What is Christian Fellowship?
Image courtesy of SpirosK
I find myself coming back to the idea of Christian fellowship again and again. Some people may think of me as that crazy uncle who rants about how things should be. I have to admit that it feels like I go to extremes on this sometimes. I have come to understand that I can be counted on to find what’s wrong with a situation. And I know that I can be the downer in the room when I start working through all the flaws in an idea. But as a friend of mine observed, I can also keep pressing people from becoming complacent because I can see there’s so much more ahead.
And that is where I find myself on the topic of fellowship. I know that so many times we are making mud pies and call it fellowship when God desires to give us a weekend at the beach, to borrow an analogy from C.S. Lewis. I think some of it stems from the frantic pace of our lives that we’ve forgotten how to slow down and enjoy relationships. We get so busy with activities, even activities with people, but we miss the bigger picture. Read more
That Song Takes me Back
Attribution: minds-eye
I bought the latest album from Mercy Me this week. There’s one song that has really resonated with me. The rhythm is infectious plus the content of the song hits where I’ve been for the last year or so.
When life won’t play along, and right keeps going wrong, and I can’t seem to find my way
I know where I am found, so I won’t let it drag me down, oh, I’ll keep dancing anyway…
I might bend but I won’t break, as long as I can see your face
There are many things in my life recently that haven’t played out like I thought. There are days when the disappointment and frustrations feel overwhelming. But this song and others like it remind me of the promises of scripture. Read more
Do I Have a Plan?
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 19:21
Yes I do. I have lots of plans. I have plans for my next job. I have plans to have a family one day. I have plans for ten or more stories floating in my head. I have plans for various websites. I have plans for businesses I could start.
The problem is not, “Do I have a plan,” but which one should I pursue?
Recently, I’ve had friends and colleagues ask me about my future plans. Sometimes, these questions come across with a tone of exasperation. “When are you going to do something,” seems to be the subtext of their inquiries. I guess the frustration I have with these queries is I find myself walking a tightrope. Read more
Trying my Hand at Short Stories, Again
Most of my writing is non-fiction. I write about my experiences, my vacations, and things the Lord is teaching me. I don’t usually write fiction. One reason is it’s hard for me to come up with all the details and embellishments that make fiction engaging. Another, is I don’t usually have ideas for stories. The last time I consistently wrote fiction was the sixth grade. Read more
Getting Away & Being Still
NPS PHOTO BY KRIS ILLENBERGER
Things have been really slow at work the last couple of weeks. Sometime last week, I started looking at places to go on vacation. I looked around Colorado and New Mexico. Doing the typical vacation thing of staying in a hotel was just going to be out of my price range. So I started looking at camping. That was a little more economical, put still more than I wanted to spend. I then looked at some national parks and learned that I can camp for a week for the $3 entrance fee. That’s more like it. Read more
Busyness & Community
Photo courtesy of mknobil
My small group befriended a refugee family from Nepal about a year ago. We partnered with World Relief to help the family make the transition to American culture and help them with their English. We offered to meet with them twice a week. For several months, we would have a couple different people each Thursday evening and Saturday morning go and work with the family. Last summer, we all got together and took them to the zoo. Another weekend we took them to the mall. Hindsight, I think we overwhelmed them with the mall. But they still talk about going to the zoo.
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Firefighting & Hedgerows
Over the past month my job has changed quite a bit. Our IT team went from three members to two. So I’ve had to transition from simply being a programmer to being a firefighter as well. During this shake up, the owners decided they wanted me to cross train and learn the networking, phone systems and all the other little bits of trivia that currently only my coworker knows. He came in on the ground floor and has spent the last few years just getting the company up and running. But at the same time the owners have realized that having all that information centralized in one person’s brain is not ideal. So several weeks ago, all approved IT tasks began coming directly to me to execute. If I didn’t know how something worked, I was to ask my coworker to teach me and complete the task. If it was something I knew how to do, I would hand it off to him.
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Laughter and Good Friends
I’ve had the great privilege the last two nights to spend time with good friends and just laugh. There are times when friends get together and the emotional walls are there. There are conversations, but you realize they can only go so far. And then there are times when it seems like everyone drops their guards for a few minutes. The conversations flow easier and usually at some point the laughter starts. It’s even better when there is that one person in the group who has an infectious laugh. Everyone will get themselves under control and that one person will lose it again, which causes the whole group to start laughing again. Read more
One Bad Dude
I didn’t decide to run the Ft Worth Zoo Run 10k till about 2 weeks ago. I had some friends and coworkers ask me if I was running and finally I signed up. I haven’t done much distance running since my half-marathon in November. Partly because I wanted to heal up and partly because I was just getting lazy in my running. So I put together a two week crash course to get back close to the times I ran last year. I focused mostly on speed work and hills. I think I got one 6 mile run over the last two weeks. Read more
Being Scared
Photo Courtesy of D Sharon Pruitt
I watched Merlin Mann’s presentation on being scared earlier today. (The title and talk are laced with profanity but once you slice through all that, there are some profound thoughts). He talked about some of the things that scared him in as a child and as an adult. The death of his father, Doyle, the school bully, and the divorce from his first wife. He also had some of the other presenters write out some of their fears. Prolific writers who feared their best work was behind them. Musicians who feared people would find out they were a fraud. Others who were scared to love.
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