San Jacinto UMC July 1, 1988 – June 30, 1994 Karen and I, with Anna (3) and Grace (1) in their car seats, drove for four days, in blistering heat, from Kentucky across the country to Southern California. We put a bucket of ice on the floor under Karen’s feet, opened all four windows and…
Category: Steps
Object Lessons
Object lessons. You know them. The ones where a leader usually working with children cuts open the pumpkin and says, “Did you know that carving a pumpkin for Halloween is a lot like being a Christian?” And everyone thinks, “No way?” And then as she cuts off the top. “When Jesus comes into our lives…
Quarantine
Who knew that I would struggle this much with quarantine. I love being at home. I love doing art and cooking and doing dishes. Vacuuming is fun. But when I am restricted home, it feels different. When my day is filled with silence, because there is no coffee shop atmosphere, there are no other people…
Time to Sing
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…
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…
Unity
This week I finished reading the book entitled Hamilton: The Revolution which describes what went into the creation of the famous play that has become an international sensation. The book describes the history of the play, the many people that went into making it a reality, the achievement of it, and the power of the…
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…
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…
Just Plain Lost…
“Just plain lost.” That’s what this guest in worship had written on his prayer request card. Life was tough with surgeries, with financial issues, with housing, then he wrote those three telling words which caught my heart. I had never read a clearer lament. Lost. That pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair. I reached out…
Cancer, Control and Freedom
I have many partial blog posts that I’ve written but haven’t published any for a month. This has been for multiple reasons — the heart, the mind, the stress, the feeling of inadequacy, the dealing with shame, or more likely, shame dealing with me. When I read this post by brother David Beck, a man…
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