Thinking Upward Blog

Thursday, November 27, 2025

How’s Your Oughtobiography Coming?

Last Saturday I headed to Jackson for a hospital visit. It was a glorious day as I traversed the verdant hills of the Mississippi countryside. But my mind was momentarily preempted from the beauty by the name of a friend of...

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Thursday, November 13, 2025

Beautiful Feet

Jaffa, biblical Joppa, sits atop a hill jutting out into the sapphire Mediterranean, Israel’s ancient seaport and historic gateway to the world. Restored today, Old Jaffa’s cobblestone alleys wind past buildings older than America. Filled with art galleries and restaurants, the...

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Thursday, October 30, 2025

The Root or The Fruit?

My home in Michigan was locked in the icy grip of winter. I, on the other hand, had happily escaped for a few weeks to the tropics. One free afternoon, I was making the rounds with a gardener friend. He...

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Thursday, October 16, 2025

A Life Of Purpose Or A Noble Lie?

Some years ago, I was invited to speak at a girls’ school in the picturesque town of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. I could tell the students were very sharp and fully engaged.  As I presented to them the reasonableness of Christianity, there...

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Thursday, October 2, 2025

The Better Missionaries

Under a cloudless azure sky, my friend Sandy and I were sitting in a 13’ Boston Whaler. It was riding on a gentle swell in the turquoise Caribbean, far out beyond sight of land.  He and I had come to preach...

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Thursday, September 4, 2025

The Scientist’s Greatest Discovery

I wouldn’t be surprised if my paternal grandfather had tartan blood in his veins. Scotland hardly appears on a world map, but, as he loved to tell me, Scottish influence in the world far outweighs its population or geography. Scotland has...

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Thursday, August 21, 2025

Life Finds A Way

If you were going to write a poem about the wonders of our glorious springtime, here are some rhyming words you might find useful: sclerenchyma and parenchyma.  Just kidding. Who writes poetry anymore? But if you’ve ever wondered at the amazing...

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Thursday, August 7, 2025

God The Book Keeper

The Holy Bible is the only great book without a title. It’s so special it didn’t need one. “Holy” means “set apart” from every other book, since it’s the only one from heaven. “Bible” is just the Greek word BIBLION, which...

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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Dead Right

James Calvert was born January 3, 1813, the son of a tenant farmer. As a boy, he was apprenticed to a printer, skills he later used in preparing the first Fijian Bible. When he, his wife Mary, and two others left...

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