Author: Sweet Tea and Front Porch Storyteller
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📖 The Art of Happiness
What I Learned Reading The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler challenged me to rethink something we often assume we already understand—what it truly means to be happy. 🌱 The Purpose of Life One of the most striking ideas is simple yet profound:The very purpose of our lives is to seek happiness.…
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“From a Distance We Judge… Up Close We Learn to Love”
Judging from a Distance In business communications, we are taught that we make three judgments when meeting someone: The first when they are 500 feet away The second at 100 feet away The third when they open their mouth and speak Before we know their story…Before we understand their pain…Before we see their heart… We…
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🌾 The Curious Pilgrim
From Dick Tracy to Smartphones: Living Faithfully in a Changing World Introduction: When the Impossible Becomes Ordinary When I was a child growing up on a farm in rural Mississippi, our connection to the outside world came through the Grit newspaper. Each week, it brought stories, ideas, and a glimpse of life beyond our fields.…
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What Is Love, Really? A Journey Beyond Romance
✍️ Introduction: Learning Love Without a Map I did not start dating until my senior year in high school. It wasn’t that I wasn’t curious—I was. But I was not driven the way some young men my age seemed to be. While others were pairing off, I was more interested in learning, observing, and trying…
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🌅 Curious Pilgrim – Part 3: Beyond the Label
Following Jesus in a Wider World There was a time when my faith came neatly packaged. At Bible college, I was taught to see Scripture through a clear and structured lens: Genesis showed the need for redemption Israel became the channel of redemption The Gospels revealed the purchase of redemption Acts proclaimed it The Epistles…
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🌄 Curious Pilgrim — Part 2
God Is Love: A Different Starting Point A Reflection on Holiness, Love, and the God I Was Taught The God I Was Taught In Systematic Theology and Bible Ethics at Free Will Baptist Bible College, I was taught about the attributes of God. God is: all-knowing all-powerful present everywhere unchanging eternal And beyond those: loving…
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When Brutality Breaks Through: A Lesson I Was Not Ready For
There are moments in life when something we read does not simply inform us—it shakes us. When I was a student at Free Will Baptist Bible College, Dr. Simpson assigned each of us a book to read for English Composition. Because I was from Mississippi, she suggested I read Sanctuary by William Faulkner. At seventeen,…
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Born Guilty… or Becoming Human?
Curious Pilgrim — Part 1 A Reflection on Sin, Choice, and the Journey of Becoming Introduction All my life, I have lived with a quiet tension. The tension between what I was taught…and what I have experienced.Between Scripture, tradition, reason, and the life I have actually lived. I remember sitting in Systematic Theology classes, listening…
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The Curious Pilgrim
Is Truth in the Eye of the Beholder? A Signature Reflection on Epistle to the Romans 7:13–25 🌅 Opening: A Question That Will Not Let Me Go There are questions that come and go…and then there are questions that stay with you. This is one that has walked with me most of my life: Is…
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🌿 The Older I Get: Becoming Whole in a Fragmented World
There are some songs that entertain us.Some that stir memories.And then there are songs that quietly sit beside us and say, “This… this is what life is really about.” “The Older I Get” by Alan Jackson is one of those songs. It doesn’t shout.It doesn’t preach.It simply reflects. And in that reflection, it reveals something…
