BLOG

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

Today was all about Jesus, experiencing his world and his ministry. We could not have asked for better weather. It was in the 70s and sunny. We began this morning visiting the Mount of Beatitudes, the traditional spot where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Because of clues in the text, and it being a logical place for a crowd to gather, the side of this mountain between Capernaum and Magdala is likely the place where he delivered the sermon The Bridge is in the middle

Today’s sites included a couple of very old Old Testament spots and a couple of places that hosted significant events in Jesus’ life and ministry. We started off with a beautiful sunny and much warmer morning, heading to northern Galilee. Our first stop was the ancient city of Hazor, one of the cities conquered by Joshua, and then under Israel rule for the next thousand years. Hazor had been home to ancient civilizations for over a thousand years before Joshua, and the layers

For over a year we’ve been planning it and 45 of us are now in Israel.With umbrellas in hand and ponchos draping our bodies, our journey began with amazing sights. Israel is in the middle of a drought and so the rain we brought with us is a blessing to these people. But we are also thankful that the forecast promises warmer and dryer weather for the rest of our week. Yesterday started with beautiful Caesarea, the Roman seat of government on the Mediterranean Sea. Here, Peter

17 dead, mostly high school kids. Horrible. Tragic. Terrible. Evil.There’s a lot of really bad stuff in the world. Right now it seems to be concentrated in Parkland, Florida. But not really. We had the heroic Chicago police commander who was gunned down Tuesday. So far this year, there have been 60 murders in Chicago, alone. Again, that’s just this year and it’s only mid-February. In reality, horrible things are happening every day around the world. The earth is filled with t