I grew up in the ancient days of the “household telephone,” when our entire family shared one telephone line. In those days, I remember my parents training me to answer the phone when it rang. “Hello, Winters residence…” is what I was taught to say. It was pretty fun, as many of the people who…
A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace
Church Blog (Page 7)
Many of you know that I spent many of my weekends while I was at the Seminary working for a banquet and event facility in downtown St. Louis. Most of our events during the year were wedding receptions. Given this and my current vocation as a pastor, I’ve seen my fair share of brides. It…
Just yesterday we began the season of Lent. This season begins on Ash Wednesday and counts down to Easter, forty days excluding the Sundays. As you’ll hear this Sunday, the number forty figures into the first Gospel reading of the season of Lent. In this first Gospel reading from Matthew 4, we hear that Jesus…
This past Sunday, a number of us watched an NFL game. This was perhaps something that we had not done since last year, perhaps even longer. And if you were one of the occasional NFL game watchers, it’s likely that you weren’t even watching for the game. You were watching for the commercials or the…
New Mexico is going out on a limb and declaring something that not every state declares: a state aroma. New Mexico is considering declaring “roasting chile peppers” as their state aroma. If you’ve ever been to New Mexico, you have probably been by one of the many places that were serving up roasted chile peppers…
Five times a day my phone sends me a notification that most people would not say they want to get: You’re going to die. The notification comes from an app with the cynical name “We Croak.” It’s a simple app that does one thing – it sends you a notification that you are going to…
I don’t know if you’ve heard of ChatGPT yet. It is an Artificial Intelligence bot that you can get access to (just google it) and you can ask it to do things for you. For example, I was having a little bit of mid-afternoon writers block as I was trying to come up with this…
It is illegal to dance in a bar in Sweden. That is, unless that bar has a permit to allow for dancing. This isn’t exotic dance of any kind. Just regular old dancing. Square dancing and waltzes and such. This is the case in Sweden unless a bill moving through parliament takes hold. If so, the…
If you live in Tallahassee, you have had a little while of witnessing the destruction caused to vegetation by the 20 degree temperatures that visited around Christmastime. Walking around campus last week, you could see the grounds crews working to take out dead plants. In my own backyard, we’re hoping that the frost-bitten citrus leaves…
Today is the final day of Christmas, the 12 days end tonight at midnight and the season of Epiphany begins with the celebration of the feast of Epiphany on January 6th. In places across the world, people celebrate the 12th day by having “12th night” parties that signal the end of the Christmas season, and…