Many years ago now when I was a teenager I went to visit a girl I knew in Texas over Thanksgiving She had a brother at Oral Roberts University so we took the bus from Lubbock Texas to Tulsa Oklahoma to visit him and the campus I did not know much about Oral Roberts but I was sweet on the gir

Luke is the one in his Acts of the Apostles who describes the event we celebrate this Sunday May 4 It is in contrast to the ascension he describes at the end of his Gospel In the latter there is great joy at Jesus going to his Father the ascension is the triumph or part thereof which f

Mark does not explicitly give us the purpose of his Gospel Certainly one can deduce that he is interested in encouraging Christians to follow Christ no matter what the cost for the rewards are great He also appears to want to show the injustice of the interpretation of Jesus that led to his d

The Bible is populated with many characters that appear briefly and then vanish from the scene Philip the most prominent person in Acts 8 is one of these Except for a brief mention of his name in 6 5 and 21 8 all we know about him involves two scenes of preaching--one to the Samaritans and one

In today s first reading we meet Samaria and Samaritans We know generally who they were though they are a hot spot in current study Samaria was a capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries often in trouble with the biblical historian of the period for roy

For the fifth Sunday of Easter the first reading continues with the Acts of the Apostles and the passage chosen raises a number of historical questions Luke again makes the point that the number of disciples continued to grow 6 1 which directs us not only to the acceptance of the message in g