Ya know, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my sis and brother-in-law’s financial miracle. (See The Bean Fields and Mighty Men of Valor 8/25). It was such joy to see my sister’s relief, to hear of God’s mercy and grace being poured into their lives. It was a “whew” moment—saved-by-the-Father kind of thing. But [...]

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Eleazar was one of David’s mighty men of valor. You know, the David from the Old Testament. The David who eventually became king, but was harangued by Saul. The David and Goliath guy. Anyway, the Bible says he had three Mighty Men of Valor and Eleazar was one of them. Eleazar and his story is [...]

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The small wiry Chinese university president pulled me to the side and whispered, “Hou Chi, Dr. Cliff look really, really stupid, but in fact, he really, really smart. When he open mouth much wisdom come out. Surprising.” Don’t worry, I told Cliff about the conversation and he cracked up laughing. The fact of the matter [...]

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C.S. Lewis said that too often educators approach teaching as deforestation. You go in and tear down every preconceived notion, pull up roots of ignorance and clear the land for planting. According to Lewis, that is the absolutely wrong approach. To his mind, we should be irrigating deserts. Bringing knowledge, life, learning, information, worldview to [...]

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How Would Jesus Teach? Many professions or vocations today lack an exact model of how Jesus would work in specific fields. We can see in Scripture that Jesus prepared breakfast for his disciples. However, we don’t know his recipe, if he used marinade, what his filleting technique was, or much about his presentation. (But I [...]

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It’s back to school time! Swoosh…summer’s gone. Unbelievable. We are now looking at the 2009-2010 academic year. Exciting stuff. Some folks who read this old blog of mine are teachers, college professors, university instructors, and even homeschoolers. To celebrate this back-to-school season, I want to share a four part series with you on teaching like [...]

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It seems difficult for Millennials to find real heroes today. Christian teens especially struggle to find good role models and mentors. Mine was always Corrie ten Boom. I was twelve-years-old when I first saw The Hiding Place. My family was living in Oklahoma City at the time. Every Sunday my parents let me go to [...]

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I’ve always wanted to be from a big ol’ ethnic family that was noisy, argued a lot and ate good food. I wasn’t even particular about the kind of ethnic family it was; just that it was big, loud, noisy and that they ate amazing food around big noisy tables. Okay, so the table doesn’t [...]

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Effects of Aging Clay: aging lends better workability to clay. To age clay, it is left open to the air for a day or two after mixing. This allows microscopic organisms to move into and grow within the clay. These organisms add more plasticity to the clay. The one drawback aged clay has is that [...]

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