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Former American Press staff writer Sunny Brown Farley writes "Naked Faith," a look at faith in its natural form: lived out in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. |
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The Baptism of Josey Gonzalez
Josey Gonzalez was born into an immigrant family with little means and a lot of mouths to feed.
At a young age, she attended the after-school program at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Tyler. That program, which is still around today, is called Wonderful Wednesday.
It was there that she played with other children who were [...]
Today is the best day
Lately, I have been on an exercise kick. I like to get up and walk for an hour before I begin the other stuff that consumes my day.
This morning, I walked through my neighborhood along the usual route and I passed an old guy on the opposite side of the street raking leaves.
A car raced [...]
It goes so fast
Today is my son’s fourth birthday.
Yesterday we celebrated with a birthday party and a movie. We took him to see Toy Story 3. It was his very first movie at the big movie theater.
The movie was great – same as the first and second Toy Story. Woody and Buzz and the gang were hilarious and [...]
Are we listening?
There are days that my visual lock on the computer screen is broken by the tinging sound my cell phone makes when I receive a text message.
I am a lover of technology – at least when it works like I want it to, but sometimes I wonder what it is doing to us.
On Facebook, we [...]
A look back and ahead
The other day a friend of mine and former roommate and colleague from Lake Charles came to see me.
She now lives in South Dakota and we live in Texas. Our lives have taken us in two radically different directions. She moved from Lake Charles to Shreveport to New York to Chicago and now South Dakota. [...]
The Oil Spill
Every day, the news shows the sad, sad state of affairs in the Gulf.
Oil continues to gush into our waters, threatening life and livelihood.
I find myself screaming on the inside. It is a reminder of just how powerless we are a times. I might as well be shouting underwater at the leak itself.
I have seen [...]
Ahhh, church camp
This week I am in the woods at church camp.
In the days leading up to my departure for camp, I spent a lot of time reflecting about what all church camp has meant to me over the years.
I’ve been church camping now for many years – as a camper in my youth to a counselor [...]
Not the same
So many times, I hear people argue that all religions are the same.
Christianity = Judaism = Hinduism = Islam, etc. etc. etc.
I guess at the heart of this concept is the desire to unify the world by unifying the world’s beliefs, which is arguably good. However, I find it utterly disrespectful of all the religions [...]
Thy Kingdom Come
So, today I had a long conversation with someone about the Kingdom of God.
It is fascinating to me that Jesus preached the kingdom. We preach Jesus and Jesus preached the kingdom!
It would seem to me that we see glimpses of the kingdom when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
However, the [...]
Brotherly Love
The other day, a student of mine asked me to take a look at Obadiah.
It’s not every day that most of us read Obadiah. There’s not much to it upon first glance – it’s a tiny little book in the Old Testament.
It packs a powerful message though.
Obadiah, a so-called minor prophet, filled his prophetic poem [...]
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