Category: Tank’s Column

  • Let’s Try Really Listening

    (by Tank Tankersley) Dana, please forgive this woefully inadequate synopsis of your most recent sermon. It falls far short of doing your message justice. I only hope to make a point. God is gracious, loving, merciful, and patient. He desires a relationship with his creation. He calls out to us, no less than to Israel…

  • Taking the Time

    (by Tank Tankersley) Almost forty years ago, right out of law school and pre-epiphany, I’d oft have occasion to talk to smarter, more experienced, more successful lawyers on the phone, and I was often struck by their abruptness. “Yeah”, “no”, and the like were typical responses to my inquiries. I recall concluding: “Wow, it’s obvious…

  • One Thing the World Can’t Take Away

    (by Tank Tankersley) In Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, Ebenezer Scrooge replies to his clerk Bob Cratchit’s wishing Scrooge a merry Christmas with, “I’ll retire to Bedlam”. Scrooge cannot fathom what a poorly-paid clerk with a large family to support can possibly find to be merry about. Scrooge proclaims that he might as well live…

  • Thanksgiving

    By Tank Tankersley I don’t imagine for a moment that I can write anything about the holiday that we call Thanksgiving that hasn’t already been said, and better, by someone else.  What more can be said?  There’s nothing special about the fourth Thursday in November, of course.  Christians ought always to give thanks.  “In everything…

  • As We See Fit?

    by Tank Tankersley “There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it” (Cicero, De Devinatione, II, 1191).  But compared to the politicians, the philosophers are the wisest of men.  It is no surprise, of course, to hear the politicians, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, spout nonsense.  It’s what they do.  It’s who…

  • A Name For Ourselves

    by Tank Tankersley God withheld many abilities from me, but some He granted.  All of us can say that, can’t we?  Oh, I’ll concede that there are those irritating few who seen to be able to do everything, but they’re so few and far between that they need not now divert us.  Most of us…

  • The Creator’s Way

    by Tank Tankersley Have you ever observed that, as to any matter of significance, it is almost always easy to know what to do but hardly ever easy to do it?  Thousands of books have been written on losing weight, but all one needs to know is “exercise more and eat less.”  This does not…

  • Whatever Happened to Nice?

    by Tank Tankersley I’m standing in line to pick up a prescription at the drug store, and a “lady” old enough to know better walks in front of me as if I am not there and verbally abuses the pharmacist, demanding to see the manager.  She then marches off in a huff, loudly proclaiming to…

  • Senator Kennedy

    by Tank Tankersley “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind” (John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII (1642)). When I learned that Senator Kennedy had brain cancer that would probably take his life, I prayed for him.  I prayed that God would use the power that is His alone to…

  • Weasel Words

    by Tank Tankersley, Please pardon my immodesty in observing that I have something in common with the apostle Paul, that “super Christian”.  Like him I am well aware that of sinners “I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15).  It’s best to stipulate this right off the bat, lest my remarks be deemed unduly harsh. A high-profile…