Year: 2008
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Death and Darkness Get You Packing
Death, and darkness get you packing, Nothing now to man is lacking, All your triumphs now are ended, And what Adam marr’d, is mended; Graves are beds now for the weary, Death a nap, to wake more merry; Youth now, full of pious duty, Seeks in thee for perfect beauty, The weak, and aged tir’d,…
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You Didn’t Say a Word (Terry Taylor on the Passion of Christ)
About ten years ago, the GREATEST AND MOST OVERLOOKED LIVING SINGER-SONGWRITER Terry Scott Taylor released a CD entitled John Wayne. The whole CD was great, marking Terry Taylor’s umpteenth self-reinvention –this time as a kind of regionalist spiritual pundit, an alterna-pop Flannery O’Connor from Orange County. But a standout song that’s been on my mind…
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Golgotha (paper and ink)
This is a little drawing (about six inches square) given to me by Verna Smith, an artist who works in hand-made paper. She must have made it around 1975, but gave it to me thirty years later. Photos don’t quite capture the delicacy and suggestiveness of the paper: we’re so used to thinking of paper…
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Pirate Epic in 25 Panels
Prolific artist Freddy Age Seven has recently turned from single images to the demanding art form of juxtaposed sequential graphic narrative: cartoons. Here is an untitled composition in 25 panels that tells a pirate story. But it is no mere entertainment: it is both a searching study of human greed, and an exploration of the…
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Making Marriage: A Wedding Prayer
I prayed this prayer at a wedding in Picayune, Mississippi, March 15, 2008. Almighty God, only you have the power to make a marriage. This special church service cannot do it, though it has been beautiful. Our hopes and wishes for Zak and Martha cannot, though we are their best friends and adoring families. The…
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Cactus Forest
The stagecoach, horse, and cacti are all drawn in red, with sharp angles and spiky corners everywhere. I can testify that Freddy Age Seven learned some of this technique from books by Ed Emberley, who can teach anybody to draw simple symbolic forms. The spokes are sharp, the cactus needles (OF COURSE!) are sharp, the…
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On Viewing a Body
Frankly, I wondered about the wisdom and place of a viewing. Our church was devastated by the death of Midi and Nathan Mikasa, mother and four-year-old son, less than a year — but such a year — after we opened our doors. I remember my pastor’s call one morning. I had been planning to call…
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Augustine's Two Spiritual Laws
Bill Bright put a simplified account of the gospel into an easily-communicated form called the Four Spiritual Laws. Those laws, as stated in the classic booklet that has been used for so much evangelism, are: 1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. 2. Man is sinful and separated from God.…
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Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective on the "Converse with Scholars" Program
This Thursday (March 6 ’08) I’ll be the guest on the Converse with Scholars web show hosted by Reclaiming the Mind ministries. I’ll be talking with the hosts and the live web audience about my 2007 book, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective. You’ll be able to listen to the show anytime from their site, but if…
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18 Cats in 5 Minutes
Phoebe Age Five recently accepted the challenge to draw 18 cats as fast as she could. She completed the task in well under five minutes, and the result is a set of cat drawings with a striking range of compositional choices. In drawing, composition is the art of arranging visual elements on a page. It…
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The Bible Women
The story of Biola’s founding is easily told as the story of Big Men doing Big Things for their Big God. I’ve told the story that way myself, because it’s true: Biola’s three most important founders were a civil war veteran oil tycoon (Stewart), a highly-educated world-traveling evangelist (Torrey), and an urban pastor who could…