Perpetual Embarrassment

Back several months ago my car was totaled. The road was icy. The temperature was cold. The driver was inexperienced. The hill was steep. And the bend in the road fairly sharp. All this combined equals a destroyed rear-end of a car. The rear-end is worth more than $3000 in damage repair. The car still…

500 Words Per Day: Air Hockey, Holy Spirit & Church Boards

I've been thinking about God's Holy Spirit. And I have also been thinking about church. To be sure, I've been thinking about Christians. I've probably also been thinking about myself and how in some way or other I have had experiences with all three. I suppose the experiences haven't always been the best of times…

500 Words Per Day: Thinking about the Pursuit of Ambition

Eugene Peterson wrote, "The great weakness of North American spirituality is that it is all about us: fulfilling our potential, getting in on the blessings of God, expanding our influence, finding our gifts, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. And the more there is of us,…

500 Words Per Day: Grace

Grace. "It's a name for a girl" (U2). Grace falls all over us and colors us clean. Grace marks as children of the living God. Grace prevails upon us when we have no clue who we are, what we are doing, or where we are going. Grace guides, teaches, sustains, and reveals to us the…

500 Words with Acts: Grace

I'm spending the month of May reading through the entire New Testament and I am now finished with the book of Acts (actually finished a couple of days ago). When I was reading it I came to chapters 13-16 where I saw something I had either not noticed or not paid attention to in past…

500 Words per Day: Laughter

I teach special education. That might be evident by the address of the blog; maybe not. Either way that is how I make a living. It's not an easy calling, nor is it always fun. It's daily challenging, but I am a trained professional so I take it all in stride. Many days there is…

500 Words with John’s Gospel: Greater or Lesser

I came across a startling idea when reading John's Gospel and it has to do with greatness or greater. Great. Greater. Greatest. We have fun ways of delineating hierarchy in the English language. I always enjoy seeing words like 'greater' in a text because it makes me wonder what's just 'great.' It happens in John's…

500 Words with Luke’s Gospel: Praying

I will be honest: I struggle with prayer. Eugene Peterson wrote in one of his books that's quite OK if we struggle and that when we don't have words the Holy Spirit prays for us. Many people struggle, yet for some reason I find little comfort in that. For some reason this is the one…

500 Words with Mark’s Gospel: Jesus?

I started reading Mark's Gospel last night. Burned through 8 chapters and enjoyed it immensely. I should finish the book tonight if all goes well. Mark is without a doubt my favorite of the four Gospels. Another thing I cannot help but notice when I read Mark's Gospel is that there is an overwhelming sense…

500 Words with Matthew’s Gospel: Living and Reading Slowly

I'm working on a project in the month of May. The goal is to read through the entire New Testament, the Psalms, and the Proverbs. It requires reading 14-15 chapters of the Bible per day. That doesn't sound like much until you actually start doing it. Some days the chapters are short, other days not…

500 Words with Matthew’s Gospel: God with Us

"So Dark is our situation that God Himself must enter and occupy it in order that it may be light. We cannot fully understand the Christian 'God with us' without the greatest astonishment at the glory of the divine grace and the greatest horror at our own plight."–Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, The Doctrine of Reconciliation,…

500 Words Per Day: Car Doors and Sin

Took some time late this afternoon to go birding with my wife. It was a great afternoon driving around slowly on the back roads, often on the wrong side of the road, without seat belts just hoping to catch a glimpse of some bird we may have never seen before. We saw a lot of…

500 Words Per Day: Being Loved (without conditions)

It's pretty sad when I read more about unconditional love from an author who makes no faith claims whatsoever than I do in books by authors whose sole purpose is to tell their readers about God's unconditional love. Or maybe it's not. Maybe I needed to read it some place else in order for it…

500 Words Per Day: Changing

I've been reading this book called The Myth of the Spoiled Child by Alfie Kohn. I'll be reviewing it on this blog soon so I won't spoil much with this post, except to say that if what Kohn is saying is true, and at this juncture of my reading I'm leaning towards that particular assessment,…

500 Words: Proverbs & Talking

I have a daily reading plan that I have been following for three months now. It is a fairly simply plan that enables me to read through the Psalms & Proverbs in their entirety every month. It goes like this: 5 Psalms per day and 1 chapter of Proverbs per day. This month I also…