And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. Ecclesiastes 1:13
Many of us have grown up in a culture where our careers define our lives. Often, men and women wear 70- to 80-hour workweeks as a badge of honor, allowing work to usurp church and family time. In my time working in Christian ministries, I had several bosses and co-workers who believed God had called... Continue Reading →
As a family clinic RN, I’m considered a front-line healthcare worker in the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of my responsibilities include triaging phone calls from concerned (read, panicked) patients wondering if they have the virus, monitoring our clinic’s quickly dwindling supply of PPE (personal protective equipment), and taking shifts in our hospital’s COVID-19 testing clinic. Many... Continue Reading →
Why are you reading this? If you are like most readers, you clicked on this entry because the topic interested you. You wanted to know more about the subject. In fact, with the exception of the reading we do purely for pleasure (typically of fictional works), essentially every occasion we spend reading is an opportunity... Continue Reading →
Tom Clancy imagined history before it happened. This prodigious writer of fiction had a knack for sewing together elements of technology, animus between nation states, and the dark schemes of terrorists into seamless and compelling works of fiction. His 1994 book Debt of Honor laid out a Japanese plot to take revenge on the United... Continue Reading →
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep... Continue Reading →
One of the chief arguments against hell is that a loving God wouldn’t consign anyone to eternal punishment. I appreciate this sentiment and think it’s a typical response to the notion of eternal suffering, at least in the West. (Punishment, judgment and severity are not strangers to some religions of the East.) The assumption in... Continue Reading →
Sometimes an image or a moment, a word spoken or a flash of understanding hits us such that we not only never forget it, but are left imprinted, changed. Such a moment hit me several years ago. In a former life as a home inspector I looked over residential properties to determine their condition and... Continue Reading →
Choosing Donald Trump: God, Anger, Hope, and Why Christian Conservatives Supported Him, by Stephen Mansfield. Reviewed by Mike Halpin I gained unlooked for sympathy for Donald Trump from Choosing Donald Trump, and a wish that the author would have stuck to the story instead of making this book his own pulpit. I loved learning about... Continue Reading →
Rudyard Kipling wrote Recessional for Queen Victoria’s 60-year Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Her life and reign were winding down, she would die in 1901, and though the British Empire was at its zenith, it too would soon descend from its lofty heights to earth. After World War II the British Empire would become a less fearsome... Continue Reading →
