a spiritual oasis

While working for his former employer, a Christian friend of mine had an extremely high pressure job. One Wednesday evening, I asked him how he was doing. He responded, “This day has been a long week.”
Have you ever had a day like that—a day when it seemed as though nothing was going right? Like the […]

I had just finished speaking about living with no regrets. A gentle-spirited, older woman approached me. She was complimentary. She was not, however, her normal, cheerful self. She wore a worried expression on her face, which I was not accustomed to seeing there. So, I asked if there was something she wished to discuss.
“Well,” she […]

Contemplating the significance of life…
Well known 19th century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote many things about the human experience. One rolls off of my lips often, because it seems to summarize his philosophy regarding life most succinctly. By now, many of you know what it is. Thoreau stated: The masses of humanity live lives […]

A friend who lives in a distant land occasionally does battle with feelings of insignificance and despair. He once stated publicly that he didn’t know why he tried to do anything of consequence, since it seemed like nothing he ever did turned out right and nobody even seemed to care.
I quickly responded as forcefully and concisely as I could in […]

For the last two weeks my wife (Telesa) and our two youngest children (Benjamin and Abigail) have been on a mission trip to Honduras. They are scheduled to return early Sunday morning. I’ll try to share some of the highlights of the trip next week. In the meantime, here is a link to a few […]

One sunny afternoon I went to the bank to make a deposit. There was only one teller on duty at this small branch. The line was long. I waited patiently for the five people who were in front of me. It seemed to take forever for each one to do his or her business.
Finally, my […]

We encounter change in our world every day. We are changing, as well. Amidst so much shifting — so much change — we often find ourselves groping for something solid to hold on to, some solid place upon which we can stand. This can be quite challenging. When it comes to facing life’s challenges, three […]

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
Planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
Proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no
wickedness in him.—Psalm 92:12-15 […]

The Gospel is astonishingly good news! In Romans 10:13 we read: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This quote from Joel 2:32 serves as a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole (a synecdoche, to be precise). It speaks of a person’s acceptance of Jesus as […]

Rembrandt van Rijn, a resident of seventeenth century Amsterdam, was a prolific and popular artist. Art historian Marilyn Stokstad ranks him as one of the great artists of all times. He also ran an enormous workshop, where many apprentices learned to imitate his style.
He may have excelled more as a teacher than a painter. His […]