William Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, wrote, ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s...

We’ve heard of Abbas the Great, Yu the Great, Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, Antiochus the Great, Herod the...

The human instinct is to run away from danger. Firefighters and first responders run toward danger, which can puzzle others. Jesus was a...

I heard a pastor tell this story. True or false, I don’t know. A missionary came and showed slides of impoverished teen girls,...

In 101 Dalmatian, Rollie tells his mother, “I am so hungry I could eat a whole elephant” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAZCatyybLc)....

Sesame Street has a fun song, “The Opposite Stuff,” to teach children the opposites: up and down, near and far, and loud and soft...

Jonathan Swift, in 1729, wrote a sad but profound political satire, A Modest Proposal. It suggested that the poor Irish might ease their...

Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great, fell in love with his half-brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. Although Moses’s law mandated a...

You’ve seen magicians ask an audience to select a number and guess that number. They do that by psychologically manipulating the audience...

On December 16, 1773, American colonists, in protest of exuberant taxation, dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor that the British...

If we travel through Asia or google millstone pictures, we’ll see various sizes of millstones. Some are small for grinding spices, some...

Every Christmas, I watch the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey tries to keep a loan office open against the wishes of a banker...

Gamaliel, Paul’s teacher, was a remarkable man. The Jewish writings call him Nasi, “a prince.” He held a highly respected position in the...

In Eleven O’Clock Tick Tock, Bono sings, “We thought that we had the answers; it was the questions we had wrong.” The disciples were in a...

In 1975, Alice Mock, a white woman, was drinking with Wayman Cammile Jr., a black man. After several drinks, she invited him to her...

In Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade, Professor Jones is standing on the edge of a cliff. As he looks, he sees an entrance on the other...

The Passover celebration of the contemporary Hebrews is called Seder. At the beginning of the Seder festival, they open the door for...

In conversations, sometimes people guess the reason for someone’s question. If I ask a friend, “What’s for dinner?” He might say, “Why?...

Killing and displaying enemies on poles was an ancient practice. The Egyptians stuck a pointed pole through the stomachs or chests of...

My birthplace is called Nagercoil, meaning “cobra temple” (naga “snake” and coil “temple”). True to its name, we have a Hindu temple in...