BLOG

I know, it’s technically still spring and I’m talking about summer. But it’s coming, and school will be out before you know it. To make the most of the warmer weather and the longer days, decide now how you are going to spend the summer and plan it. Here are a couple of suggestions.

I just bought a couple of patio chairs that came together in a single box. When I opened it, I saw they were in multiple pieces. Laying them out on the floor, I was discouraged. “This is going to take forever!”

I visited a couple of locations where television programs are taped for the History Channel. I was surprised both times. Television can be very deceiving. Some of it is due to the nature of camera lenses and TV screens, and the way our imagination fills in what is past the camera’s periphery. But a lot of it is intentional deception written into the director’s instructions to give a desired illusion. All in all, these two locations were entirely different from what I had expe

There are days, and sometimes weeks, when disappointing circumstances can seem overwhelming. You feel like you're barely keeping your emotional head above the water, and then you see a giant wave approaching. For some reason, hard times come in blasts, not trickles. A broken relationship, trouble at work, health issues, money problems…They seem to come at us all at once. You don’t know what is harder: disappointment, fear, shame, or rejection.

There’s a local story of a guy named Randy Reid, a 34-year-old construction worker welding on top of a water tower. He unhooked his safety harness to reach for some pipes when a metal cage slipped and bumped the scaffolding he stood on. The scaffolding tipped, and Reid lost his balance. He fell 110 feet, landing face down on a pile of dirt, barely missing rocks and construction debris. A coworker immediately called 911.

In Christian circles, we are told that we should glorify God. But what does that mean?

You messed up.

“My co-worker had been inviting me to come for quite a while. I finally relented — and wow, I’m glad I did! I’ll be back next Sunday” (from a first-time guest at The Bridge last week).

I’m babysitting three of my grandkids today and sitting on the patio watching them play. The oldest is pushing her doll around in a little stroller. The boy is driving his big red plastic car, loading and unloading equipment (he doesn’t just play…he plays “work”). The youngest is toddling around from thing to thing, crawling on and getting into everything.

I was discipling someone who was going through a difficult trial. Every week during our meeting, he was asking me to pray for his faith to grow. But every week, he was also in turmoil over the adversity he was up against.

Nick Chowdhury lost his identity in 1991. It was returned to him last week. He was fishing on Vancouver Island and left his wallet on the rocks near the shore, not knowing that the tide was rising and would sweep it away. The problem, Chowdhury said, was, ”I had everything in there: my birth certificate, my status card, social insurance card — everything that was me was in that wallet.”

Carrie Clark lost her cat, Galena, last month. She and her husband live in Utah, where the cat seemed to disappear. Four weeks later, she got a call from a veterinarian 700 miles away in Southern California. Amazon dropped the cat off with them. Yes, Amazon!

“I need a better work-life balance.”

The minimum lethal dose of botulism bacillus is .00003 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. That's like a mosquito derailing a 100-mile long freight train! It was an inexpensive O-ring that took down the Space Shuttle, Challenger. And you know how your whole body can be affected by a slight pain in a key area, such as a toe or heel.

My grandson was happily pushing his truck along our kitchen floor and I was enjoying watching him. He suddenly stopped, looked at the ground in front of him, and froze, with a concerned look on his face.

A couple of years ago, a man with a gun attempted to highjack a school bus in Columbia, South Carolina. The bus was filled with younger elementary students, including a lot of kindergartners. But the commandeer let them all go because the kids would not stop talking to him and asking him questions. “Are you going to hurt us?” “Are you going to hurt our bus driver?” “Why do you want our bus?"

Before taking off in an airplane, all pilots understand the necessity of commitment. There is a point on every runway, depending on the airplane, where I know that if I reach that point, I am committed to taking off. It’s based on the airplane takeoff speed and distance of the runway, and I calculate that when I do preflight planning.

The founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, thought so.

I’ll have to admit, my job was easier six years ago. Six years ago we had one campus and one location. I was responsible for a wonderful, though much smaller staff. I was preaching sermons, leading staff meetings, discipling, and doing a little bit of counseling. But there was less pressure, fewer places and staff to worry about. It was easier for me to get away when I needed to.

Awful, awful, awful.