Church worship moved online. Sports canceled. State of emergency declared. Panicked shoppers. No toilet paper anyplace. What a strange and wild time we are living in. While waiting for the customer service at a Walmart, the worker took a phone call and I overheard her saying, “Sir, it is an epidemic. I don’t have enough…
Category: God is real
The Stalker
March 24th, 2 years ago, I drove Gabrielle, then 26, to the airport. She then was a flight attendant. Enroute I brought up a conversation that we had partially had another day. During that previous conversation, I had asked if she had had any problems with stalkers. The reason I asked was because during training…
Ash Wednesday
I don’t know if this took anyone else by surprise — or perhaps some do not even note the liturgical calendar — but suddenly it is /was Ash Wednesday, that day which marks the start of the season of Lent. That season of letting go, of saying “no,” of “fasting,” of saying “yes,” of “adding”…
Relationships Bring Hope
The team of 11 missionaries — all from Westside Journey UMC — returned from the Dominican Republic July 29th, 2019. We experienced great cross-cultural training and a great week of missions work and life impact. The best moment for me in cross-cultural training was when our group was divided into four different “cultures” for which…
Unto You…
Sheep are known as “golden hoof” by some that raise them, for the land becomes better because of them. But this was not apparent on the sheep farm nearby where we lived with our family for 15 years. There the pasture divided between the goats, and sheep and King, the llama, was just mud most…
Christmas Eve — almost Christmas
I love Christmas Eve. Although that’s not always been the case. Here’s a line from a journal, years back now, thankfully. “I hate Christmas Eve. It’s too hard. Too rushed. Too many people with too many expectations. Too much stuff to juggle. God, I hate it!” That from a pastor… Thankfully after that confession, I…
Raised from the Dead
I knocked on the door and my sister opened it tears immediately brimming her eyes to see me standing there, opened the screen door and stepped out into my arms and began to cry. We just held onto each other. It had been so long. I had last seen her at our mom’s funeral. For…
Stop the Madness
Those weeks — there are too many things to do, too many directions to go, emails flow in, text messages arrive, phone calls pull at us, needs hit like Dorian hit the East Coast — you know those weeks and those days. So do I. Distraction in those times is like a masked intruder…
When God Seems Absent…
I don’t know if you have read the book of Esther recently, but we have been walking in it for a number of weeks and it is a stellar walk. Therein we find that although God is not mentioned, not one time, God is there. Again and again — in a king’s sleepless night (ch…
The Next Step
Many of you know, I took a sabbatical in 2016. It was time for me to slow down, to walk more than 1,000,000 steps on the Camino de Santiago, and get in touch with my own heart. What happened was I discovered emotions I had not felt, and learned how much I valued silence, and…
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