Sturtz Stuff

Franklin's kite-lightning experiment changed things as we have seen over the last two posts. What I would like to offer here are some possible implications for those people who are followers of Jesus or a church leader. Perhaps by looking at this past event we might discover some lessons for our current cultural moment.  What does this make possible? That is a question that often goes unasked and thus unexplored. Yet we have heard stories that illustrate the asking of this question. We have heard stories about people who have overcome all kinds of physical and mental challenges. Often because they explored what was possible. If their legs did not work, they explored the use of their arms. If their eyes did not work, they examined the use of their hands and ears. When people have experienced failures in life many found new life in exploring what opportunities that failure created. Perhaps a chance to start over. Maybe it gave them a renewed sense of purpose. It alerted them to a met...

If you remember the story of Ben Franklin and his lightning experiment, do you remember the part about protracted theological objections? Me either.  Benjamin Franklin was many things during his lifetime. Among other things he was a scientist, writer, inventor and diplomat. He was also a slave owner and a founding father of America. Around the month of June in 1752 Franklin launched a kite into some storm clouds and made history. Will either he did or someone else did. Franklin was well known for his meticulous notes on each experiment that he performed. Interestingly, Franklin seems to have never made any notes about the kite-lightning experiment.1 So who knows. Prior to his kite-lightning experiment, Franklin had done considerable work attempting to understand electricity. In fact Franklin had achieved a kind of popular notoriety among his scientific contemporaries that he was perhaps the Galileo or Newton of his time. Our modern understanding of electricity and lightning are gre...

A lot of people have stories about horrible jobs. Gross tasks, appalling bosses, crazy co-workers. As ridiculous as some job tasks can be, none of us would have wanted to be a church bell ringer in the Middle Ages. Why? Being a church bell ringer in the Middle Ages could get you killed. Before the time of the Enlightenment (17th-18th century), people lived in a world that we would consider enchanted. People lived in a world that we modern folks would consider magical and backward thinking. Before the Enlightenment, things that we might give a scientific explanation for were often chalked up to some movement of unseen evil spirits or deities. Before the 17th and 18th centuries witch, demon, gnome, mermaid, and hobgoblin myths were familiar to people of all ages and classes. Widespread were reports that the devil entered into an animal or even a person. People thought devils were everywhere: in houses, in fields, on the streets, in the water, in forests, and in fires. The same was true f...

The home that I grew up in was at the top of a hill. A fairly steep hill at that. That same hill is where I learned to drive a 5-speed. My Father owned a small sized pickup truck called an Isuzu P'up. Just a bit smaller than a Ford S-10. The truck had manual steering as well as transmission. As soon as I had my learner’s permit my dad put me behind the wheel of his truck.  While driving with my Dad we were going up the steep hill that we lived on. About halfway up the hill my Dad told me to stop. He then told me to put the truck in first gear and to set the hand emergency brake. That way I could take my foot off the brake and only mess with the gas and clutch pedals. He told me that I needed to learn to start on a hill. Well I freaked out and stalled out a lot. Like a lot of times. Like a lot, a lot of times. Eventually we made it home which was only about 50 yards away!  Among the things learned that day was that often you and I have all the resources we need to solve our pro...

“ It is pointless to resist. ” That is what Darth Vader tells Luke SkyWalker as they both stand before the evil Emperor Palpatine. It is a pivotal moment. Will Luke succumb to the desire for power that has overtaken Darth Vader and the Emperor and join in their quest for domination or will Luke resist and in so doing possibly die? It is difficult not to feel that sentiment in recent times. Is it just me or does it seem like every week since about 2019 has been filled with one horrible historic event after another? COVID with daily death counts and arguments over masks, lock downs and vaccines. Horrific school shootings along with even more horrific mass shootings. Protests and riots. Disgusting displays of racism and a host of other terrible things. All of that is enough. Yet added to all of that is Russian military aggression and right-wing conspiracies that brought about actions that came dangerously close to altering the peaceful transfer of power in America. In the mix of all of th...

Sometimes you and I make life out to be more mysterious than it actually is. For example you could ask why you keep getting speeding tickets. Do you usually speed? If so then your speeding tickets are not that mysterious. Perhaps you might ask why your friendships are so full of conflict. Do you gossip about your friends? Is it that mysterious as to why your relationships have a lot of conflict when you gossip about them?  Often problems whose origins seem mysterious to us are really not that mysterious to others. The same is true for many of us who want the church to reach new people and are puzzled why that just isn’t happening. Maybe it’s not as mysterious as you think.  The stories about the Old Testament prophet Elijah are recorded in the last part of the book of First Kings and the first part of the book of Second Kings. We know very little of what Elijah said. We are told stories of wonders that he performed. He is probably known best for the challenge he issued the nat...

In the Bible God is specific about His concern for the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan/fatherless. It isn’t because he values them more than others. It is because their state of being makes them the most vulnerable in their society. God's concern is expressed all throughout the Bible. Here are just a few passages that highlight God's concern for the most vulnerable.  He makes sure that orphans and widows are treated fairly; he loves the foreigners who live with our people, and gives them food and clothes. So then, show love for those foreigners, because you were once foreigners in Egypt. - Deuteronomy 10:18-19  “Long ago I gave these commands to my people: ‘You must see that justice is done, and must show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need.” - Zechariah 7:9 Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. - Proverbs 14:31 Religio...

In May 2012 Marina Keegan graduated from Yale University. She wrote an essay for her graduating class entitled “The Opposite of Loneliness.” Part of her essay reads: We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together and are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s 4 am and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group texts. This scares me more than finding the right job or city or spouse. I'm scared of losing the web we’re in....

On August 8, 2011, just before sunrise, two car loads of white teens hit the road of Jackson Mississippi. They had been drinking through the night. At some point in the early morning they came to the conclusion that their mission was to find any black person and just mess them up. It did not take long to find their victim walking across the parking lot of the Metro Inn on the outskirts of town. His name was James Craig. James was a 49 year old autoplant worker and was walking to his car. The group attacked Anderson, beat him up and robbed him.  One of the teens, Deryl Dedmon Jr., after participating in the beat down took things to another level. While James was on the ground injured from his beating, Deryl walked over to his Ford F150. He turned his truck on and ran James over, killing him. It would be easy to write off this act off as the alcohol-fueled actions of some teennagers gone wild. But they didn’t set out to mess with just anyone. They purposely sought out someone who had...

It was a cool day in October. I was standing in the backyard of my parents' home. My Dad had asked me to put up a snow fence that ran across one side of the backyard. My parents' home was at the end of the street and surrounded by farmland on three sides. During the winter months, the wind would blow across the open farmland and pile snow on their driveway. Putting up the snow fence limited the amount of snow that would pile up in the driveway.  My Dad was concerned that he would not be able to get the fence up before winter. By this time my Dad had been fighting cancer for several months and his physical strength had diminished. The chemo treatments along with the aggressive nature of the cancer had zapped his body of energy and muscle mass. Sleeping and feeling tired occurred a lot for my Dad most days. Yet he knew what was happening to him and the more than likely outcome. And he also knew that winter would soon arrive. He had become concerned that without the snow fence, th...