Jeff Hampton – Page 120 – Jeff Hampton, Writer

January 8, 2020

Teamwork

For Wilshire Baptist Church

As a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and Baylor Bears, I’ve been both amused and annoyed by the speculation in recent days about the futures of their head coaches. There were a lot of people who wanted to replace Dallas’ Jason Garrett because they believed that would bring a return to winning. And a lot of folks were worried that a departure by Baylor’s Matt Rhule would bring a return to losing. But let’s be real: coaches are important, but they don’t actually play the game.

January 4, 2020March 23, 2020

Star Struck

For Wilshire Baptist Church

The headline on National Geographic’s website the day after Christmas read, “A giant star is acting strange, and astronomers are buzzing.” I’m not a star geek, but those words got my attention, so I dove in and learned that the red giant Betelgeuse may be getting ready to explode.

If you’re a novice like me with most of your star knowledge learned while laying on a blanket in the back yard at night with your father the navigator, then you at least are familiar with the constellation Orion. And if you know Orion, then you can visualize Betelgeuse, the bright red star marking the hunter’s right shoulder. Only now, that star is the dimmest it’s been in almost a century, and that dimming means the star is dying. But before it dies, it will explode in a spectacular light show known as a supernova.

December 3, 2019December 3, 2019

The Heart of Advent

“So, who’s that dude with his hand touching his heart?”

I looked out the car window. We were passing the Catholic cathedral on Ross Avenue in downtown Dallas. “Uh, that dude would be Jesus,” I answered.

We were with Ethan, our youngest nephew, who lives in New Mexico but was staying with us while performing in Wilshire’s summer MusiCamp. It was a fair question coming from a boy raised in the evangelical church and not the Catholic tradition. I was raised in that same tradition and at that age I might have had the same question, because our church, like Ethan’s church, didn’t have statues and icons. It’s mostly years and experience that provided me the answer.