Opinion

Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order on Feb. 19, 1942 that excluded Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The next month, he created the War Relocation Authority that forcibly moved people to spend the next three years in internment camps in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and elsewhere. Despite the president’s orders, Baptist missionaries urged Americans following the attacks on Pearl Harbor to keep sharing God’s love to Japanese people.

Our oldest child had a birthday recently. She is now grown and married, with children of her own. But you just never forget the birth of your first child. I was a pastor, so can you guess where we were when my wife went into labor? At a Wednesday night church fellowship supper! If I had been paying attention, I would have realized that this event was a portent. Our children’s lives would be forever impacted — for good or ill — by the church.

During a trip to Colorado as a child, I found gold. I had previously devoured Jack London’s “Call of the Wild,” imagining myself out in the Canadian Yukon or the Alaskan Klondike finding gold. Unable to convince my parents to take me to Alaska — I unsuccessfully suggested this family vacation every year as a child — the Colorado Rockies at least fit the image in my gold-panning dreams better than Missouri. And then it all came true. I found gold.

Is Valentine’s Day a Christian holiday? Well, yes and no. No, it is not a day on the Christian calendar like Good Friday, Easter or Christmas. In that sense, it is not technically a Christian holiday.

The recent passing of astronaut John Glenn has revived interest in our country’s early space flights. I remember as an elementary student being herded into our school library so we could all watch this brave man in an oversized tin can hurtling through the inky black void.

By calendrical coincidence, we have two national celebrations this Jan. 16.

One is the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the best-known and honored figures of the 20th century. The other is the birth of religious freedom in America

“[Lord] when I am afraid, I will trust in You.”

These words from the Psalmist are certainly applicable for us today. If we didn’t already have sufficient reasons for concern, recent events have certainly given us cause.

Since my election in November to serve as the ninth editor of Word&Way, several faithful subscribers have shared with me how they have read Word&Way since they were kids. I understand. I recall bringing the Word&Way in from the mailbox as a child.

In 1787, so the story goes, a Russian named Grigory Potemkin erected a portable, fake village in order to impress the visiting Empress Catherine II.

Thus the phrase “Potemkin village” has come into our lexicon to describe anything literal or figurative that is constructed in order to deceive others into thinking that the situation is better than it really is.

My favorite Christmas movie is "A Christmas Story," which tells the story of Ralphie Parker, a nine-year-old boy and his desire to receive an official Red Ryder carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a sundial for Christmas.

The problem that Ralphie faces is all of the adults in his life are against him receiving the gun as a Christmas present because, as they say, "he'll shoot his eye out."