I was reading a seventh-grade public school exam from many decades ago and was struck with the level of language, grammar, and difficulty of the exam. It was very sophisticated and I struggled to “pass!”
No one can look at the current culture and not witness the coarsening of the language of our day. Between the mainstreaming of…
Have you ever had to hold a secret until the right time? I remember how frustrating it was for me to keep a secret about a surprise birthday party for a dear friend. It was going to be the “big 4 0” and we had all decided that I was the one who was going…
Here’s a long quote from C.S. Lewis’ book “The Weight of Glory”
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to…
A wise leader was teaching a group of “leaders to be” and he made a provocative statement ” When someone comes to you and asks for permission to do something in the organization, let your answer always be ‘yes.'” Yes? Yes!
In my years of ministry, both as a Protestant pastor and now as an Orthodox…
Welcome to the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church are meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! I know this is a constant temptation for me!…
Everybody else was squirming. They were obviously having a hard time with the information and seemed to rather have been elsewhere. But I was at peace. It just made sense to me, I guess.
Some of you know the story of how I entered the Orthodox Church. I was a pastor of a growing Pentecostal church…
He was a canny businessman. He actually took real pleasure in knowing he had gotten the better of his business associates in deals, in negotiations, and in life. He seemed to know just when to strike and just the right words to say to get his way and get ahead.
And he was all alone. His great…
Faith is something we humans take for granted. We seem to just assume that we “have” faith or we “keep” the faith merely by wanting to do so, but is that true faith?
Is faith something we simply “think” about and so we “have” it? I don’t know about you but this seems to lead us to magical thinking or, worse yet, self-delusion. Is it…
What is it about close relationships that either blind you or enlighten you? What I mean is, I’ve known folks who were so close to someone else that they were absolutely blind to that other person’s faults. I’ve seen it get so bad that the two people were so enmeshed with each other that they…
Have you ever thought about all those people Jesus healed during His ministry here on earth? They were so happy, grateful, and changed. In some cases (the illness of leprosy) they were now free to rejoin society, be reunited with their families, and finally get their life back. They went on to live their lives.…