Northern Crossings

Most people think that being an orphan is a distinct disadvantage which it can be but being adopted by good people can be a definite advantage too.  It is possible to even have an asteroid named after you.  This is borrowed from...

  “We were only watching sheep huddled against the snow where David waited for the dawn 10000 grief’s ago. One was searching in the wild a lamb that strayed a part,  stumbling through wearisome ravines anxious and...

I have mentioned that I am plowing through “Grammars of Creation” by George Steiner.  It started our as a collection of Gifford Lectures and they must have been fascinating to listen to, but the reading is...

Coleridge claimed that “Kubla Khan” a great epic came to him whole and entire in sleep.  As he feverishly wrote it down and sought to finish it whole and entire in one sitting he was distracted by a “person...

Rev. Tom Puffe is one of those preachers that we talk about on this blog that shows the connections we have up here in the North Country.  He was in North Dakota for many years and his family is in Grand Forks.  Pastor...

So some wag at the New Yorker is upset that Chick-fil-A seems to be popular in New York City. He wondered how a company that had such creepy Christian traditionalism would dare invade the sacred cosmopolitan paganism of the...

Bill Moyers was the press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson a long, long, time ago. He was also an ordained Baptist minister. The story is told that one day he was at a dinner at the White House and a lot of people were...

“What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?” Chemical weapons are banned by International agreement.  100% of chemical weapons we were told, were out of Syria thanks to the...

The story of Jesus cooking breakfast for the disciples in one of the post Easter appearances has always intrigued me.  It brings to my mind the saying from our catechism, that where there is the forgiveness of sins there is life...

It is axiomatic that in the present environment there will be calls for banning guns.  Mass shootings bring out the gun banners and it is apodictic that the pro gun folks will list all the things that kill more people than guns...

So it rained last night and I woke up this morning to several inches of snow. It is always depressing at this time of the year.  One year in April all the snow accumulated over the whole winter had melted very quickly and in one...

I have been told that the Norwegian Bible translates the word “search” with the word “ransack”. I love this. Right off the bat I get an image in my mind of a bunch of Viking raiders sitting around with their Helga horns on...

President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod,  Matthew Harrison was the preacher at the opening of the Minnesota North Convention.  He travels to all of the Districts Conventions and I imagine that is a tough job.  I did not...

I have not had the chance to live stream the Minnesota North Convention but I have it on good authority that Rev. Don Fondow has been reelected and congratulations are in order.  I have said that I am not always sure that...