In Gennesaret

This photo – I don’t know if it speaks to any of you. It was hard to capture the image effectively. This was the view above me while I was sitting at my outdoor table one afternoon during the Christmas break. I had been reading, and when I finished a chapter, I set the book down and laid my head back to look around. It was beautiful. The colors! Can you see how blue that sky is? It’s a remarkable blue . . . a soft, gentle, clear blue. In the winter in Iowa, I would walk my daughter to the bus stop with snow on the ground all around us and notice that the sky was as white as the snow. I remember thinking that the world looked like an empty coloring book. Not in Texas. Look at that blue, blue sky in December. And the leaves. The green! Not all the trees around me have green leaves on them in the winter, but this big, beautiful live oak that I sit under in the backyard does, even in December. And the contrast of those green leaves against that blue sky with the sun shining down . . ...

Create in me a clean heart . . . I don’t remember where this verse popped up over the holidays, but it has been on my mind ever since. And with it comes the old worship chorus – specifically Keith Green’s live rendition because YouTube Music keeps bringing it around again in my playlist in the car. So, join me in a bit of Bible study here, and feel free to sing along. Create in me a clean heart, ohhh God . . . A clean heart . . . what makes my heart unclean? We modern folk hear the word and think of plain old dirtiness, requiring Lysol and a scrub brush, but I’m not sure that’s what we’re talking about. Lepers in biblical times were called unclean. So, there seems to be a connotation of disease here. And those lepers had to keep away from others because their disease was contagious. So maybe we’re even talking about something that somebody else could catch if they were too close to me? That’s sobering. When I look this passage up in the Blue Letter Bible online ( love that r...

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned on Facebook that I was thinking about watching all the Star Wars movies. I saw the first one in the theater in 1977, but I never saw the others. FB friends wanted to hear my reactions – so here you are: Episode 4 – A New Hope (? When did it get that title?) - How did I sit through this and understand it when I was nine? I don’t think I did understand it. I’m not sure I really understood it all at 56. - I was bored through the first half. Bored enough that I had to watch it again because in the second half I got into it and wondered what I missed in the first half. - So, honestly, the effects are good enough even fifty years later to not be a big distraction . . . and that’s pretty amazing. I bet they blew people away at the time. - It’s unfortunate how much this has been parodied. I feel like I’m watching a spoof. “Use the force, Luke.” I almost laughed at that. It’s hard to take it seriously sometimes. I have to keep reminding myself that thi...