June 2016 Blog Posts (12)

I guess it all started with my parents’ subscription to Reader’s Digest. I enjoyed reading the brief articles. I never much liked reading long bodies of material at one setting. Then I had a Seminary professor who assigned us fifty-word papers to write. He said anyone could elaborate, but an accomplished writer could abbreviate. So I guess that’s how I got to writing my one paragraph, spiritual jump-starts for the week, entitled, Dr. Dan’s Monday Morning Manna. It doesn’t quite fit in the…

God of the nations,

How easy it is for us to decry downward spiraling moral trends in America. The majority ignores your commandments and lives by their own rules. Many worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship. Most people in our country appear self-centered, pleasure-seeking, materialistic, and proud of possessions. Still known in the…

My 2011 Hyundai Sonata looks exactly the same as it did a month ago. On the surface it’s the same 100,000-mile car as it was then.

Yet here’s the strange story of why my car is worth more now than it was several weeks ago…

I got a big surprise when I took my Sonata to the dealer for some routine recalls. “You need a new engine!” the service rep told me, to my shock.

In the seconds that followed, I groaned at the thought of having to pay around $7,000 for a new…

Recently a friend texted me and asked how my week was going.

“Uneventful!” was my reply.

My friend texted back and said that sometimes “uneventful” isn’t such a bad thing. I guess he had a point, but in my case “uneventful” was pretty much equivalent to boring.

This got me thinking about one of my favorite stories in the Bible, the lame man who was healed in Acts 3:1-9. The chapter begins at three o’clock in the afternoon, as Peter and John are on their way…

Congratulations to the Cleveland Cavaliers, winners of the NBA championship this week. It was quite a success story, especially since the team was down 3-1 before winning three straight games from the Golden State Warriors.

The Warriors had been the winningest team in NBA history in the regular season, winning an incredible 73 games and losing only 9.

But victory, in sports or in life, is seldom a matter of getting off to a good start. Rather, it comes to those who finish…

It is not at all because you are such righteous, upright people that you are about to occupy their land. The Lord your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness, and to fulfill the oath he had sworn to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  DEUTERONOMY 9:5 NLT

Despite countless warnings…

I’m convinced that very few people know the present-tense God. Instead, we worship the God of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Azusa Street, or some other movement. Or perhaps we worship the God of Moses or the God of Peter and the original apostles.

It’s not all bad to worship these versions of God, because He wants us to appreciate our spiritual heritage and the amazing work He has done in people’s lives throughout the centuries.

For example, when God appeared…

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of a pony named Pearl who worked with the carnival. Shackled to a pole from a young age, she gave rides to children along a small, circular path. 

Every day was the same. Pearl lived in sheer drudgery, going around and around in endless circles, without even the slightest taste of freedom.

Far in the distance, Pearl sometimes saw other horses frolicking joyfully in the meadow. What a great life that must be! she moaned, feeling sorry for…

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” (Leonard Bernstein)

With yesterday’s awful news of the worst mass killing in American history saddening our hearts, my wife and I joined others in St. Paul’s Adult Masterworks Chorus in King George to rehearse the beautiful St. Cecelia Mass by Gounod. As we lined up to process into the sanctuary, I noticed this quote by Bernstein on a bulletin board.…

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

Deuteronomy 6:5 NLT

God is Love, not law. God is not interested in compulsive religiosity. He is unimpressed by punctilious rule keeping. His standing…

Not long ago, my computer froze up. As I always do in such cases, I called the IT Department in desperation.

“Have you tried rebooting?” they immediately asked.

Doesn’t it seem like that’s always the first solution when your computer—or your life—gets stuck? You have to reboot in order to function properly again.

That got me thinking about my life these days. While many things are going great, in other ways I’m sure I could use a reboot.

But I couldn’t help…

So be very careful to act exactly as God commands you. Don’t veer off to the right or the left. Walk straight down the road God commands so that you’ll have a good life and live a long time in the land that you’re about to possess. Deuteronomy 5:33 THE MESSAGE

A trusting heart listens…