In my recent book, "The Eighth Page," I discuss understanding that hope is based in something bigger than us.  Much bigger.  Something that's sovereign and immovable.  Something untouched by everything that we could touch it with as a means of destroying it. “Pausing and scanning the landscape for a moment, he turned back to little David and … [Read more...]

In my book, "An Intimate Collision," I tell the story of a blind man named Doug.  Doug lived his life walking through it touching, smelling, holding and savoring everything along the way.  He savored the journey because his handicap left him with little alternative.  Doug did not live for great goals.  Rather, he lived for small things.  And to … [Read more...]

In my book, "An Intimate Collision," the first chapter engages the these of "love."  But it does so not in the sense of human love and the shallowness of that kind of love.  Rather, it engages it in terms of God's love, which is both the fullest embodiment of love as well as the fullest expression of our humanity.  A quote drawn from that chapter … [Read more...]

What would I do with a new start?  I mean a really new, ‘new’ start?  Not something that looks new because we’ve vigorously spit-shined something that’s old to a new luster.  Not some radical make-over of something that’s radically old so that it looks convincingly new.  Not a meticulous restoration that’s going to erase the footprints of time and … [Read more...]

With the New Year we long for a fresh start.  We want to wipe the slate clean, removing the smudges and the smears.  We want to get rid of the errors, the poor choices, the misguided decisions and the bruising flops that populated the previous year.  We want to wipe away old habits, clean up destructive behaviors, sponge up toxic relationships, run … [Read more...]

She was born into an emerging America in 1890.  Through the ninety-five years of life that stood in front of her she would watch an Industrial Revolution unfold, Henry Ford roll out the Model T, and Edison light the world.  She would read the headlines of dough boys marching off to fight a Kaiser in what was originally called the ‘Great War’.  Some … [Read more...]

We stand on the escarpment of a New Year.  In many ways, it seems that what lies ahead doesn’t rally us with energizing hope, but rather it seems to rattle us with deep apprehension.  From the vantage point we stand on at the beginning of this New Year, the landscape that lies ahead looks uncertain at best and disastrous at worst.  We see a world … [Read more...]

It is worthy to note those things upon which we wage war.  There are those completely virtuous and entirely untainted causes that are birthed at those seminal moments when the very foundation of the whole of our existence is suddenly teetering on some precarious precipice.  Indeed, in every generation there are those utterly horrifying moments when … [Read more...]

I don’t know how I got it or where it came from, but Mom always said it was mine.  Sometimes we are gifted small things that appear to be the epitome of small things.  Yet, lifetime treasures are always packaged in small things because only small things have enough space to hold something that large. The Christmas tree was always tastefully … [Read more...]

Have we forgotten Christmas?  Or more tragically, have we never really known it at all?  Have we embraced some pathetic derivative that is but a thin and emaciated shadow of something that we have found intimidating and demanding because of how grand it is?  And so, do we diminish great stories out of our fear of them?  More frighteningly, do we … [Read more...]