We had some good plans— worthwhile, helpful, and productive plans. But you know how quickly your plans can go awry, right? On the last Sunday of 2018, my wife Chris planned to stop by our son and daughter-in-law’s house to pick up our grandson for church. The whole family wasn’t…
How many times over the past few weeks have you heard maxims that sound like these: “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie “By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in…
Prior to 1992, I’d never been to Vermont. To this mostly Midwestern guy, the small northeastern state might as well have been a foreign country, for all I knew of it, which was almost nothing. But in July of that year, I received and accepted the call to pastor First…
The Appalachian, the Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide are the three great long-distance hikes in the United States. Each is over 2,000 miles long and takes the typical thru-hiker 5 months or more to traverse. An interesting feature of each is that somewhere along the trail, the hiker will…
In 2014 in the Scottish region of Fife, 14-year-old David Hall was doing a bit of exploring with his metal detector when, suddenly, it started beeping like crazy! You ever been to the beach and seen the old guys out there with their metal detectors, hoping to find a quarter…
One of the biggest mistakes parents of more than one child can make is showing favoritism towards one of their children. What’s the depth of emotional hurt when an adult child says to his sibling, “Yeah, well, mom always liked you better!” Don’t you have to wonder how much family…
In the course of reading the familiar story of Abraham’s encounter with three strangers (Genesis 18)—a story I’ve read dozens of times—I was reminded of some of the experiences of thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail (AT). Could you imagine yourself driving along a relatively quiet rural two-lane highway, approaching a…
There’s nothing quite like a good sunrise to put things in perspective. I’ve visited Chicago plenty of times through the years and seen a gamut of stuff up close and personal. Certainly, parts of the city are beautiful: Millennium Park…the view from Navy Pier…the grand architecture…the river walk along the…
