Category: Christian Living

I talk about the sabbath and I think people freak out because its sounds so hard or is somehow not for you, maybe even some sort of “affluence” thing. But I think one thing that holds people back is the idea that making the Sabbath a personal priority is boring. So here’s a practical look…

There is a woman boarding the plane with a stroller for her dog. Really? — Efrem Smith via Facebook Have you seen dog strollers? It’s a thing. Check out this search on Amazon. There are dog strollers with hundreds of 4 and 5 star ratings. I see them at Lake Murray. There’s a path that’s…

Certainty scares me a little. Let’s start off by admitting that. I can’t talk about honesty until I admit that people who are absolutely certain about their work life, personal relationships, and non-essential elements of their faith make me nervous. Like I don’t know if I’d trust them to go to a timeshare presentation and…

We use words all the time that we’ve not thought about the meaning, intent of the word itself. And my experience over the past 2 weeks of vacation proved something to me afresh: A lot of people have no idea what recreation means… they don’t have a personal understanding or philosophy of recreation.  Recreation – activity…

“Be careful.”  I say this to my kids all the time. I cringe a little each time I say it. And yet I can’t stop myself. It just happens. Paul jumps up on a banister to slide down 30 feet with concrete in every direction. Be careful! Jackson chases after his 6-year old cousin at Glacier…

Vacation – the state of vacating. The suffix turns the verb vacate into a process, state, or condition. The verb vacate comes from the Latin vac?tus, past participle of vac?re, to be empty.  About 8 months ago I read an article by Tim Maurer about his justification of a 10-day vacation instead of a 7 day vacation. Here are his points, all of which hit…

Enmity – noun – the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. The english word enmity is based on the latin word “inimicus,” plainly translated as enemy. 

This Spring, while we were in Haiti, our team bumped into a young American woman who was visiting Haiti to make a very big life decision. She had met a Haitian man in college, fallen in love, and their relationship had progressed to the point where they were contemplating marriage.

Most people are generally good. Stranger danger doesn’t apply, necessarily, to adults. Crime is way down. You grew up in a more dangerous society than your kids. In yesterday’s post, Impending Doom, I shared about a segment of our society whose entire  life narrative is built around the hope they find in a world headed to…

Last month, I drove from Nashville, Tennessee to Starkville, Mississippi for a Sunday afternoon speaking engagement. As I drove across rural Alabama and Mississippi, through small towns, flooded fields, and by countless small farms, I got a glimpse into a religious phenomenon oddly familiar. On this drive were hundreds of religious signs. Most mentioned the name of…