I gave at the Gardner Webb University School ofDivinity this past Monday.  It was based, in part, on the story of Jesus’ encounter with the a Samaritan woman at “Jacob’s well” (John 4).I surely understand...