A very successful man who was in the hospital in great pain reminded me of an important Bible passage about humility: the apparent Creed that we think Paul inserted into his letter to the believers at Philippi. We consider Creeds in general, like the Apostles and the Nicene, and then look at this beautiful, rhythmic passage of Paul's. We then consider why Paul's poem might be a much better Christian Creed for today.

Years ago, when I had an as-yet untreated corneal disease, I had very limited vision. I once accidentally stepped into a coffee cart line in a hospital lobby, and without meaning to, cut off a number of people. I got yelled at loudly - and felt both angry and embarrassed when the woman who yelled at me didn't seem to care that I couldn't see well. We look at a few quotes, from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes, that have to do with how we treat others, how God looks after us, and our duty to take care of other people - and to see things from their perspective. There was another, very real reason why I had no business being unhappy with this woman.

When I was a boy, the cross on the top of my church was covered with gold leaf. We consider the First Temple, Solomon's Temple, which King David declared "will not be for man". We consider an amazing vision of the Prophet Ezekiel: a valley of dried and disconnected bones rising up and reforming the lost people of God. We consider the result of the gold leaf being put on the cross of my childhood church by a person who was honoring himself and not God - and the greater issue of God speaking to us, sometimes very dramatically and sometimes very quietly.

My wife and I once saw a side-dump trunk tip over and completely bury and crush a car - with a man still inside. It seemed like the perfect example showing that we can die at any time. We look at the Lord's Prayer, its text from the Gospels, what it really meant (as opposed to what we might think it means), and we consider how it relates to us today. We look at the Lord's Prayer as the perfect prayer to offer at any time we are in need - and to offer every single day.

When I was a boy we used to look for particularly salacious or gross stories in the Bible and talk about them on the playground at recess. My favorite one is the bread that God orders Ezekiel to bake - by cooking it over human poo. We look at the Old Testament purity laws and what they were really meant to inspire in the People of God. We look at what they mean for us today. We consider how we can be "pure" in the eyes of God - in a spiritual sense.

I once spoke with a young woman who had been badly traumatized in life. She understandably had a jaded feeling about the ability of Christianity to change humanity. We look at two similar stories in the Gospels, about the "Second Coming", or the "Parousia" in Greek. We look at this from the perspective of a spiritual, not a physical, second coming - and what this could mean for those of us who still believe that people could transform this world before Jesus comes again.

We look at the four famous "Servant Songs" from Isaiah. We also consider Sister Marie, who was one of my boyhood teachers - and what she told me about the use of Jewish scripture and our relationship to the Jewish people. As it turns out, there is strong disagreement between Christians and Jews as to what these "Servant Songs" mean. This leads us to the much bigger question of how to interpret the Bible as a whole.

I once met a man who had lost one foot and had just been told he would lost part of his other foot. He had something to say about how this relates to faith. We look at the age old debate of salvation through faith vs. salvation by acts. We consider a bit of a different perspective to try and see if we can find a way out of the seeming conflict. Is there a way to look at faith that does more than conclude that a person with faith will want to live out that faith? Just what does it mean to have faith? Perhaps that tells us what really matters.