On our very last weekend of seminary, Meg asked me to get the kids out of her way while she finalized packing. I decided to we’d go see Lookout Mountain, which was only 45 minutes away yet something we had not done in those three years, despite it being one of the main attractions in the area as it “looks out” over Chattanooga and the Tennessee River and it has a lot of history.

We did and it was fine. And we started home.

Dad wanted to see one other site that day. Covenant College also sits up on Lookout Mountain, which is really just a long sliver of the Cumberland Plateau, as all of the “mountains” in that part of Tennessee are. For years we could see it up on the mountain from I-24 in the valley, and I thought it would be cool to see it up close.  It was. We just drove around it for a few minutes, admired the view, no big deal. That’s when the trouble started.

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Here we are, and can you believe it? Friday is December first, which means we are already almost out of hurricane season! It has been an active year for us. One reality of life here in beautiful Lake Wales, Florida is that we know they are coming. They probably won’t come every year, but they can come any year. They may bring a lot of rain like Donna and Ian, and while they are defined by their wind speeds, some like Charlie are way more intense than others.

And so we watch. We can look at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s cone of probability, which is better now that they’ve added a yellow blob to show how wide the high wind area is. And we see the spaghetti of various tracking projections. Many of you like the European model, not because it’s exotic or you’re interested in the World Cup, but because it tends to be right.

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How did Luke learn what was said on the cross? The Apostle Paul was imprisoned at Caesarea Maritima, which was the provincial capital of Judea or Palestine under the Roman Empire. He was there for at least two years. Luke, his companion and a physician, stayed in the area. That gave him the opportunity to learn a great deal from the other Apostles, those who followed Jesus and saw him raised from the dead, including the women and others who stayed with Jesus all the way to the foot of the cross.

Luke was thus able to record what these criminals said and some of the most important words we have from Jesus.

Jesus said, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

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