We live in a love-saturated culture. People everywhere talk about, write about (as I am now), sing about, make movies about, paint about…love. All. The. Time. But what we don’t live in is a Christian-love-saturated culture. Jesus tells us that there is a qualitative difference between Christian love and all […]
Herb Reese
Today is the last day of my bedroom imprisonment. My consignment to household oblivion began a week ago Thursday with diarrhea. I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when I awoke with a sore throat and sinus congestion. “Who gets diarrhea with a sore throat and congestion?” […]
By all accounts, Richard and Cynthia Murphy were living the American dream in suburban Montclair, New Jersey. They and their two daughters had been residing for twenty years in a two-story colonial home that backed up to a wildlife preserve. According to their neighbors, Richard and Cynthia lived nondescript, ordinary […]
Ever since Erasmus decided that divorce could be a good thing, Christians and humanists have been dancing a five hundred year long intellectual, spiritual, and cultural tango. Often it looks more like a tangle than a tango, but for better or for worse, we are stuck with each other. Now […]
As I’ve mentioned in a recent post, Patti and I love watching the home remodeling channel, HGTV. One of our favorite shows is Good Bones, where Mina Starsiak and her mom, Karen Lane, remodel dilapidated homes in the southeastern suburbs of Indianapolis. At the beginning of each show Mina’s husky […]
Restructure your church governance so that your deacons do only what the first deacons did.
“Thy lovingkindness is better than life.” Psalm 66:3 They didn’t know it, but when Tom Cook and Joseph Feeny promised with a handshake nearly three decades ago that if one of them ever won the Powerball lottery they would split the winnings, they were engaging in a thousands year old […]
Pastors, how long has it been since you preached that dreaded sermon on widows?
“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19:29 A couple of weeks ago, as I was rummaging through some of my father’s […]
I love daily naps and long walks. No, I am not a sloth. I get up around 5 am, often earlier. But while I work hard, naps and walks have been a part of my regular schedule for thirty years. Besides the obvious health benefits, the reasons I have napped […]