Life can be so wonderfully joyous. The birth of a baby, the hug of a friend, the beauty of a sunset, the smell of coffee. And yet at other times, life can be so tragically sad. The recent floods in central Texas and the loss of so many young children and families was devastating. Our […]

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? If not resolutions, maybe any goals or plans for the coming year? The new year provides a fresh start, a sense that “this year is going to be better.” I think that is a good thing because we all need fresh starts, do-overs, goals and plans. Can I

One of the things we love about Christmas is the music. Phillips Brooks, who penned, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” once wrote, “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, and its soul full of music breaks the air.”   What’s your favorite “fun” Christmas song?

Can I tell you a little about our family dog, Lady? She’s a beautiful, loving black English Lab who turns 10 years old this week on December 7. Although December 7 is Pearl Harbor day, we will celebrate it because Lady has brought us peace, love, and joy. When our last dog, Snowball, passed away,

The writer Frederick Buechner once made an interesting observation: “I think maybe it is holiness that we long for more than we long for anything else.”[1] The origin of the word “holy” is helpful in understanding what Buechner meant. The word holy comes from pagan and Jewish temple practices, and it literally means taking something

“Where is the hope? I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. Where is the hope? The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed, or what great things that we do as a nation. Our hope is in

Happy Pentecost! Did your church celebrate Pentecost this last Sunday (May 19)? If not, you can still celebrate with the Eastern Orthodox church, which (based on their Easter calendar) celebrates Pentecost beginning Sunday, June 23, with three days of feasts and celebratory worship! But Pentecost is actually something we should be celebrating every day. What

Have you ever experienced a paradigm shift? You thought you understood something, and then something happened that opened a completely different perspective? I have experienced such a paradigm shift in the way I view God. And because (whether we realize it or not) how we view God affects every part of our lives, this paradigm

I hate death. I can’t stand it. It separates us from the ones we love; it cuts short our goals and longings; it brings excruciating physical pain and waves of emotional grief. Death is a trainwreck, “the expression of a catastrophe which runs on a collision course with man’s original destination or, in other words,

The question was a little strange: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). It was strange because, being Jewish, the disciples of Jesus knew how to pray. From childhood, their parents had taught them to pray the Shema three times a day: “Hear O Israel, the LORD is God, the LORD alone” (Deut. 6:4). It