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Would you call that unlucky? 1 person being attacked and bitten by a shark, a bear, and a rattlesnake?I’ve spent a lot of time in the outdoors. I’ve slept where bears roam, hiked where rattlesnakes slither, and swam in oceans where sharks live. But I’ve never been threatened, let alone bitten. Dylan McWilliams has been attacked and bitten by all three in just the last few years! The shark and bear within a year, and the rattlesnake a couple years before. And he’s only 20 year

Did you hear about the woman in Texas who lit her house on fire? 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 engulfed in fl

I lifted weights pretty seriously in high school for the sake of athletics. Those of us who were into it, we were never content with whatever we were capable of at the time. My first goal was to just bench press my own weight, which wasn’t much. I kept increasing that goal by 10 lbs., and each time I’d achieve the next goal, I’d move it up again.We’d all test our “max” periodically, but the key to growing to what we were capable of, was the daily, 3 sets of 10, and increasing

A conference speaker asked a volunteer from the audience: “If I were to place an I-beam across the floor, would you walk across it for $20?”  “Sure!” she replied eagerly. “What if that I-Beam were suspended between two tall buildings, forty stories in the air?” She shook her head, “No.” “Ok,”  said the speaker, “Suppose the I-beam is forty stories in the air, you are on one building and I am on the other and I’m holding one of your kids, threatening to drop that child if you

Snow in April. Freezing temperatures. Not much of a warm-up in the forecast. It looks like spring is never going to come.Some of you feel like that in your life. You see other people doing well. This friend is getting married. This person’s career is taking off. This relative just bought a dream house. When is your ship coming in?Some of you are not just weighed down by recent discouragement. It’s been a long time since there’s been any encouragement. And you are wearing down

I just had a car accident. It was my fault. I feel really stupid.I was driving in New Orleans, having dropped my son, Brock, off at his police academy so that I could have the car for the day before we drove his car back to Chicago for Easter. New Orleans is filled with parallel 1-way streets and they are confusing to me. When you turn left, you are supposed turn when your light is green, but then go through the red light of the parallel 1-way street going the other way…and t

Several years ago, one of our office assistants complained that her computer shut down and wouldn’t turn back on. At the time, 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.

A paramedic was asked on a local TV talk-show program: “What was your most unusual and challenging 911 call?” “Recently we got a call from a church,” the paramedic said. “A frantic usher was concerned that during the sermon an elderly man passed out in a pew and appeared to be dead. The usher couldn’t find a pulse and there was no noticeable breathing.” “What was so unusual about that?” the interviewer asked. “Well, we carried out four guys before we found the one who was dea

Notice how God is really into changing things? The seasons change. Eras of time reveal dramatic change in climate within a single region. Even within a single day, our bodies and our lives experience constant change. The earth turns, the birds migrate, our bodies age, our children grow, friends move away and others move in. We live with constant change.BUT NOT AT CHURCH!Yes, we are right now experiencing a big change at church. This weekend is the last page in a chapter of ou

So I said I would write this last Israel post on the plane heading home. But as I warned all of our travelers before we left, this trip was not a vacation, it was an excursion. I told them that one of my goals would be for them to get on the plane heading home, exhausted, and filled with new Biblical knowledge and an understanding of Jesus’ world. We succeeded. And I too was exhausted…and fortunately slept most of the flight home.So here’s the wrap-up, 4 days after returning.

Wow! So many things these last two days. Our excursion in Israel shifted to Jerusalem on Friday. We started the morning in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night before his betrayal, and where his friends fled from him in fear of his captors. We saw olive trees in this garden that are so old that they would have been there when Jesus prayed. It was a sobering experience. From Gethsemane, we made our way to the Garden Tomb. There are two places that are thought

These last two days in Israel were filled with a wide variety of sites and experiences. We started day 5 (Wednesday) by loading our bus and heading to Beit She-an, a major Biblical city that most are unfamiliar with. It’s often called the Pompeii of the Middle East because of the spectacularly preserved Roman ruins at the base of the ancient city mount. Not only was the old city an important place in the Old Testament, it became an important Roman city in Jesus’ day and many