How did you get your name? Who named you? What is the family lore about how you got your name? If Jacob were asked how he got his name, he might well respond, “Which name?” If anyone did not need another name, it was Jacob. He already had a host o...
Young Absalom lay dead beneath a makeshift grave of stones. “Deal gently” were the last orders from King David mouth, but General Joab heard only the pathetic uttering of a desperate father. Joab would do many things to a rebellious soldier, but “deal...
“Imagine the beaches of Hawaii.” That was the lead-in pitch to a group of graduating seminarians in 1980 by the late Jim Tubbs, then executive of Wilmington Presbytery. Jim could sell a space heater to someone living in the Florida Keys. He had come to U...
Walk into Matthew 13 and you will stumble over a parable. Give Jesus an audience and he will tell them a parable, a cross between an analogy and a word puzzle. Jesus loves a good parable but I am not sure why exactly, for more often than not...
Matthew loves lists. He begins his Gospel begins with a long list of who begat whom. And, today, he is at it again. I notice this about Matthew because I love lists myself. I find few things more satisfying than crossing off just enough items f...
The year was 1955. The place was Montgomery, Alabama. Down the street from the state capitol sat Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. This black Baptist congregation was led by the erudite, brilliant, and wildly eccentric – Vernon Johns.
I grew up in the Tidewater of Virginia. The James River, Chesapeake Bay, and Atlantic Ocean were my childhood neighbors. I swam in them, fished them, clammed them, boated on them. It did not take long before I learned to love but also to respect the...
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of time.” So, begins Dickens’, A Tale of Two Cities. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.” So, begins...
Oddly enough, during this quarantined time, I have lost sight of Sabbath. How is that possible? In typical times, I am often going in a thousand different directions, but in...
