Painfully Hopeful

An invocation for Memorial Day

This year I was asked to give the benediction at the Memorial Day remembrance in my town. I’ve been asked before, but has always declined the invitation. I’m a strong proponent of the separate of church and state, and find blurring the lines between civil and revealed religion disagreeable. This year, however, I was motivated…

Unpacking The Plan

This post explores yesterday’s “Fiction Tuesday” post, The Plan. The teen shows up Jeremy’s character has been bugging me for a few posts now. He is a “lad,” as Walter calls him – probably around 16 years old. Jeremy just seemed too passive to me. This could have something to do a sense of unease…

Fiction Tuesday – The Plan

Jeremy spun on Ama, not at all happy with Walter’s revelation. “You planned this?” Ama was slightly taken aback by Jeremy’s outburst, but it was Walter who replied. “Whoa, lad, settle down. It’s ok.” “No, Walter, it’s not!” Jeremy shouted out as he began walking away from the council building. “You both knew that the…

Considering the other

This week I preached on Hebrews 10:19–25. The sermon was ok but, for me, the most compelling section was the last paragraph – so I’ll spend some time unpacking it’s ideas a bit more fully this morning. More and more I’ve been hearing, from Christians near my age and younger, how we don’t need the…

Power Trips

For some reason this week I was thinking about the nature of power versus the nature of authority. In our culture, people tend to use these words as synonyms – and in the last few years they have also tended to take on entirely negative connotations. While our language does recognize a lexical over-lap between…

All about a microphone

With the advent of our video studio in the ABCNJ office I’m finding I want to do more on site interviews while events are happening. Eventually, these can be edited into news stories and shared during an ABCNJ @Live “Around the Region” show. The problem has always been audio, the on board microphone on my…