What Being a Leaf Fan Has Taught Me About Idol Worship

Seems like everyone's a Leaf hater these days, and I mean HATE. It's like everybody's gotta tell me that the Leafs haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1967. (Thanks, I'll write that down somewhere) or tell me that the Leafs suck (no kidding). I know you're all having some fun, but some folks need to …

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Two Kinds of Racism

What does a Canadian white male do with what is happening in Ferguson, MO? The violence and the bitter distrust is heart breaking and I don't know what I can do about it. I would like to think that I could hold this at arms length and shake my head condescendingly since this kind of …

You Don't Actually Learn From Experience

Lots of people say that the best way to learn is from experience but the truth is, strictly speaking, nobody actually learns from experience.  If you want proof of that, consider what a group like Alcoholics Anonymous would say about real learning.  Learning is observed through a change in behaviour. A person dealing with alcoholism, …

A Distracted Mind

This week I've been learning about Spiritual Reflection at a one week intensive course at Lipscomb University. We talked about a study done by two Harvard researchers who wanted to track the connection between where your attention was focused, and how happy you were. So they developed an iPhone app that contacted 2,250 volunteers at …

Adding Silence to your Prayer Life

I remember a summer camp skit I saw years ago where a family was gathered watching TV and one kid got up and said, "I'm heading off to pray, anybody need anything?" I think we all appreciate that prayer is not just the practice of asking God for stuff.  Prayer is about expressing concerns and …

Pictures of Egypt

Exile is an powerful metaphor for discontinuous change. Not a simple adaptive challenge like buying a bigger pair of pants because all your clothes shrank (go figure). Exile is finding yourself in a unfamiliar place where what used to work doesn't work anymore. Christians find themselves in exile these days. We are doing what we've …

Resurrection

17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles[a] from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she …

The Teacher and the Student

Last night I came to our mid-week youth program thinking I was teaching a class and instead I learned a great deal.  We are studying the character and nature of God and we were learning about four of God's character traits. God is Just God is Unchanging God is Gracious God is Unfathomable With the …

The Workshop Continues

The canceled workshop continues today.  I am choosing to see this opportunity as a way for God to train me in topics I need to understand better. Lesson #1 Use discretion in speaking in public I have overheard more phone conversations in the past couple of days that I can possibly relay here.  People talking …

September Sailing

This past week I went out on the boat for one of those pathetic sails that sailors do in late September to justify not taking their boat out of the water at the end of August. At the end of the summer you say to yourself, "No, I'll go out a couple of times next …