Who doesn’t love a “Top Ten” List?  There is even a website devoted to the listing of lists of top ten things.  There you can find . . . The Top Ten Scariest Animals on Earth The Top Ten Countries with the Best Food The Top Ten Most Terrible Events in History The Top Ten Greatest People of All Time The Top Ten Most Common Geography Mistakes, and The Top Ten Things You Learned in School that Are Now Useless Now, I realize that I only listed six items of what you would find on the “top tens” website, but I will now make up for that. I am going to do the website two better. Here are, in my opinion, the top twelve quotes from Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together. (Why? Because twelve is better than ten!). I figured this would be a great way for us to think through

There are careers I just would not want. I would not want to be a mortician. In my opinion, it’s a dead-end job. I would not like to assist a doctor giving colonoscopies. Now, maybe it is better than being a professional colonoscopy patient, but I am not so sure I want to probe the differences. I would not want to be a corrections officer. Imagine doing that for 10 to life? Nor would I want any part of these real-life jobs: a roadkill collector, a crime-scene cleaner, a manure inspector, a zoo cleaner or a priest. That’s right, a priest. I definitely would not want to be a priest. Why? Simple, I don’t want to hear your confessions. Perhaps, I could listen to confessions from people I didn’t know, but hearing them from people I know and love, no thank you.   We are looking at Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

In our previous post, we asked, “What caused the Titanic to sink?” In this post, we want to ask the “who” question, as in, “Who was the one most responsible for the disaster?” This is also known as the “blame” question. Now obviously, the captain should shoulder the bulk of the blame (after all, he was the captain); and his executive officer did absolutely nothing to help save the day, but neither of these gentlemen would be at the top of my list. My number one target to blame is the ship’s radio operator, Jack Philipps. Long before there was a crisis with an iceberg, Jack was dealing with a crisis of his own. See, the day before the Titanic sank, the radio went out, and that meant he was way behind. Thankfully, the radio had been fixed, and that was a very good thing. Now back in the day,

Here are seven simple ways the Titanic disaster could have been avoided. Build it with a double-hull. Single hulls save money. Double hulls save lives. Use steel rivets, not weaker wrought-iron rivets (40% of the 3 million rivets used to weld together the hull’s steel planks were inferior).  Seal the top of the watertight bulkheads. Watertight bulkheads are great if the water is shallow, but if the water gets deep and you haven’t sealed the tops of the bulkheads, water will just flood over the top, making a watertight bulkhead a waterfall bulkhead. When in dangerous waters (especially where you cannot see too far ahead of you), slow down or stop completely. In other words, don’t continue going at near maximum speed. Other ships in the North Atlantic that night took this advice to heart. None of them sank. Once you see an iceberg dead ahead, turn the ship immediately.

They’re back. Worms. Thousands of them. All slithering about in our backyard. There are big worms and little worms, fat worms and thin worms, disgusting, slimy worms and more disgusting, slimy worms. And they are literally everywhere, meaning you can’t take a step without ending up with worm mush on your shoes. That’s not completely true. They are everywhere, but as soon as you get too close, the worms scamper back into their holes like pieces of spaghetti being sucked up by Lady and the Tramp. Be alarmed. Be very alarmed. There are worms everywhere. And nobody knows why. For months, our worms stayed underground, just trying to stay warm.  But an early spring has changed their minds about going topside; and when it rains, it’s like it’s spring break. According to most experts, worms come out after a rain because it is easier to move about when the surface

Jack Adams made this helpful distinction: “If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle.” Today, we want to talk about the miracle of free advice, so let’s start with a quiz. Which of the following is good advice and which is worthless twaddle? If it is good advice, say, “amen,” after reading the statement. Here we go. . . . “Never insult the alligator until after you have crossed the river.” “Never do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to a paramedic.” “If you find a toilet in your dream, don’t use it.” “If attacked by a mob of clowns, go for the juggler.” We are looking at chapter 3 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship. It is odd for a book on Christian community to devote a whole chapter to being

It’s February. Even though our winter has been incredibly nice by any standard you may suggest (except skiing), all of us are ready to move on to spring. And that is why Groundhog’s Day is such a big deal. We all want Punxsutawney Phil to come out of his burrow, fail to see his shadow and announce that spring will be early this year. That is, unless you live in Canada. If you live in Canada, you don’t care what some Pennsylvanian rat in a hat thinks. You’ll get your weather prognostication from Wiarton Willy, thank you very much! But that’s also true about many other locations because there are at least NINE groundhogs in the weather-predicting business. We already know of Phil in Pennsylvania and Willie in Ontario, but there is also Staten Island Chuck, Dunkirk Dave (New York) Jimmy the Groundhog (Wisconsin), General Beauregard Lee (Georgia), Buckeye Chuck