Opinion Archive

They wear black and white striped shirts. They throw flags and blow their whistles. And boy do they take a ton of heat.
The life of an official for a sporting event, especially a high school sporting event, is not an easy one.

These days, I am toting two smartphones, one is my personal phone, the other is the church phone. Friends raise their eyebrows whenever I lay my two phones on a table at restaurants. They give me a subtle, amused look that says, “Somebody sure thinks he’s important.” Thankfully, I am not all that important, so having two phones has not resulted in twice as many phone calls.

The sports world came to a screeching halt last Tuesday.
And it had nothing to do with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift calling it quits on the relationship NFL fans are growing more tired of each day.

“Here in Santa Rosa County, we, and all of our neighbors in the gateway to Florida, find ourselves facing an alarming and distressing challenge – a fentanyl crisis is knocking at our door and making it the epicenter of overdose incidents within the state. The severity of this crisis has taken a devastating toll, with a sharp rise in overdoses and a grim reality: most people who use fentanyl in our area do not survive.

Is anybody wondering what God’s thoughts are about Hamas’ inhumanity to man in this “wicked and perverse” generation?  Of course, some are, in light of Biblical warnings of wars and rumors of wars occurring.  Some know, most don’t that nothing needs to happen before the rapture, the next event on God’s calendar.  The rapture is the “catching-up of the church,” only God knows when!

For well more than a year, the Milton Historic Preservation Board has proposed ordinances to extend its reach beyond the city’s National Historic District. For well more than a year, it has faced adamant opposition from district residents.

It’s hard not to see the debate through the lens of typical Milton division, but we believe the issue is more nuanced.

A few weeks ago, I celebrated one more birthday by adding another notch to my belt. You see, each year on my birthday, my one request of my wife is that she prepare for me an obscene quantity of my favorite food – spaghetti with a cheesy bechamel sauce. My request always presents a moral dilemma for her, pitting her love for me against her concern for my health; that dish would be high on any cardiologist’s list of foods to avoid.

Ray Eddington has a thick Tennessee drawl and a sensibility that pairs well with a solid work ethic and growing reputation as a practical problem solver.
But his common sense failed him last month when he suggested keeping all Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioner meetings in Milton, the county seat.

Chasing competitive balance is a loss cause. It’s like running a cross-country race and never getting to the finish line. Or chasing that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You won’t ever find it.
And yet, as usual, our high school association in the state of Florida likes to change the playoff format more than it changes socks.

Every week for the past 35 years of ministry, I have thought about what is essential in corporate worship. I am a musician, and when I came to faith in Christ in a small, south Florida church, I naturally volunteered to be in the choir.