In two weeks we leave for Haiti. Into the mountains to build a medical clinic. Away from our normal base camp — Jenny’s Villa is on the beach near the ocean with palm trees — we are taking tents. True camping. I should probably pack marshmallows… and tarantula repellent! For some this would be a […]

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With a group of deacons, I am reading Phileena Heuertz’s book Mindful Silence. At the end of each chapter she outlines a specific prayer. The second chapter asks us to spend time in silence picturing the scene of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). Bartimaeus cries out, but the crowd silences him, pushes him back. Yet Jesus […]

Read more "What do you want?"

Friends, the Chiefs are in the Super Bowl. Wear your RED on Sunday! But that is not the only event happening in my life. I am about to hit a milestone and become a stone tumbling down the hill. On Monday I am Forty. And a new decade makes me pause… what hill has my […]

Read more "Hills, Billboards, and Living"

“I like Texas, but I don’t have to like Texas – you like yourselves enough.” — Comedian Dustin Nickerson  Much like the people of Texas, it was easy for the Jews to imagine the Messiah coming for them. Read Jeremiah 29:10-14 – a passage we know so well – and realize it was written for […]

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A few months ago it was easy to be jealous of the Astros — especially with the Royals stumbling into regular losing. Houston made the playoffs 4 of the last 5 seasons, won it all in 2017, this year the AL Pennant, and seem primed to keep winning. But now the team is mired in […]

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In college there was a little Mexican restaurant named El Rodeo. It came with the chairs and paintings of every Mexican restaurant — they are a strange national chain. Like its counterparts, chips and salsa were unlimited and the food cheap. A perfect upgrade from my usual 99¢ Totino’s pizza dinner. Their fountain drinks included […]

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At the corner of I35 and 152 I saw a Target grocery cart. It was a ways from home. I pondered how it arrived there. It wasn’t the wind. Did someone without a car need to carry their packages?… they must have felt out of place too. We all feel this way one time or […]

Read more "Out of Place"