Forty-three years ago, I read something by Sherwood Anderson in an upper-level literature class at Albion College. Which took me a while to find, given that I wanted to see if it was as I remembered it. But I did. And it was.

Anderson shared a legend, suggesting that in the beginning there was a valley filled with truths. And the truths were all beautiful. There were truths about every subject under the sun. There were truths about virginity and truths about passio…

In the British Museum in London there is displayed the final draft of Thomas Gray’s masterpiece of a poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”  Lovers of English literature marvel at how every word seems to be carefully chosen.

The amazing thing is that Thomas Gray never considered that poem complete.  In the museum display you can see the process …

Traveling by sea in the 1700s wasn't particularly safe and one of the biggest challenges was that sailors couldn't work out their positions. There are no landmarks at sea and it was called the longitude problem. A problem that Isaac Newton couldn't solve but a carpenter from Yorkshire did. On the 22nd of October 1707 there was a huge naval disaster when the Admiral of the Fleet with the ridiculous name Sir Cloudlessly Shovel made a navigational error and accidentally crashed into the Isles of Scilly, killing 200 sailors.

When Queen Anne was told what caused the disaster, the longitude problem, she set up a reward of £20,000 for anyone that could solve the problem. Now, to determine their position at sea, a sailor has to know two things. They have to know their latitude, i.e., their distance…

Several years ago a couple of reporters conducted an experiment on the streets of Miami, Florida. They printed up a copy of the Bill of Rights in the form of a petition, put it on a clipboard, and then stopped people on the sidewalk and asked them to sign it. As you know, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are the Bill of Rights, and they were adopted and put into effect in December of 1791. The reporters were surprised at people's reaction when asked to add their names to the so-called petition. Most people glanced at the document, shook their heads, and walked on by without signing. Several people became angry with the reporters and accused them of being radical enemies of the American way of life. …

After physicist Richard Feynman won a Nobel prize for his work, he visited his old high school. While there, he decided to look up his records. He was surprised to find that his grades were not as good as he had remembered them. And he got a kick out of the fact that his IQ was 124, not much above average. Dr. Feynman saw that winning the Nobel prize was one thing, but to win it with an IQ of only 124 was really something. Most of us…

Dwight L. Moody may well have been the greatest evangelist of all time. In a 40-year period he won a million souls, founded three Christian schools, launched a great Christian publishing business, established a world-renowned Christian conference center, and inspired literally thousands of preachers to win souls and conduct revivals.  A shoe clerk at 17, his ambition was to make $100,000. Converted at 18, he uncovered hidden gospel gold in the hearts of mill…

General Eisenhower would demonstrate the art of leadership with a piece of string. He'd put it on a tab…

How St. Francis, Walking One Day with Brother Leo, Explained to Him What Things Are Perfect Joy. 

One day in winter, as St. Francis was going with Brother Leo from Perugia to St. Mary of the Angels, and was suffering greatly from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who was walking on before him, and said to him: "Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the Friars Minor should give, in all lands, a great example of holiness and edification, write down, and note carefully, that this would not be perfect joy."

A little further on, St. Francis called to him a second time: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor were to make the lame to walk, if they should make straight the crooked, chase away demons, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, what is even a far gr…

1.  My hands are small; please don't expect perfection whenever I make a bed, draw a picture, or throw a ball. My legs are short; slow down so that I can keep up with you.

2.  My eyes have not seen the world as yours have; let me explore it safely; don't restrict me unnecessarily.

3.  Housework will always be there; I'm little only for a short time. Take time to explain things to me about this wonderful world, and do so willingly.

4.  My feelings are tender; don't nag me all day long (you would not want to be nagged for your inquisitiveness)…

The first perversion of the doctrine of the second coming of Christ is perpetrated by those I'm going to call "prophecy mongers." You know these people. They come with their charts and graphs, with their predictions and projections, claiming to have special insight into the workings of God in the world, so that they're able to cue us in on just where we are in the divine timetable. And somehow, every political event of the past fifty years fits neatly into their scheme of things. But Jesus said that no one not even himself knew the day or the hour of his co…

Author Anthony Campolo says our attitudes start at a very early age. He brought his son to the first day of school and the principal was addressing the parents in this way: "Here at the Ding Dong School, we like to think of each child as a little flower, unique and special, one which blossoms and grows in its own special time." The problem is, the kid grows up thinking she is so special that…

Three friends were discussing death and one of them asked: "What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?"

The first of the …

In the fifth century, a man named Arenius determined to live a holy life. So he abandoned the conforms of Egyptian society to follow an austere lifestyle in the desert. Yet whenever he visited the great city of Alexan…

In a memoir of the years before World War II, Pierre Van Paassen tells of an act of humiliation by Nazi storm troopers who had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged him to headquarters.

In the far end of the same room, two colleagues were beating another Jew to death, but the captors of the rabbi decided to have some fun with him. They stripped him naked and commanded that he preach the sermon he had prepared for the coming Sabbath in…

A world-class woman runner was invited to compete in a road race in Connecticut. On the morning of the race, she drove from New York City, following the directions or so she thought given her over the telephone. She got lost, stopped at a gas station, and asked for help. She knew that the race started in the parking lot of a shopping mall. The station attendant also knew of such a race scheduled just up the road and directed her there.

When she arrived she was …

In the early days of our country a weary traveler came to the banks of the Mississippi River for the first time. There was no bridge. It was early winter, and the surface of the mighty stream was covered with ice. Could he dare cross over? Would the uncertain ice be able to bear his weight?

Night was falling, and it was urgent that he reach the other side. Finally, after much hesitation and with many fears, he began to creep cautiously across the surface of the ice on his hands and knees. He thought that he might distribute his weight as much as possible and keep the ice from breaking beneath him.

About halfway over he heard the sound of singing behind him.…

We have called this the information age but I would give it a different name. I would call us the age of efficiency. We want every process streamlined - we want it efficient. The doctor's office doesn't what you checking in with the receptionist anymore, that is a time waster. Through…

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army during World War II. He was decorated for bravery and rose to the rank of captain. In 1945, while serving on the German front, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in letters to a friend and was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. After completing his prison sentence, Solzhenitsyn was exiled to Kazakhstan, but after Stalin's death his position improved, and his citizenship was restored in 1956. His first novels described how grim life could be in the labor-camp system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was permitted publication in 1962 as a result of the personal intervention of Nikita Khrushchev. In subsequent years, however, he was considered to be a dangerous and hostile critic of the soviet system. He …

Every now and then, someone does respond in a radical and unexpected way. Dr. Fred Craddock tells the story of a medical student who heard the call and made a radical response. A young woman came to him after hearing his sermon on today's text. She had decided to leave medical school and go to work among migrant workers in the Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Craddock did not manipulate her unexpected response. Instead, they talked for a long time about the meaning of her decision. Her parents were, understandably, furious with the new direction her life had taken. Like those fishermen, however, she heard the call and she stayed with it.

And there have been others. People in the western tradition have long known about Francis of Assisi. He turned from a life of luxury to one of voluntary poverty wi…

I know that all of you were saddened to learn this week of the death of one of our church's most valuable members Someone Else. Someone's passing created a vacancy that will be difficult to fill. Else has been with us for many years, and for every one of those years, Someone did far more than the normal person's share of the work. Whenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to f…

On the California coast on the morning of July 4, 1952 a fog was rolling in. Twenty-one miles to the west, on Catalina Island, a thirty-four-year-old woman waded into the water and began swimming toward California, determined to be the first woman to ever swim the twenty-one-mile strait. Her name was Florence Chadwick, and she had already been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.

The water was numbing cold that morning, and the fog was now so thick that Chadwick could hardly see the boats in her own party—there to scare away the sharks. As the hours ticked off, she sw…

Jesus sat as a child with other Jewish children on the dirt floor of the synagogue in Nazareth to receive instruction from the rabbi. Paul studied at the feet of Gamaliel. John Wesley received instruction at his mother’s knee and later received formal training from some of the most outstanding scholars of his time. Instruction served them, as it serves us, as a strong potion. We are not speaking of education in general here, though the same claim may be made for it. Some things can be learned on one’s own and achieved from personal experience apart from instruction. The focus here is upon that part of our knowledge which has come to us through intentional instruction. There are simply some things which we must be told and have translated or explained.

We are impressed that Jesus was commo…

He teaches kindness by being thoughtful and gracious even at home.
He teaches patience by being gentle and understanding over and over.
He teacher honesty by keeping his promises to his family even …

Miroslav Volf is a theologian currently teaching at Yale University. He is Croatian by birth and began his teaching career in his native country, the former Yugoslavia, while the wars raged around him. He is a theologian who believes deeply in the cross of the crucified Christ and believes that forgiveness from such a cross must in some way inform the way we live our lives.

At the beginning of his book about embracing the enemy [Exclusion and Embrace: Abingdon,1996] he recounts …

The Rev. Hal Chorpenning tells about a visit he made to a planetarium. What he heard there is that you and I are made literally from stardust. Our wonderful human bodies are made of matter that once was a star. He goes on to say, "Perhaps on a scientific level, that isn't terribly exciting, but on a metaphoric level, it's mind‑blowing. We have the Genesis story of Adam being created f…

When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day's pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performanc…

On the occasions when Jesus praises peoples’ faith, most Christians automatically assume that he means their faith in his divinity, which he then rewards by helping them out; but that is just another sorry example of transactional theology. According to this theology, if you believe the right things about Jesus, then he will help you. If you don’t, he…

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the…

Frederick Buechner once looked back at his high school class and observes a rather sad fact about life:

"In my class, as in any class, at any school, there were students who had a real flair, a real talent, for something. Maybe it was for writing or acting or sports. Maybe it was an interest and a joy in working with people toward some common goal, a sense of …

There is an old story about the Greek Marathon. Muscular, conditioned runners paced nervously near the starting line for the long-distance race. The time was near. They "shook out" their muscles, inhaled deeply, and put on their "game faces." In the midst of it all, a young stranger took his place at the starting line. His physique was awesome. Taking no notice of the other contestants, he stared straight ahead. Two prizes would be awarded th…

The mark of a great leader is the demands he makes upon his followers. The Italian freedom fighter Garibaldi offered his men only hunger and death to free Italy. Winston Churchill told the English people that he had nothing to offer them but "blood, sweat, toil, and tears" in their fight against the enemies of England. Jesus demanded that his followers carry a cross. A sign of death.

• Andrew died on a cross
• Simon was crucified
• Bartholomew was flayed alive
• James (son of Zebedee) was beheaded
• The othe…

Some years ago, a movie titled Zapata depicted the engaging story of the famous Mexican hero, Zapata. He was to the Mexicans what "El Cid" was to the Spanish: a redeemer of his people. Those who loved Zapata were radically devoted to him and his cause. At the end, when Zapata was ambushed by government troops, the white horse upon which he had led countless charges, escaped into the hills. The peasants violently refused to believe that their leader would have allowed himself to be ambushed and killed, and whenever they caught a glimpse of the white horse in the hills, they claimed that it carried Zapata, signaling to them that he would return. They fully expected the return, but in time, the expectation died.

Although Jesus attempted on several occasions to interpret specific events to hi…

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl, successor of Sigmund Freud at Vienna, argued that the “loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect on …

Sometime, when you're feeling important,
Sometime, when your ego's in bloom;
Sometime, when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified man in the room;

Sometime, when you feel that you're going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow this…

In 1536 Reformer William Farel recruited John Calvin to come to Geneva, Switzerland to pastor St. Peter's Church. Calvin, a sickly man all his life, was on his way to Strasbourg to be a quiet scholar, but he relented under this need, this request, to become a pastor.

Two years later, the city fathers publicly banished Calvin from Geneva. Actually, Calvin felt relieved. The moral chaos of the city was terrible. He went to Strasbourg. Three years later in 1541, the same city fathers who had tried to humiliate him begged Calvin to return and help restore order.

He didn't want to go this second time, either, "yet," he wrot…

William Willimon notes that in many churches there is a little brass plaque attached to the preacher's side of the pulpit. It is not something the people in the pew can see, but something that no pastor can miss as he or she prepares to speak. It is a reminder of why people have come to church that morning. It simply reads: "We would see Jesus."

And it's true, isn't it? Isn't that why people come to worship?

Take Oscar for example. He had been in the church most of his life. Like many, he attended…

His given name was Leslie Leonard but everyone just called him "Pete." Pete was the son of very devout parents. They saw to it that the seeds of faith were planted in him. They were there to nourish the seeds along. Once he got out on his own in life, however, it appeared that the seeds of faith had not taken very deep root in Pete's soul. He sowed wild oats instead. He appeared to have left behind him the faith of his parents.

Early on life went well for Pete. He married, had a son, was involved with a number of businesses. He had some successes in his life. What was most successful about him was his personality. Pete was a charmer. He had a ready smile for all whom he encountered. People who were swept into his life's orbit couldn't help but like him. He was just that kind of guy.

As t…

Some years back neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a fascinating vignette of an intriguing neurological difficulty. As some of you know, Tourette's Syndrome is a bizarre mental disorder that causes victims to have any number of physical and verbal tics. Some Tourettic people have constant facial twitches, others find themselves uncontrollably uttering verbal whoops, beeps, and sometimes also raunchy swear words. One man with Tourette's whom Dr. Sacks knew was given to deep, lunging bows toward the ground, a few verbal shouts, and also an obsessive-compulsive type adjusting and readjusting of his glasses. The kicker is that the man is a skilled surgeon! Somehow and for some unknown reason, when he dons mask and gown and enters the operating room, all of his…

There is a story about a local fitness center that was offering $1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate that they were stronger than the owner of the place. Here is how it worked. This muscle man would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and then hand the lemon to the next challenger. Anyone who could squeeze just one more dro…

Please see the note below this illustration.

A woman visiting in Switzerland came to a sheepfold on one of her daily walks. Venturing in, she saw the shepherd seated on the ground with his flock around him. Nearby, on a pile of straw lay a single sheep, which seemed to be suffering. Looking closely, the woman saw that its leg was broken.

Her sympathy went out to the suffering sheep, and she looked up inquiringly to the shepherd as she asked how it happened. “I broke it myself,” said the shepherd sadly and then explained. “Of all the sheep in my flock, this was the most wayward.…

For a number of years, until her death in 1976, I worked off and on with Kathryn Kuhlman as a writer. Although Miss Kuhlman was very sensitive to criticism, she never let it deter her from her goal. Instead, she used it to help her get there, always seeming to make the very best out of even the harshest criticism.

Shortly after she went on nationwide television with her weekly program, she received a letter from a …

D.M. Stearns was preaching in Philadelphia. At the close of the service a stranger came up to him and said, "I don't like the way you spoke about the cross. I think that instead of emphasizing the death of Christ, it would be far better to pr…

In the Antarctic summer of 1908-9, Sir Ernest Shackleton and three companions attempted to travel to the South Pole from their winter quarters. They set off with four ponies to help carry the load. Weeks later, their ponies dead, rations all but exhausted, they turned back toward their base, their goal not ac…

Since many of the followers of Jesus were fishermen, it made sense for Jesus to use fishing as an example of the Christian life. In Matthew 4:19, as Jesus is walking by the Sea of Galilee, he sees Simon Peter and Andrew in the process of fishing. He says to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

In this text, Jesus gives them another picture of the work they would be doing. On their own, they are not able to catch many fish, but when Jesus commands them to cast the net on the other side of the boat, they catch more fish than they can handle. How are we doing at catching fish? Perhaps the problem is that we keep doing it the same way and the Lord would like us to try a new method.

The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:22 says, "I have become all things to all men, that I mig…

Here is a living example of fearlessness, of unwavering loyalty, and of determination to finish a task. At Jerusalem an ugly cross was waiting to inflict its cruel anguish upon Christ. Yet without flinching or hesitation he set his jaw and started for the city. Here was discipline of the first order, and an example to every follower of Christ.

Discipline is not popular today. The discipline of the armed forces is being eroded. Childre…

When it comes to talking about the hereafter, I like the words of St Paul: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, What God has prepared for those who love him."

Resurrection is not some natural right that we are given. It is a remarkable gift from the grace of God. Gratis! Some Greek philosophers believed that we are, by nature, immortal spirits. The human body and life on earth are but crude …

Bishop Ernest Fitzgerald tells about a slightly crooked Texan who was a big racer of horses. He took one of his prize thoroughbreds to London for an international race. The Texan was back in the stable area prior to the race feeding his horse some suspicious-looking little white pills. The Duke of Marlborough who also had a horse in the race, happened to see what the Texan was doing. "My good man," he said, "Don't you know that that is …

The story of Jesus sitting and debating the Law with rabbis reminds me of another debate that took place in a comparative religions conference, the wise and the scholarly were in a spirited debate about what is unique about Christianity. Someone suggested what set Christianity apart from other religions was the concept of incarnation, the idea that God became incarnate in human form. But someone quickly said, "Well, actually, other faiths believe that God appears in human form." Another suggestion was offered: what about resurrection? The belief that death is not the final word. That the tomb was found empty. Someone slowly shook his head. Other …

James Moore remembers the time when he was seven years old and got lost at the Ringling Brothers Circus. It was a frightening experience for a seven-year-old boy in a crowd of over twenty thousand. Jim and his older brother, Bob, went to the concession stand to buy some cotton candy. People were pushing and pressing toward the counter. Since Bob was taller he was waited on first. After Bob got his cotton candy he stepped aside for his brother. Just then loud laughter came from the arena. Bob wanted to see what was going on. Certainly he didn't mean to leave his small brother alone. He simply got caught up in the excit…