Tom

Well, I almost hit a deer on my way to work the other night.  In most of the places I’ve lived you always have to watch for animals on the road when you are driving after dark.  In Sri Lanka it was lizards.  The large lizards, often over five feet long, would crawl out onto [...]

A few blocks from my house is a charming, well-kept older house.  It is clear that someone, probably the lady of the house, has a decorator’s touch.  One item that stands out is that they have one of those decorative flags hanging from the front porch.  You know the type, they have pleasant pictures or [...]

We all know that line, don’t we?  From the hymn America the Beautiful, it has become embedded in the American psyche.  Written as a poem in the late 1800s under the original title Pikes Peak, it was renamed America the Beautiful and set to music by 1910.  By the way, the music was swiped from [...]

Once you have determined to live by grace or, as a friend of mine says, “live at the speed of grace” the next obvious question becomes “How do I do it?”  In some settings it is easy.  Just reach out to people where they are and touch them with grace and love as a believer.  [...]

I’d like to start by apologizing for not posting articles for more than a week, nearly two in fact.  I have been busy, I have been working on a project that is exciting me and, of course, sometimes there are just time pressures.  I will share more about the research project I am doing in [...]

Last night, at church, we had a great time of discussion with Marty and Melissa Childers in advance of the second mission trip to Bolivia, set for just a few weeks from now.  Their helpful input was focused on two areas to help us prepare for the trip and, incidentally, help us in our efforts [...]

Baseball history was made last night.  In the entire 135 year history of major league baseball there had been only 20 perfect games; only twenty times when it had been 27 up, 27 out, end of story.  Last night was the 21st.  Only it wasn’t.
The pitcher was a 28 year old man named Armando Gallaraga.  [...]

Once again, the religious wars have made the news.  On May 31st a federal judge ruled that Enfield High School in Connecticut cannot hold its graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of First Cathedral, a 11,000 member church in the town, as there was a “likelihood of irreparable harm” if the non-Christian student of the high [...]

A few weeks ago I was sitting with a friend at Panera Bread.  Just across the aisle was a table with two other men.  They both had their Bibles, and they seemed to be discussing things of the Lord.  I really wasn’t paying much attention but I was happy to see them there as it [...]

In the summer of the year I turned nine, two “unsavory” influences entered my life.  Until that point I had been the dutiful son, well mostly dutiful, of conservative religious parents.  We attended a good church that could have been described as fundamentalist or legalist, although until that summer I was not aware of what [...]