Author Archives: jackpelham

First it tried to kill him in the slaughter of the innocents. And though that failed, things were tolerable for a time—Until he started preaching and doing mighty worksThat proved he was really something.

Some get so busy with lovingThat they never take the timeTo make sure they have got it just rightAnd are doing it as Jesus would have done.

Life’s big events happen on one timelineAnd the reckoning of them on another—The latter being often the more important,For I do believe we were put here Both to learn and to decide.

It’s easy to underestimate the difference between the person who tries to do what’s right and the person who always tries to do it! Here are some brief observations from my time on Planet Earth so far:

One huge divide in Christianity is over the question of whether Jesus died so that believers could overcome in their struggle against sin, or so that they wouldn’t have to. The way that people answer that question seems to have … Continue reading →

I had gathered that he wasn’t the eloquent sort, but it seemed that he had something he wanted to express throughout our conversation. And I think I managed to piece it together at length. It was something like this: “I … Continue reading →

We’re all different from each other—to some degree. And we’re all like one another—to some degree. OK, I get that. And special attention is being paid to this in cognitive science these days, the idea being that most of us … Continue reading →

Him: “You always have to be right!”Me: “Thanks for noticing. I wish we both suffered from that virtue.”

“If you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” Daniel Gilbert. Stumbling on Happiness. What you don’t know about your own religion is that if you are like most people, certain of … Continue reading →

Mere ignorance stands invisiblyIn the place of what we could know,As the blank spaces in a warehouse markThe missing inventory that we would have Acquired by now had we acquired it by now.