This will be the first of two blogs on Luke’s Nativity story.  I’m looking here at how Luke tells the story more than its specific content.  If you have a good modern translation, you will see that many of the verses are in a poetic structure…

Matthew chose to begin his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus. In doing so, Matthew makes it clear that he sees the story of Israel (starting from Abraham) leading to Jesus, the Messianic Son of David…

As we come into the Advent season, I want to begin writing about the beginning of the Jesus story by speaking of the John the Baptist story. I recently watched Martin Scorsese’s portrayal of John in his series, “The Saints…”

Through much of my life, Thanksgiving was a time for the church to sing, “Count Your Blessings,” written by Johnson Oatman Jr. and published in 1897.

It’s well known that a person’s perception of reality is often determined by that person’s point of view.  This has been seen by honest, but contradictory reports of an accident from witnesses who viewed the accident from different vantage points.  Of course, points of view are not simply geographic…

Finally, our election season is over! Will our divided nation find some experience of unity? My guess is that while there may be a brief period of some sort of unity, the bitter partisan divide will reassert itself…

In 1741 George Frederick Handel started work on his greatest oratorio, The Messiah.  His friend, Charles Jennens organized passages of Scripture to form the libretto for the piece.  However, Handel was virtually bankrupt as he began his composing, but with funding help from Dublin, Ireland, he began his work…

I begin with a confession: My relationship with Halloween is conflicted.  I have fond memories of trick-or-treating as a child.  I love seeing costumed children coming to our door and joyfully getting candy…

In our adult Bible class, here at Littleton, we are studying the book of Judges. Led by our excellent teacher, Matt Cass, we looked at chapter three last Sunday and saw a pattern that continues through the rest of the book: Israel sins; God allows them to be plagued by enemies; they cry out; and God appoints a charismatic leader…

In reading my last blog post, a dear friend suggested that I could have included the impact of the fall on creation itself in disasters. He’s right, and so that’s where I’ll go in this blog...

The devastation of Helene, per predictions, will be compounded by the coming devastation to Florida of Milton. And, as I write, it is the anniversary of Black Saturday when Hamas attacked Israel…

My father died from the complications of pneumonia in August 1996.  At just about that time, Irish singer/songwriter, Phil Coulter, wrote a song after his father died, titled “The Old Man"...

Here, at the Littleton Church of Christ, we just had our “Mission Sunday.” Speaking that day was our brother from Marseille, France, Philippe Dauner. I always appreciate Philippe because the content of his messages is always Biblically rich...

A great weekend is now behind us at the TRYAD camp. We renewed our love with many, yet missed others we had grown to love. I spoke four times, and each message was followed by intensely personal discussions which were rich with both pain and hope...

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I will speak at the TRYAD camp this week. I will give four presentations on Matthew 18. This chapter forms a unit on the community of the Messiah, Jesus...

On this Labor Day weekend, I will again have the joy of being the speaker at the TRYAD camp. Roxanne and I will join Becki Graves and other dear friends at the Easter Seals Camp in Empire, CO...

In my last two blogs, I wrote about two hymns that spoke powerfully to our faith. This week, I want to address a general aspect of our singing. That aspect is unity…

On the weekend I turned 76, a lot happened. Of course, I got older and with that naturally comes thoughts of aging and mortality. I assure you those thoughts were not morbid, and that’s part of the point of this blog post…