Thanksgiving During the Christmas Season

I have a a friend who is also in ministry and among the things that we share is a love for the Christmas season. Whether it’s because I’m a pastor or because I’m an adult—probably both—the Christmas season passes far too quickly. I like to savor it, so I like to stretch it out as long as possible. My friend...

The Myth of the Lone Genius

Do you know who invented the light bulb? If you said Thomas Edison, then you are…kind of right. The real story is more complicated than that. Other inventors had been making various forms of incandescent light bulbs for more than 80 years before Edison started working on it. Edison filed a patent for...

There’s No “ME” in “Scripture”

Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the...

A Right-Handed World?

My parents had three sons, and two of us are left-handed. Neither of my parents are left-handed, so what are the odds that their first two sons would be left-handed? Somewhere between 90-93% of people are right-handed, so the odds have got to be extraordinarily small. Yet here we are. Hand orientation can...

The Struggle of Following Jesus

What does it mean to be “close to the Lord”? That’s a phrase that I’ve heard all my life, though I’m not sure it was ever defined for me. It was never a phrase that a person would use to describe themselves; no one who was truly close to the Lord would ever tell someone, “I’m close to the Lord.” It was...