PODCAST

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

BuzzKing

Learning about God’s grace from Scripture & Passing that grace on to others.

religion & spirituality christianity

All Episodes

21:06

A Gift Not of this World: An ancient doll stuffed...

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/05/17

My father's father was a burglar in World War I and served in the trenches for two years. He came back home very mentally ill and lived on the street in Quebec for the rest of his life. My dad's mother raised my father alone. When she was close to death, she gave me the only thing she had from her childhood, a cherished possession. In doing so, she taught me a lesson that we see in Paul's writings and in the words of Jesus.

22:59

Proselytizing in Prison: Letting our faith see the light

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/05/10

I once ditched a boring "team building" academic meeting to hang out for a bit with a bunch of jail prisoners. One of them was a man who had been incarcerated for sleeping in the snow on someone's private property. He was planning a Bible study session with the rest of his Christian inmates. In this podcast, we look at Paul, who also proselytized while in prison - and quite successfully. We see what this means when it comes to living not for the things of this world, but for the joy of God's

23:06

We Are All Ants: Carrying holy crumbs

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/05/04

Quantum physics tells us that we understand very little about the physical matter that makes up the universe, the way we proceed through time, and the nature of events in the universe. We consider Tony the ant, who lives in an anthill, bringing carrying huge crumbs of unidentifiable organic material back to the anthill. The most important and powerful people who live in this world, who live in the Kingdom of People, are like Tony the Ant when he manages to bring back a piece of pure dark

22:45

A Good Name and a Good Website Name

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/04/27

We look at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and at how I managed to get BuzzKing.com as my domain. We see that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes both tell us about the importance of having a good name. They also tell us that it is important that we, as believers, remember that we represent the Church at all times. We need to protect our good name - and the good name of the Church. We also see that there comes a time - at death - when all that we might have obtained by corrupting ourselves in this life

23:21

Every Day Is Easter: We can all rise

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/04/19

I once sat with a woman in her nineties who was on comfort care. Her adult children could not be there because they were out of the country, so I was with her. She ended up telling me why she had no fear whatsoever of death - and it had to do with Easter. We take a bit of a biblical survey, looking at both the literal version of the Easter story, and at the more personal side of the resurrection story. We see that getting caught up in defending the resurrection from a scientific perspective

19:02

The Skull: Faith and Forgiveness

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/04/18

Luke tells us that Jesus died at a place called The Skull, from which we derive the Latin word Calvary. I once saw a skull of a Pueblo Indian. The goal of the display was to show us that the Pueblos ground corn with sandstone, and so when they ate cornmeal, they also chewed on grit, thus wearing down their molars. But to me, the skull reminded me that real people - long dead - once lived in those cave dwellings. Jesus chose his death at The Skull to tell give us the most important advice ever

23:02

Palm Sunday, to a Kid of Cement and Steel: The donkey...

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/04/13

We look at the two times in my life that I have encountered donkeys, once as a boy on the edge of town, and once in Santorini, Greece. These incidents remind me of the two biblical qualities of donkeys, and why this makes the donkey the perfect animal for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem. We also look at why Jesus was not the savior that many people in Jerusalem were hoping for, and this reinforces why he was indeed on a donkey. We look, as well, at the Old Testament prediction of a king on a

24:01

3D Animation: Was Joseph an autistic genius?

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/04/06

I taught 3D modeling and animation at my university. I had a student who apparently was on the autism spectrum, and one day I knocked his notebook computer off his desk onto the floor - and he did not react. We look at a figure from the Old Testament, one of the fathers of the Israelite people, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. There is a theory that he was also on the spectrum. We look at what we can learn about faith, forgiveness, and achieving all we can as we strive to serve

23:01

The Meeting Place: Riding on three tires and a rim

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/03/30

We look at the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus - and at a man whom I once drove behind as he bounced along on three wheels and a broken rim. His determination to make his journey, to get to his meeting place, reminds us of where God is truly located, where God lives. We also see that although history has assumed that the Israelites and Jews thought that they had to be in the Temple to be with God, their beliefs were not so different than ours, or of that man throwing up sparks as he drove

25:11

The Sylmar Earthquake: Fish all over the floor

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/03/23

When I was 15, there was an Earthquake that did a lot of damage in Southern California. A fish store that I frequented had all its aquariums land on the cement floor. It was a huge failure, a loss for the owner. We talk about one of the biggest failures in the Bible, Peter denying Jesus after Jesus had wanted him to serve as the rock upon which he would build his church. Peter did rise up, however, and do just that. He overcame his failure. But he was also executed, we believe, for his

22:40

Making it to Spain: The Pickpocket

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/03/16

We look at the long-standing mystery of whether Paul the evangelist ever made it all the way to Spain - and we look at Buzz making it to Spain, but hardly behaving the way Jesus would have. We consider the historical data that supports the theory that Paul spread the Word in Spain. We look at what Paul had to say about forgiveness in Romans, the letter to the church he wanted to visit on his way to Spain...

25:20

Only one rudder, only one sail

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/03/09

We look at Noah's ark - the story that is eerily similar to older, polytheistic flood stories. We consider the act of God destroying all of humanity, due to its total corruption, but showing enough mercy to allow a remnant to survive. We look at a natural disaster, a much smaller flood, that happened in Colorado, and how such natural phenomena remind us of our vulnerability, our dependency on God. We note that in the flood story, the Ark is engineered by God to very specific details: height,

22:05

Voyage au centre de la Terre

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/03/02

My mother identified strongly as French. Thus, when my best friend's mother lent me Voyage to the Center of the Earth to read, she immediately took me to get the real version: the original French. We look at the story of these adventurers and their naivety. We also look at Proverbs, Chapter 2, and a speech to a son by a father, who is trying to teach the son about the importance of gaining wisdom and living the way God wants us to. We see the hidden relationship, as detailed by my friend's

25:21

A torque wrench is like giving: Gaining Leverage

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/02/23

When I was a boy, my father ran a car shop with a buddy of his I called Uncle John. One day Uncle John taught me about torque wrenches and - more importantly - leverage. We talk in this episode about the reasons that a Christian gives, and the constrains on our practice of giving. We also talk about why giving is very much like the leverage we get from a torque wrench with a very long handle.

23:02

Pursued by God and a Turkish Carpet Salesman

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/02/16

Wendy and I were once in Istanbul. We were pursued aggressively by a Turkish carpet salesman who was desperate to make a sale, given their terrible economy. We look at Psalm 23, traditionally used at funerals and memorial services by Christians. But this Psalm is not about saying goodbye to a loved one. We look at what Psalm 23 is truly about - and why it reminds us of this relentless carpet salesman.

25:15

From the Old to the New Testament: From Fact to Fiction?

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/02/09

I once had dinner with Sony Bono. I did not write about this dinner contemporaneously and am only now talking about it more than forty years after this occurred. So, I might have some of the details wrong. The Bible is also not a contemporaneous document. There were also some reasons for the authors to twist or exaggerate parts of the story - they were telling us about faith, not about the literal details of ancient history. So what do we make of this? How does this impact our understanding of

22:27

Dead Corneas: Pouring down a blessing

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/02/02

I have had both my corneas replaced with transplants. My left eye was repaired successfully with one graft, but my right eye proved very problematic. We look at the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon, only to find their farmlands in very poor shape and one oppressor (the Babylonians) replaced with another (the Persians). Malachi tells the People of God that they must be patient, that they must put their full trust in God. I had to live with only one eye working for some time. The

22:33

A dead man and only goodness in the City of God

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/01/26

When I was a grad student at USC years ago, I came across a man lying on his back. He appeared to have been killed with a shotgun blast to his chest. We look at the mistake this man made in his life, how he did not learn the lesson of Augustine and of Solomon, and that is to make sure that what we create in life is only good. This leads us to understand why there appears to be a paradox that a good God would somehow create evil.

25:12

The Bible and numerology: no safety in numbers

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/01/19

We look at the heavy duty use of numerical symbolism in the Old and New Testaments. We examine specific numbers and what they meant. Then we address the bigger question: why the preoccupation with numbers? What about our preoccupation with things like mathematics, art, and literature? What about our preoccupation with video games and social media? What of this is good? What did God intend? Where do we find safety?

24:10

Earning privilege: A wall of boxes

Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture ·

2025/01/12

When I was a young guy working in San Francisco as a computer programmer at an insurance company, I decided to do something a bit unethical to help my mother's claims get paid. I made a one character programmer error, though, that would later make me realize that God had been speaking to me. We look at 1st Peter and Romans, and we talk about what it means to truly strive toward perfection, to be like God as much as possible in this life. We also see that society today has even lower standards of

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Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

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