My wife, barlow_girl, is a wise woman. One fantastic rule of thumb she's taught me is that "love believes the best." Scripture teaches us this, explicitly and implicitly, over and over again, and we see this truth reflected in varying degrees of distortion all around us. But wow, is it ever challenging ( Read more... )

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

-Galatians 5:15
My friend Mike ( Read more... )

While telling a story, I caught myself laughing at the end and was reminded of how I sometimes find that habit annoying in others. Fact is, I probably do it all the time. Fact is, I'm not that different ( Read more... )

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
     be gracious to me and answer me!
You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
     “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”

-Psalm 27:7-8
Some of the times I am most centered, sane, and honest are just after I wake up in the middle of the night (though honesty can often trump sane and centered). This time, I awoke ( Read more... )

So much fog that I can't see much past my block from the deck this morning. Wonder if that negates the benefit of taking morning tea here ( Read more... )

Enjoying a cool morning at Irwin's with a cup of coffee and a slice of banana bread. Felt pretty chaotic and untethered of late, which is uncomfortable for me, so this is nice. Sometimes the simplest things are also the most grounding ( Read more... )

An area where I regularly struggle with others is related to momentum. Before I begin, a few caveats are probably in order:

• When it comes to laziness, if I'm not chief among sinners, that's only because I was too lazy to try.
• Taking time to reflect and to really think things through are both important and severely underrated practices.
• Doing anything ( Read more... )

After taking things much easier yesterday, I've enjoyed a pretty solid office day today. Nothing earth-shattering, which is good, because I'm not at all in the market for that this week.

barlow_girl and I have really been enjoying praying through the Psalms together this Lent. I'm the king of good intentions, but I need some kind of structure to do anything ( Read more... )

I've always loved how, particularly in the Old Testament, people respond to being called with, "Here I am" (or some equivalent thereof). Read it this morning in Genesis 37:13, but it's regularly peppered throughout the Bible. I don't want impart some deep and wildly inaccurate meaning to the phrase; quite the opposite-I love its simplicity ( Read more... )

Reading Genesis 24 this morning, I'm struck by the nature of trusting God's faithfulness to His word in the context of community. God promised a Abraham to give a land to his offspring, and in his old age, after the death and burial of his wife in that very land, Abraham trusts God will be faithful to his promise. He hadn't always been so trusting- ( Read more... )