Hurricanes are devastating events. It is hard to comprehend the suffering the people endure -particularly in the aftermath of a Category 4 or 5 storm.  With tears in my eyes, I have observed brave people from all walks of life rescue thousands of people from dangerous flood waters.  In most of those cases, men have risked their lives…

We are into the NFL season.   I am pulling for the  Minnesota Vikings.  I have to admit that my bride and I get  “jacked up” over our team.  The Star Tribune recently had an article in which  Sam Bradford, our quarterback, talked about his faith.  The bar has been raised high for this coming season.  Our quarterback in under a…

This is another of those personal blogs from yours truly, brother Al.  Yesterday (Aug. 31st) was not a good day for me.  Using the analogy of a storm, I would say my day started out rather sunny and peaceful.  I was looking forward to being at my desk studying, praying and writing.  In the afternoon…

Here is a quote from New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright on transgenderism.  “The confusion about gender identity is a modern, and now internet-fuelled, form of the ancient philosophy of Gnosticism.  The Gnostic, one who ‘knows’, has discovered the secret of ‘who I really am’, behind the deceptive outward appearance (in Rifkind’s apt phase, the…

Men, we are coming into turbulent waters in the coming days due to the “alt-right” and “alt-left” movements in our country, venting their deep anger concerning the direction of our nation.  I plead with you not to be influenced by the inflamed rhetoric, both by the participants and the media’s coverage.  We read in Isaiah 8:12 -13, “Do not call conspiracy everything that…

Church historian Robert Louis Wilken has made this  pertinent observation regarding  the church in America.  “Nothing is more needful today than the survival of Christian culture, because in recent generations this culture has become dangerously thin.  At this moment in the church’s history in this country it is less urgent to convince the alternative culture in…

I often read N.T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament.  I was struck, recently with his use of the word “calculate” instead of “credited” (NIV) or “counted” (ESV & NAS), when declaring a person being right in God’s sight.  “Now when someone ‘works,’ the ‘reward’ they get is not calculated on the basis of generosity, but on the basis of…

Recently, David Brooks wrote an editorial in the New York Times entitled, “How to leave a mark on people.”  “Some organizations are thick, and some are thin,” Brooks explains.  “Some leave a mark on you, and some you pass through with scarcely a memory…a thick institution becomes part of a person’s identity and engages the whole person – head,…

A new song by Selah entitled  “Broken Ladders” speaks to one of the spiritual “land mines” in male spirituality.  Here is the refrain: “All you ever wanted was my heart/My heart, my simple heart/To You that’s all the really matters/Why do I feel I have to reach/Believe I have to rise/When you never said I had to climb/These…

I owe the poet Robert Bly a debt for the image of a wild man back in the early 90’s.  After reading “Iron John” I wanted to be a soulful man, even though I was frightened and insecure about the condition of my soul.   In the 80’s Bly observed, “Every modern male has, lying at the bottom of his psyche, a…