Have you ever gotten an idea or a thought or something in your head, that once it got in there, you had a hard time removing that thought?  If you tried to divert your attention elsewhere, this idea or thought would keep bubbling back up?  No matter how you tried to distract yourself or move on to something else, this thought would keep intruding and come to the forefront.  Sometimes a song or a tune can do that, but I’m not going to talk about that.  But hopefully this idea connects, and you know what I’m talking about.

Recently during a sermon, our pulpit minister asked a question whether any of us had ever depended on God literally for our daily bread.  My wife and I exchanged a knowing glance because we both remembered a time in our early marriage and parenthood when we learned the valuable lesson that we served a God whom Abraham called Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide.

In John 18:37-38, during the trials of Jesus, He told Pilate, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

"What is truth?" Pilate asked.

It is a cliche that it is a small world, but sometimes it really does seem that way.  As I was leaving a basketball game twenty-four years ago, a lady stopped me and said, “I know where Letona is.”  Earlier, I had written of my father spending a part of his childhood in the tiny town north of Searcy, Arkansas.  She went on to say that she had read the article and asked me if I had ever heard of Skinny Aaron.  I told her I had not, but would see if my dad remembered him.

Keeping the Lord at the forefront of your life is difficult for every Christian in every walk of life, but being a Christian with ADHD can present a number of unique challenges. Our brains’ chemical imbalances manifest in a host of symptoms that often make the pillars of faith – prayer, meditation, scripture reading, worship services – difficult, and sometimes even onerous.

There are millions of people who give little thought to why they believe what they believe, or more importantly for doing what they do. For many, one’s “belief system” is merely the product of their actions.  For the Christian, one’s actions are, or should be, the product of their belief system. It is important to understand that there are only two explanations for the reality that we are, in fact, here and that this universe does, in fact, exist. But first I need to share the following with the reader.

A few days ago at the National WW2 Museum in New Orleans, Dan and I were reminded of a time in Germany when a distinctly bellicose nationalistic voice came to power, convincing frustrated citizens that they could regain lost glory by carefully reordering society, purging the weak links and the "other" through unanimity of will. Find people to blame for everything and dig in. Create a society of people Exactly Like Us. It did not go well for the world.

In the earlier days of my career as a teacher in small, rural Texas towns, it was often the case that faculty members became a positive part of the community by involvement in other non-job activities. In one community, a need arose for substitute ambulance drivers to supplement the emergency operations at our small one-doctor county hospital.

There’s a question.  What are we to do with evil? There's a number of things we can do.  Perhaps an initial, instinctive reaction - for those of us who consider ourselves to be ''good people'', and thus enemies of evil, - would be for us to fight evil.

In Art History there is significance in strong vertical movement as being symbolic of God. If you examine paintings of the Renaissance and Gothic periods you will see obvious vertical lines which seem to be going upward which represents man's connection with God.

How would you describe yourself? This is a prominent interview question that some may feel uncomfortable answering, yet it has a significant purpose. Communicating why your specific experiences and attributes make you the best person for a role allows others to feel confident in you serving in the role you are seeking. This confidence is greatly enhanced when supported with action.

Early in my Christian life I was blessed with a preacher who was bigger than life to me. He and his wife were instrumental in helping my wife and me early in our marriage figure out that it wasn’t a 50-50 proposition, but it actually required 100 percent effort from each of us in order for us to be successful. They exemplified that in their own married life to us.

I am so selfish, Father. I think rich thoughts of how it could be with me and mine, but I think so rarely of you and the wondrous sacrifice you made in the coming of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. The emptying of yourself to come to be one of us is too deep for me to grasp, too bright for me to even glance at, for the glaring love of it all causes my eyes to close and my breath to catch.

The Bee Gees had a hit song during the disco craze of the 70’s called “More than a Woman.” I wonder if we should think of Jesus as more than a man.

Part of my morning routine includes setting on the edge of a lake and doing nothing. I just sit there and look around me. I enjoy the trees, clouds, weeds, turtles, tadpoles, geese, and rippling water. I feel a gentle freeze, a drizzle, or sometimes a harsh cold stillness. I hear the wind in the trees, birds singing, frogs croaking. I smell the honeysuckle and blooming trees. Before long I automatically start praising God as the creator of all. How can I not, when all nature does.

Five months in, and 2024 has been the worst year of my life. A water heater leak, a tree on our house, and the death of not one but two of our cats, one of them less than four years old and the other less than 6 months old.

People who know me today have a hard time accepting the fact that by nature I’m an introvert. But I truly am. I have shared before about my love for reading that I’ve had since a young age, and I would much rather be left alone to read a good book than to be in any social situation.

There are moments in our lives where we don’t know what to say, but we know we will never forget. 160 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln had to imagine what to say to a war-torn country struggling to understand the loss of life. “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here,” declared the President, “but it will never forget what they did here.”

When my father was about seventy-four years old, he decided to open a restaurant by the railroad tracks in Kensett called, appropriately enough, Sheltons’. It opened in 1996 and lasted until early 2001. It was a popular place and had a number of regulars.

Sometime ago, I was flying back from Pontiac, Michigan where I spoke at the funeral of a dear, sweet lady who touched the hearts of hundreds of people over her lifetime of eighty-four years.