O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! Massachusetts born and bred Wellesley College professor Katherine Lee Bates visited Colorado in 1913. She had traveled the […]
Two different people told me about the personal testimony Debra Blake shared at the recent ABC Women’s Prayer Brunch. I thought this would be a good contribution to our current series emphasizing how a person’s backstory can help us appreciate who they are, so I called and interviewed her. Debra has experienced a meteoric rise […]
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks […]
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” ― George Bernard Shaw, from his novel Immaturity Rev. Clinton L. Goodwin was one of Altadena Baptist Church’s senior members when I came to be Pastor in 1972. He had been one of the church’s founders in 1934, and […]
Sometimes personal backstories shed a lot of light on important events in human history. Take, for instance the familiar narrative of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke’s Gospel about the birth of Jesus. It may help if you take the time to read it right now. Elizabeth is described as a relative of Mary (the mother […]
Well, ABC finally made the front page of a local online newspaper, Pasadena Now. It’s not exactly what we had in mind, but it’s all good. After the protestors’ interruption, the speaker, District Attorney Jackie Lacey, went on to bring an inspiring message on the topic of “Can we make a difference?” Her answer was […]
I was proud to see one of ABC’s fine young people, Miles Kealing, standing before the church and community leaders at the January 20 Martin Luther King Celebration, sponsored by the Ministerial Alliance, at Metropolitan Baptist Church. Miles will be graduating high school this spring and has been accepted to enter the freshman class at […]
“The Best Song Ever” — that’s what the name Song of Songs means as the title of a beautiful love poem in the Jewish Old Testament. In our Christian Bible, the name of the book is the Song of Solomon. I describe it as a love poem, but that’s really too genteel a label. It’s […]
I stumbled across this B.B. King blues song and was fascinated by how much meaning and feeling were packed into its simple lyrics: Nobody loves me but my mother, And she could be jivin’ too. Now you see why I act so funny, baby, When you do the things you do. Wow! Think of the […]
Anne LaMotte writes, “My mind is a bad neighborhood I shouldn’t go into alone. It’s too often 4:00 AM in one’s mind, the hour of the black dogs, and there are so many muggers and drive-by shootings and piles of dog [doo] you step in just when you’re starting to feel better about things.” (Operating Instructions, […]