By MIKE PATRICK As a high school student, my understanding of prophecy focused on predicting or foretelling the future. Not long after that Hal Lindsey’s book, Late, Great Planet Earth became a best seller and a movie. A few years later, as a college student, I began hearing that prophecy dealt more with forth-telling or what we might call preaching.
Read moreBy MIKE PATRICK Psalms of lament typically begin with gloom and end with gladness, sorrow ends with shouting, tears turn to triumph. However, Psalm 88 is the only Psalm that ends in gloom, that ends with a word of darkness. Famous theologian Walter Bruggemann says, “Psalm 88 is an embarrassment to conventional faith.” The psalmist’s lament reeks with honest misery,
Read moreby Mike Patrick This time of year, many people are joining health clubs in order to get back in shape after the holidays. That includes senior adults. In 2016, my wife, Nancy, attended a three-day workshop at the Cooper Institute in Dallas. She and about a dozen other people from around the country earned their certificate in senior adult exercise.
Read moreBy Mike Patrick Evelyn Bailey became a well respected artist in San Antonio. Her father deserted the family for another woman and left her mother to raise the children. In addition to enduring that difficulty, Evelyn (as well as one of her sisters) contracted polio as a child. Following experimental surgeries, she had a severe limp the rest of
Read moreBy Mike Patrick Bob May, born to a Jewish family in New York in 1905, left for Chicago when the family lost all their wealth during the Great Depression. He found low-paying employment as an in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward. However, life became harder a few years later when a doctor diagnosed his wife, Evelyn, with cancer in 1937.
Read moreby Mike Patrick A middle-aged woman visited with a counselor because of her depression. Joy in life had evaporated over time. She hated her job and had difficulty getting through the day. She started her morning with energy and feeling upbeat. However, it got worse by the hour. The counselor thought that the way she lived her life at work
Read moreBy Mike Patrick Nancy and I decided to get away for a few days at Thanksgiving because of our busy schedules—her grading English papers at the university and me starting a new teaching series at the hospital. We chose simply to go with no specific plans other than to relax—read, watch movies, eat. We left Wednesday afternoon and managed the
Read moreBy Mike Patrick In a former graduate school course, a student in her mid 30’s shared with the ministry class her assignment of a pastoral experience visiting in the hospital. After introducing the setting and role playing the parts in class, everyone reflected with her on that encounter. The patient, a severely intellectually challenged man, did not give any response
Read more
Spirit Of Abilene 