When I was a pastoral newbie in the 1970s, the cathartic approach to anger was all the rage. The let-it-all-out method of venting anger was in vogue and counselors even created "rage rooms" so clients could blow off steam. Recent research has...
I've been reading the Old Testament book of Isaiah. There are parts of Isaiah I like, and sections I don't like. The prophet Isaiah doesn't hold back with judgment when God's people make a mess of things. As I came to Isaiah 33, I thought to...
I still possess a copy of the first sermon I preached when I was called to the pastorate. What strikes me as I reread it is my strong desire to be liked. While I tried to faithfully interpret Matthew 28, I cannot lie: I desperately wanted people to...
Psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote a groundbreaking book in 1946, Man's Search for Meaning, referencing Frederich Nietzsche's quote, "He who has a why can bear with almost any how." What Prudence Randall (1803-1890) did in the...
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) was a twenty-eight-year-old seminary graduate waiting "for some decided indication of Providence as to the place of duty." While visiting a neighbor, Dr. Cogswell, near his home in Hartford, Thomas observed the...
Lindisfarne is an island off the northeast coast of England. Most of its one hundred eighty permanent residents are employed in the fishing industry. The town has three pubs, a post office, and one hotel. A single causeway connects the island to...
John Jea was born in Africa in 1773. He, with his parents and siblings, were kidnapped by slave traders, transported to America, and sold to enslavers in New York City. John was not yet three years old. The family was purchased by a Dutch couple,...
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) wrote in her diary on February 7, 1837, "God spoke to me and called me into his service." She was not yet seventeen, living on a luxurious 1,300-acre estate in England. Years later, it became clear that her calling...
Robert C. Lawson (1883-1961) was orphaned at a young age and raised by an aunt and left home as a teenager to become a nightclub singer. He abandoned his Christian roots and adopted a pleasure-seeking lifestyle. At age thirty, he contracted...
I have preached in challenging, supercharged moments but none can compare with the moment Samson Occom (1723-1792) took the pulpit at Moses Paul's execution. A heated argument after drinking broke out at David Clark's Tavern in Bethany,...
Tom Fettke (1941-) spent a lifetime in choral music as a music instructor and church choir director. As former director of a church choir in California, Tom asked choir member Linda Johnson if she would be willing to transpose Psalm 8 into lyrical...
She was the first woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women in America. She was born to free slaves, orphaned at five, and taken in as an indentured servant. She had no formal education but became a voracious reader. In her words, "I was...
The date of September 11, 2001, is forever etched in my memory. Most of us can remember where we were and what we were doing when we learned the horrific news of planes slamming into the Pentagon and incinerating the World Trade Center Towers. Our...
Heresy was considered a capital offense in the Middle Ages. Try as I might, I still can't wrap my head around such drastic censure. Granted, the rise of popular heretical movements had something to do with it, but it still doesn't explain why the...
When Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) was young, he was sent on an errand by an anti-slavery office in New York City. He overheard two prominent lawyers talking about a recent conversation with John Calhoun, a senator from South Carolina. In the...
Shia LaBeouf (age 38) is an American actor and filmmaker. He was raised with Jewish as well as Christian influences but acknowledged in 2007 that "religion never made any sense to me." His struggle with alcohol addiction and a series of public...
C.S. Lewis married for the first time in his late fifties to a fellow writer, Joy Davidman. She contracted cancer shortly after they married and died three years later. C.S. kept a diary to chronicle his grief after her death, which he never...
People in the church often tell me they prefer the New Testament to the Old Testament. They find themselves more in sync with the New Testament God of love than the Old Testament God of wrath. Did God have a change of heart over time, or are we...