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Like football itself, the Super Bowl halftime show has become an integral part of American culture. In some ways, the halftime show is even more widely anticipated and talked about. King Solomon once wrote in Ecclesiastes, “There is no new thing under the sun.” What is now, has been before. As far as popularity goes, the Roman stadiums are a good example, complete with a halftime show. Yet this was very different than ours today, as were the “games” played before and after. As the bloodiness and the brutality of the so-called bread and circus...
There was an airline pilot flying over the Tennessee mountains and pointed out a lake to his copilot. “See that little lake?” he said. “When I was a kid I used to sit in a rowboat down there, fishing. Every time a plane would fly overhead, I’d look up and wish I was flying it. Now I look down and wish I was in a rowboat, fishing.” Contentment can be an elusive pursuit. We go after what we think will make us happy and content only to get it and find out that it didn’t work. Our nation shows our lack of contentment in many ways, such as our high...
This past Sunday, my congregation celebrated World Communion Sunday. This is a day set aside where we acknowledge the universal connection we have in Christ throughout the world. My denomination’s website describes the history of this celebration: “World Communion Sunday was adopted as a denominational practice in the Presbyterian Church (US) in 1936. Churches in other denominations were invited to celebrate with us from the beginning, but it wasn’t until 1940 when the Department of Evangelism of the Federal Council of Churches (a prede...
We are currently going through concerning times with political issues as a nation. There is a great amount of division affecting all levels of government. Every day seems to bring fresh news of problems and scandals. But this is nothing new. Every generation has faced troubling times and seasons with what is happening with government and politics. The Bible gives us both comfort and wisdom as we observe what happens around us in politics. We should never wring our hands in despair but instead...
By trade, I am a saw filer. In earlier days, anyone in this trade may have been called either a sawsmith, or a saw doctor – as filing or sharpening saws was only a small part of our trade. A sawsmith, or saw doctor, takes great pains to repair a saw so that the sharpening can be used to best effect. Often times, the repair process involves welding broken teeth back into the saw, or welding a broken saw body back together. Part of the process of welding involves tempering the welded area. The careful application of heat can cause the welded a...
You may be old enough to remember that song by the Beatles. It was released in 1967 as a single and quickly swept the world. Just for fun I “Googled” the question “How many songs have been written with love in the title?” I did not receive a good answer. There was one person that counted the “love” songs in his collection and it came to 1,187…quite a large number for one person. As a society we use the word love to describe many emotions, events, persons, animals, etc. The list is endless. I want to share with you the true meaning of th...
“And Moses said unto the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue.” When God called Moses to go to His people and lead them out of slavery in Egypt, Moses tried repeatedly to give reasons as to why he was not the one: “Who am I, that I should go forth...?”, “They shall say to me, What is His Name? What shall I say to them?”, “But behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say; the Lord hath not appeared un...
There is a tension between liberty and security, between our freedom and our safety. Of course, we would all prefer, and choose if we could, to have both complete liberty and complete security. However, that is not the world we live in. For example, we desire for others to not steal our possessions, so we secure them, with locks or cases. But in order to secure those possessions with a lock or in a case, we give up a little bit of our freedom to have easier access to those possessions. Most of the time we weigh the cost of the freedom that we...
Last week I was down in Frisco, TX for the NDSU championship football game. Next to our hotel was…by all counts…the most tempting and fabulous building I had ever seen. On the outside it read in beautiful neon letters: Indoor Skydiving. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to skydive. It’s been one of my bucket-list items, for sure. When I was 14, my Godmother took me on a 3 day trip to Hawaii to celebrate my birthday/confirmation. She was a flight attendant with NorthWest and had the chance to fly me for free. One of the things we did while in Hawaii was a f...
I still enjoy visiting libraries. I appreciate the opportunity to borrow books without having to purchase them and being exposed to various titles that I was not aware of. But part of me (a small part) misses the nostalgia of the little card catalog drawers. Back in the “olden days,” with covered wagons and the pony express…we searched for information on card catalog cards according to subject, author and title. Nowadays, it is common (yes, for myself) to simply search on the Internet. Admit...
Recently I was sitting in the yard in the evening as the stars came out and even with my imperfect vision I was able to see literally millions of stars. Having seen pictures from the Hubble telescope, I was able to envision billions more yet unseen as I sat there. Then I sort of wandered off in my thoughts, thinking about the massive array of our universe and pondered on the limited understanding we have of how it all came about. I realized that there was a fantastic system and order present, with laws governing the whole. I contemplated this i...
More than 45 years ago when I served in the Air Force, there was nothing I looked forward to more than going home. The little house I grew up in, the small town near where I lived, the people I had known for all of my short life, were all very familiar and special to me and I certainly missed it all. There were trails through my favorite woods, my favorite swimming holes and fishing holes and that section of river that my friends and I loved to float in inner tubes on hot summer days. The Old Saying claims that you can never go home again. And...
My brother-in-law was a true intellectual. Having served as a past dean of the faculty at Cornell University, he was a truly humble man. He was always more interested in what he could learn from others than in telling others how much he knew. This always felt to me like a point of separation between a true intellectual from a pseudo intellectual. You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “Remain quiet and people may think you ignorant, or speak up and remove all doubt.” My father used to advise me, “Know what you know and know what you think a...
Having been convicted of 49 murders and confessing to 71, Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, is considered to be the worst serial killer in U.S. History. In his 2003 court appearance, his consecutive confessions to each individual murder were completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever...“stonefaced and cold,” as one reporter described him. The judge subsequently allowed families of the victims to address him directly and most all were rightly heart-broken and enraged, up to wishing a “long, suffering, cruel death” upon hi...
If you follow the NFL at all, you know that there has been on ongoing controversy surrounding certain players who decided to not stand during the singing or playing of our national anthem at the beginning of the game. And recently the NFL instituted a new rule that stated that all players on the field during the singing of the national anthem had to remain standing. I have found it rather interesting that the instigator of this controversy remains currently unemployed as an NFL player, but even more interesting to me is the fact that he, and...
On down the highway through Prince George and Vanderhoof, logging trucks appeared, Fraser Lake and Burns Lake. All the way to Prince Rupert seemed like every third rig was a logg’n truck. Motor’n through Smithers, B.C., I spotted a gigantic igloo. It was called Adams igloo, as big as a house. Need’n a break I stopped to investigate. It was closed so I went to the house. “Yes,” the men said “But see’n how you stopped, I’ll open it.” Inside was every mounted animal from Canada. It was impressive. Seems like the ol’ boy was quite a hunter. Come to...
It has recently become very easy to jump on the bandwagon of lament, crying, “The world is so divided!” While the lament may be true, getting stuck in lament is not helpful. As a follow-up to my last contribution to this column, “A Different Conversation,” today I’d like to go beyond lamenting. To begin, let’s name a big problem we tend to participate in: dehumanization. We dehumanize one another so often, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. When we so easily use words like “hate” to describe our feelings for someone, we have already made t...
In my articles I have been looking at the attributes of God. These are the characteristics of Who God is and how the Lord relates to us. The holiness of God is mentioned abundantly throughout the entire Bible. At the same time, the attribute of God’s holiness is difficult for us to wrap our minds around. The challenge to grasp God’s holiness is actually because this attribute shows us the extent that God is beyond you and me. That God is holy means He is perfect and pure but more than this God...
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? To answer this, Christ gave us one of the most influential parables ever recorded—that of the good Samaritan. I love this parable. We all know it…here we have a Priest, a Levite and a Samaritan who all responded in their own way to a traveler who was stripped, beaten and left for dead. When I first was taught this parable, I understood that the lesson was to become more like the good Samaritan. While comparing our lives to that of the good Samaritan is not a bad thing to do, today I invite you...
“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) My wife and I are privileged to travel a lot and have been fortunate enough to serve on the African continent over a dozen times. Occasionally I hear stories from people about their fear of surrendering their will to God because, “God might send me to Africa or something!” But as we grow to know God more and trust in His character, it’s not a fearful thing to say, “Here am I Lord, send me!” He is a God who i...
And no, I’m not talking about the extra pounds I put on over the Easter holiday...rather I was reflecting on the verse from Chapter 4 verse 10 of Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” The thought that occurred to me as I read this verse was that the reality of my life is that, too often my life is more often a reflection of me, of my human nature and not often enough a reflection of Christ and His nature. I have found o...
“And (Jesus) went out from thence and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him....And He could there do no mighty work, save that He laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them.” The first question that usually gets asked when reading this verse is “why.” If Jesus is truly God, why would He not be able to perform miracles, “mighty works”, here? Part of the answer is that He was in fact more than able but there is more to be considered. There is a story of a young child who was once given a toy train. Immediately...
I am in the middle of listening to the audio version of the book “The Road to Wigan Pier” written by George Orwell and published in 1937. In it, Mr. Orwell describes in detail the living conditions of thousands of common working class men and families living in northern England in the years before World War II. I have not finished the book yet but my time listening to and considering it have led me to share a couple of thoughts that have been sparked in my head by it. 1. I have nothing to complain about! If I gain nothing else from the boo...
Many, many moons ago on an early spring day, I ventured forth on one of my many trips to Alaska to cut timber. Up into Canada through Banff I drove singing and rejoicing in the Lord for my new life in Christ. Only those who have experiences this passing from death into life know how I felt. Looking onto those impressive Canadian Rockies reminded me of the last time I drove this way late at night. The stars all shined friendly and then the magnificent aurora – “the dance of the spirits” as the Cree call it. It was a sight to behold it was....
For many, using GPS (Global Positioning Service) is a helpful convenience to find directions in the car with very little hassle. For a reasonable cost, users can connect with multiple satellites in their cars to be directed all over the world. However, this is not reliable for everyone…especially for Australia. Australian GPS information was last updated in 1994 and the entire continent has moved approximately five feet since then. For drivers locating someone’s house or a store to visit, thi...
