by Teri Ong A “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.  John 8:44 I had a sad conversation with a young woman at church recently. She is in her early twenties and is studying business at the University of Northern Colorado. She was born in a refugee camp […]

by Teri Ong I am always excited for Loveland Orchestra concert nights, and we have one coming up this Friday (March 8). The unifying theme for this concert season is favorite pieces selected by members of the orchestra. I submitted two, and they both are part of this concert.  The first one was “anything by Dvorak.” We are playing his most famous symphony– “From the New World,” which is usually called “The New World Symphony.”  It is, however, very old world, since Dvorak was Bohemian born (the western side of what is now the Czech Republic) and spent most of […]

by Teri Ong  …perplexed, but not despairing… 2 Cor. 4:8   I have been perplexed for a number of months as I have heard the advertisements on the radio for a company called “High Times Investments.”  This is a company that is touting the positive financial benefits of the marijuana “industry.”  The interested listener is invited to sign up for a webinar that will convince the potential investor that a small amount of money may provide such a windfall that the investor can retire in style. The webinars are hosted by high profile politicians and business people, which puts an aura […]

by Teri Ong   It is no secret to my friends and family; I am a baseball fan. It probably started when I was a youngster and Harmon Killebrew was the hometown hero on the Minnesota Twins. My brother even won a drawing for a baseball glove signed by Harmon in a contest sponsored by Oscar Meyer Hotdogs– a one-time stadium favorite. Or it could have started when my husband got rid of our TV during the first summer of our marriage. It was then that I began listening to Denver Bears baseball games on KOA radio. Sometimes we would go […]

 by Teri Ong   [This is the third of three posts about abandoning attendance in a local church congregation. If you are reading this and getting a little uncomfortable about your own practices in regard to building up the Body of Christ, I only have one suggestion: go to Scripture and the Lord for yourself and see what He would have you do on a regular basis. We, as American Christians, are so spoiled by our ease and affluence; perhaps we need to take some time out for honest self-evaluation.   This post picks up our imaginary round table discussion where we […]

by Teri Ong  We have already looked with sadness on the problem of churches cancelling services for reasons that are less than legitimate. Their reasons often are pragmatic and/or humanistic, but they don’t stand up to Biblical scrutiny. As sad as it is when churches cancel services, it is even sadder that there is a large population of people who profess to be members of the body of Christ – the church universal– that cancel service in church for themselves on an almost weekly basis. They find many reasons for forsaking the assembly.  I have met many people who were […]

by Teri Ong   [Introductory remarks – I wrote this a long time ago, but I needed to carefully consider whether it could be helpful to anyone or might be merely inflammatory. Many years ago I heard a song by a country Gospel group that was much more concise than what I have written, but along the same lines. The song was called “Excuses.” It was all about the excuses people give for not going to church, and believe me, in 40 years of church ministry, I have heard every one of them given. There are sometimes legitimate reasons not to […]

by Teri Ong   This weekend is the end of the annual “birthday” cycle for our immediate family. Even all of our children’s spouses fall within the January 5 to October 15 range. So far we only have one grandchild outside the range, but even he gets his in by the end of October. This gives us a couple months for focusing on Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.  As our children were growing up, they understood that it would happen fairly frequently that we would not be celebrating “their day” on their day. This was particularly true if “their day” happened to be on […]

by Teri Ong   Besides summer wildfires and autumn hurricanes and all their attendant disruption and destruction, other forces of impending doom have been in the news in the last few weeks. I speak of top tech industry leaders warning about how artificial intelligence is going to cause catastrophic collapse of the workforce as we know it. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been holding conferences giving predictions about the millions of workers who will no longer be employable when their current jobs are taken over by automation.  This kind of thing has happened before when there have been […]

by Teri Ong   Introduction: I wrote this blog two weeks ago, just after the Las Vegas shootings. In the weeks since it happened, we have learned a little more about the shooter, his name, his age, his socio-economic status, and a few other perfunctory details. But we have learned very little about his inner motivation. The act was thoroughly premeditated. However, if anyone knows what made this man buy $20,000 worth of firearms, not to mention thousands of rounds of ammunition, plus surveillance cameras, tripods, chemicals for bombs, then set up his own deadly machine gun nest in an expensive hotel […]