Why nations do the thing they do, writ small: Prophecy from Peanuts Charlie Brown comes in to find his sister Sally carrying her clothes into his room. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “Big … — Charles Schultz
Ken Sehested,
Text: Hebrews 2:5-12 (The Message)
The main title of this sermon, “remembering the future,” is a nonsensical notion. How can you remember the future since it hasn’t happened yet? Maybe if you love science fiction, or if you’re a fan of the actor Michael J. Fox, you can imagine going “back to the future.” But remembering the future?
How silly is that, in a grown-up world?
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 13 September 2017 • No. 136
¶ Processional. “She's a rounder I can tell you that / She can sing 'em all night, too / She'll raise hell about the sleep she lost / But even cowgirls get the blues.” —Emmylou Harris, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 6 September 2017 • No. 135
¶ Processional. “Ice El Hielo,” La Santa Cecilia [Lyrics in English translation: “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is loose over those streets. / We never know when it will be our turn. / They cry, the children cry at the doorway, / They cry when they see that their mother will not come back.”]
Read more ›by Nancy Hastings Sehested
It was the last night of Vacation Bible School at the Sweet Fellowship Baptist Church. All week our five year olds rehearsed the story of Pharaoh and Moses to dramatize for their parents. All four boys wanted to be mean ‘ole Pharaoh.
With the church pews filled with family, the performance commenced. Our wee Pharaoh sat on his throne holding his plastic sword. Then little Moses walked up to him with his shepherd’s crook and said, “Pharaoh, stop hurting my people. Let my people go.”
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 29 August 2017 • No. 134
¶ Processional. “The Flood Blues,” Louis Armstrong & Hot Seven Band featuring Bertha “Chippie” Hill.
In Scripture, water can symbolize either deliverance or death, salvation or destruction, healing or harm, prosperity or peril, blessing or curse, assurance or threat. What follows is a selection of such texts.
§ . . . the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. —Genesis 1:2
§ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. —Genesis 1:21
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
Listen, all you who stagger in desert waste,
disgraced by gloom’s unremitting groan, dragged
daily to death’s gate and the sea’s drowning flood.
The Blessed One stands at the gate of plenty.
The Beloved waits by the well of refreshment.
Signs of the Times • 23 August 2017 • No. 133
Afghanistan is "easy to march into, hard to march out of."
—Alexander The Great (4th century BCE)
Signs of the Times • 16 August 2017 • No. 132
¶ Processional. “O troubled dust concealing / An undivided love / The Heart beneath is teaching / To the broken Heart above.” —Leonard Cohen, “Come Healing”
by Ken Sehested
This article was originally published in Baptist Peacemaker magazine in 1995. Th
e version below is slightly edited.
One of the up-and-coming stars on the humor scene in the U.S. is Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck If . . ." standup comedy (now in multiple illustrated book form and soon, I'm told, to be a television offering).
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