Today we went to visit some family who live close by. It’s always nice to see those people you don’t often get the chance to see because, for some reason, busy schedules and the demands of life always seem to get in the way. Sometimes you get to be with people you haven’t seen since the last Christmas. So, after a few necessary pleasantries, you get to talking with folks and you realize how much you’ve missed them during the year. Before long, you’re chatting as if you’ve never been hanging out together all year. That’s the beautiful thing about love. It...

Well, today is Christmas. And this day always brings images of Mary and Joseph coming into the little town of Bethlehem looking for some place to lay their heads and for Mary to give birth to the child who would grow up to change the world forever, or at least as long as there are people here. It’s a beautiful story; it really is. I hope it’s true, or at least most of it. Of course there are a lot of historical problems with the story. And this all stems from the simple fact that the only sources we have for this story come from two of the gospels, Luke and Matthew. Mark and John both...

Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him...

Back around thirty years ago, I was in a bad way.  I had hurt my back, and as a result of this injury, found myself out of a job.  Then, my wife at the time asked me to leave the house, so I was homeless.  It was lucky for me that my parents lived close by.  They bought a little travel trailer in the same mobile home park in which they lived so I could have a place to live.  It wasn’t much of a trailer.  You could literally sit at the dining table and stir a pot of soup at the same time.  It was tiny.  It was so small I had to get a folding toothbrush. So there I was, broke, lonely, and...

Before there was Jesus there was John the Baptist. John was quite an interesting character. Unfortunately, he pretty much gets lost with all the hoopla over Jesus and all. But John is not just any old goof, you know. The Roman Jewish historian (or is it the Jewish Roman historian) Josephus writes much more about John the Baptist than he does about Jesus, mentioning him by name which he never does exactly about Jesus. In fact, John is a pretty significant dude in at least three religions besides the big C. John is a pretty important figure in Islam, where he is held as one of the prophets of God....

On the way home from Phoenix last week, we stopped at the Flying J Travel Center to get gasoline.  I love Flying J Travel Centers.  They have lots of strange merchandise you just don’t see anywhere else, blue denim rodeo jackets with real country-western designs on them, for example, or little toy electric weasel looking creatures that roll around on the floor around a plastic ball.  You just don’t see that stuff around anywhere else.  You see a lot of interesting people there, too. While we were stretching our legs, walking around in the desert right behind the store, we looked down on...

So Sunday was the first day of Advent. And the season of Advent is all about hope. There was a time when all the people who believed in charity and faith were in a rather poor position. They had been conquered by a people who saw kindness and mercy as a weakness. The “chosen” people who believed in a loving God who sustained them in times of tribulation were persecuted terribly. Many of these people chose to face horrible torture and death, rather than renounce their beliefs in the divine spirit of humankind. The only hope they had was in the promise that one day, a person would come...

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. For all those unfamiliar with Catholicism, this is the official beginning of the Christmas season, black Friday notwithstanding. Today people came to get their advent candles blessed. There are four candles in an advent wreath. Each candle symbolizes a season during the year, and at the same time, the seasons of life. The use of candles is supposed to symbolize the light Christ brought to the world. But, regardless of your religious belief, is it true? Did Christ bring a light to the world? Is the world any better off now than it was before the advent of Christianity?...

I love living in the twenty-first century. I will admit there are parts of the twentieth century I liked better, but all in all, it’s nice to live in this day and age when we have all this amazing technology. When I think of the things that have been invented just in my lifetime it boggles the mind. I find that many of the students I teach cannot imagine life before there were VCRs, microwave ovens, home computers, and even compact disks. You should see the looks on their faces when I tell them that when I was a child I had only seven TV stations. And they don’t really understand that...

Imagine a Thanksgiving dinner where the dish that received the most attention was the cranberry sauce. It’s funny how we set priorities. We all know the turkey is the main dish, but the other side dishes are important too. But we spend all our time before Thanksgiving telling turkey jokes and reading turkey cartoons. Nobody much tells cranberry jokes. That’s just attaching too much importance to something that isn’t that central to the event. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like cranberries, so I don’t even eat the damn stuff. We do focus on some weird things in...