Israel intensifies strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza; and who can fault their resolve, considering the unspeakable atrocities by Hamas attackers, brutally cruel inhuman acts against other humans that can only be explained by ferociousness of hatred; in my lifetime only previously seen in Germans' treatment of conquered Volk, especially Jews. Israel is right in "never again" and in either strategic or tactical terms no manner of force is excessive in eradicating such evil from creation. Israel's overwhelming response was so inevitable that only hatred could explain Hamas' stupidity in bringing this war on themselves and their people.  Nations and Volk bring total war on themselves: read accounts of our settlement of Hamburg and Dresden. Read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." Some offenses are so extreme that calls for humanitarian restraint in response are misplaced. Hamas has made clear that the entire population of Israel, every man, woman and...

At 6:25 last evening, the day was closing with the sun having slipped away in a sunset that lasted barely long enough for me to grab my camera and snap a shot. From 7H porch, our sunsets and sunrises over St Andrews Bay seem most brilliant when there are clouds; and it's too hackneyed to say again that this is what life is like, sunrises and sunsets, clear skies, clouds and rain, but it's true, isn't it! ++++++++ The wars are too horrible to keep up with, maybe what stirs my nightmarish dreams of late, that continue, thrashing sleep again last night as nature's garbage man. You don't remember, but I certainly do, in the late 1930s and into the 1940s we lugged our garbage can from just outside the kitchen door, around the house, down the hill that was our front yard, to the end of the driveway where, the next day the city's garbage truck rolled by. It was a late 1920s or early 1930s stake truck with high stake sides, this was the South, remember, driven by a Whit...

  A question on an Old Testament test early in seminary was simply "God's behind" and the student's task was to make something of it.  Honestly, I don't recall how I did with that question, probably not well! IDK; but for me at this end of life, the value of any such question, and all such questions, is the impression that's still with me decades later: I remember. Cleverly worded test questions have assisted my recall all these years. In this case, God showed Himself physically to Moses.  Every interpersonal relationship is special and different:  God and Abraham have been characterized as "old drinking buddies."  God loved David as a father loves a son.  The relationship between God and Moses was much more tentative, and it was strained at Times, not warm, friendly, loving, but more like business partners, even more like God the Boss and Moses the Agent. And there was no unquestioning mutual trust at first; in the case of "God's Behind,...

  Dark out, 4:xx a.m., a small ship gliding by, around the turn, and out the Pass, heading for Progreso. Clearest sky imaginable, stars galore. Venus high in the east, Sirius the Dog Star, Orion high overhead and slightly south. Sirius: thinking of Harry Potter, seems to me Sirius is Harry's godfather, whose alternate form is a large wolfish dog.  Sirius is killed in the Harry Potter series, inaccessible behind the veil of death, but if I start from the beginning Sirius is still alive, which is it, dead or alive? Some have said eternity is like that, all eternity spread out like a screen and God sees past, present and future all at once. That's nonsense, but suppose it were so: conceivably, could I choose where to Be and keep starting there over and over again? Maybe that's what Hell is like? Or, Heaven? No, in the peace of death, all such possibilities are lost to us. Thank God, eh? we could be like Sisyphus, eh?   Following the Israeli-Hamas war too closely, so closely ...

The next five Sundays we shall be reading from First Thessalonians, which is Paul's first and, except for Philemon, simplest letter. It is an "occasional letter," which means that it wasn't just written out of the blue as a friendship letter, Paul wrote it for a reason, an occasion, to respond to something that was going on.  Maybe word about a problem or question had come to him in some way. In writing, Paul had an agenda, as indeed every writer has an agenda, a reason for writing. Paul is generally to give answers and/or instructions as he writes back to the members of a church that he has founded. That's the case with First Thessalonians. As in the case in all of Paul's writing, we do not have letters from Paul's correspondents, we have only Paul's side of the conversation (his letter), and so in order to understand why he wrote, what the problem was, in some cases who the adversary was, we make some intelligent assumptions or conclusions based on t...