Parental Support

 The classic rock song "More Than A Feeling" by Boston  is a song that describes how the right song can turn a person's feelings from dreary to bright and sunny.  Feelings are powerful forces in our lives, yet they can change at a moment's notice.  One of the disciplines every person must develop is evaluating and sifting through his feelings. Every person has at least one moment in his life where his emotions scream at him to act immediately.  The challenge is that a decision made in the heat of the moment is often a poor decision.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?"  One of the truths that this passage coveys is that a person's heart, his emotions, can lie to him.  If a person continually makes emotional decisions, chances are he will make some poor choices. Rather than making decisions when emotions are running high, every individual should strive to follow the words of the Apostle Pa

 In her book The Hiding Place , Corrie Ten Boom tells the story of learning to give thanks in the most challenging of circumstances.  While prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, Corrie and her sister, Betsie, found comfort in studying the Bible.  Upon reading Paul's command to, "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18), the two women wondered what they had to be thankful for in the midst of the horrors of the Holocaust.  To make matter worse, the two sisters had been moved into a barracks ridden with fleas.  Surely this pit of despair was devoid of anything for which to give thanks.  As Corrie and Betsie reflected on Paul's words, they began to realize that the fleas in their barracks had kept the Nazi soldiers away, allowing the women to study the Bible freely.  This realization led the two sisters to thank God for the fleas.  The two women discovered that, even in the darkness of WWII, there were still things to be thankful for.  Joy and grati

  As a child, I attended Camp Lylewood every year for church camp.  It was a glorious time of adventure and excitement as every church camp should be.  The boys’ cabins were on one side of the property, so as to separate boys from girls.  (Though this measure never stopped the boys from using a massive slingshot to launch water balloons at the girls).  Inside the cabins were rows of bunkbeds.  Inevitably, the underside of each upper bunk bore the name of some boy who had been there before.  Carved, etched, or drawn in the wood comprising the bedframe were names of boys who had enjoyed camp and who desired to let others know that they had been there and that they had left their mark on this place.  So, they proudly scrawled Tom, Danny, or John "was here." Genesis 2 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture.  In it we read how God "formed man out of the dust of the earth" (2:7).  The imagery here is that of God rolling up His sleeves and getting His hands dirty as

  Perhaps there are no two letters that change the relationship between parent and child more than those that form the word,  NO .  Up until a toddler learns this word, he or she appears to be such an angel.  Then, one day, that dreaded word touches his lips and the battle of wills between parent and child begins.  Yet, somewhere during our transition from childhood to adulthood we lose our ability to say, "NO."  We would all do well to embrace our inner toddler and utilize this word more.   This year has been a challenge for many, myself included.  Faced with the challenge of working from home while also attempting to maintain some semblance of a "normal" home life, I found that often the lines between family, work, and self-care were regularly blurred.  My responsibilities to my job, to my wife, to my son, and to myself all made demands upon my time and I felt myself being pulled in all directions.  My solution was simple: multi-task and do it all.  With my conf

Aesop's fable The Fox and the Lion  portrays a fox who, over the course of several encounters, loses his fear of a lion.  The message of the fable is simple: familiarity breeds contempt.  The struggle to not take things for granted is one to which every person is subject.  At times this struggle may even spill over into the arena of the created world around us.  As we go through the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, it is easy for the majesty of the world around us to fade into the background, but as the beauty around us blurs I wonder if our understanding of God suffers as well. Recently, my family and I took a road trip out west.  As we drove over the majestic Rockies, through colorful canyons, and around rich, red sandstone, I was overcome at the beauty of the world our God has created for us. As we drove, mountains standing majestically in the distance, I was reminded of the writings of the prophet Nahum, "The mountains quake before him and the hills me

The theme song for the year of 2020 should be Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive .  For all of you who just started singing it in your head, here's the link:  I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor .  Seriously though, 2020 has seen a pandemic, social unrest, a near collision with an asteroid, zombie fires (those are a thing??), murder hornets, re-emergence of cicadas, a Sahara dust cloud, tornadoes, earthquakes, broken dams, and skyrocketing unemployment and it's only July.  This will be a year to tell the grand kids as they sit wide-eyed listening to the struggles of the past.  Unfortunately, 2020 has also been a year for disappointment.  Seniors have lost out on graduations and senior proms, families have been forced to cancel long-awaited vacations, and kids have had their summer plans turned on their heads.  To say that 2020 has been hard to take in and process would be a huge understatement.  If ever there was a year to point to as proof of the need for the confidence faith in