(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) A talented musician wrote a song about my hometown. Actually, more than one musician has written a song about Paducah, Kentucky. But I’m thinking of George Coryell, a hometown contemporary of mine. He wrote and performed “Paddlewheels.” It’s a fine little song about Paducah that includes many of the town’s hallmarks. Chief among those is Paducah’s two rivers and the paddlewheel-driven riverboats that ply them. We played down by the river, wh

For my Aussie friends and family, a garden is all the land next to their house with flowers, trees, and grass. It is the equivalent to what we Americans refer to as our yard or lawn, which, to the British, is a hard, often paved or concrete area. Our garden is their “veggie patch” or even their “allotment.” God’s garden is full of beautiful flowers and trees. Ours was not. I grew up on a small 90-acre farm in rural Pennsylvania, and we always planted a vegetable garden. My mo

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) Dad only worked at the brothel for about a week. There was in my hometown what was then called “a house of ill repute.” I could write a lot about that place and the fact that even children knew about it. But that is a story for another time. This is how Dad came to work at our everybody-knows-about-it brothel. Dad worked for his cousin, Norman, as a “brick and tile man” or “brickie.” Norman, a general contractor, had agreed to make some r

Have you ever been on “cloud nine” (not eight, or ten), meaning you were exceedingly happy and joyful? (The idiom probably comes from the high thunder clouds that were listed as number nine in earlier weather classifications.) You probably thought that “every cloud has a silver lining,” and were having a good day. The cloud formations in Papua New Guinea are majestic and beautiful. I often viewed the giant altocumulus clouds, often bringing thunder and lightning. At other t

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) How’s life going? Do you sometimes feel like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons? No matter what approach he takes, no matter how sophisticated, he never succeeds in capturing that pesky bird! His nemesis is faster and smarter. He just can’t win. The problem: Mr. Coyote is stuck inside a paradox, a Catch-22. Mark Twain describes a coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.” If Twain is right, there is no w

Did you ever fall or get hit in the head and “see stars”? You felt dizzy and saw flashing lights in your head. Those are not the kinds of stars that I am writing about. I once took an airplane trip to northern California with a pilot friend of mine. We were in a small single engine aircraft and at night we opened our sleeping bags and slept out under one of the wings of the plane. It was dark, but the sky was filled with stars, millions of them. I remember the immense amaze

(a Steve Orr Bible Reflection) Many people want to be the people other people think about. There’s a preoccupation with being the topic of every conversation, being the focus of every moment, being the Main Character. Part and parcel: certain phrases we toss about on social media posts, in self-help books, and in our real world conversations. Likely you’ve heard them: "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch!" "Go big or go home!" "Cookies are for closers

Have you ever been with your girlfriend, boyfriend, wife or husband, with a beautiful, harvest moon in view? If so, you may have had the opportunity to be romantic. You might have said, “I love you to the moon,” a poetic metaphor that represents love, mystery, and a connection to unseen things above. Myths about the moon often have forbidden lovers chasing each other across the moon-lit sky and the poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Loouis Stevenson, and Percy Bysshe S

(a Steve Orr Bible reflection) World War II in the Pacific officially ended when Japan surrendered in August 1945. But that didn’t end the war for everyone. Lieutenant Hiro Onoda was one of several specially trained Japanese soldiers assigned to occupy small Pacific islands. They had been ordered to disrupt and sabotage enemy efforts—and never surrender or take their own lives. Lieutenant Onoda was a man who followed orders. Despite several attempts by the post-war Japa

The colors and majesty of sunsets and sunrises are wonderful. During the “dry season” in the mountains of Papua New Guinea I would often contemplate the beauty of God’s creation, available in technicolor, with shadows and clouds reflecting through the sunshine. “God made a home in the sky for the sun; it comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom, like an athlete eager to run a race. It starts at one end of the sky and goes across to the other. Nothing can hide from it