A life map

A life map

Apart from his family’s middle-of-the-night, harried escape from Herod into Egypt, when he was too little to remember, Jesus’ rural Galilean upbringing was mostly uneventful. At the very least it was unrecorded. He would have spent part of his boyhood playing with his...
That choice before us

That choice before us

Our world is one where the word ‘dystopia’ (an imaginary society with great suffering and injustice and hopelessness under a totalitarian regime marked by harshness) and its corresponding adjective, ‘dystopian’ are in vogue. It’s very chic to use either of them in...
A PD re-telling of the return of the prodigal*

A PD re-telling of the return of the prodigal*

One might think that a cascading of prophetic Scriptural fulfillments would make Scripture aficionados jubilant. But one might also be wrong. Terribly wrong in fact. The various groups of synagogue leadership (those most familiar with those prophecies) were the most...
Lesson # 2,000 and something

Lesson # 2,000 and something

As John opens his telling of the Good News of Jesus, he simultaneously connects and separates the Old and New, the ‘what was,’ and the ‘what is.’ He deftly acknowledges Moses’ critical role in Jewish history while shining a spotlight on the Person and Mission of...
That’s a Plan!

That’s a Plan!

“God . . .  has planted eternity in the human heart,  . . .” (Eccles. 3:11, NLT). Not jealousy, not anger, not frustration, not sloth, but eternity! Eternity, then, is the heart’s true home. So, maybe babies are born with an ‘eternity knowing’ but without...