Parts of Speaking Publishing

  16  For I am not ashamed of the Good News of Christ, because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.  17  For in it is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. As it is written, “But the righteous shall live by faith.” This key verse/truth is repeated in Habakkuk 2:4 , Galatians 3:11 , and Hebrews 10:38.  Faith is not the opposite of doubt. It is a different category of thing. 

 Some reject the idea that this passage from Isaiah is speaking of Jesus Christ. That is hard for a Christian to accept or understand. Its poetry is so striking as well.  Isaiah 53, for the World English Bible (copyright free) Who has believed our message?      To whom has Yahweh’s arm been revealed? 2  For he grew up before him as a tender plant,      and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty.      When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3  He was despised      and rejected by men, a man of suffering      and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;      and we didn’t respect him. 4  Surely he has borne our sickness      and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued,      struck by God, and afflicted. 5  B...

 To anyone out there, please leave a comment.   I read the Book of Joshua this week in preparation for a Life Group lesson. Joshua is mostly conquests (and perhaps genocides) and land distribution. But in between there are relevant glimpses of God's care for the chosen people. Although one wonders why the others get such violence when the Israelites aren't so obedient.  The cities of refuge: a place for those who commit involuntary manslaughter to wait out the revenge of kin.  The five daughters who got their inheritance and became a test case.  The Gibeonites - be careful who you make a pact with! Caleb getting his land 45 years late.  Joshua's stirring speech--and messing with the Israelites--in the last two chapters.  Still, the mass killings are hard to take. I can see why some take it allegorically or symbolically.  In stark contrast we have the God who dies for his enemies in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Wow.   

It is 65 days (less, really) until I am officially retired.  Retiring is hard work.  For one, there is dealing with Medicare and supplement plans. Sheesh.  Second, there is going to be the final office cleaning out, which is preceded by making sure all the responsibilities of being an academic chair and professor are tied up. Not there yet, and probably will not be until Memorial Day (last day is May 30).  And of course, the emotional transition. I suspect some people are going to expect me to fill my time with helping them out.  I can't use work as an excuse any more (I'm being facetious, well, maybe not).  In other words, I am facing a different reality.  We do not think about how Jesus the Son of God faced a different reality in his days on earth. What a difference. We cannot fathom it. Of course, we would take a while to not have electricity and indoor plumbing (much less no coffee). Again, facetiousness. More, Jesus had to be surrounded by sin and...

A dear friend died in the last few days. He was 63 or 64. An outstanding person. My brother-in-law passed away last Monday. Death and disease sometimes feels like it surrounds us.  Lent reminds me not to be sugary and optimistic about things. Pain and suffering are real. They may be temporary, but they are no less real. 

 Observing a season like Lent, at least in the way I am, requires a self-examination and humility, at the very least.  Short note: the President of our college, who is a devout Byzantine Catholic (that is a faction I had never heard of before he came to us), stopped by at Baptist Collegiate Ministries yesterday to see what we were doing. We invited him to eat, but he said he was doing keto and giving up carbs for Lent. (a church had brought Stouffer's Lasagna, very tasty but I had massive heartburn afterward and had not taken my meds for it). I have not focused on giving up something for my health, although I have stopped watching most of media or TV I used to, which I will continue.  For me, a family member (in-law) died this week and I got pressured into going to the service tomorrow in another state. This deceased person was highly irresponsible and left a wake of hurt.  It's a 6-7 hours car trip with my husband, and we will have to spend the night in a hotel. I a...

 Psalm 22 was quoted by Jesus on the cross. Today I quote parts of it; tomorrow, reflection.   My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?      Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? 2  My God, I cry in the daytime, but you don’t answer;      in the night season, and am not silent. 3  But you are holy,      you who inhabit the praises of Israel. 4  Our fathers trusted in you.      They trusted, and you delivered them. 5  They cried to you, and were delivered.      They trusted in you, and were not disappointed. 6  But I am a worm, and no man;      a reproach of men, and despised by the people. 7  All those who see me mock me.      They insult me with their lips. They shake their heads, saying, 8       “He trusts in Yahweh.      Let...

Yes, I missed the 19th.  From Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy "Lament helps us embrace two truths at the same time:  Hard is hard.  Hard is not bad."   As mentioned previously, lament is more than the common idea of a weepy person. I still have not fathomed it. But I am amazed by the paradoxes of our faith, and how people want certainty rather than the tension and uncertainty of paradox and we are not really allowed that. Love and justice. Sovereignty and free will. We want those resolved and they just won't be, really, until eternity; so today we just ignore the other side and make all love or justice.   Paradox is hard. Hard is not bad.  We have built a civilization around hard is bad. We have definitely built an education system around it.  "Learning should be fun!"  Hard is not bad.  My husband's brother died, and he wants me to go to service and viewing 6.5 or more hours away. I don't want to . It's a nuisance, and I was not fond of hi...

I had a sort of epiphany. My struggles have been a lack of gratitude.  We are to be grateful in everything, if not for everything. I was annoyed by everything, everyone, without seeing that all of them were gifts.  I don't know where it came from.   Even this morning with bureaucratic paperwork--it allowed me to talk to a coworker and help her out.   Why is this so hard? 

Franky Planner quotes for Lent: Ella Fitzgerald: It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.  Phyliss Bottoms: There is nothing final about a mistake except its being taken as final.  Rose Kennedy: Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them? Thomas a Kempis: Habit is overcome by habit.  Agatha Christie: I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.  Tom Brokaw: It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.  Christopher Paolini: I am not who I was, but I know who I am.  Seven will do.  I see the gospel in each. The gospel is a lens, in a way, although far more than that. 

 My text for Lent this year (since there are really no direct Biblical texts for a tradition like this).is the book on lament psalms by Mark Vroegop. The chapter I read today asked, essentially, why we don't lament at funerals.  The rest of the world does.  Yes, we do not sorrow as others who have no hope. I would like to know the original Greek on that to know if it is saying we do not sorrow period or we do not sorrow like the hopeless.  That's a big difference.  I am perplexed as to where we go this "happy all the time" evangelical mindset, where we have to race through any recognition that people are grieving, sorrowing, struggling, in pain, in doubt of God's direction, to get through to "hey, it's all fine, all good, I'm good, I don't want to bother anybody with my grief and heaven knows I don't want to be bothered by yours." In other words, why are we so blasted shallow? (I wanted to use damn there, I really did. I think I just did....

A former colleague just posted something on FB that equates Trump supporters with perpetrators and facilitators of incest on children.  Okay, I need to say something.  To this man. To everyone.  That is going way too far. I am appalled by Trump's actions of the last three weeks. I had six chances to vote for him and never did. He is not a conservative, and he is not a wise man. But that analogy is beyond the pale.  It does not help. It is ad hominem. It is a lie.  And it will persuade no one. 

A quote from John Piper: Keep trusting the One who keeps you trusting."  Faith is a gift, not an effort of our will (it is a choice, though).  Ephesians 2: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves;  it is  the gift of God,  9  not of works, lest anyone should boast.  10  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Any faith we have is very weak, riddled with doubt (a residual effect of our ability to reason and question but tainted with the self-addiction of sin), and only useful because of His empowering.  

  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/primal-world-beliefs-unpacked/202210/we-thought-conservatives-saw-the-world-more-dangerous-we Short version: Researchers thought that what separated conservatives and liberals was seeing the world as dangerous v. safe. Turns out they were sort of wrong; conservatives were not scaredy cats.  Now this research says the difference is hierarchical views of the world v. not.  Hierarchical doesn't mean there should be a king as much as there are categories that are based in reality (like gender, maybe?) To me this says conservatives are more likely to see ethics as black/white or right/wrong. That I can buy. They are also more likely to prioritize belief in God (definitely a hierarchy).  I still feel like this research is motivated by a desire to make conservatives look less than intellectually or emotionally. But let me say conservatives, not Republicans. Although that is a Venn Diagram with a lot of overlap, there are outliers. I...

 From the Dispatch, March 14, 2025: Despite being associated more with K-12 education, a far greater share of the department’s resources go toward higher education. The Education Department is charged with administering student loans and distributing the Pell Grant, which awards low- and middle-income students up to $7,400 per year toward college tuition. The former is by far its largest role: The department oversees $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for more than 40 million people—a job that required about one-third of its workforce prior to the administration’s cuts.  “The Department of Education is basically a mega bank with a small K-12 policy shop attached,” Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, told  TMD . “Far and away, the biggest part of what it does is handle financial aid for folks going to college.” The cash that is distributed to K-12 schools through the Department of Education is primarily via two ...

The book on lament that I have been reading is guiding me through Lent this year.  This morning I read two incidents in this pastor's life that cut me to the heart--both because of the content/context and my own cold-hearted reaction.  Cold-heartedness, lack of compassion (I won't use empathy--that is problematic for me, more on that later), impatience, intolerance, and annoyance. My sins that I must own and confess and repent of.  I won't get into the stories; one was about a young couple's struggle through a premature birth and the child's medical conditions, the other about a minority member of the congregation questioning the lack of response to a racially charged incident. My responses to both were callous, selfish, ungodly.  Where does this come from?  The word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword (not a random metaphor),  piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intent...

Five years ago today, the world shut down. First the schools and colleges (theoretically they went online, but it will be a long debate what level of quality the online instruction achieved), then sports stopped(no March Madness, oh no!) then businesses responded, and finally hospitals and medical professionals were hit hard.  We all have our experience and feelings about how the country as a whole responded. I have my doubts and opinions, but not being a scientist or doctor, I will keep it on the down low.  I do know that for most, it was not their finest hour. COVID-19 did not make us anything; it revealed what we already were: insular, selfish, hyper-individualist, materialist, and looking for excuses not to engage any more.  The church has not done a whole lot better, although it seems that attendance has crept closer to pre-2020 levels.  Lent is about confession and repentance, and it might be time to confess and repent over our COVID sins, whatever they might h...

 As mentioned before, I have been reading Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Pastor Mark Vroegop, a book on Lament. I don't usually recommend books, but this one might be helpful for lay leaders in a church; his sections on Jeremiah and Lamentations are quite good, since we skip that book most of the time.  The lament psalms can help us when we are struggling with bitterness by providing an opportunity to talk to God about our pain and pray for those who've hurt us. Too often I find books dealing with bitterness tip toward what Chris Brauns, in his book Unpacking Forgiveness, calls therapeutic forgiveness--when we unconditionally forgive people so that we can deal with our pain. I think this is a startling quote in the light of the cross. Christ died for our sins--but we must own them. Do we have a right to expect others to own their sin, acknowledge it and confess it?  Perhaps there is a better answer to bitterness than just letting hurtful people off the hook. Can we take "Fath...

  What a Beautiful Name it is Lent is not about, or it shouldn't be about, us wallowing in our self-pity over our sin. There is no reason to talk about sin if one is not going to know there is forgiveness. 

 Of all the appalling news coming out of this White House, nothing is as appalling, illegal, unethical, and cruel than Trump saying that Ukrainian refugees might be sent back.  Today, I think perhaps to say "We are part of this church and community," the Ukrainian folks in our church, Brainerd Baptist in Chattanooga, hosted a lunch for us with home-cooked Ukrainian food. We all ate to our hearts' content and some of us, I think, got the point.  The Old Testament law required the Jews to protect refugees. The U.S. always has. Now in the name of MAGA and saving money but really assuaging an ego, we are violating everything we stand for, as if Ukraine is an enemy combatant.  Republicans must stand up to this man. Oh, and his little hillbilly puppet (or puppeteer). The food is delicious, and these folks are not living on the dole. The adults work and the kids go to school. We think coming here is easy for these folks. God help our stupidity.  I would write my Congre...

 Everyone needs to hear this and sing to God.  Is He Worthy Between the two advents, we live in a time of already and not yet. 

 I am late on this, but church this morning was transformational. I am going to share music.  I underlined two thoughtful lines. This is sung to the tune of Finlandia and has a feeling that is both mournful (minor key) and triumphant, if that is possible.  1. Be still, my soul! the Lord is on your side; Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain; Leave to your God to order and provide; In ev'ry change he faithful will remain. Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly friend Thru' thorny ways leads to a joyful end. 2. Be still, my soul! your God does undertake To guide the future as he has the past; Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake; all now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul! the waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while he lived below. 3. Be still, my soul! when dearest friends depart And all is darkened in the vale of tears, Then shall you better know his love, his heart, Who comes to soothe your sorrow and your fears. Be ...

 I had a lightning bolt experience the other day. It was a deep and disturbing revelation on personal sin.  I will not burden you with it. It is still shocking me to my toes, even though I know it is forgiven and will be forgiven if it happens again, and that it is not something I will act upon, the existence of the attitude and tendency and character trait involved is disturbing on a molecular level.  We ARE sinners. That means we do, think, believe, feel sin. It is our being. That is not popular, even among evangelicals. I am a Puritan at heart. Our sinfulness does not change God's love, but it should remind us to "get a life" about our own supposed goodness.  From the article I quoted earlier, the one by Chris Hunt in GroundWorkOnline:  A century later, Puritan theologian  John Owen  critiqued the Roman church for the Lenten practices of mortifying the flesh, the self-denial of giving something up. Owen charged that Lent called people more to “morti...

 As I face retirement from 47 years of professional practice, I am experiencing some not-so-friendly feelings.  One of them is general annoyance by most of what goes on in my work place. That is sin for me, stemming from impatience and ingratitude.  One of them is fatigue. It's a deep down exhaustion even when I feel pretty strong and energetic after a decent sleep. From the fatigue comes what I call ennui and anhedonia. I lack joy, every thing (separation intentional) is a task I don't want to do (echoing the silly song on YouTube that is stuck in my head), every day is a rut or hamster wheel, at least at times.  From that comes an occasional staring at the wall depression.  Some of this is sin, some just the human body and experience. Some of it is coming from knowing I won't be so "needed" after the retirement date, or "important." . Some of it is fear about finances (not reasonable for me but understandable with the chaos in Washington, D.C.) Some of...

 " In recent years, Lent has resurged in importance among mainline Protestant churches and has even seen  renewal among Protestants . In a time that some call the “post-Christian era,” many evangelicals have gained a new appreciation for the Church Liturgical Calendar, and for a season to reflect on their need for the cross and to prepare their hearts to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. For all faithful observers, Lent is about Jesus and what he did. “You could observe 1,000 Lents,” says Eric Ferris, founder of the  Lent Experience , “and it won’t ever accomplish in your life what the cross of Jesus has.” Whether Christians observe Lent or not, what really matters is our embrace of Christ crucified and the empty tomb." This is from an essay by Chris Hunt at  https://groundworkonline.com/blog/a-short-version-of-the-long-history-of-lent   I am going to be returning to it.  If Lent is about trying to impress somebody, get over yourself, as we used to say. That...

Corran Addison July 9, 2018    ·  The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president,by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University. Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece... “I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes. Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining." Distributive bargaining always has a winner a...