Coming Up Sunday, June 13

On Sunday, we'll continue our new series, "What God Wants for You." This week's divine wish is "Wisdom," drawing on the Canticle of Wisdom, found in Proverbs 3 and 4. "Get wisdom, get understanding," says the Lord. The challenge, of course, is how to learn that knowledge.

Like last week, this is a large and potentially complicated topic. Seeking focus, I've found an unorthodox approach -- the game of baseball. In particular, I think we'll spend a little time thinking about James Earl Jones' great monologue at the end of "Field of Dreams":

In particular, we'll think about baseball's constancy and its simplicity, and how that relates to the wisdom God wishes for each of us.

Resurrection in Scripture

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled by asking about resurrections in the Bible -- or stories of presumed resurrections, in the case of Herod believing that Jesus was John the Baptist -- and then discovering that there were several more than I remembered. While doing some reading today, I came across a list of resurrections in the Scriptures.

The list is as follows:

• the son of the widow of Zarephath by Elijah
• the son of the Shunammite woman by Elisha
• a corpse thrown into Elisha's grave by Elisha (technically, by Elisha's own corpse)
• Lazarus by Jesus
• the daughter of Jairus by Jesus
• the son of the widow of Nain by Jesus
• Dorcas, also called Tabitha, by Peter
• Eutychus by Paul

Plus the biggest of them all, Jesus' own resurrection. Which is more than I remembered, and may be more than you remembered too. Even minister's fail pop-quizzes from time to time. It's embarrassing, though, if it's the minister's own pop-quiz.