I suppose the unexamined life is not worth living may be right for the most part. However, is it possible to have an over-examined life? In the last several years, I have been in conversations with people young and old about what it means to do something meaningful with their lives. For the young, it is mostly a question of how to invest their future years in a fulfilling and purposeful career – or series of careers. For many, this leads them to nonprofit work or social entrepreneurship as they have serious doubts about the value of either a corporate career or “menial” work. For the older, it is often…

None of us thought it would end the way it did. It began with small, almost unnoticed decisions by Mrs. Britton, our Sunday School Superintendent in the Baptist church where I grew up. Every year there was a Sword Drill competition to reward how well we had learned to locate Scripture. Standing with our closed Bibles, Mrs. Britton would call out a verse. We would throw open our Bibles and when we found the verse, step forward, recite the verse and then step back. It was the rule that the verse had to be read from the page to show we had found it and not simply memorized it. Now…

The story of Abram’s calling begins at the end of the line. If you trace the descendants of Adam through Noah and then to Terah, the line of family was about to disappear because Sarai, the daughter of the first-born of the last of Adam’s line was barren. While it had survived against great odds – it was about to be extinguished. For 1,000 years between Noah’s covenant and Abram there had been no word from The Lord. “This is the sign of my covenant” – and then silence for a millennium. I’ve wondered how they were able to live on so little from God when we expect to hear…