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 thought [...]

It was a glorious summer day in late July 1978. I had spent the better part of an afternoon water skiing with my high school friends, Clair, Steve, Lori, and Kristi. A quintessential day for skiing, the water on Iowa Lake was calm, quiet and smooth as glass.
When the sun began to slip behind the trees lining the [...]

Last Saturday I took Annie and Emma to their school’s Fall Festival. A fund raising event by the local PTA, it was a fun four hours of games, candy, hot dogs and Sno Cones. The students’ favorite booth was, “Pie In The Eye”. For just a few tickets they could throw a whipped cream pie in their [...]

In a letter written to Arthur Greeves and dated December 29, 1935, C.S. Lewis penned the following thoughts on the topic of friendship:
“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think [...]

Some time ago during one of my kids’ elementary school events I was walking the halls observing the latest student created art and literary projects displayed on the walls. One was by some third graders who were given the assignment to write about what they thought their future would look like. All were entertaining to [...]

You heard the phrase more than once during the Christmas season. “Let’s wait till after the first of the year.” You may have heard it from me. I said it quite a bit.
“After the first of the year.” During the frenetic Christmas holiday we speak of early January as though it were a wide open, [...]

12 seconds left in the game. The Phoenix Suns have the ball. They’re down by a point.
Steve Nash, Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire have been a three-headed scoring monster in the second half, breathing 3-point fire from the perimeter and pounding down earthshaking slam dunks underneath. The clock ticks toward double zeros.
Marion, aka “The Matrix”, [...]

Do you ever find yourself so busy that you can’t keep track of everything on your schedule? Have you ever said to yourself or to someone around you, “I just don’t have time to think about that right now!”?
Sometimes we get so involved and over-committed that we forget things. Forgetting to pick up your shirts [...]

 
The New Year. Our good intentions are at their peak in January. Yet there’s no magic in the turning of a calendar page. The challenge of a New Year is that we bring our old self into it. So how do we make a fresh start?
God is a gracious God. A God of “do overs”. [...]

The lesson of a Picasso print and priorities.
(Presented to Hope Covenant Church – Chandler, AZ – 11/7/2004)

It was relatively quiet for a late afternoon at the Omaha airport. I was waiting out a two hour layover, pondering the price of a Diet Coke and cookie I had just purchased. “$5.80? Pardon me, miss, but is there a major league baseball game going on behind this counter?” She gave me an “I [...]

Immediately after graduating from college in 1985 I lived with four of my friends on Central Ave in Orange City, IA. Occupying a corner lot, the gray two-story affectionately known as “The House” was over the years a home to some, temporary quarters for others and even a half-way house for one foreign national on [...]

Tonight was bath night for the girls. Just like every other bath night.
It begins with them in their high chairs. Goldfish crackers in the crease of their shirts and peaches in their hair. Sweet, sticky faces with baby tooth grins. They signal dinner is over by backhanding their mostly empty sippy cups onto the floor. [...]