“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” – William Henly1 The pull-quote above comes from the 1875 Victorian era poem Invictus by the English poet William Ernest Henley. It was written while he was hospitalized with a diseased right foot, having already lost his left leg when it was amputated below…
When I get questions from readers, I usually respond privately. I received an interesting question this week and rather than respond privately, I decided to turn the response into a blog-posting, as the question is likely to be of interest to others. In a nutshell, the question is, “When, if ever, is shunning of a…
In an attempt to appear fair, the man suggested we flip a coin. “Heads I win, tails you lose,” he said as he tossed the coin into the air. Since I was only five years old, it took me a moment to catch on to his humorous deception. There was no way I could win,…
I am forever grateful to Landon Saunders1 for opening my eyes to this truth and thereby transforming my walk with Christ. What is Success? How do you define “success?” What does that look like? What is that stuff? If we look outside the body of Christ, success is almost universally defined by the accumulation of wealth…
The Twilight Zone As a youth, one of my favorite television programs was The Twilight Zone, a programming concept created and hosted by Rod Serling. It was an exceptionally well-written anthology series that ran from 1959 to 1964. The stories told were designed to toy with the viewers’ minds through use of psychological manipulation, suspense, strange…
This week we engage part two of a two-part blog posting. Today we look at Jesus’ response to last week’s question, “Teacher, what must I do to be saved?” The Response Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him,…
This week we see part one of a two-part blog posting. Here, we will examine the question Jesus is asked, and next week we will study his answer to that question. In the Gospel of Luke, we find the account of a contentious interaction between Jesus and an expert in the Law. I think it…
I apologize in advance for the length of this blog posting. I could not find any way to break it into weekly segments without losing the impact of what happened. Grab your coffee and a blanket, put on your slippers and read on. When I meet someone who intrigues me, someone with whom I would…
Last week we saw Jesus interact with a Roman Centurion, and the week prior to that, we saw him actually touch a leper. Both were societally objectionable acts by Jesus, and today he will complete his trio by engaging in one more activity that presses against the orthodoxy of his day – he will interact…
Last week we saw Jesus do the unimaginable – he actually touched a leper. Directly on the heels of that, in Matthew’s gospel account, Jesus violates yet another societal norm. He interacts with a non-Jew, a Gentile. Immediately after coming down from the mountain, and cleansing the leper, Jesus entered Capernaum. The city of Capernaum,…
