Radio Days: A Retrospective (Part 2)

  

Yesterday, I talked about some lessons I learned while working as a radio announcer right after college. One lesson I left for today. It has to do with dealing with people. Although I didn’t have a call-in program, there were some individuals who had the phone number for the radio station because they had been calling announcers there for a number of years to request certain songs be played. I inherited that tradition. The problem was that I was introducing… Read more »

Radio Days: A Retrospective (Part 1)

  

I guess I’ve always been a communicator, in one way or another. My undergraduate degree was in radio, TV, and film production. From the start, I wanted to use that degree in a Christian ministry. My first after-college job was with the Christian Broadcasting Network, at that time located in Portsmouth, Virginia. Although I began as a behind-the-scenes audio technician for the television station, when an opening occurred in the radio ministry, I immediately applied for, and was awarded, the job. I… Read more »

The Loss of History Is Our Loss

  

I remember it was back around 1980, when I was teaching some high school students, that I first encountered the realization that I was older and they were unbelievably young. What do I mean? I was talking about the JFK assassination and was stunned to learn that they were too young to have had firsthand knowledge of it. Of course, if I had been thinking clearly, I would have understood that ahead of time; after all, even if I’m not… Read more »

From the Portraits to the Original

  

The ongoing problem with humanity is not that we are so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good; rather, it’s the opposite: we’re so earthbound that we’re no good to heaven. We keep thinking that this world that we see around us, and those who populate it, will fulfill all our hopes. If we think that, we are terribly off-base. “The settled happiness and security which we all desire,” remarked C. S. Lewis, “God withholds from us by the very… Read more »

Principle Above Politics: Conscience Is Forever

  

Bill Clinton was acquitted of impeachment charges in February 1999. The next month, I was in Washington, DC, attending a conference on constitutional history. It included a session in the chamber of the Supreme Court. I was thrilled to be there. Years before, while earning my doctorate at American University, I had worked in the Supreme Court history office and had even sat in on one of the cases presented to the Court. The thrill, though, disappeared as I listened… Read more »

The Place God Has Made for Us

  

“The place for which He designs them [human beings] in His scheme of things is the place they are made for.” That’s C. S. Lewis commenting in The Problem of Pain regarding human desires. “When they [humans] reach it [the place God has made for them] their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over.” Yet human beings universally set their desires on the wrong things. We want… Read more »

Today You Shall Be with Me in Paradise

  

On this Good Friday, I am speaking in the service being held in my church—All Saints’ Episcopal in Lakeland, Florida. Here is what I’m sharing. Why crucifixion? What did one have to do to receive this particularly gruesome method of execution? There were two main reasons. One was terrorism (or imputed terrorism such as speaking out against Rome)—this was what the Jewish leaders used to convince Pilate that Jesus had to be crucified; he threatened Roman rule. Even though He… Read more »