It was the Spring of 2000. There I was, a freshman at Trevecca Nazarene University, sitting in the class most feared by fledgling religion majors: Biblical Exegesis. Even the name makes a person want to duck for cover. It sounds like the sort of class you walk into wearing a hazmat suit and gloves beforeContinue reading “Our Motherly Father: God, Mom, and Prayer”
Category Archives: Biblical Studies
Becoming Attention In a Distracted World
What does it mean to “give attention” to something or someone? What does that look like? What faculties are employed? What thoughts are necessary to hold the other in our gaze for moments that matter, anticipating their speech or attending with our hearing in a way that could change us in an instant? In anContinue reading “Becoming Attention In a Distracted World”
“Daddy, Is it our Turn to do the Bread?”
“Daddy, is it our turn to do the bread yet?” my little girls asks, her big brown eyes gazing up at mine awaiting the point in the church service when she gets to “do the bread.” I am often beside myself at how much truth comes from the mouths of babes, especially my own. ThisContinue reading ““Daddy, Is it our Turn to do the Bread?””
Lent as Re-Membering: Reflections on Luke 4
Luke 4 is the traditional text that comes to mind when we consider the beginning of Lent: the 40-day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday (Sunday celebration days withstanding) in which we reflect upon the journey of Christ into the wilderness and the temptations he encounters while there. During the season of Lent, weContinue reading “Lent as Re-Membering: Reflections on Luke 4”
Leaning Into Death: An Alternative Reading of Acts 2.42-47
Preaching from Acts 2 this Eastertide, it dawned on me this familiar passage was saying something much simpler, yet more profound, than providing fodder for theological arguments between Pentecostals and, well, every other Christian. The early portion of this chapter (tongues of fire, upper room, etc.), gets most of the attention in the chapter, and rightlyContinue reading “Leaning Into Death: An Alternative Reading of Acts 2.42-47”
Death asks Questions. Ecclesiastes Answers.
Sudden, premature, Death is the great equalizer. Both for those who die and those they leave behind. For those who die, suddenly, everything they were, or weren’t, did, or didn’t do, is finished. Their dreams, their opinions, their loves, their hates, their things and their family, all stay behind. The prince and the pauper meetContinue reading “Death asks Questions. Ecclesiastes Answers.”
Gutless Grieving: Taking Lamentations Seriously
Today, I have been fatherless for one month. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my father dying of heart attack (no family history of them), suddenly leaving us without any opportunity to say “goodbye,” speak final words of love or simply say “thank you” for being a great father, a wonderful granddadContinue reading “Gutless Grieving: Taking Lamentations Seriously”
My Fathers Sermon on Peace
Two weeks ago, Feb 26th, was my father’s last Sunday alive. In usual fashion, he found himself at church around 9:30am preparing to teach Sunday School. I did not attend his Sunday School class that morning. I missed his last lesson. In retrospect, I wish I had not worked so much on the weekends,Continue reading “My Fathers Sermon on Peace”
I Don’t Believe in Jesus
This is the newest rage…and by people far less intelligent than Magellan. (FTR, I support Magellan, Galileo and Copernicus) Just go onto any social media outlet and you’ll find people clanging the cymbals of disbelief. And not just disbelief in general (for which there may be justifiable cause) but disbelief in Jesus, his actual historicalContinue reading “I Don’t Believe in Jesus”
Heaven Doesn’t Matter
I mean who does care about heaven? We care so much about heaven we speak of it as often as we speak about hell. (see my previous post Why the Hell does Hell Matter? wherein I describe the banality of this idea more academically than my approach here to heaven) Equally we spend as muchContinue reading “Heaven Doesn’t Matter”
ParanormalChrist 