More Than Today

“Growing Up, Up, and Away” Yesterday I took our oldest daughter, Rosie, to the airport to fly across the country, from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, with stops in between. She went on a mission trip to share her faith and music with Navajo children and get to know people whose life experiences have been different than her own. She is 16 and quite ready for the adventure both as a Christian and musically. But am I ready for her to go? The last few days and especially on the drive home from dropping her and others in her group off at the airport I experienced the sadness of Rosie leaving. Oh, not just this leaving because I know she will be back in eight days. But all of this reminded me that in just two years she will be off to college and life as we know it will change. Most likely we won’t be up early together reading our Bibles and praying for her day at school as we have since elementary school. That doesn’t mean I won’t be praying for her and sometimes I might even get ...

“Third Time’s A Charm” Third time’s a charm…at least that’s how the saying goes. I failed once, failed twice, and now it was time for a third try. This is the one that will succeed, at least that was my hope. I was reminded of this the other night when Emily, my youngest daughter, brought up something that had happened and that I had said from a few years back. She mentioned it after we had been driving and gone by a hotel where nine years ago I had started a church. She hadn’t remembered the place but then she was only 3 years old. I had begun a new church in a hotel conference center. It had been exciting. The opening Sunday had a real good attendance. The people who got involved really enjoyed the newness and freshness of a brand new church. Small groups had started and people enjoyed them. But after a year it was obvious that the church wasn’t growing, in fact it was shrinking. So we made the decision to end it. People understood it and even kept their small ...

“Passing The Test” Tests are a part of life. It begins in school with written tests meant to show whether we understand what has been taught to us. Sometimes it is reciting back the textbook or teacher’s thoughts and sometimes in an essay it is putting our own ideas into it by writing what it means to us. Some tests count little. A “pop” quiz meant to keep us on our toes and do our homework regularly. Its point value is small in the larger scheme of total points but it still matters. Some tests count a lot. In Law School doing assignments throughout the term just qualified me to take the final. The only thing that mattered for the grade was the four hour final exam. All the pressure was there. Bad day? Too bad. Feeling sick? Didn’t matter. The only thing that was important was the grade gotten on that one test on that one day. Outside of school comes the test of interviewing. People talk to you, look at your resume, and check a few references and decide whet...

The Importance of “We” Sometimes it just has to be “me.” At least that’s the way “I” feel about it. It has to be “me” that gets the special word from God. “Me” that gets to speak for God. “Me” that gets the “attaboy.” But in Daniel 2:23, “we” becomes more important than “me.” Daniel says “You have told me what we asked of you and revealed to us what the king demanded.” And what was this all about? King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and asked his wise men to tell him the dream and interpret it. It’s hard enough to interpret a dream but even harder to find out what the dream was in the first place and then interpret it. The wise men couldn’t do it and they were going to be killed for their failure to do so. When Daniel finds out he is to be killed along with his friends, he goes to them—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—and “urged them to ask the God of heaven to show them his mercy by telling them the secret, so they would not be executed along with the other wise men of Ba...

The Quest “The quest of several Dover Area School Board members to find a high school biology textbook that teaches both evolution and creationism…” And so a recent news article begins. It is a quest. Good word choice. I don’t know the writer of the article and I don’t know the school board members but I do know that a quest is significant. Whatever the outcome of the quest, whether or not evolution and creationism are taught side by side for intelligent minds to consider, the quest to do so is a good thing. I applaud the quest. To go on a quest is to be willing to learn and grow and challenge and change and be changed. A noble endeavor. In this quest there is no absolute human opponent. There are varieties of opinions and persons and groups who will decide for a time what may be taught in Dover High School. But the only absolute in this world is God. God is not appalled or surprised or humiliated when ideas collide. After all, God created us to think, to gro...