On My Mind

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 […]

The bigwigs huddled secretly, hatching a plan to arrest and kill Jesus. But they had a problem: pilgrims were pouring into Jerusalem by the tens of thousands to observe Passover, and they were in a frenzy of excitement about Jesus. Jesus had to be eliminated. “But not during the Feast,” the schemers whispered, “or there […]

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky was twenty-eight when he was arrested for his vocal opposition of Tsarist Russia. Sentenced to death by firing squad, Dostoyevsky was on the scaffold, soldiers with muskets at shoulders, when the execution was stayed. Tsar Nicolas I had commuted his sentence to ten years of exile, four of them in the […]

F.W. Boreham spun a tale about a family that lived in a comfortable house with a delightful river running nearby. One day the river overflowed, the house’s basement flooded, and the chickens that roosted there drowned. The man of the house stormed off to see the landlord and told him he was giving notice that […]

Mark and Katy were living a happy life in our community and church when they were abruptly uprooted and transferred to a remote, thinly-populated outpost in Alberta, Canada. I stopped by to spend a night with them when a trip took me that way. We talked and laughed late into the night. But out of […]

John Glenn. Everyone knows the name of this American hero who flew fifty-nine combat missions in World War II and twenty-seven in Korea; the first American to orbit the earth and the oldest man in space when, at seventy-seven, he flew with the Space Shuttle Discovery crew; four-term U.S. Senator from Ohio. His history of […]

Luke 15:11–31 I smiled when I saw the sign in the front yard. It was as big as a bedsheet: WELCOME HOME DAVE! Dave was the son of Jack and Nancy Carter. Fine young man. He had just finished the semester and was coming home to Littleton, Colorado, for the summer. You see it when […]

Jabesh was in the crosshairs of the sadistic King Nahash. Frightfully outgunned, Jabesh’s leaders were considering surrendering. “Here’s how it will go down,” said Nahash: “I’ll mark you as mine by gouging out the right eye of every one of you. You have a week to think about it—In seven days, you can fight me […]

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. […]