Saturday Mornings

...more photos from VSF Church Camping 2009 here .

...more photos here .

Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend. -- Gabriel Marcel

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and f...

Our music is about the realization everyone gets at some point in their lives that the world is broken , and we don't know how to fix it...

Remember, sinner, it is not your hold of Christ that saves you -- it is Christ. -- C.H. Spurgeon

One of the many things in nature that just about can't get any better.

Two things I ask of you, O Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but...

...more photos here .

Life once again feels very full. I move back and forth now in a sway between perceiving it to be ‘too full’ and simply a good ‘full life’. ...

The Holy Spirit, in the inspiration of scripture, has kept quite a few things out of our purview, to keep us humble and open to mystery. Li...

Worship begins with finding you finding me and ends with this neverending. -- Tim Koshnik

Honest doubt is different from an ironclad commitment to doubt itself. Honest doubt is painful, but its pain is active rather than passive, ...

For more scenic views, click here ....

I must say that at the very least life is unpredictable. …so much so that I find myself wondering why I try to predict it. I think I reall...

...well, the 2 on the right anyway...after a recent 5k together in Winona Lake, IN.

There is a certain similarity between marriage and the Christian religion, which is suggested by the text in our gospel reading: “Ye have no...

Poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of th...

...of course (!), more pics here . Many eyes go through the meadow, not many see the flowers in it. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson What am I lookin...

The delicate combination of morning sun eeking over the residual dampness of night is such a beautiful sight, sound, and smell. Something i...

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. -- Galatians 5:6

What saves me from the tedium of another day is falling hopelessly in love with the people I meet: the curly-haired barista at the coffee s...

The morning light makes promises it has no intention of keeping, but why quibble? Look how it shines on my aging face and my fading to-do l...

Derrick Jensen: What do you say to people who feel they are busy struggling to get by and don't have time to help others? David Edwards...

It seems to me, in this time and space, that one must choose things that are important. An example, solitude. In the swirl of noise almost c...

There’s nothing quite as drawing as an honest Christian human-being. Why does this seem to be the case? In part, because it seems like man...

We had a great day biking as a family on Fort Wayne's Rivergreenway on Mothers Day. 'Mom' liked it a lot.

...finding her form, wind, and speed in 7th grade.

I’m feeling really flat today…as a person. I felt this coming on yesterday. Perhaps it is because the landscape of my requirement this wee...

The world today is upside down because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life. We have no time for each other. Everybo...

At times I am overcome with gratitude for the range and depth of God’s love and provision. At other times, and usually without much separat...

Solitude is the garden for our hearts which yearn for love. It is the place where our aloneness can bear fruit. It is the home for our res...

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the ...

I hear the birds singing loudly today...because it is beautiful Spring morning or do they sing unrestrained for the hope born this Easter mo...

I fell asleep last night with such high hopes for an 'awakening' morning. It is Easter morning and I knew the weather would be quit...

My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, he muttered to himself, and that I am ther...

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. -- Mother Teresa, "The Simple Path...

Learn to humble yourself, you are but earth and clay. -- Thomas à Kempis I fear that humility has escaped me again. How and why does i...

One of money's evils is its beckoning to isolation.  -- dana williamson    ...before I explain, what is your initial reaction to this si...

A master musician...a priviledge to have seen him again!

Hey, bored of TV, check this out: http://www.ysmarko.com/?p=3953 It is usually fun to see what a bunch of people we don't know anything ...

And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you ...

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not see the answers that cannot be give...

It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil to...

Several times now I have said that our real hope lies in that no matter how oppressed we may be, we always retain some spark of capacity to ...

There is something comforting about time after all, even as it seems to hasten us on into oblivion at times. The chance to reflect and revi...

I really miss the habit of daily writing. It is good exercise for the soul. I fear that my life has become full again, perhaps 'clut...

"...sometimes the most real things in the world are things we can't see." -- Conductor, The Polar Express

It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the...

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may exp...

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. -- Cicero

Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It i...

  Unless you have been unfree, it's difficult to understand what it does mean to become free.  -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu One of the t...

In the famous words of MLK, "I have a dream..."...and 'a dream' may be all that Michigan has this year...but we'll roo...

Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence. -- Meister Eckhart

I have learned much, but the time has come to realize that neither parents nor teachers nor counselors can do much more than offer a free an...

An amazing scene from a recent hike in the Swiss Alps.

21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions ne...

Well there wasn't much 'Go Blue'-worthy in the game itself, but the tradition, the color, the stadium, and the day together ...

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and good...

The early Christian monks staked their survival on their willingness to be as God had made them, creatures of the day-to-day. They regarded...

As we wait, we can fix our eyes on Jesus as a companion who empathizes with our suffering and a Savior who is working behind the scenes. Dif...

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. -- Joseph Cardinal Bernardin

...shot taken at our annual church-wide campout .

His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill He t...

…faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Eve...

25 riders from VSF rode 20+ miles on one of the more beautiful days of the year...to the equally beautiful beaches of South Haven, Michiga...

Have you ever had a great sneeze in the early morning? Quite a unique and wonderful feeling, I must say. For over 40 years, I never acknowle...

Getting ready...for another era! GO BLUE!!!

We enter most appropriately into [the revelation of who God is] when we listen and tell stories to one another and listen and speak to God i...