Category: Misc.

Here is the latest song by Terry Scott Taylor. He played it at a small concert last week and I can’t get it out of my head. He’s written dozens of songs that show him to be a Californian with deep roots in this region which seems rootless and placeless, and I know he’s been…

I lived in Berkeley from about 1995-1999, and enjoyed the wackiness of it all. Moving here from a seminary town in Kentucky with a cross atop the municipal water tower, my wife and I experienced the kind of culture shock usually reserved for overseas relocation. We knew the red state/blue state thing was going on…

This week I attended a small concert by Terry Scott Taylor, my favorite singer/songwriter. Terry’s been recording since the mid 1970s, with his serious band, a joke band or two, under his own name and various pseudonyms. These days he’s spending a lot of time writing music for animated cartoons. How’s that for versatility? But…

I’m spending this month with a group of about three dozen students who are reading Philippians over and over and over, trying to reach a point of saturation with this short letter (four chapters and not much over a hundred verses). My starting point for Bible study of this sort is always that the Spirit…

I. I saw the best cats of my litter destroyed by catnip, clawing yowling shaved, ripping their way across the shag carpet at dawn looking for a frisky fix, fuzzyheaded mouseketeers purring for the feline connection to the whiskered dynamo in the overlapping rhythm of the vibrating larynx, who hairballs and mange and declawed sat…

On a hilltop over San Simeon, California, stands the “Hearst Castle,” a set of buildings constructed in the early 20th century by jillionaire William Randolph Hearst. It’s now connected with the California Parks system, and open to the public. I took a tour of it yesterday with some friends and family, and it is remarkable.…

Jesus says in Luke 16:17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.” Other translations say, instead of “one dot,” things like “one stroke” or, as the KJV has it, “a tittle.” The greek word used here for dot/stroke/tittle is keraia, literally…

After toiling away in the mines of academe, there’s nothing so refreshing as a good wacky book, and one of my favorites is Power of Will by Frank Channing Haddock (I can’t verify his lifespan, but possibly 1853 – 1915). The book is written in a tone of voice that I find incantatory and impossible…

A couple of months ago the House of Representatives was talking about legislation that would have made it a criminal act to provide humanitarian help to illegal immigrants. More Senatorial heads prevailed, which made charities and churches heave a sigh of relief. The immigration legislation process grinds on, with developments every day but no breakthroughs…

A sermon I preached at my home church, Grace Evangelical Free Church of La Mirada, on Sunday May 14, 2006. (I started the sermon by taking out a camera and snapping pictures of the congregation left, right, and center, then pointing the camera up at the ceiling and getting a shot of that) Thanks for…

R. A. Torrey (1856 – 1928) travelled the world preaching the gospel. In a series of startlingly successful preaching tours around 1902 – 1906, his preaching sparked revivals and drew crowds on multiple continents. Throughout these tours and for the rest of his ministry, he delighted in pointing out that the message he preached was…

“We had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “but God gave us boldness to declare the gospel to you.” And they had suffered there: as Acts 16 narrates, Paul and Silas were chained and put into prison in Philippi. What kept them from giving in to discouragement? Paul…