When I was a kid we watched horrible movies at church about the last days. Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder are such wretched films. They are badly directed, badly filmed, badly acted, and I’m not so sure they are theologically sound. Daryl told me he knew kids who became Christians because of those movies. Really? […]

go to permalink....

There’s an old adage, “War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” I think about this saying whenever I’m reading or studying the life of Abraham. Abraham, an ordinary guy going about his ordinary life doing ordinary things when all of the sudden BOOM! God interrupts and Abraham’s course, his life, […]

go to permalink....

This week our dysfunctional HOA board had four beautiful, healthy, 20-year-old Linden trees cut down. Their root systems were not a disturbance; they were not interfering with power lines. Without notifying the residents or even putting it up to a vote, the board made the decision to cut these amazing trees down. As it was […]

go to permalink....

I love being in Lithuania. Especially on days like today when the sun is shining and there is fresh snow on the ground. A delicious 21 degrees Fahrenheit is for me a perfect temperature. But not all days are like this…some days it’s a struggle. Not because of Lithuania, but because of homesickness, missing family […]

go to permalink....

In our apartment building here in Vilnius we are required to clean the common areas/entry areas of our building every third month. There’s a list on the door as you leave the building reminding all the tenants which month is their month to clean. Welcome to the cooperative neighborhood of a former Soviet State. September […]

go to permalink....

Some things I’ll just never understand this side of heaven. A friend said to me recently, “I don’t want to go to hell over a mystery.” I know exactly what he was saying even though I believe once saved always saved. If I edited that statement and made it mine it’d go like this: “I […]

go to permalink....

We just finished our eighth week in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and we love it more each day. Someone asked me what I miss most of our lives in the U.S. Things? No, not “things”. I don’t miss movies or TV or restaurants or shopping malls or having a car. I don’t miss our house or the […]

go to permalink....

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” (George Eliot, 1861, Middlemarch). I hope and pray that I […]

go to permalink....

Wow. Crossing an ocean didn’t make me better! That’s a shock! Somehow I thought if I could get overseas just once more then I’d become a better follower of Jesus. But the truth of the matter is I still struggle with the same ol’ same ol’. For example, prayer. Why is it so hard to […]

go to permalink....

There is a time in all of our lives, no matter how old or young we are, that we need to stop and evaluate things—do a sort of assessment of where we are and why we are doing what we are doing. Friends said to me once they always felt kind of guilty when hanging […]

go to permalink....