Poimen Ponderings

I might be bias because I am Irish (some percentage anyway), but Saint Patrick is a hero of the Church to me.  After being kidnapped and taken as a slave to escape years later; he returned to his captor as a missionary to win the king’s heart and mind (and soul).  He return to save [...]

Being raised an Evangelical, I knew what the Gospel was and wondered why some denominations didn’t teach it.  I hear some of my brothers and sisters say they have never heard the Gospel in “such in such” church.  I am inclined to think there is an overall miscomprehension over what this Gospel is in the first place.
I grew [...]

0 Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
Hear Me!
I am small and weak
I need Your strength and wisdom!
Let me walk in beauty
And may my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things You have made,
Make my ears sharp to hear [...]

There is a movement to combine science and religion in an attempt to quantify empirically results of people’s faith.  There has been research on prayer and recovery of patients.  But, these are not truly scientific because they only give interpretations of observed reductional results without any control to the myriad of variables.  It only makes [...]

Recently, my wife and I attended an Army Ball for the celebration of the Centenial of Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s 100 years of serving and carring for our wounded and sick service members. Anyway, after enjoying the dinner, we ran into my previous battalion commander, LTC Greg Gadson.
May the Lord God continue to make [...]

Each day, creation reveals another level of humanity’s dependence on the other elements of nature.   We are dependent on water.   We are dependent on the sun for light, heat, and energy.  We are dependent on trees for fresh air, on plants and vegetation for food and nourishment.  We were not created simply out of the [...]

Christianity is full of paradoxes.  We cannot put our minds around the idea that God can be human.  Its blasphemous!  It is the great scandal.  Through that paradox, we gain life through death.  Solitude as loneliness and solitude as grace offers us another such conundrum.  One person speaks of sorrow while another experiences it as [...]

We seek after God because we want to experience Him; we want to know Him.  Yet, we often create barriers instead of bridging.  No matter who you are, we all tend to perform good works in order to please God, to gain His favor and blessing on our lives.  Some perform acts of penitence to [...]

The Church has focused on the deity of Christ, and understandably so, while professing Christ was fully human, but denying it in fear that it will weaken His image.  Think of this, we learn by mistakes.  From our infancy, we make discoveries by trial and error.  We are not born with aged maturity.  In order [...]

Over time, we have developed a sacred/secular dichotomy that splits hairs on every aspect of life such as in art, worldly/Christian media, clergy/laity, and career/calling. We have come to believe that one component is blessed while the other is left to defend itself. Each Christian bookstore is an example of how we have instituted this separation. One of the most [...]