Colossians 1: 1-14 (links validated 6/21/22)

Elements of this week’s Epistolary Lesson are faintly reminiscent of Huck Finn’s experience with prayer. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck recounts how his foster mother, Miss Watson, tried to teach him to pray. “Miss Watson … took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow, I couldn’t make it work.”...

always good insights!

Lew Smedes defied the 20-1 odds of surviving lungs spattered with blood clots. When his doctor congratulated him, he didn’t feel particularly grateful, partly because he hadn’t thought at all about dying. A couple of nights later, however, Smedes felt himself what he called “seized with a frenzy of gratitude.” He recalls, “My arms rose straight up by themselves, a hundred-pound weight could not have held them at my side. My hands open, my fingers spread, waving, twisting, while I blessed the Lord above for the almost unbearable goodness of being alive on this good earth in this good body at this present time.”

The author of Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkein once had a good friend who was a committed atheist. Both men were professors and extremely well read. They would spend hours together discussing the twists and turns of ancient Norse legends and stories from the Middle Ages. Being a good Catholic, Tolkein would often try to persuade his friend Jack to consider the claims of Christianity but his fellow scholar always had a reason to reject them. The man could dissect a philosopher's speculation without even breaking a sweat. For every point suggested by Tolkein, Jack had a counterpoint. One evening Tolkein once again challenged his friend with the claims of the gospel. He pointed out that when his colleague would read myths of gods dying and then coming back to life, he was deeply moved but he stopped short of accepting the claims a Christianity because the story is simply a true myth, it really did happen. Tolkein's arguments were very unsettling for Jack and nine days later while on walking with his friends through a zoo C.S. Lewis, who was known to his friends as Jack became a believer. He would later write, "when we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did."...

("Mike Bullock is a contemporary poet, who has written a piece entitled, "Feet."...")