Blog
Is Heaven a Lot of Malarkey?
If you take a quick stroll through the religion section of a bookstore, it might surprise you how many people are going to heaven these days but are not staying. Currently, there are no less than twelve such books for sale on Amazon about people who have taken a brief...
Entering 2015 With the God of Possibilities
When our children were young, we owned bicycles equipped with child seats. Riding the bicycle with one of our boys in a child’s seat was a fun way for us to spend time together. I got some exercise while one of the boys enjoyed the changes of scenery. We also talked...
Who is That Looking Back At Me?
When I was about the age of three, I had my first chance to sit on Santa’s knee. He was in the back of George Shipman’s Dixie Dandy, Close to the bottle drinks, meat section, and Christmas candy. A “Ho! Ho! Ho!” came from a mouth I could not see, Words...
Care For One Hundred In Liberia
The Bricks for Ricks Foundation recently contributed $2500 to the Care for One Hundred Campaign along with $1500 from the First Baptist Church of Jefferson to Dr. Olu Menjay on his recent visit to Gainesville First Baptist Church. Dr. Menjay is the Principal of Ricks...
God’s Ordinary is Still Miraculous
During Advent, stories of the miraculous emerge from our scripture readings. An angel appears to Mary, then Joseph, to ready them for a virgin birth. Angels appear to shepherds as they keep watch of their sheep during the night. Ananias and Sapphira, long awaiting the...
The First Gift: Evening and Morning
An Advent Devotional On our trip to Finland last summer, we were greeted by days filled with eighteen hours of sunshine. Now this sounds nice, but our biological clocks actually crave darkness. Like chickens that know it's time to roost because the sun goes down, our...
If Fear Wins the Day
Helen Cooper is a writer for the New York Times. Her coverage of the Ebola crisis is unique because she was born in Liberia and she still has family living there. Having immigrated to the United States, she escaped many of the civil war's atrocities which members of...
God, Lines, and Line Segments
A friend recently asked me, "Did God ever wonder where he or she came from?" Wow! That's not your everyday question and it required a lot of thought, like a math problem. Strangely, my mind raced back to geometry class and discussions about lines and line segments. A...
A Greater Tragedy
On September 10, 2001, First Officer Steve Scheibner sat down at his computer to check the American Airline flight log to see if there were any unassigned flights for the next day. As a twenty-year pilot of American, Steve was following his normal routine. The flight...
Foundation Gives $1000 to Fight Hunger in Liberia
During my first trip to Liberia in 1995, Olu Menjay and I visited Ricks Institute. It was closed because of the war, but the United Nations had a refugee camp on the campus of the Baptist school with 20,000 people. The people in the camp had been displaced from their...
Present Your Requests To God
Larry Stanton and his wife Rebecca are stateside, but it is not by choice. Ebola is keeping them from returning to Liberia where they have made a four-year commitment as missionaries. Rebecca is working with teachers at Ricks Institute in Virginia, Liberia, to help...
Resetting the Margins of Your Life
One thing all pages of books and printed documents have in common is the use of margins. Have you ever wondered, "Why have margins? Couldn't you get more words on the pages with them?" Just think of how many pages you could cut out of a book. I suppose you could cut...