Devotional

Embarrassingly, I must confess, I had little interest in the trades. The individuals who were employed by the tasks of manual labor were nice enough to converse with, though to me their actual work seemed very mundane and redundant. That is, until my church and parsonage burnt to their foundations in September 1985. After the ground was broken, I visited the construction site daily. Each trip heightened my understanding and provided a weekly accumulation of respect for the laborers. The most significant moment came when I viewed all of the pipes the plumbers had installed on the ground that would…

Attending a seminar while serving as an officer in the Army, I was both surprised and amused when the general showed on the scene. The room could hold about fifty soldiers, while approximately twenty were in attendance. As expected of adult students we made use of the ample space, spreading ourselves across the room. The morning the general was to address us the sergeants, backbones of the military, took a commanding presence. We all had to move to the front of the room, with every seat in every row occupied. The tables behind us were taken down and stored. When…

Casper ten Boom had been repeatedly warned not to engage the dangerous ministry of hiding Jews under the very eye of the Gestapo. His answer was plain enough, “I am too old for prison, but if that should happen, then it would be for me, an honor to give my life for God’s ancient people, the Jews.” That evening, he prepared those seated around his dining room table for the dark and tremulous days ahead. He asked his son Willem to read Psalm 91. Afterwards, father prayed. Father was eighty-four. The family resided in Haarlem, Netherlands. The next day, Casper,…

Jesse Owens panicked. How could he owe $114,000 in back taxes?  Soon there would be a court trial condemning him to a long prison term. This was an issue Owens realized he had to accept, failing to personally oversee his business ventures. He had not scrutinized the character of the man who represented him. He wrongly trusted his business partner to file his income tax returns. Ashamed.  Afraid.  Anxious. Owens grabbed his jacket and rushed into the kitchen to kiss Ruth, his wife, good-bye. Not even pausing to explain, taking the stairs three and four at a time. Thirty-five minutes…

“Women, and children, and unsaved into the lifeboats!” Note in this cry the rescuer’s word “unsaved.” Those who did not know salvation and the assurance of the Kingdom of Heaven should be saved from the sinking vessel to await the opportunity for a profound event – being saved from one’s sins. That was the conviction of Scottish evangelist John Harper as he raced across the decks of the sinking Titanic. Harper was a renowned evangelist who in 1912 was sailing the Atlantic on his way to pastor the illustrious Moody Church in Chicago. Since his wife had recently died, he…

Christological Titles – Prophet On Thursday evening, August 27, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pacing the floor of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The next day he would be standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, addressing a crowd 250,000 strong on the issue of racial equality. The event was the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The dilemma which confronted King was how to adequately express himself in the eight minutes he was allocated. Throughout the night he worked on his speech, writing one draft after…

Let us revisit the meaning of Ash Wednesday where Holy Week began 40 days ago, as we will solemnly celebrate the crucifixion of our Lord on Good Friday of this week. Then I turned to the Lord God to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, keeping covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments, we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants…

Artificial Intelligence. When it first emerged, the biggest challenge was having a computer beat a person playing poker. The games already conquered were chess, checkers, and backgammon. In these games every contest starts the same way and follows a consistent set of rules. These games evolve through an enormous, though finite, number of possible moves. To win the computer builds a tree, with each branch representing every possible move in the game. As the game progresses the computer selects the branch that has the best combination of moves attached to it. The power of mathematical computing allows the computer to…

In 1946 a California lawyer needed a change in life. His practice was mediocre and the cases routine. An ambitious man, he knew there was something more invigorating he could do with his hard earned and costly law degree. One morning searching the Whittier Daily News, he read this ad: “Wanted: Congressional candidate with no previous political experience to defeat a man who has represented the district in the House for 10 years. Any young man resident of the district, preferably a veteran, fair education, may apply for job.” Richard Milhous Nixon answered the inquiry, launching his political career all…

July 1965 was an adventurous month for me. It was the month that the Love family moved from the Midwest to the East as the U. S. Steel Corporation consolidated all of their engineers from across the nation into a single locale, Pittsburgh. For a thirteen-year-old the move held the adventure of traversing from the flatlands along the shore of Lake Erie to navigating the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Current events extended no further for me than the next sandlot baseball game. On the opposite side of the globe there was a country named Vietnam, and July was not…