Two Big Bangs…and Counting

Are you as fascinated as I by the Big Bang? It wasn’t an explosion. Explosions blow things apart. The Big Bang blew things together. Within milliseconds, many design elements were in place and fully programmed. Our Creator God planted a period on a blank page and...

Those Mysterious Wise Men

IN THE PREVIOUS TWO BLOGS, we see the baby in a floor manger,     …shepherds coming to worship him— though not in a stable.  Now come Wise Men. What do we know about the Magi? Not much, actually. We know they came from the East, and Kenneth Bailey opts for...

And there were shepherds…

Are you still with me on this closer look at the Christmas story through the lens of Middle Eastern culture? Kenneth Bailey, after a lifetime of studying that way of life, saw details in the Scriptural account of Jesus’ birth that had been misunderstood or...

Rethinking Christmas-1

Most of us grew up with standard Christmas images—baby in a stable, surrounded by cows, sheep, shepherds, and wise men. And a star overhead. But what if some of those images are wrong? What if centuries of birth-event “interpretation” leaves us with a false picture...

A Life Well Lived

“Eugene was more than The Pastor. He was more than The Author. Truly this man lived and breathed and smiled Jesus.” —Don Pape Eugene Peterson died on Monday, October 22. I am sad. His family reports, “During the previous days, it was apparent that he was...

LESSON LEARNED

Flying squirrels LOVE the attic of our cottage at Rumney Bible Conference in New Hampshire. We’re dealing with that. The Terminix person noted that limbs from a couple of small beech trees were providing a red carpet for the squirrels. We, being experienced tree...