The yellow and white flags of the Vatican are down.  But who will forget the unprecedented national fanfare that accompanied the first visit of Pope Benedict XVI to this nation last week?  Personally welcomed and greeted at Andrews Air Force Base by President Bush and his wife, feted at the White House with a regal welcoming ceremony attended by more invited guests than any previous such presidential event, two standing-room-only masses celebrated in a pair of iconic baseball stadiums in Washington and New York, adulated by the news media, an address to the leaders of the w

Are we at war with nature?  E. O. Wilson thinks so.  In his newest book, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, he offers this intriguing definition of nature:  “Nature is that part of the original environment and its life forms that remains after the human impact.  Nature is all on planet Earth that has no need of us and can stand alone” (15).  I.e., nature is what has survived the global encroachment of the human race.  Is he right?

Want to know why God doesn’t wear a watch?  Probably because it would drive him to the same distraction it drives us!  Ever find yourself racing across a parking lot or down a hallway or into a building or up a sidewalk . . .

Want to know what one of the most contagious human activities is?  Don’t be surprised.  It’s yawning.  That’s right—opening your mouth so wide it feels like your jaw might drop off as you breathe in all the air around you—that six second (on the average) act of yours will lead 55% of the people who watched you yawn do it themselves within five minutes!  In fact, you don’t even have to see someone do it.  The blind will yawn simply from hearing an audio tape of someone else yawning.  In fact, you don’t even need to hear a yawn.  Just reading the word can cause you to yawn (a

Is there a soul that doesn’t love a party? How about that surprise your mother threw for you long ago—remember? God bless her—how she pulled it off with holding down a job and keeping you and your siblings clothed and fed we’ll never know. But when you came bursting through the door after school that day, to your wide-eyed wonder the walls and ceiling above your family table were draped with brightly colored crepe paper streamers and festive skinny and fat balloons as far as the eye could see.

I watched a resurrection last Tuesday night. One of our viewers is a Pentecostal pastor with whom I’ve had the privilege of studying the Bible the last few months. It was my turn to visit his church this week, and no sooner had we sat down in his small sanctuary than he picked up a video and played it, “You need to see this.”

What is there about a rumor that gives it a life of its own? In this hyper season of politics and elections the talking heads of television thrive on rumors, innuendos and unsubstantiated stories. Why? Because rumors are the staple of our very human curiosity, the stuff of our fascination. And we often cling to them as hopeful corroboration for our personal convictions or strongly held opinions. “That’s what I believe—don’t confuse me with the facts!” The world loves a rumor.

“A small crisis of my faith” is how the student put it. His email to me included an attachment of a letter he was writing to the campus paper. Turns out his young heart and mind were troubled by what appeared to him to be a contradiction of faith and life at a public event not long ago. So he exercised the very proper and academic right of public expression to voice his convictions. It is the stuff of university life—this free-for-all exchange of thought and belief. Whether this young adult’s opinion is the minority opinion these days is really immaterial, isn’t it?

There is an old Swahili proverb:  “Travel with open eyes and you will become a scholar.”  Our recent journey to the Horn of Africa was certainly an eye-opening experience for me.  For two weeks we were able to slip behind the headlines of conflict and violence (of which we encountered none), and quietly observe the fingerprints of God upon two very diverse spiritual movements.

Having just returned with Karen from two weeks in the Horn of Africa, I’ve had the chance to ponder the meaning of a word we don’t use much in daily conversation.  But as we spent time in the company of two very different communities of people there, the word has taken on a new meaning for me.