Author Archives: Don Follis

Unspeakable is Os Guinness’ take on the utter mystery of evil and suffering.  It’s a very sobering read, but emotionally satisfying.  Guinness asks hard questions and somehow makes his peace with not knowing the answers.Guinness explores three sources of evil and suffering:  our bodies, nature and other human beings.  I have had countless discussions withContinueContinue reading “Making peace with what we cannot know”

Choose this day whom you will serve.  You have to choose everyday.  You will serve the Lord, or you will serve yourself.  But you will make a choose.  You’re not a robot.  From Carol Kent’s book A New Kind of Normal (Thomas Nelson, 2007) here are eight choices you can think about as you celebrateContinueContinue reading “You always get to choose”

I just finished Carol Kent’s A New Kind of Normal  — Hope filled choices when life turns upside down.  In 1999, Carol and Gene Kent watched their good life unravel when their only child was arrested and eventually sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.This book is Kent’s story of how youContinueContinue reading “Normal, really?”

"A Christmas Carol," a poem by eighteenth-century writer Christina Georgina Rossetti, always has fascinated me.  I read it every year.  See if you can see how Rossetti deftly moves the reader back and forth between the original Christmas scene, the present, and the future return of Christ the Lord.  The final 8 lines really bringsContinueContinue reading “Giving Jesus our heart at Christmas”

I read Matthew 1:1-17 this morning.  It’s Matthew’s version of Jesus’ ancestry.  Jesus’ forebears included children born of incest (Perez) and children born of mixed races (Boaz).  Solomon is in there, too.  Imagine stepping in this Christmas scene and someone trying to explain who Solomon is …"See that pretty woman sitting there to the leftContinueContinue reading “Accepting your ancestry at Christmas”

After John the Baptist was thrown in prison he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the Messiah  we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?"  This verse popped into my mind this morning as I read the New York Times and the story of thousands of Congolese fleeing their homesContinueContinue reading “Christmas tension: John the Baptist felt it too”

One of my favorite Christmas poems is "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell (1561-1595).  Southwell was a Jesuit priest during the time of intense religious-political conflict in England.  He was martyred in 1595.  Most of his poems were written from prison.  This poem is an strange, extended metaphor in which the baby Jesus is likenedContinueContinue reading “The fiery Babe”

Isaiah 40:3 says, "A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  Then the gloryContinueContinue reading “Transparency … A rare Advent gift”