Reflections on God … Man … Life
One day in the late 1960s, when I was in high school, somehow—and I don’t remember the details—I came across a book that made a major impact on my thinking and my understanding of a relationship with God. It was a book that also took me into a world of which I had no knowledge. It was called The Cross and the Switchblade. It was the story of a rural minister in Pennsylvania who sensed that God had called him… Read more »
I’ve never wanted to use this blog as some sort of personal diary of my family’s life, but sometimes events are worth mentioning. I hope you will indulge me today. My wife, Jan, was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive breast cancer. She has now begun chemo treatments. We expect surgery to follow later. When something like this occurs, one certainly must do what the name of this blog enjoins—ponder principles. As a Christian, I view all of life as… Read more »
I’m glad President Obama is an American citizen. Otherwise, we would have had a major constitutional confrontation on our hands. There would have been a multitude of voices declaring that the provision in the Constitution that requires the president to be a natural-born citizen is discriminatory and should be ignored. The saddest part is that they might have won with that argument, given our national ambivalence toward fidelity to our Founding documents. So Obama has met the minimum requirements for… Read more »
I haven’t said anything about education for some time, so I’ll enter that territory briefly today. Fortunately, the teachers’ unions can help us understand our current state of affairs. A little commentary on how those unions operate can perhaps show us how we ought to reform our education system. Or perhaps not. Hmm … could it be that some of the problems we’re experiencing could be because of the teachers’ unions? As someone who has taught at the university level… Read more »
If you have been a regular reader of this blog, you can’t have escaped noticing that two of my academic interests are Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers. I have worked for a number of years on a book comparing the two; the manuscript is finished now, and I’m in the process of trying to find a publisher. That may be a backward way of writing a book, but I never knew when or if I would actually have time to… Read more »
No one who was present on that first Good Friday would have given it that name, not even the Pharisees and Sadducees who sought Jesus’ death. The earthquake and the veil of the Temple being torn in two probably put a damper on their celebration. Dismal Saturday was, if possible, even worse for the disciples than the day before. It was a day without hope. But hope was coming sooner than they knew. Resurrection Day made the two previous days… Read more »
The day after Good Friday was probably the worst in the lives of those who had chosen to follow Jesus. They had left all—they had believed He was the future. Now He was gone. All they saw was an empty cross. But that empty cross was only the beginning of an incredible journey. One day later, their despair would turn to delirious joy. But they would have to go through that dark day first. They would have to experience anguish,… Read more »