My Own Thoughts

Category: Christianity

  • Christianity across Generations

    From Barna: “few Christian Millennials today are willing to share their faith with others (and in fact think it’s wrong to do so)” “a big drop among Millennials, with just shy of two-thirds claiming Christianity (64%)” “self-identified Christians who attend church every month and say their faith is very important in their lives). Almost four…

  • Church Today

    From the Lord’ Supper comments: I am in the presence of greatness every day because God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit is/are with me. From the sermon: What if the voice of God had spoken to you? Why to me, when there are others who long for it? I don’t know, but I am very grateful, God. Thank…

  • Suffering and Pain

    I have been considering for the last few Sundays (and I am unsure why it is only on Sunday, put perhaps that is the only day I slow down and actually think) about God’s view of suffering and pain. Jesus came, knowing his life would be hard and his end would be horrible. God/Jesus was…

  • Connections

    When I first came to my new position, I was asked for a six-word autobiography. My teaching blog is down, but it had to do with coincidence being God’s working in my life. It was beautiful and succinct. This will be far more rambling, but it also is a weaving of God in my life.…

  • Prayer and Rhetoric

    I began reading Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance by William FitzGerald. It’s a fascinating book and I am highlighting too much. I thought I might put it in some of the things I highlighted that I want to ponder more. Maybe I can do that here in this space. “the most profound problem…

  • Recent events

    Ron’s mom had a stroke yesterday and she has Broca’s aphasia. Ron flew out this morning on the 5:50 am flight and arrived in Fayetteville by 9:05. We bought a TV yesterday for my dad–but ended up buying a bigger one for us (not that I thought we needed it, but…) and giving our 55…

  • Answer to Prayers

    Our preacher spoke on Jesus asking the Lord of the Harvest to send forth workers and said something I have never heard before. He said, We are the answer to Jesus’ prayers.

  • Keeping the Sabbath: Conceptual Elements

    This post is a discussion of Cynthia Agnell’s Summit presentation, “Enough Already! Keeping the Sabbath in the 21st Century,” in relation to some of the conceptual elements presented by Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind. Symphony: Mrs. Agnell looked at the big picture in regard to Sabbath in several ways. First, she asked why…

  • Quote Journal

    “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes – The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  • Reading the Bible

    While I do not recommend to anyone a multi-year hiatus from reading the Bible for yourself, I will say that the lack of familiarity when I came back to it has been eye-opening. Many things I remember and knew already and yet other things I see as if I had never seen them before. I…

  • How to Live

    Here is a rule for everyday life: Do not do anything which you cannot offer to God. St. John Vianney

  • Praying Causes Irreparable Harm

    A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. … The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their…

  • Zombies in Church

    “He died, and they buried him. The third day he rose again. It’s not like a zombie, no, because he is alive for sure.” from “Alelouya” (Haitian Easter song), sung at Easter Sunrise Service of Worship in Durham, NC

  • Middle Class Poor

    Frowning Providence is a post on what it is like to not be able to participate in church because of financial issues. Even more than that it is about the inability of the church to accept a discussion of the reason they cannot participate. We don’t want to hear that you are doing badly, basically.…

  • The Star: A Recommended Read

    The Star from American Digest begins with a quote from T. S. Eliot and then proceeds: Theirs was the Age of Myth; a world where night was not dimmed by the web of lights that now obscures the stars. Their nights were lit by flaring torches, dim oil lamps, guttering candles; by the phases of…

  • Meggido: Chemists and Archaeologists

    Fabled as a site of biblical battles and spectacular palaces, Tel Megiddo today is a dusty mound overlooking Israel’s Jezreel valley. It is also host to one of the hottest debates in archaeology — a controversy over the historical truth of the Bible’s account of the first united Kingdom of Israel. Chemists Help Archaeologists

  • Cheating Students

    I am never particularly happy about cheating students, but this paragraph from a “shadow scholar, a ghostwriter” of college (undergrad and graduate) work really frustrates me: I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat…

  • How My Colleagues Think of Christians

    In the eyes of some, August fits stereotypical images such as the comic-strip character Zippy the Pinhead. Yet likening my son, and other people who have microcephalic heads, to Zippy is about as relevant as likening African-Americans to blackface caricatures. In the eyes of others, August resembles Terri Schiavo, who, for the secular-educated, triggers the…

  • The Blood of Martyrs

    A string of anti-Christian bombings has cost six more lives in the wake of the Baghdad church bloodbath, sowing panic in Iraq’s 2,000-year-old minority on Wednesday, many of whom now want to flee. “Since Tuesday evening, there have been 13 bombs and two mortar attacks on homes and shops of Christians in which a total…

  • Thankfulness: 2010 A and B

    In my 26-day thankfulness, leading up to Thanksgiving, let me just say that I am thankful for Abilene Christian University, where I got an excellent undergraduate and graduate education, had some amazing teachers, made some wonderful friends, and met my incredibly awesome husband. I am also thankful for Ashton and Aby. Angie and Amy. Apples…