It’s 8:27 AM. I’m running 5 minutes late. Grab the keys, pull the door shut behind me and hit the garage door button on the way out. The motor drones and plays the familiar tune of creaking and rolling and lifting, the morning anthem that starts my day.
A double glance in the rear view mirror (I’ve heard the stories about people backing before looking) tells […]

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 I came […]

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. […]

Last Wednesday evening I took the girls to Golfland to play mini-golf. When you play putt-putt with twin 6-year olds, you don’t bother playing yourself. You just help them try to stay focused on the hole in front of them and keep them from trying to climb the Windmill or wade in the water hazard.
They […]

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. She got […]

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 of […]

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 school. […]