Tommy Mann

Micah was crying in Nashville again. One year ago the University of Florida’s 7’1 center Micah Handlogten suffered a devastating injury in the championship game of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. The sophomore endured a compound fracture to his lower leg, a gruesome sight on live TV. His teammates gathered around him as he cried in pain, knowing he may never return to the sport he loved.  Over the course of the season Handlogten recovered and rehabilitated his leg, with hopes to play again, not this year, but next. He was medically cleared to play in February, but the plan remained to sit out this season. After Florida lost two other big men to injuries, Micah decided to forgo his medical redshirt and suit up for the Gators. That meant he would be returning to the scene of his horrific injury: Nashville, and the SEC Tournament.  Not only did he play on the same court where he got hurt, Handlogten’s Gators returned to the championship game and hoisted the trophy in vict...

We all learned about the water cycle when we were in school: through the steps of precipitation, evaporation, and condensation, water cycles from the sky to the ground in a continuous loop (there are other steps in the process, but that is what most of us learned in elementary school). The Bible speaks to this cycle. In Ecclesiastes 1:7 the author observed: “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.” It is amazing to think about how much water from streams flow into the sea. Consider this: every single day the Mississippi River dumps 518 billion gallons of water into the Gulf of America, and that is just one of thousands of rivers doing the same thing. But the seas are not full. That water is going somewhere. In the 17 th  Century scientists figured out this puzzling water cycle. But the Bible actually cracked the code long before these scientists did. In Amos 9:6 the prophet asked and answered his own question:  “Who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them o...

  There are some lines or phrases in the Bible that do not make sense to us on the surface. When we come across some of these seemingly random phrases, the issue may be that something was lost in translation. A good example of this is Amos 8:1-2:   This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. And He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.”   Why did God give the prophet a vision of a basket of summer fruit, and then not mention it again? Did I miss something?    If we were reading Hebrew, not only would it make sense, it would be kind of funny. There is a play on words here, specifically, word sounds. The Hebrew word for fruit is pronounced like  ka-yis,  and the word for end is pronounced  kes.  The basket of summer fruit is no longer random. It was an object lesson to drive home the poi...

  God gave Moses precise instructions on how to construct the tabernacle, and He equipped certain people with the skills to complete the task. Then He called for all the people to have some skin in the game, so the tabernacle would be furnished by each tribe bringing contributions. In Exodus 35:4-5 we read, “Moses said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, ‘This is the thing that the LORD has commanded. Take from among you a contribution to the LORD. Whoever is of a generous heart, let him bring the LORD’S contribution: gold, silver, and bronze.’” Each family was encouraged to do what they could so that the whole camp could benefit from a place of worship. We should still follow that model today. In a 2013 article in  Relevant  titled “What Would Happen if the Church Tithed,” the author found that only 2.5% of Christians per capita give to the church, and that if all professing believers would give their 10% there would be an additional $165 billion, or enough ...

  In the last letter Paul ever wrote he mentioned three people that we know almost nothing about. At the end of the book’s opening chapter we read of Phygelus, Hermogenes, and Onesiphorus. The former two were fierce opponents of the apostle, while the latter was a dear friend.   In 1:16-17 he wrote, “May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me earnestly and found me.” Onesiphorus refreshed Paul. That verb is only used this one time in all of Scripture, and it means to relieve. The Amplified Bible translates the phrase this way: “he often braced me like fresh air.”  What an amazing word picture! Who doesn’t love to take in fresh air, especially after being cooped up inside for an extended period of time? Paul knew about being cooped up; he wrote these words from a prison cell, after all.  We don’t know what exactly Onesiphorus did for Paul, aside fr...

  In Isaiah 40 there is an interesting conversation between the prophet and someone else (possibly an angel). It says:   A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever (v.6-8).   At the beginning of the chapter Isaiah is told to speak a message of comfort to God’s people, which was not typically part of the prophet’s job description. Condemnation and correction, yes; but comfort? Never. But in this instance God wanted to make sure His people knew He still loved them even after calamity came.    Isaiah did not seem to be in the mood to deliver the message. It’s as if he says, “Why should I? They haven’t listened to me all these years, and now I am supposed to comfort them?”    Isaiah was in his...