Chip Shots

I was a little nervous when Chris came to our youth group. He and I were friends from the football team in high school. Both of us had moved from end-of-the bench roles our junior year to starting positions our senior year. I was fast, and played cornerback. He was strong, and played linebacker. As juniors, we were both on the meat squad. Our assignment was to play the opposing team’s offense and defense during each week of practice. Our team finished second in our state that year. Let’s just say this: playing meat squad was not fun. Chris and I commiserated together a lot. During that time, Chris discovered that I went to church, and more than that, liked it. He thought it was a little strange, since he had mostly given it up since his first communion. The idea that a friend of his actually enjoyed church seemed foreign to him. That was our junior year. A lot had changed since then. Now we were seniors: it was our turn to beat up on the meat squad. (I liked that much better, by the wa...

Last Saturday evening I stopped at Circle K to get a cup of coffee. While there, I heard an older gentleman ask the attendant how to get to the theater to see the production of “Hot ‘n’ Cole.” The attendant was unsure, so I pitched in to help. “Take Cave Creek Road back to Carefree Highway. Turn left. At 60th Street, turn right, and ….” Hmmm. If you know where the theater is, you know that things are a little sketchy from that point on. The theater sits in the middle of school property, virtually invisible from the road at night. I hesitated. We were holding up the line. He was a bit hard of hearing. I didn’t want to lead him astray. They were nearly late already. “Let me explain it to you at the car so the rest of the group can hear,” I said. I thought I might reduce the margin for error by telling several people. Sure enough, five people were in the vehicle. One of them pulled out a pad of paper. I started again, becoming less and less confident as I proceeded. I told them my cell ph...

Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off because of a vow he had taken (Acts 18:18). This simple sentence fascinates me. Why was it included in the scriptures? Just before he left for Syria, the apostle Paul got a haircut. His biographer, a doctor named Luke (who wrote most of the New Testament, by the way) tells us that it had something to do with a vow he had taken. Did Luke know what vow it was and conceal it from us? Or was its essence known only to Paul? It doesn’t seem fair. After all, we read the Bible in order to gain spiritual enrichment. If Paul had taken a vow, shouldn’t we know something about it? Why keep us in the dark? Or maybe the fact that we don’t know is precisely the point. Perhaps the content of his vow is of less consequence than the fact that he made one. Maybe the writer merely wants us to realize there was more to Paul than what met the eye. His spirituality was not always on public display. Some have speculated that Paul had taken the Nazirite vow, a vow most...