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Brock, my youngest son, loves to watch the Discovery Channel's, “Storm Chasers.” It follows several crews of tornado chasers who look for and follow storms that are likely to produce tornadoes. You’ve probably seen the news accounts of the tragic death of three men who were featured on the program, Tim Samaras and his son, Paul, along with colleague Carl Young, were all killed when the vehicle they were using to follow an E3 touchdown, was crushed by what is believed to be

In Matthew 6:16-18, Jesus told his followers to fast differently than the way a lot of people of his day fasted. It seems a number of people enjoyed attention from others for their “sacrifice” of fasting.

The tornado tragedy in Oklahoma is heartbreaking. The idea of an elementary school being leveled by an E5 tornado is horrible. And then you hear first responders recount how they found remains of three children huddled together under the body of the teacher who had been attempting to shield them. Wow. The loss of life, property damage, and lots of individual stories make the situation difficult to follow on the news. I have a hard time watching it. Then we ask, “How could Go

This has been quite the week of scandals in American politics. President Obama has, for the most part, enjoyed the goodwill of the mainstream press. But that appears to be interrupted this week. Major questions of credibility are now being asked in lieu of the Benghazi talking points affair, the procurement of Associated Press journalist telephone records, and the IRS maltreatment of conservative organizations. It does remind us of the fickle nature of political favor. And no

Horrified. That’s how we felt as the details emerged of the plight of those three young women who had been kidnapped and imprisoned in Cleveland for over a decade. And the details are just beginning to come out. They will worsen in the weeks ahead, no doubt. Will these young women ever be able to return to normal life? Many psychologists being interviewed on news television programs emphasize a need for lengthy and careful “debriefing”. I think it’s going to take a lot more

There is quite the commotion in the media over the recent NBA player who has come out publicly to announce that he is gay. And there is even more clamor over Chris Broussard, the ESPN announcer, who said that because of his Christian faith, he cannot condone homosexual behavior. For that, his job is now in jeopardy. I wonder if a high profile Christian were to say that adultery is not compatible with Christian values, would he be censored for saying that? What if he said that

I struggled with baptism. For six months I held off getting baptized. I had grown up knowing only of babies being sprinkled as baptism. The idea of a person my age getting fully immersed as a metaphor of what Jesus did for us was foreign to me. The first time I heard about it, I thought it was weird. Even after I started reading the Bible and seeing baptism being practiced as an immersion for adults, or people old enough to request it, even then it was a struggle. After actua

Flooding in Des Plaines has become a fact of life. My introduction to the northwest suburbs came three weeks after we moved here in 2007. The people we bought our house from insisted it had never had water in the basement. But our first month in Des Plaines a storm knocked the power out for ten days and brought about six inches of water into our basement. Canoes were making their way down River Road (which becomes literal every time it floods). The flooding has repeated itsel

Did you hear about the woman in Texas who lit her house on fire last month? While raking and cleaning out her yard, she encountered a snake. Her response is a bit perplexing, because hitting it over the head with the rake handle would have worked just fine. But instead, she grabbed a nearby gasoline can and doused the snake, then threw a match on it. The inflamed snake slithered into a brush pile next to the house, and before she knew it, the brush pile and the house were eng

Several years ago, one of our newer office assistants complained that her computer shut down and wouldn’t turn back on. I was the resident “go-to” for tech issues, so I asked, “What happened when it shut down?” “I dropped my mouse,” she said. That normally wouldn’t turn off a computer, so I assumed something else had happened. “Check all the wires behind the computer and try turning it on again.” She did, and it didn’t respond. “Where did you drop your mouse?” I asked. “Right

Should it matter to us now what heaven will be like? I should say so! After hearing and reading from both church and non-church people what their assumptions are of heaven, having a Biblical understanding of what God says our ultimate home will be like, does matter. If heaven is really the place (or lack thereof) that many people think it is, it does not offer much incentive for people to want to find out how to get there. After all, the Bible describes it for a reason! One,

Salmon are amazing creatures. Several years ago, our family vacationed in Alaska in August, the prime season for salmon migration. I was enthralled with the sight of rivers, so teeming with salmon swimming upstream, that they gave the appearance of white water rapids, when in fact it was all salmon creating the disturbances in the water. Salmon are born as fresh water fish. As they grow, they become more streamlined in their appearance, their color changes, their endocrine ac

In a vain attempt to keep him “lifelike”, the body of Hugo Chavez, like the bodies of many other totalitarian heads of state before him, will be embalmed and placed on permanent (sort of) display in a glass sarcophagus near his presidential palace. Most are familiar with the display of Russia's Vladimir Lenin in Moscow's Red Square. Others include Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong (China), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), and Kim Il Sung (North Korea). Russian historians say that Lenin and Sta

Imagine complete and total darkness, the inability to see anything, and then...light, images, sight! A biomedical engineer at the University of Southern California has developed a process using a tiny HD camera attached to eyeglasses, which wirelessly transmits to a sheet of electrodes that are implanted on the retina, to give partial sight to some who otherwise would be totally and completely blind. It’s already being used successfully on a number of candidates in Europe, w

Last fall, there was an incredible story in the news about a dog that found his deceased master’s grave in a distant cemetery, and stood guard over it for six years. Shortly after Miguel Guzman passed away, his German Shepherd, Capitan, ran away from home. The family looked everywhere to no avail. They assumed he had been hit by a car. Then the following Sunday, when the family visited their father’s grave, Capitan came running to meet them in the cemetery, barking and waggin

Did you hear about the near miss last week? If you were watching the news, you knew it was coming, but we also knew it was going miss us by about 1,700 miles. That may seem like a long ways away, but not when it comes to meteors the size of a Wal-Mart, hurtling towards us at forty times the speed of sound. An impact from something like that would destroy a city, and could possibly cause global weather catastrophe. So obviously, even though it was going to miss us, scientists

The power of words is an amazing thing. Particularly the words that come from those who matter to us. I was 17 the first time I preached. The youth group I was attending had a special night for young guys who thought they might go into the ministry to preach to the youth group. There were three or four of us scheduled to speak that night and we were given 10 minutes a piece. I still remember the message that I gave (I think I even have my original notes), and I hate to admit

A couple of weeks ago, while examining the third commandment, I talked about the common practice of Christians attaching God’s name to their actions and choices, thereby claiming a kind of “divine endorsement” on their decisions. How often do we hear Christians say something like, “The Lord led me to __________.” And I sited a few examples where others claimed to be led by the Lord when clearly, God would not have have led anyone to contradict Scripture. There are also times

What a week. I’ve been reminded with three unrelated people who are close to our family that life is precious, and it is also precarious. It’s harder to remember that in modern America. We have had the best health care system in the world since sin began. I know some are convinced that we have major nutrition issues in our culture (and there are no doubt problems with chemicals, trans-fats, etc.) but life expectancy and overall health in modern times has never before approach

My daughter and I were recently on a hike though the most unusual woods I had ever been in. It was a bamboo forest. Have you ever seen bamboo growing wild? While it is technically in the grass family, bamboo shoots rise higher than a most trees in the Midwest. The “forest” Erica and I hiked through was so thick that at 1:00 in the afternoon, with not a cloud in the sky, the tops shielded the sun so much so that it felt like nightfall down where we were walking. One shoot had