On My Mind

In a Commencement address at Stanford University, the late Steve Jobs said: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.” Death is an enemy that terrorizes mortals, causing them to be “like slaves all their lives because of their fear of death” (Hebrews […]

Dr. Fred Alexander, my college roommate and lifelong friend, chose a career in higher education. It was a close call, because early on he felt the tug of a different calling. As a young Navy Reservist, Fred blew the top off of pilot aptitude tests. The U.S. Navy pulled out all the stops to convince […]

There are a handful of things in my life that have always been there—changeless, consistent, dependable: the sun has not failed to rise or set since the day I was born; the earth has not perceptibly changed its spin in my lifetime; God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And then, there is my […]

A group of grieving women who watched Jesus die on Friday trudged to the tomb to anoint his body on Sunday. But the tomb was empty. “He is not here,” an angel told them; “he has risen!” Risen? Who could believe such a thing? His disciples should have. He had told them more than once […]

Limping ashore after decades at sea, he was taunted: “You don’t have much to show for all those years, do you?” “No, not much,” said the old salt who had spent years sailing with Sir Francis Drake. “I’ve been cold, hungry, sick, scared, and shipwrecked. But I am certain of one thing: I have been […]

People thought she was whacko. She claimed that she and God talked one-on-one every night and that he told her about the shenanigans of people who thought their secrets were, well, secret. Someone advised her to validate these alleged conversations by asking her minister if she was really talking with God or hallucinating. Tormented by […]

Day to day, year to year, news remains pretty much the same: A war going on somewhere. Violence on some street in our hometown. People fighting for position, power, a bigger slice of the pie. Hunger, with pictures so appalling we have to look away. Those who have fallen on hard times living in poverty […]

Ready or not, one day it will be over. There’ll be no more sunrises, sunsets, or birthdays. Position and possessions will be history. Whether you lived in a castle or a cottage will be irrelevant. All you accumulated, both treasures and trinkets, will pass to someone else. Your proficiency, polish, and pedigree will be meaningless. […]

It was a beautifully manicured patch of green where the county buried its unknown dead. As I strolled among the graves, I saw a marker: “Infant Lara.” I wondered who she was and why she died alone. And why did he whose bones were beneath the stone that said “Unknown” die alone? I had been […]

It had been a rough day for Jesus in the Temple. First, the Pharisees tag-teamed with the Herodians to snag him in a trap about paying taxes to Caesar. Then it was the Sadducees, with a cockamamie story about seven brothers dying one after another, each marrying the left-behind widow. “At the resurrection,” they asked […]