This year, I changed from my employer’s health insurance to Medicare. For most of my life, I paid Medicare taxes out of my salary. Now I receive Medicare health insurance until I die. I also pay for supplemental health insurance provided by my employer. Because of my retirement income, the …
Family Advantage
Three months after retiring from a long career, I started seminary as a full-time student. I was required to attend first-year student orientation. Frankly, I really did not want to participate in orientation. I was in my mid-fifties and had not been inside a university classroom in almost thirty …
Immigrants
In 2004, my wife and I accepted new assignments in The Hague (Den Haag per the locals), the capital of The Netherlands. We worked there for two years, then repatriated back to the United States. We did not speak Dutch, but the Netherlanders spoke fluent English and the office language was English. …
Church Buildings
In late 1981, I transferred from my first professional assignment in Los Angeles to Kingwood, a planned community located northeast of downtown Houston. Friendswood Development Company (FDC), a subsidiary of Exxon Corporation, developed Exxon’s extensive fee acreage into an award-winning residential …
Abraham’s Children
Why can’t Israeli Jews and Arabs live peacefully? How do these two religions and cultures interact within the State of Israel? This is a different problem from that experienced by the West Bank Palestinians who are within the occupied West Bank, where the majority population is Muslim. In Israel, …
Shorashim
Why can’t Israeli Jews and Palestinians peacefully co-exist? This question was posed in my last blog during my visit a few weeks ago to the Hebron Tomb of the Patriarchs (Cave of Machpelah). This question incorporates more than 3,000 years of complex Middle East history. Migrations, wars, and …
Machpelah
I returned to Austin late evening four days ago from a two-week tour of Israel and Jordan. My wife and I joined a Seminary-sponsored tour of the Holy Land. Named “The Friendship Tour,” it was a joint Jewish-Christian tour. The tour leaders were Rabbi Neal Blumofe, who teaches Old Testament and …
Balancing Telic and Atelic
It is ‘between’ times: Christmas has passed, and the New Year will begin in a few days. This is a pause period when I reflect on the past and plan for the upcoming year. Most people will look back on 2022 with mixed to negative feelings. The economy was a bust as inflation and the financial markets …
Humanities
I woke up this Saturday morning to a beautiful fall day in Austin. The morning was chilly after a cold front blew in yesterday. The wind blew hard from the north through overcast skies. It felt colder than the posted temperature. I walked briskly into the gym underdressed for the cold, but the …
The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (Part VI)
I try to steer clear of controversial subjects and listen to all sides. I believe in unity rather than division, although the United States has increasingly become more politically, racially, and socially divisive during my lifetime. I am not proud of this trend and have prayed for it to cease — …
The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (Part VI)Read More