Saturday Mornings

Have you seen the posts at " Dawn's Random Acts of Thought "? I particularly like this one: Beware of refusing to go to the...

The great secret of a life of faith is to hang upon Jesus daily; to go to Him in every trial; to cast upon Him every burden ; to take the in...

I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard throughout my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the ...

God is going to redeem every single piece of you…He just is not going to submit his plan for doing so for your approval.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.   -- George F. Will

More Winona eagle pics here ....

I’ve reached all kinds of conclusions about you…because of all my conclusions about myself.

The love I bear Christ is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself:  He kindled it and he keeps it alive; and becau...

More often than not, but not every time, I wake up with a fairly clear list of the ‘get tos’ I want for the ensuing day.  Things to think ab...

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 ...

AS WE LAY IN BED this morning, Norma asked what I was going to do today. “Save the world,” I replied in a deadpan voice. “Did you say ‘save,...

The Milky Way was created by a herd of white horses set loose, rearing and kicking, galloping through the desert night, leaving their wh...

The first duty of love - is to listen. -- Paul Tillich I wonder if the listening required is a listening to life and to those in it, as ...

As much as there is in the 1 Cor 13 passage on love (see below), I'm struck by is 'not' there...and what is not there seems to l...

Q:  Is 'love' an idea or a person? A:  God is love.

Bitterness & Confession. Prejudice & Love. Life & Death. ...one of my Top 10 movies.

I’m in a hurry a lot.  I find myself often thinking that I could get more done IF it didn’t take me so long to get from A to B.  So I tend t...

Love loves when it is not loved back. How can it do this?  …because it knows it is loved by another who loves when He is not loved back.

Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Is trust the root of protects, hopes, perseveres?  In other words, c...

Love never fails – 1 Corinthians 13:8.  I feel a bit snagged by the absolute nature of this statement, but suspect that it is meant to be en...

We reach for a new law, often through the muck of an ever-present old one.  And, as we do, we discover that the ‘new law’ is really the olde...

I am both surprised and disappointed at the regularity and rate of change within myself.  Why would I even be surprised or disappointed by s...

What will a new year bring?  Unanticipated suffering or surprising ease.  Health or physical descent.  Or, rather than either extreme, will ...

I heard the bells on Christmas day       Their old familiar carols play,       And wild and sweet the words repeat       Of peace on eart...

...more stuff here .

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again.  Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will...

Busyness.  There seems to be merit to the notion that busyness is a good thing, to the extent it that complements the notion that “idle time...

When I vacillated about my decision to serve the Lord my God, it was I who willed, and I who willed not, and nobody else. I was fighting aga...

Our wilderness experience doesn’t simply tell us how badly we’ve offended God, it’s also a measure of his earnestness when he says, “I will ...

Woody on Bo: "If 'Bo' is not a winner, I never saw one and I should know. He beat me the last three games we played. We...

I feel a strong need to write this morning. A feeling of pent-up-ness surrounds me, daring me to burst towards its suffocation. Expression ...

Some of what I think and say isn’t really true, I just don’t know which part.

...yes, more morning glory here .

...yes, more morning glory here .

...is was great to be together again.

...yes, more tasty colors of fall here .

Click the pic and just listen!

Dietrich Bonheoffer, after being in prison for a year, still another hard year away from his execution, forging long letters to his friend E...

We humans, somewhere along the way, seem to have picked up the bad habit of trying to get life on our terms, without all the bother of God...

...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...