This past week I was able to spend time with some cousins and my siblings. We reminisced about aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, and caught up on other cousins and their children. Earlier this summer I did the same with other cousins. Families matter. This summer we have carved out some very intentional time to be with our children […]
Joe Walsh of James Gang fame (before he was with The Eagles) recorded a song (after he was with The Eagles) about being “an analog guy in a digital world”. Is the world digital or is it analog? There is much in this world that is analog. Colors, as they change along a spectrum of pea green to forest green, […]
Summer is for more than recreation. It is for re-creation. Even as the ground and the nests teem with new fruitfulness, so summer can be a time for us to be “re-created”, renewed, revitalized—a new fruitfulness. Summer is much better than the winter months for such things. In January we make our resolutions for new lives and then struggle through […]
God is a lot of things. He is not in a hurry. Why should he be? He works from a position outside of our 9 to 5 (or is it 8 to 6?) world. He doesn’t need to be in a hurry; he has eternity in his hand. That same God promises to provide for his people. And he does. […]
This week we celebrated our anniversary. A friend of mine and I were talking about a guy who blew up his ministry. My car is about to turn over to 200,000 miles. Friends at church are far better golfers than I. The house we bought a year ago is becoming our home. What do all these have in common? None […]
Mitch Albom, a popular Detroit radio personality, put it in the “bad song prison”, but I always thought it was one of the best “one hit wonders”: Signs by the Five Man Electrical Band. My favorite part was this: And the sign said “Everybody welcome, Come in, kneel down and pray”. But when they passed around the plate at the […]
I was visiting with some young friends recently and we discussed the place that “desire” has in decision making. Does having a desire for something legitimize getting that thing or engaging in that activity? Then one of the kids said this, “Of course, you only desire the things that you see.” Profound. Not necessarily original, but profound none the less. […]
There continues to be tension in the world, the Church, families and people’s lives. People are upset, uptight and, too often, up in arms. From some conversations this past week it occurs to me that to relieve tension we should actually embrace tension. Embracing rather than eliminating tension will bring relief from it. Follow along. For instance, there was still […]
Spring is in full bloom. It’s almost crazy. Those trees looked about as dead as could be. From a rise in the neighborhood I could survey the roof tops of all the houses down the hill. The patches of dirt covered in leaves and last year’s mulch in the neighbor’s yard seemed irredeemably dormant. It was hard to imagine anything […]
Earlier this week a speaker opined that the Church should be known for hospitality and not hostility. Certainly. Agreed. And that is a problem because as the Church continues to live out its life in this alien world it often is moved toward hostility. We fight against this. We fight against that. We fight against outsiders. Sometimes, we fight against […]