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When God came to Ireland

WHEN GOD CAME TO IRELAND

In this post, I’d like to share when God came to Ireland. In the beginning, in Ériu, in Éire, long before the land was dubbed Ireland and before the birth of Christ, there were the Celts.  This group traces their beginnings to 1,200 B.C. and they were predominantly in four countries of Europe; France, Spain, Britain and Ireland. The influence of the Celts was pervasive, militant, and it took Julius Caesar six years to conquer then (if he ever truly did.) The Celtic...

Ashes to ashes

ASHES TO ASHES

  • February 24, 2024
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  • Faith

This post concerns some fundamental themes in God’s creation of Adam and Eve (including rabbinic traditions of Eden), sin and repentance, and death. I want to focus specifically on the final hours of a person’s life in this existence and what immediately lies beyond the veil as far as we mortals can know. The familiar funeral term “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” does not come from the Bible as such, but from the Anglican Book of Common prayer. However,...

Numbers

NUMBERS

  • February 21, 2024
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  • Faith

The item in the photo should be familiar to many of us, though it is not widely used anymore. It would be familiar to Jesus, and his disciple Matthew who likely owned one of his own, since he was a tax collector. The item is an abacus which predates Christianity by many centuries. There are also various versions of this instrument used in counting. For example, it may have been more convenient in the Old West to use knots in...

HEARTS

  • January 29, 2024
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  • Faith

Valentine’s Day is coming up and I wanted to do something about love or relationships, but I settled on the topic of “hearts,” instead. After all, hearts are a common motif on the occasion of Valentine’s Day. I happened to think of a lesson on hearts that I may have used many years ago in my adult Sunday School class (and) which would be as relevant today as back then. The scripture passage is from the Old Testament of the...

The Leader

THE LEADER

Usually, I work my way step-by-step into a topic, especially if the topic is controversial. However, this time I think I’ll work backwards. The topic is whether or not Donald J. Trump, if re-elected, might represent the First Horseman of the apocalypse. The leader. Our leader. I’ve reached a point to where I am entertaining the notion that Donald J, Trump might be the First Horseman of the Apocalypse. The Apostle John received the series of visions in the book...

Stranded

STRANDED!

Not long ago, Deena and I watched a church service online from a nondenominational church we once attended when we lived in Texas. The church, located in McKinney, TX is called Christ Fellowship. It’s a good, praise-oriented church with a solid, Gospel message and even Lutherans like myself can be comfortable there. They have awesome community outreach programs (including a prison ministry) and you’ll find all sorts of people from every walk of life at their services. Also noteworthy is...

Shameless audacity

BE SHAMELESS IN YOUR AUDACITY

  • January 10, 2024
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  • Faith

We’ve all heard the idiom “The squeaky wheel gets the oil (or grease.)” Different people around the world make the same point in a way that more typically represents their culture. For example, in China there is a saying “Babies who cry at night get more milk” (哭夜的孩子多吃奶.) But exactly what is the point? Most reasonable people would say that the more assertive you are and the more vocal you are, the more likely you’ll get your way all else...

Epiphanies & Theophanies

EPIPHANIES AND THEOPHANIES

  • January 1, 2024
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  • Faith

Friday, January 5, 2024, is Twelfth Night for Christmas, 2023. You have until then to send your true love twelve drummers drumming. Saturday, January 6th, is Epiphany. The day after (Sunday, January 7th) is when members of the Eastern Orthodox church celebrate Christmas. Immediately after this, you must take your Christmas tree to the curb if you expect the city to haul it away. In this post I’d like to discuss the term epiphany and the notion of epiphany. Also,...

Seduction

SEDUCTION

si-‘dek-shen. 1. The art of seducing. 2. Something that seduces. Temptation. 3. Something that attracts or charms. (Merriam-Webster.) I remember when I first became aware of the artwork of Roy Lichtenstein. I was in graduate school at the time and there were a series of tee-shirts for sale in an off-campus bookstore. They were all in Lichtenstein’s style of pop images with amusing captions. For example, one tee-shirt with a cartoon portrait said “I’m not smart, but I can lift...

Not that kind of Christian

When Church Hurts

  • December 9, 2023
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  • Faith

American society often has a lot of negative things to say about Christians and Christianity. You’ll find these negative comments on social media or on the news, and you’ll hear them in conversations on the bus or in the breakroom or at social events. Christians have many ways of dismissing these negative comments. I know I did.  For example, we’ll dismiss them by saying, “This is an example of how Jesus told us the world would hate us.”  Or, we’ll...

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