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.

The longer I am blessed to journey alongside Christian brothers and sisters the more I realize that Christian community is a powerful glue that holds us steady on our course through this earth to reach our destiny in heaven.

I teach several courses in Photography in the Department of Art, Architecture & Design. Artists like to do things the old-fashioned way. I think it has to do with working with our hands as well as our heads, but it also connects us with the senses of touch and, at times, our olfactory sense.

"A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecc 4:12b)

When a married couple drifts away from God, they also drift away from each other.

If you want to strengthen a marriage, first strengthen your relationship to God.

Words. Words are powerful. Words give direction. Words move us, shape us. There are times when words break our hearts, fill us with fear, torment us. Sometimes, when they come from one we might respect, we are shamed by their words, hurt by them. They cause our eyes to go blind with tears.

I’m an early riser, so sometimes I see things other people miss. For example, last fall I was astonished when from my porch, I saw a young man riding a bike down a deserted Charles Street at dawn – with a twin mattress on his handlebars. A man on a mission. There was definitely a story there. It pays to keep your eyes open; sometimes you see things that will amaze you.

Back in the 1970s, Chester was our class clown. Nature had given him a natural ability to break everyone up whenever he wanted. One very hot July day, my cousin Darrell and I were supposed to go down below West Point and help Darrell’s dad haul some hay. We needed one more person to help and we got Chester to come along.