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Too Marvelous for Words
Just for fun Friday (JFFF), enjoy this short video that celebrates both artistic creativity and the past. I’m into manual typewriters. More later.
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Do You Like This Book?
A close friend began our conversation by saying she did not like a book I had recommended. Though I often repeat, “A book is only as good as it is timely,” in this case, her comments led me to rethink how different readers respond to the same books. Quite incidentally, after that conversation, a blog I read linked to “Fabled Bookshop” in Waco, TX. [1] It’s an independent bookshop and cafe, one that my daughter and granddaughter have visited and had told me about. Online, this bookstore offers what they call “THE STORY BOUND SOCIETY––A Book Subscription for Every Character.” Here, you choose your character for a monthly subscription that…
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Thinking Big Thoughts
When my 7-year-old grandson captured my Queen in five chess moves, I admitted again that I am not a strategist. Or a manager. Or a calculator of wins and losses. Soon after that match, while cleaning my office and clearing out a ton of stuff that no longer serves my purposes, I came across notes from a chapel message by Dr. Larry Crabb [1], notes taken while I was in seminary. Chess Players vs. Poets Comparing chess players and poets, Dr. Crabb argued that chess players maneuver and manipulate in ways that make God subject to their moves. Poets hear the music of heaven, step onto the dance floor to…
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Good Friday: Did Jesus Have to Die?
After Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–44), the die was cast. The Rubicon crossed. No turning back. The Jewish religious leaders gathered, devising the plot to kill Jesus. Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did [raised Lazarus], believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who…
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A Response to Evil
Life disrupted all across America as people reacted to this week’s shooting in Nashville. Meanwhile, life irrevocably changed for the families of the victims of evil. You and I Must Call Evil by Its Name The Bible does not sugar-coat evil or resort to euphemisms when it describes the evil that exists in the heart of man. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to show how anyone is capable of evil because you and I live in a fallen world. When Evil rears its ugly head, people look for reasons to blame someone or something. In any case, no, no not one of us is right about everything,…
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A Time to Pivot
This is my 200th blog, posted on this website that I created using a WordPress Theme (there are thousands to choose from). I spent a lot of time last summer revising the appearance, choosing a new theme, and working to make your reading experience better. Start Logic hosts my website for annual fees that include security so that I don’t get hacked and neither do you. My husband supports this endeavor, just as he has every venture I have attempted since we married. What a crazy resumé that would make. Is writing my blog a hobby or more important than that? I’ve been asking myself this question for the past…
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Palindrome
Today’s date, written numerically, is a palindrome. 3-2-23. Palindromes are words, phrases, sentences or numbers that read the same backward as forward. The longest palindrome sentence is: “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” The most referenced: “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!“ I didn’t say that palindromes have to make sense. Whenever I see or say “palindrome,” the music and words to an old TV Western come to mind. In Have Gun-Will Travel (1957–1963, 225 episodes), the main character’s name is Paladin. Dressed in black, Paladin wore a fancy rig and defied the Western stereotype (white hat vs. black hat) as a gunfighter for justice and good––”a crusader…