This is something that I wrote for my church a little while back: In the book of Acts (found around the last 1/8th of the Bible), Jesus tells his followers, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”

I recently reconnected with an old seminary friend of mine – Phillip Stokes.  Phillip has been very busy since seminary.  He lived in the Middle East, predominantly Jordan, for a number of years where he studied Arabic (the language of the Qur’an) along with Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew, various Aramaic

 – I’m just following orders.  – I’m just doing my job.  – If I don’t do it, they’ll just get someone else to do it.  – It’s okay, they’re rats, leaches, terrorists, scum, etc.*  – It’s for the greater good.^ It is pretty safe to say that more human suffering,

Earlier this week I posted a write up I did on what the Qur’an says, based on my first reading of the Qur’an (That I might have better titled, “My First Reading of the Qur’an”).  You can read that HERE. The post sparked a conversation on Facebook with one of

You can’t understand Islam (meaning ‘devotion to God’) without understanding the Qur’an (meaning ‘reading’ or ‘reciting’) and they say that the best way to understand a book is to read it – so that is what I did.  I wanted to know what it said, not what people said it

Sometimes when we disagree with someone, one or both parties believe the engagement can’t be over until there is a clear winner – till all parties agree on who or what is “right.” This is an unfortunately common dynamic in human interactions because in so many situations there is no

Leaders are supposed to have a Vision – the ability to see a new and better future for their people, the ability to help their people see that future with them, and to lead them towards it. It just sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Here is a confession: most of the

Islam and Muslims are a hot topic these days.  Just today more people were shot and blown up in Europe – Brussels this time.  Little is known at this point about who did it beyond that at least one now dead attacker was shouting in Arabic before he died. For

Lyra (my three year old daughter) was sitting quietly in a chair on our back deck – a very unusual thing for our talkative and active little girl. I sat down beside her and asked, “How was school today?” Looking at her hands and in a sad little voice she

On August 28th, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of an endless sea of black Americans and white Americans and gave these words to the longings of every soul who had gone to incredible lengths to stand with him on that hot summer day: And so even