By SUSAN PIGOTT Why did they name you Miryam, Bitter Sea? Did they know how bitter life would be eclipsed by your brothers? Little girl keeping watch over Moses’ basket on bloodied Nile waters. Fearless girl, bartering with Pharaoh’s daughter to pay your mother as wet nurse. Prophetess by the Sea of Reeds, leading the women singing and dancing, hand
Read moreBy PHILIP LeMASTERS Eastern Orthodox Christians begin Lent this year on Monday, March 11. That is when we we begin the most intense annual period of repentance as we prepare to follow our Lord to His cross and empty tomb. There could be no greater sign of the folly of exalting ourselves and condemning others than the Passion of Christ.
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By LORETTA FULTON Appropriately, Bishop Michael Sis prefaced the Ash Wednesday liturgy with a bit of education. Appropriate because the setting was Logsdon Chapel at Baptist-affiliated Hardin-Simmons University. The education and the liturgy would be repeated later in the day at United Methodist McMurry University and at Abilene Christian University, with ties to the Churches of Christ. Before the actual
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Editor’s Note: “A New Song” by Joshua Lain is one of the daily Lenten reflections written by members of Pioneer Drive Baptist Church. It is reprinted here with permission. By JOSHUA LAIN I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry
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By LORETTA FULTON Stepping inside St. Luke Orthodox Church already was an experience all its own, evoking holy mysteries, but it just got better with the addition of a 4 x 5-foot icon of the Theotokos, or Mother of God, behind the altar. The icon, with its unmistakable Byzantine style and deep, rich colors, shows Mary seated and holding the
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By LORETTA FULTON The only thing missing from the Feb. 27 meeting of the Abilene Association of Congregations was an altar call. Otherwise, it would have been “church,” not a “meeting.” The presentation by Dr. Kelvin J. Kelley, who was a church pastor before he was a professor, was that powerful. Kelley, associate professor of theology in Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon
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By LORETTA FULTON Ash Wednesday will be observed at several churches in Abilene, at all three universities, and even on the sidewalk next week. Leslie Dunlap, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, will be on the sidewalk in front of the church, 1202 S. Pioneer Drive, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 5:30 p.m. for “Drive-by Ashes.” Read
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By LORETTA FULTON United Methodists voted Feb. 26 in St. Louis to maintain the current wording in the church’s Book of Discipline concerning human sexuality issues. The denomination’s Council of Bishops, including Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe of the Northwest Texas Annual Conference, voted in May 2018 to support a plan that would have been more inclusive. That plan, and one
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THE IDLE AMERICAN Commentary by Dr. Don Newbury One was nationally renowned, known for the spoken word–the other, for words written down. The former was radio newsman Paul Harvey; the latter–as eloquent in print as Harvey was on the airways–was William Arthur Ward. They were genuine to the core. During these days when too much is called “fake news,” these
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