Fourth Sunday in Lent - A
David Coffin
A group of younger workers are seated next to one another at a workplace where they have to deal with the public both person-to-person and over the telephone. They are having difficulty dealing with clients and customers who are older than they are in terms of communication skills, etiquette, and basic manners. These workers console one another once the older clients leave the office by criticizing the older people and trying to avoid them the next time. In the next office sits an older worker who is of the generation these younger workers are trying to avoid. If they were to simply talk to their elder colleague, they could get good tips on communication and etiquette skills. But these younger people only communicate to others in their spare time on social media and handheld computer...
Wayne Brouwer
Schuyler Rhodes
Sometimes we see people who are wide-eyed with wonder. Children especially can appear this way, in part because of the size of their eyeballs. Our eyeballs grow very little during the course of our lives, and certainly not at the same rate as the rest of our bodies' organs. For that reason children stare at life with eyes bigger in proportion to their faces than those of adults. Compared with big people, children's eyes dominate their facial features and can thus appear more piercing and inquisitive.
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me!"...
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me!"...
Wayne Brouwer
Most twentieth-century predictions about life in this new millennium have proved widely
off base. Much of what was forecast about technology simply hasn't happened, while
aspects of invention and the communications revolution far exceed anything that was
imagined. We are, at best, quite hopeless when forecasting massive shifts in human
trends. Now and again, there are hints at new days dawning, but most of us are too
myopic either to notice or to understand the implications.
Yet the message of the Bible is always about shifting currents and the wind of the Spirit of God blowing in new directions. Even during this season of Lent, when we rehearse the old, old story of sin and death that led Jesus on his painful pilgrimage to the cross, we feel the fresh breezes of...
Yet the message of the Bible is always about shifting currents and the wind of the Spirit of God blowing in new directions. Even during this season of Lent, when we rehearse the old, old story of sin and death that led Jesus on his painful pilgrimage to the cross, we feel the fresh breezes of...
The connection between sight and belief in Christianity is as old as the insistence of Thomas to see and touch Jesus' wounds in order to believe the wild story of his colleagues. Yet sight and faith might even be diametrically opposed to each other.
The wonders of Disney World captivate young and old alike to such an extent that parents use their children as the excuse to visit the Magic Kingdom and its neighboring extravaganzas. We know going into the park that we are entering a world of fantasy, but the sights seem to confuse that earlier conviction. People marvel at how cleverly the shrubbery is crafted to resemble this or that animal, but the fact is that the shrubbery itself is not real. Seeing leads only to believing in what is not true.
The wonders of Disney World captivate young and old alike to such an extent that parents use their children as the excuse to visit the Magic Kingdom and its neighboring extravaganzas. We know going into the park that we are entering a world of fantasy, but the sights seem to confuse that earlier conviction. People marvel at how cleverly the shrubbery is crafted to resemble this or that animal, but the fact is that the shrubbery itself is not real. Seeing leads only to believing in what is not true.
Maybe sleepwalking is too dramatic a metaphor for the way we live our lives before God opens our eyes. But it will do until something better comes along. I do not know much about the biology of sleep and thus of sleepwalking, but the professionals are not too sure of much of it either. What we do know is that some people walk about a house, treat porch railings as tightropes, and engage in hazardous dances at heads of stairs -- not noticing the awakened world around them or remembering the path next morning. Some functions are there: eyes are open, hands stretch out. But the sleepwalker does not really know what is going on.
Wayne Brouwer
Sometimes we see people who are wide-eyed with wonder. Children especially can appear this way, in part because of the size of their eyeballs. Our eyeballs grow very little during the course of our lives, and certainly not at the same rate as the rest of our bodies' organs. For that reason children stare at life with eyes bigger in proportion to their faces than those of adults. Compared with big people, children's eyes dominate their facial features and can thus appear more piercing and inquisitive.
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me...
While all five of our senses help us connect with our environment, we tend to rely more dependently on our sight than on smell, taste, hearing, or touch. We are people who trust our eyes before we will accept input from our other senses. Missouri claims that it is the "Show me...
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