When I was growing up, some of the older boys in my school used to taunt me: “Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-o!” It appears they were right, because it’s all come horribly true. I’m old. My name is McDonald. And I do indeed live on a farm – a small horse farm about a half-hour’s drive from downtown Indianapolis. … Read more »
Norman Borlaug may be the most remarkable person you’ve never heard of. The American agronomist, who died in 2009 at the age of 95, revolutionized global food supplies. In the words of former Minnesota Senator Rudy Boschwitz, “Norman Borlaug is the first person in history to save a billion human lives.” Hunger has always stalked humanity. In France alone between… Read more »
According to Greek mythology, the seemingly invincible warrior Achilles was saddled with the original Achilles heel. His mother Thetis, in an effort to endow her infant with immortality, had dipped him into the river Styx. Unfortunately, his left heel never made it into the water. That’s the place where she had been holding him. Having one small point of vulnerability… Read more »
“The Lrod is naer to the broknehreated and svaes the crsuehd in siprit.” (Psalm 34:18) If you copy the words above as written, your spell-checker will throw a hissy fit. What’s interesting is that our brains have no problem making sense of them. Researchers at Cambridge have confirmed that as long as the first letter is first and the last… Read more »
No one remembers the first person who said it, but it really is a great line: God may have gotten his people out of Egypt, but his next job was far tougher: getting Egypt out of his people. According to the book of Exodus, there was nothing simple or easy about the task that God entrusted to Moses. This fearful… Read more »
Congregational leaders are currently wrestling with a question that no one alive has ever had to face: When the pandemic is finally behind us, will church attenders come back to church? There are good reasons for believing that the New Normal will not look exactly like the Old Normal. Long before America was driven indoors by social distancing, mask-wearing, and… Read more »
Did you hear about the man who was stranded all by himself on an island, much like Tom Hanks in Cast Away? He lived alone for 10 years. Then one day, miraculously, he was spotted by a passing boat. His rescuers were curious about the three huts he had built on the beach. “The first one is my house,” he… Read more »
William Provine, a Distinguished Professor at Cornell University who served three different departments – History, Science and Technology Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology – was a brilliant scientist. He also had supreme confidence when it came to discussing life’s most important philosophical questions. Two decades ago he declared: “Let me summarize my views on what evolutionary biology tells us… Read more »
Several years ago I read about a megachurch that presented “Feed the 5,000 Day.” The first 5,000 people who showed up on a particular Sunday morning received a free fish sandwich – bread and fish, get it? – passed out by Ronald McDonald himself. Large American congregations are nothing if not inventive in their efforts to keep crowds of spiritual… Read more »
Even before the final shots of the Civil War, another great conflict had broken out between the North and the South. It was the battle of the cemeteries. Before 1864, there was no national cemetery in the United States. Few people imagined the need for such a place. But the monumental struggle between the Union and the Confederacy cost an… Read more »