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Do you remember, from your childhood days, the neighborhood football game when everyone wanted to play quarterback? Sometimes you’d stand around and argue and take forever getting started. Usually the way it was resolved was that the one who owned the ball got to call the plays. But finally everyone had to agree to play a different position, otherwise you could not even have a game! Then if you stayed with the sport and gave yourself a little time to grow up, you discovered that it can be just as much fun to throw a good block as it is […]

A few years ago, newspapers carried the story of an elderly man in Ohio who froze to death when the utility company turned off his electricity. He owed a bill of $18.38 that he could not pay; the service was discontinued, and he froze to death. It would be easy to get angry with the utility company over that, but to do so would be over simplification, and we, I’m sure, know it. The utility company did not deliberately freeze that man to death, any more than his neighbors deliberately let it happen. The problem was not a shortage of […]

Time Magazine a few years ago carried an article of the latter years of billionaire Howard Hughes. If the story is to be believed, it is one of the most tragic ever told. It tells of a story of 15 years of seclusion, loneliness, boredom, and drug addiction. For most of that time his only entertainment was watching old movies on his private screen. His primary food was chicken soup, and his only associates were people who were paid to be with him. He neglected his appearance until his hair and beard reached to his waist, and his fingernails were […]

Wars and earthquakes are, for the most part, beyond our scope. The trembling of the earth and the shaking of governments are things that most of us cannot control. The same is true of many events. None of us can exercise complete control over his or her own life. Some things come our way without asking our consent or waiting for our permission. And it’s silly for us to worry about that kind of thing. Why should we wring our hands and wrinkle our brow over things that we cannot help? The Serenity Prayer makes a lot of sense at […]

I am told that some young people shy away from the Church and following Jesus for fear that life will lose its luster. I’m not sure where that notion comes from. But I do know that it does not derive from the New Testament, at least not from a true understanding of the New Testament. There is enough tragedy in its pages to make it the saddest book in all the world. Yet instead there is a prevailing mood of joy, confidence, and expectation. Jesus was certainly no frowning savior. His first followers were for the most part young people. […]