As a child I loved to pull my parents’ wedding album from under the bookshelf that held the fiction. I would dust it off and page through, pausing at my favorites. My parents’ wedding color was red, matching the church’s Christmas trees decorated with white lights and red bows. Candles lined the aisle and everything glowed.

I set my bike on the ground and trotted over to the truck. Inside, a man was sitting upright behind the wheel, his head on his chest, his hands hanging limp in his lap. Something needed doing, but where to begin?

Her story dates back more than 350 years to the Spice Islands of the Indonesian archipelago and the wars that erupted over their control.

Given time to reassess, to think about what the potential outcomes could have been, I would have made a different decision. I would not have swerved.

I was not the man of God I had portrayed; instead, I was in need of restoration and healing grace.

Recently I started a contracting company with two friends. We fixed the roof of a church and the exterior wall of a house. The church paid promptly. But an elder from the church who owns the house refused to pay the agreed amount.

The fallen leaves swirling along the avenue remind me that although it is warm enough to sit outdoors with my coffee on this October afternoon, winter is just around the corner. Looking up, I notice one leaf on an otherwise bare tree.

When we got the news that our adoption was annulled and I had been labeled a five-year hazard, I believed the entire year had been a waste, and I was the one who had wasted it. I believed this knowing what I know as a Christian in my head.

This is a theology not learned on the hill in the white-steepled church, but caught on the streets of the trailer park and inside the teen center while living in the shadow of the Chugach Mountains, a theology carried to me—taught to me—by those who walk on other city streets.

Years ago, during a canoe trip on a Michigan river, I stepped into what appeared to be shallow water to pull the canoe to shore. But the water was over my head. Instantly I was disoriented, grasping for anything to provide stability.

She sat across from me, a look of disbelief on her face. As she spoke, her eyes grew larger, her voice stronger. “These things would never, ever happen in my country,” she said. “But if they did, there would be a big problem for that person and for that person’s family.”

Eating the “clean fifteen,” seeking out grass-fed beef—has been tiring. And so far it has not fixed the world.

Parkinson’s disease doesn’t just sneak in and take all of your stuff, although that might be easier. You could make adjustments and move on. No, Parkinson’s starts out taking small stuff and you hardly even notice. But you do notice.

It may be easy to shut our eyes and hearts to nameless throngs, but personal relationships make it much harder. 

All I really remember about my first few years of lessons is that I wanted to play. My brother and sister both played, and it looked like fun. When I started, it was the pure joy of creating something beautiful and meaningful out of nothing.

In Acts 17, Paul is basically called a nitwit by his new friends. Here’s what happened.

This man got a pair of gloves, and I got a blessing. I think I came out ahead.

Loving small means doing small things, helpful things, things not all that striking, but doing them with great love.

One of our greatest hopes for our friends in Bethania is that they might believe, think, and act outside the myth of scarcity—and live instead into the liturgy of abundance.

In November of 2016, my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer after a routine mammogram.

Darlene and I attended the same church from birth. Yet I didn’t really notice her until she was a teenager and her swollen arm was in a sling because of a bee sting. 

The guidebook described the lakeside campground as one of the great family destinations in California if you don’t mind the drive.

A red heart catches my eye.