Unwind or rewind
Picture it’s the end of a long day. In addition to being a long day, it has also been a long week. You have no responsibilities tomorrow—you don’t even need to take a shower if you don’t want to. What do you do? The phrase I hear in my mind is this: Time to unwind. […]
100% saved
Imagine if you lived an average American life (77 years or 28,207 days) and you only had to be good 1% of the time to make it to heaven. By my math, 1% would be .77 years or 282 days. Think you could do it? What if God forgave you for 99.9% of your sins […]
Hand in hand
Every Sunday, Bob and Alice walk hand in hand to our church’s café counter to buy a single donut. Bob is 92. Alice is 87. They have been longtime members of our congregation. Recently, they were asked to share their faith journeys at a church event. Bob’s eyes twinkled as he expounded: “When we were […]
A little taste of home
In Reagan International Airport, I unexpectedly ran into someone from home. Had we been at home, we would not have greeted each other in the way we did, with excited exclamations and hugs. People nearby smiled. They understood the joy of the familiar amid uncertainty. Something similar seems to be at work in these words […]
Badwater Basin
The lowest, hottest place in the United States is Death Valley National Park in California. At the lowest place in the valley, there is a pool of water. Try to imagine this: As you descend into the valley, all you see around you is dusty dry mountains, cracked earth, and rocks. It’s a dead, barren […]
The problem with being human
According to Jesus, the problem with being human is that humans are like sheep. Sheep, despite all they offer our world (wool, milk, meat), have a fatal flaw—they can’t conquer wolves. Even a varsity sheep can’t outrun a JV wolf, and once caught, a sheep can’t fight back. It has no bearlike claws or sharklike […]
Jesus submitted for us
There is a beautiful, handmade cross that hangs over the entrance to my church’s gathering place for worship. My friend Tom crafted it back in 2014 during a sermon series that attempted to redeem one of American’s least favorite words—submission. That cross is engraved with these words of Jesus: “Not my will, but yours be […]
Hey, Dad! You awake?
My kids used to wake me up in the night when they were small. “Hey, Mom! You awake?” It was for a variety of things: They needed a glass of water, they had gotten sick, something looked scary in the darkness of their bedroom, they had a bad dream … the list goes on. As […]