Unsolved Mysteries

Maybe the flesh wants too many answers. It wants to categorize and compartmentalize and get all things in order. Systematic, neat, tidy answers. Squares, boxes. (Someone once said, “The straight line belongs to man, the crooked line to God.” Take a walk in the woods or mountains and you’ll see how true this is.)

Re-Purposed

Recently Carol, Sam and I have been walking the train tracks by our home. (“Don’t do that with headphones in!” was the advice of one sage friend.) As you look down at your feet, trying to adjust your gait to match the railroad ties, you can’t help but notice a ton of old, rusty railroad…

Lessons from the Backcountry

1 Corinthians 9:23–27  [23] I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.  [24] Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. [25] Every athlete exercises self-control in…

Burden Sharers

Galatians 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. I’m at the church preparing to head down to Paradise to help some of our people who lost their houses in the Camp Fire.  Loading boxes filled with suits and masks and gloves into the back of my truck, I try to…

Transitions

The morning after Halloween is always a tough one.  Those of you with kids know why.  Stayed up too late, couldn’t fall asleep, sugar highs and sugar lows, then, an hour later, it seems, the alarm clock is jolting me. Tumble from bed, workout (hardly), shower, quick breakfast, coffee.  Outside, bleary eyed to feed the…

In Your Ordinary

I’m sitting in my office at church, warm cup of coffee in hand and my window to the outside world is filled with the colors of fall.  John Burroughs once wrote, “How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”  The tree outside my window is a picture of…