Infant being baptized

A BRIEF COMMENT ON INFANT BAPTISM

What a long, strange trip it’s been I typically try to avoid discussions on issues that divide Christians (such as who can receive communion and the meaning and mode of baptism), because individual denominations have taken stands one way or another and the debate can be heated, tiring, and totally unpersuasive.  So, rather than go into the subject of infant baptism root and branch, let me explain in general terms how I evolved from disdaining infant baptism to embracing, or at...

Girl looking out a window with gentle rain falling

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

PORTIA:  “The quality of mercy is not strained:it drops on to the world as the gentle rain does – from heaven.It’s doubly blessed. It blesses both the giver and the receiver.It’s most powerful when granted by those who hold power over othersIt’s more important to a monarch than his crown.His sceptre shows the level of his temporal power –The symbol of awe and majesty in which lies the source of the dreadand fear that kings command.But mercy is above that sceptered power.It’s enthroned in the hearts of kings.It...

Post cards from last century

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE–VOICES FROM THE LAST PANDEMIC

I found several dozen letters and personal accounts from the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 in the U.S. on the CDC website, and I’ve included some here as a context of what our ancestors experienced back then, and in terms of what we’re going through now. You can see that during the flu pandemic, people were urged to stay home, limit social activities, and churches and schools were closed even as now. By and large, Americans back then saw it as their...

SALT AS A NEW TESTAMENT METAPHOR

If you ask twenty-five people what single thing they’d like to have with them if stranded on a desert island, the chances are at least one person will say “salt.”  Personally, this mineral (commonly called Halite and symbolized as NaCl) would be at the top of my list, because I often crave salt or salted snacks much like other people crave sugar, chocolate, and other sweets. Salt has always been important to civilization.  Our word “salary” comes from the Latin word salis, which...

CT Scan

MY JOURNEY WITH CANCER

Jump to most recent post The new year is barely two weeks old, and I’m already finding out what 2023 will bring. While some people will be coping with war and peace, poverty, inflation and unemployment, love and marriage, happiness and sadness, I (and my loving wife, Deena) will find ourselves meeting new people, visiting new places, experiencing new things and the common denominator is cancer. Our plans to travel to my homeland in Germany next winter may not occur...

My Cancer Journal

MY CANCER JOURNAL (7/2023)

SUNDAY, JULY 2, 2023 (C DAY +156) The second round of my chemotherapy treatment begins early tomorrow morning. I have no reason to think it will be any different than before. Dreams Over the past few months I seem to be having more dreams than ever before. I don’t know why? Parkinson’s Disease? The medication that treats Parkinsonism? Subconscious thoughts about my cancer?Increasing age? Something else? My neurologist does say that vivid dreaming and acting out dreams is a hallmark...

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