The title of this blog is confusing at first, so let’s start with the fact that the Lord’s Prayer appears in only two places in the Bible. The first and more familiar version is in Matthew, written between 85 to 95 CE: “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. … Read more
The festival of Epiphany, derived from a Greek word that means “an appearance or manifestation,” always falls on January 6 in the church’s liturgical calendar. Epiphany is the occasion when Followers remember the story of the wise men who supposedly came from afar to recognize Jesus as the King of kings. This story is told … Read more
In honor of my recent trip to Hawaiʻi, I am including the rest of the prodigal son parable, told in Hawaiian Pidgin. Last week I shared the first part of the story, where the father unconditionally accepts, forgives, and cares for his errant son. This is a story about agape love, which is what followers … Read more
My wife and I lived in Hawaiʻi for twenty years. Below, I’ve included the parable of the prodigal son written in Hawaiian Pidgin, a local lingo spoken by those who were born and raised in Hawaiʻi. It’s spoken quickly and is difficult to understand unless you’re a kamaaina (local). I’ll share the part about the … Read more
I suspect some of my readers aren’t quite so sure about the word oenologist. How does one say an o and an e together? Is it pronounced o, then enologist? Do folks just forget the o sound and simply say or write enologist? I do the latter. It’s easier! Anyway, an enologist studies and masters … Read more
In the early church, when the Followers of Jesus had diverged from Judaism (about 88 CE), they gained the reputation of being cannibals. They were a mysterious group. They met in secret places like catacombs and had strange signs and signals such as a fish—in Greek, ichthus. If two people met on a road, one … Read more
In March 2017, Annie and I were in China cruising on the Yangtze River. Every day we disembarked and saw fascinating things. The day before we left the river for the city of Xi’an and the terracotta warriors, we took a short bus ride to a four-century-old Buddhist pagoda. It was next to very high … Read more
I have been terrified of John for some fifty-five years. He’s complicated, threatening, outrageous at times, secretive, and almost unintelligible. I wanted to have nothing to do with him. He was poison. Then a strange thing happened. My wife and I had been working with inmates at the local jail on Tuesday afternoons, but the … Read more
The story of the flood and Noah’s Ark is found in the book of Genesis, chapters 6–9. As a child I always loved that story, but for some reason I had never heard the ending until I went to seminary. It’s sad! About five years ago my wife and I went to Turkey and spent … Read more
I was a history major in college. I really wanted to be a psychology major, but those students had lab classes in the afternoon, and I played soccer in the fall and lacrosse in the late winter and spring. As a psych major I would have to go to Columbus, Ohio, once a week and … Read more