StephenBarkley.com

Merry Christmas everyone! I’m looking forward to spending some time with family over the holidays.  I hope you are too. See you in 2008!

You can’t love people collectively. — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Salt of the Earth) I don’t play the lottery. I don’t have any biblical justification for my views (other than the implications of stewardship); I just don’t need another way to lose my money! One of the things I’ve heard people complain about is the taxation [...]

The man to whom God is all in all, who feels his life-roots hid with Christ in God, who knows himself the inheritor of all wealth and worlds and ages, yea, of power essential and in itself, that man has begun to be alive indeed. —George MacDonald (Unspoken Sermons) You’ve got to love a surprise [...]

The Lord has multiplied his knowledge . . . For there went forth a stream, and it became a great river and broad; indeed it carried everything, and it shattered and brought (it) to the Temple. And the restraints of men were not able to restrain it . . . For it [the water] spread [...]

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll. — Horatio G. Spafford, “It is Well With My Soul” The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest point of dry land on the planet. Since elevation is measured by Sea level, the Dead Sea is [...]

If our waters are polluted it is not because God is exercising some tyrannical power over us; it is because we foul our own streams. —David L. Barr (Tales of the End) On my holidays in Bancroft, I picked up a copy of Joe Kane’s book, “Running the Amazon”. The book details the first complete descent [...]

Hi, Donna, Ryan, and I are off on a week’s holidays in Bancroft.  I’ll get back to Ezekiel and the water issue next week. Thanks for reading, Steve.

Just as the altar needed to be cleansed of its defilement before the temple worship system could be established, so the land must be renewed before it can play its intended role in the deity-nation-land relationship. — Daniel I. Block (The Book of Ezekiel: Chapters 25-48) I remember looking for my first real apartment with [...]

The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood— Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday Good. — T. S. Eliot (Four Quartets 2: East Coker) Nothing brings people to church like food. Hold [...]

The tree of American economy is rooted in the toxic soil of unbridled materialism, a culture that extols greed, a false standard of values that puts short-term profits over societal health, and a distorted calculus that measures human worth by personal income instead of character, integrity, and generosity. — Jim Wallis (God’s Politics) Samuel warned [...]