Under pressure? Feeling squeezed? Me, too. Do you like it? Me, neither. Pressure. Squeezed. Pressed. In the vice. However you describe it, I hate it. So how about we just eliminate it? No more pressure. Badda boom. Badda bing. It’s gone. While waving my mental magic wand, I thought about what life would look like […]

You’ve probably heard about it in the news this past week. Pat Robertson, ordained Baptist minister and former Republican presidential candidate was asked a question on his “700 Club” TV show. Robertson was asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from Alzheimer’s. […]

Sometimes we just have to laugh. As Frederick Buechner wrote, “Laughing is better than crying and maybe not even all that different…(because) no matter what the immediate occasion is of either your laughter or your tears, the object of both ends up being yourself and your own life.” Several months ago while driving on Loop […]

Most Sunday evenings you’ll find me somewhere having coffee with friends, doing my best to finish out the weekend while staving off the coming work week. On this night my friend Allen Weathers, worship pastor at Turning Point Church, and I were at IHOP enjoying the java and conversation. Our server, we’ll call her “Lori”, […]

It’s about a quarter till five at United on 50th and Q and every line is at least three carts deep. It’s not always a given that the Express Lane is faster. Most of us would rather push a cart than carry a basket so I check each one to see if maybe someone only […]

In literature, he or she is referred to as the “protagonist”. The leading character, hero, or heroine of the drama. These are the good guys. The good girls. The characters who, though not perfect and may stumble along the way, do the right thing. Especially in the end. As good literature proves, without tension there […]

(This appeared as the back page “Classic Thoughts” column in the February 2010 issue of “The Classic”, the alumni magazine of  Northwestern College. I’m grateful for the privilege to contribute to this fine publication.) Pulling into the parking lot, I ask my 9-year-old twin daughters the same question I ask every week. “Girls, what are […]

One of my seminary professors, Dr. Steve Tracy, earned his doctorate at the University of Sheffield in England. For part of his degree program he relocated his family to the UK. When Thanksgiving rolled around, they had been there for some time. Long enough to be missing home and family in the United States. They […]

Have you ever been deeply wounded by another person? Have you ever been deeply wounded by another person who, with deliberate action and malice aforethought, hurt you on purpose? Have you waited for justice to be served? And waited some more? Are you still waiting? (Maddening, isn’t it?) In our broken world, wounds come in […]

Every house has at least one.  The “junk drawer”. Most often found in the kitchen, it usually barely opens. Pull it out five inches and a ruler or a tire pressure gauge or a plastic thingy from some forgotten project gets stuck cross ways and you have to jiggle the drawer back and forth. Why the plastic thingy […]

It was a hard morning for Emma. Purposely provoking her sister Annie to frustration. Lots of button pushing in her communication with me. A good measure of “I hear what Daddy is saying but I’ll do it when I feel like it.” Then, when called to accountability, blaming her sister or feigning poor hearing as excuses for her […]

Smile. Crack a joke. Help the carry out person wrangle a couple stray carts. Write a real paper and pen note to a former teacher telling them what you learned from them. Call your parents and tell them you noticed how much smarter they got after you went to college. Hold the door for someone. Let […]

In the aftermath of my relocation to Texas I’ve spent evenings going through all the boxes in the garage, merging and purging as the items dictate. I think it was Erma Bombeck who said, “When you see how quickly things accumulate on their own, you wonder why you bother to save anything on purpose.” Among the boxes […]

There are some differences between this place I’ve been for a month and Phoenix, the place I was for the past 14 years. For starters, Lubbock is more than ten times smaller. Had I come here straight from the farm, it would have seemed like a big city. But moving from 4 million to 220,000 […]

Years ago my good friend Fred told me about a delightful conversation he had with his then 3-year old grandson, Nathan. Nathan was just about to have another birthday. “Grandpa, I don’t want to be 4. I want to stay 3.” “Why is that?” “Because after you turn 4, then you turn 5.” “What’s wrong with […]

Over the holidays some dear friends gave me a great Christmas present. Tickets to Santa’s Village, a Christmas theme amusement park that sets up each year at Firebird Raceway here in Phoenix. We had a blast on the rides, eating kettle corn and cotton candy. It was a delightful afternoon spent making memories with my twin 6-year […]

Back in the day, before farmers relied solely on herbicides in their Iowa soybean fields, the preferred method of weeding was “walking beans”. It was a predictable summer job. You’d get your crew together, most of the time your family, spread out and walk down the field getting rid of the weeds that grew. Each […]

Hope Covenant, my home church, is in Chandler, Arizona. Like the other towns in the Phoenix valley, it began as a small farming town that over the decades morphed into an urban area. About 3 million people live in the metro area known as the “Valley of the Sun”. Vestiges of the former agricultural existence […]

When I was in high school, a friend of mine made plans to spend his summer riding across the United States with a group of bicycle enthusiasts. For his trip he bought a brand new Sekai touring bike. The bike was expensive and looked it. Everything from wheel to wheel was top of the line. […]

Most people have likely never heard of my college alma mater, a small Christian liberal arts school in Orange City, Iowa. But since Deb Remmerde went on the CBS Morning Show last Monday a lot more of the country knows about Northwestern College.   Deb is a sophomore All-American basketball player for the Lady Raiders. […]

About 12 years ago when we moved to the Phoenix valley one of the things we wanted to do was find a church to attend. We visited quite a few. One Sunday during a worship service at a church in Mesa, the pianist played a solo. An arrangement of an old hymn. It was one […]

Is there a job that you think is beneath you? Has your education, position, title, or wealth elevated you beyond performing mundane tasks? Ever since high school I had a sense that seminary would be in my future. After graduating from college I realized it wouldn’t be wise for me to go straight to graduate […]