Mark 1:9-11 In Latin, to bless is benedicere. The word “benediction” that is used in many churches means literally: speaking (dicto) well (bene) or saying good things of someone. In the Old Testament, it was the tradition for each father to pass on a blessing to his children before he died. This blessing was much…
Mark 1:9-11 In sixth grade, my best friend Tom and I both tried out for the part of Santa Claus in the school play. It was a singing part and my aunt tried to help me sing with a deeper voice. (Good luck.) I got the part and my friend Tom told me I got…
Mark 1:1-20 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. 19 When he had…
II Peter 3:1-18 When I first became a follower of Jesus in the early 1970s, there was a lot of excitement about the return of Jesus. Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold 28,000,000 copies. In this book he said that the 1970s were the era of the Antichrist and that the…
various Mark Twain was an American author and two of his most popular books are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. These books share the same characters and so the second of the two books, Huckleberry Finn, begins with this: You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the…