Tragedy in Newton

Long before the horrific tragedy of Newton, CT assaulted our consciences, there was another tragic massacre of children half way around the world. The same epic display of grief, horror, and loss was recorded as an entire town’s population of boys was wiped out in one moment, carried out by an insecure tyrant afraid to lose his power and wanting to make a statement about himself.

This time, the scene was Bethlehem. About two years after Jesus was born, Herod the Great received news via the wise men that a king was born who would rule the Jews. Well that won’t do, he thought. So he ordered the execution of every male child two years and younger, just to keep it that way. It was an act of brutality simply because he perceived a potential future challenger. A senseless crime if there ever was one.

The prophet Jeremiah touches on the intense ache and pain of this kind of loss:

"A cry of anguish is heard in Ramah -- mourning and weeping unrestrained.

Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted -- for her children are dead." (31:15)

How heart breaking this tragedy was. No parent should ever have to bury their child. Estimates are that in Bethlehem there were around a dozen boys murdered in this sleepy remote town due to the incredibly evil intent in a person’s heart. No evidence exists, but one has to wonder whether or not some families might have been related to Mary and Joseph, or each other. It was a tragic, horrific event that served no purpose other than to feed a madman’s spite.

It brings me to today, with the scope of the Newton massacre still fresh in our minds. Here are a few thoughts swirling around in my heart and mind as I process this awful catastrophe, ranging from evil to mental illness to Christmas.

The evil that has overrun the world is even greater and more pervasive than most of us give credit.
Like a dark stain we try to scrub and bleach out, or a germ we attempt to wipe out with massive loads of disinfectant, we’ve tried to erase the presence of evil and injustice in our society. And we’ve done a fairly good job at certain levels in our culture of eradicating some of the more obvious issues. But I think our very success has lulled us into a false sense of complacency. The truth is that evil will never be wiped out this side of death. We must always be vigilant. We can never declare “mission accomplished”—at least not till Jesus returns and ushers in a new existence. That can be a challenging and demoralizing truth, but it is the reality we face.

We also don’t just face the issue out there; we also wrestle in here. The inconsistencies of our own hearts, the selfishness we too quickly activate, the messes we make and must own up to are all evidences that we, too, are not a finished product. I like to say that we are works of art…in progress. Both realities are present: the beauty of our design, mixed with the mistakes and flaws that try to drag us down. Sometimes, these mistakes are pain-free. Other times, they hurt the very ones we love tremendously. I found myself thinking more than once this weekend “there but the grace of God go I” – whether as a grieving parent who lost a child, or as a lamenting parent of a child who is mentally ill and full of rage.

We can also detect a sense of irrationality as we try to analyze evil and sin. It makes no sense. Why does someone return acts of love and care with rejection, hatred, or harm? Why would they choose to walk away from a healthy loving relationship for the inferior alternatives? I actually have in mind Adam & Eve, the ones who started this disastrous merry go-round of futility. But it could sound like almost anyone, because we’re all like them. Possessing the seed of Adam means we all contain the same elementary impulse to do something that is just odd or bizarre with respect to loving relationships.  Sin makes no sense, but we all do it. Evil is the most ridiculous conclusion one could arrive at, but yet we can be blinded and bamboozled into thinking “maybe it’s not so bad”. Oh, it may be obvious when the contrast is stark and severe – but what about the subtle choices, the ones that don’t seem so blatantly depraved?

Even mental illness is a reflection of the brokenness of this earth caused by evil.
Please hear me - mental illness is not a sin at all; but it is a reflection of a severely and deeply broken world. No healthy human mind would arrive at the conclusions that young man did. A healthy heart does not attack children. A healthy soul does not conclude that killing little ones for no sound reason is a good decision. Adam Lanza sure sounded mentally ill. His mind was defective by his illness. It's part and parcel of a broken world that some children will carry defects throughout their lives - some physical, others mental.

My bet is that we all know families who have a member that might remind us of an Adam. We see the odd eccentricities, the loner or anti-social behavior. Our natural instinct is to recoil and avoid someone like that, but this begs the question – is that what might have precipitated his murderous rage, or fed his sense of resentment and antipathy for people?

Mental illness is not easy, fun, clean, or quick. I’d argue it’s one of the most challenging aspects we face while living in community. I know from some personal experience. Dealing with someone with mental issues is a long-term, draining existence, especially if they’re a loved one or relative. Would it have helped Adam’s mom to have a network of loving support around her as she wrestled through the daily rhythms and rages that awaited her? I don’t know, but it’s worth asking every person who has a situation like this one.

We have to figure out how freedom and responsibility are going to exist side by side.
Because the reality is that you cannot have one without the other.  Whether you favor gun-possession or elimination, the truth is that there needs to be a better way to prevent mentally ill people from obtaining access to firearms. I don’t have an answer, and I strongly doubt whether the simplest answers are the best ones.

But if we are to be a free society, that means we need to develop responsibilities that match the freedoms. Wild-west anarchy and totalitarian shut downs are two extremes being tossed around the internet, and it’s a shame – because we should be better and smarter than that. Or maybe we are not a culture that is as far removed from the days of brute survival as we initially thought.

We discover that most things in life are secondary to being alive.
Nothing beats life. We grab and hug our kids more. We watch them with a more alert eye. We take their immature moments and tantrums with a little more salt because in the final analysis, they are alive. And we want to keep it that way. Living in an affluent society like we do can sometimes mask the truth that for all of our advances, we are just one incident shy of injury or even death. None of those things can insulate us from the frailty of our existence. Having lots of belongings may deceive us in thinking we’re shielded from the hard ravages of a broken world full of evil, but it doesn’t. At any moment, on any given day, we can meet the moment that will be our last on earth. And no amount of control on our or anyone else’s part is going to alter that.

Maybe this Christmas should be a simpler, humbler expression of love for Jesus and each other.

Jesus himself said that a life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. I say this because Christmas has been so commercialized over the years, that I think we’ve become numb to the idea of celebrating the Savior’s entrance into our world with simple acts of affection, worship, or love to others—and nothing more. Maybe this year could be a year we practice a simple and plain Advent.

 

Truth is, we desperately need a savior. We've needed one for a long, long time. The joy of Christmas is that God has answered our cries with a definitive "yes". We celebrate the baby Jesus this month, but it was the adult Jesus that took the weight of all our combined sinfulness on his own and paid the price to enable us to experience true freedom. That hope, that these burdens and demands of life we flail over will not be the final chapter or the end of us, is stil real and alive today as it was almost two thousand years ago.

 

Perhaps this year could be a year where we celebrate the true meaning of Christmas with more meager and simple expressions of love, joy, and appreciation, and leave the volumes of gifts and goodies in the garage (or at the store) for another day.

In the company of good friends...or familiar strangers?

Which is your experience of the Christian life– being on a journey with good friends, who know you and most of your quirks; or with transitional groups of strangers, who barely know you enough to ask more than ‘how was your week’?

Increasingly, in churches, it is becoming more of the latter.

Chris Gambill, of the Center for Congregational Health, says that “Increasingly in congregational life we have a growing deficit of what might be called ‘social capital’. In many contexts — not by intentionality, but by accident — churches are a company of familiar strangers.”

Social capital is the relational connective tissue for the soul. God designed us to be in significant relationships with others through whom we can grow and develop into mature social beings that live in harmony in community.

But because of the mobility of our culture, the transient nature of fast change today, the massive amount of everyday choices set before us, and the advent of invasive technology, we are distracted and obstructed from having those relationships around us become such a force for good relational development.

Instead, we are delayed or even stunted in our relational capability. This has a profound effect on how we manage life with others, especially the more challenging and difficult moments. This is particularly so when it comes to having difficult conversations with people.

Gambill: “It’s difficult to have a significant conversation with someone you don’t know well. For one thing, you don’t trust them, and you don’t know how much you can say. So when we have a difficult conversation at church, we don’t have a group of people who have a deep relationship they can build off of — we have a group of strangers.”

Think about it – how intimate will we truly become if all we ever discuss and share are surface facts and opinions? The road to closer relationships has to run, at some point, through the land of difficulty and conflict. If we never head that way, how can we be a people who know each other well enough to speak truth lovingly to each other?

It wasn’t always this way. In the past, church members’ daily activities kept them in close contact with one another throughout the week and outside the church.

But those days of repetitive connections with the same people over the span of days and weeks are gone. Now, it is possible to not see the same people for more than once a month, or even longer. This either hinders the development of social capital or delays it significantly from growing .

If there ever was a screaming, crying need for the role of small groups in the life of the church as a central means to help people get relationally connected [even before beginning the growth process!], this should help spell it out clearly.

We need to be in relationship. And if our culture is going to delay, distract, or even obstruct that from happening, then we need to be intentional and prioritize our time and space to help create it.

A healthy small group is what every individual serious about becoming mature in Christ, relationally speaking, must be involved in.

More here

The structure of belonging

"The small group is the unit of transformation and the container for the experience of belonging." - Peter Block, Community.

The honor of people

“We live in an age where men fear each other, but do not fear God. As a result, ours is a society that is more and more stripped of grace.” – Miroslav Volf, 2012 lecture

I got to hear Volf speak at a lecture series last week, and his words still seem to be lingering in my mind almost a week later.

These are powerful words from Volf. His perspective is that at the root of our ever increasing incivility with one another, where people seem to react with more venom and vitriol, and the center doesn’t seem to hold together, is an absence of an awareness of a greater Person or Authority present and at work. Having less of an awareness of the Majesty of life, we have lost the awe of life itself.

Now, nothing is sacred. When nothing is valued, we have less reason to hold back, to restrain from hurting people or possessing things. Life becomes a game of reaching and grasping. People are lost in the shuffle. Living seems to be more of a hurried rush of actions and reactions. The simple beauty of each day seems to fade into the crunch of deadlines, noise, irritations, and the daily routines.

It would explain much in the way of our politics. It’s no longer “to the winner go the spoils”. It’s now more like “bloodsport” or “to the death of the other”. Political parties don’t just want to win; they want to utterly control all, while virtually annihilating the competition; bi-partisanship be darned. Forget negotiation and compromise. I make the rules, and you will be subservient to my wishes.

I was at a professional sports game recently. Maybe I’ve just been out of the loop for too long, but it struck me how intense the fans in the stands had become. It had veered far from cheering for one’s own team atmosphere to a heckle-and-insult the other team –their coach, their players, their fans, their mothers, their lineage, their eyesight—and so on. Profanity and vulgarity were considered art forms like using water colors or ink. And it only got worse for the referees.

Miroslav’s answer? For the devoted follower of Christ, it’s simple. Honor everyone (1 Peter 2:17). Practice indiscriminate respect. Look for the image of God in people, and value that. Learn to distinguish between a person’s deeds and actions, and their value as a human being. Regardless of whether the person’s positions are similar to yours, or the exact opposite, Volf said to always respect the person – and sometimes…maybe…respect their position.

Whether we agree or not is not the final issue. It’s whether or not we as a community, or as a nation, can sustain our differences and learn to honor each other in the process that will determine whether or not our country endures.

While we cannot save the world, we can affect the person that’s in front of us. And to do that, we can start by honoring them for who they are as a creature of the God of the universe.

My thoughts on the election

Today is a day that hurts.

It hurts to see my fellow citizens choose another path for our country. It hurts to see what I’ve perceived to be bad leadership rewarded and encouraged. It hurts to see policies that directly affect negatively the family become ensconced in the mechanical rituals of our national health care. It hurts to look at the gloom I’ve seen on the faces of many over these last few years, knowing that some of these circumstances that are the source of their sadness were avoidable - shaped by the national trends emerging out of decision-making power centers that seem out of touch with either the impact of their choices or the answers to resolve them. It just hurts.

We seem to want to walk down a pathway that is only going to invite more misery and hardship upon people, and yet all I can do is watch. Like being shackled to the prodigal son on his journey towards the land of wild and lavish living, I can do nothing but be dragged along to the place where I know this will end — eating leftover food products tossed to the pigs. I see the end, but all I can do is brace myself and wait.

This is the feeling I get when I watch the Ravens lose to the Steelers. The major difference being that is just a football game. In this case, I didn’t lose a game — I lost a country. And the ache is about 1000x sharper.

It’s understandable that most people have a desire to build an equitable society. That’s a noble quest. The difficulties arrive when different people have different pathways to making that happen. And choices have consequences. So to choose one path means we may not walk down another. I fear that in our haste to journey down one road, we may lose the wisdom and benefits we gloss over as outdated, passé, or irrelevant as we sail away from the paths not taken.

Most of us have an aversion to pain and suffering. We run from it, avoid it, minimize it. But we may be coming to a place in our country where those options are no longer viable. I believe the discomfort and unease we feel will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. We may even see increases in it as our nation strains at the sinews that are only barely keeping us connected together now.

We may continue to ache, like it says in Romans, being the creation that longs to be clothed with something other than the robes of ignorance, self-interest, reckless living, being enslaved to our passions.

So here comes the million dollar question: What can I take from this moment?

There are four consolations I draw out of this most painful moment. In no particular order…

First, the Kingdom of God is still real. The beauty of God’s timeless word is that his truth still is true, regardless of circumstance. So the Kingdom, a place where there will be no more crying, war, or pain, is still an ever-present expectation. I live each day in the light of this coming reality. And every day, we are one day closer to God’s kingdom coming – even on a day like today.

Second: If my country’s potential collapse is the precursor to the End coming, then I need to accept our part in the unfolding of history. This one is hard. I love my country dearly. But if my own country’s deterioration is one of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is a first step to the culminating of history, then I need to accept that. My prayer becomes more like the prayer of Gethsemane – may this cup of suffering pass from our lips; but Your will be done, not mine. Give me the strength to trust you; may my faith in you not fail as we walk this rocky road. Help me to be compassionate on many who will be even more so affected negatively by our direction. Help me not lose hope myself.

Third: Jesus is still real. This is the best truth. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). I need not fear that He is unaware of these choices we are making. He is sovereign and capable to help us navigate the minefield we’ve chosen to tip-toe through. Even if we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is still closer than a brother, and will bring all his power to bear upon the situations we face. My hope is in him, even if my worst fears are realized—and that hope will not fail.

Fourth: His promises to me are still real. I still have hope. He will sustain me, provide for me, keep me focused on the things that matter most, as I hear often from a few others around me.

I feel mostly for those who don’t have Him to hope upon. Whether it be those despairing over the results of the election; or even worse, those who have put their hope in someone other than Jesus. Because ultimately, he will fail. Only Jesus never fails.

The day for those folks has not yet come where they may need Him like I do today.

May their eyes be clear and their hearts be open when that day comes.

The means and the ends

By now, you’ve probably heard that Lance Armstrong is in the process of being stripped of every cycling medal he’s won in the last 15 years or so. His name will be literally wiped off the books by the US and world cycling authorities. His elaborate scheme to hoodwink the authorities and deceive all the various drug tests he had to perform with each race will arguably go down as one of the most intricate and cleverly masterminded cheating plans of sporting history.

That’s a shame, because his story, on the face of it, was compelling in its own right. Had he not won any Tour de France races – yet still managed to come back and compete at the highest level after cancer – could have been enough to start the Live Strong foundation and launch those philanthropic efforts that are blessing people today.

Instead, any positive achievement is lost in the shadows of rampant cheating that enabled him to win those seven titles.

It reminds me of the importance of not just the ends, but the means. What do I mean by that? Armstrong was focused on the ends, and the means were just conveniently flexed to make those ends happen – rules or no rules. He flaunted the limits of competition to get the edge he needed to win. The ends mattered; the means didn’t.

For us Christ followers, we need to consider living our lives differently. To God, both the ends as well as the means are hugely important. In fact, often times the means are the very ways we arrive at the ends God desires, and to go about things in a different way means we’ll miss the goal altogether. Jesus wants our end to be Christ-likeness, but the means to that end are crucial. And there’s no short-circuiting or microwaving the process.

Paul makes this claim in 2 Corinthians when he says, “We reject all shameful and underhanded methods [of ministry]. We do not try to trick anyone, and we do not distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know that. If the Good News we preach is veiled from anyone, it is a sign that they are perishing.”

This applies to groups as well. While group life is messy, sometimes chaotic, and even a bit bumpy, it is still God’s Plan A for redeeming people. Hint – there is no plan B.

Loving people is hard work. It is not easy, quick, or clean. It takes time, energy, sweat, and even pain. It can be a long time before someone grasps truths that may seem so clear to the rest of us – i.e. ‘God loves me’, ‘He has what’s best for me’, etc.

This also means doing some of the “yeoman’s work” upfront in the beginning to set your group’s course in the right direction. Yeoman’s work is a phrase attributed to the guy/gal who is the unsung hero, toiling and laboring in the background with no fanfare – often times doing the work nobody else wants to do. But their contribution is priceless. They are difference makers. Be that person for your group.

My encouragement to you is – be faithful to the course God has you on. Take no shortcuts. Remain steadfast in your pursuit of God’s best for all of you, and do the hard work necessary to invite the greater opportunities for transformation later on. By remaining committed, you are demonstrating that you believe God when He claims that He is faithful, and you’re willing to put it on the line.

Leaders: Start with the end in mind

On more than one occasion over the years, I would hear the following from a leader: “I am not going to continue leading our growth group”. After hearing more about it, I would then ask them who will take over the group, to which I might get a reply like “nobody wants to lead.” I would then ask how they presented the situation and the options before the group, and might hear something like this: “well, I threw it out in our discussion time, and nobody responded to it.” Had I bet every leader who did this my life savings before that meeting that I could guess the answer of the group for that night, I’d be a multi-millionaire by now. Many times over.

We as leaders need to start with the end in mind. What do I mean by that? You start your group with the idea that one day, you will not be the leader of the group, and someone else will need to be. The big question you need to ask yourself is “what am I doing to prepare these guys to keep on the journey without me?” You also pray and ask God, “what is it I need to do to help get these guys ready to grow without me?” It sounds like a harsh question, but you are asking the right and best question in terms of their welfare. You are, in effect, preparing to put yourself out of a job by preparing them to grow on their own.

While that may sound silly right now (especially if you’re with a brand new group), the time will come more quickly than you realize. Don’t ignore the need to develop until it’s too late to do anything meaningful besides springing a loaded question in the middle of a discussion time onto an unsuspecting group.

What can you do to begin preparing? Here are some great ideas:

• Pray and ask God to reveal to you someone in the group with potential, even if they are rough around the edges.

• Personally identify someone who has the potential – Are they present at most meetings? Are they dependable with tasks or assignments? Are they willing to learn and showing an interest in growing spiritually? Great, you might see a leader under all that. But YOU need to have a personal conversation with them and share your observations with them and ask them to consider it.

• Give them portions of your meeting to run – icebreakers, discussion, prayer, outreach event, just to name a few.

• Have them go through our training to help them

Look, one day, you will not be the leader of that group. I guarantee you one of three things will happen: your circumstances or personal direction from the Lord will change, you will die, or Jesus will return in glory. The latter two are more permanent issues, so let’s mainly stick with the first one. One day, you will realize that God is calling you into a different direction. That’s great. No complaints here. But when that day comes, is your group ready to continue on without you? If not, then I have to say that you may have failed at preparing them for their next step of faith, even if you’re ready and prepared for yours.

You have probably heard the quote: “Most people don’t plan to fail; they just fail to plan.” Don’t be the leader who failed to plan for their group. Too much is at stake eternally for you to not work towards empowering others with a special privilege to see God do amazing things in their life, with you having a front row seat to witness it.

Plan ahead. Start with the end in mind.

Relationally rich or poor

I may not have much money at all, but I can love.

I may not have a job to produce things, but I can serve.

I may not be blessed with a strong or gregarious personality, be beautiful by our cultural standards, be dashing and daring and creative and excellent in all I do…but if I can love, that is better than all the previous combined could offer.

The currency of Heaven is not in bucks and buildings and programs and classes; it is in the form of blessed moments of love and opportunities to love others lived out in the daily rhythms of a relational life. It is in the what-would-be-natural rhythms of a give and take occuring in relationships that flow as effortlessly as the Gulf Stream does within the larger Atlantic Ocean. As we rub shoulders, roll up the sleeves, or cry on another's shoulder, we are experiencing the heart of the life God has called us to. And in the process, our hearts are filled to capacity with the ability to love more.

Those who practice this way of life are rich by the standards of heaven, and have a treasure trove to share with the world.

Conversely, those who stray or avoid this path eke out an impoverished existence that reflects the shallow and one dimensional aspect of life it brings.

What shape is your account in these days? Too many withdraws? Getting NSF (insufficient funds) messages? Credit card rejections at the checkout lines of relational experiences? See if you can align your heart, energies, and resources to match the rhythm of heaven, and in the process, become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

Relational Life - baseball or soccer style?

When it comes to being involved with significant relationships in our lives, we tend to live one of two ways. I call it the baseball vs. soccer analogy. I get these metaphors from my wife, who hates one sport and enjoys the other. I’ve played both of them as well, so my reflection is a combination of my own playing years as well as watching and rooting from the stands.

In baseball, the game is usually played with long periods of inactivity, followed by brief periods of intense action. This can even apply to the players. I remember spending long innings out in right and center field, not ever getting the ball or being involved in a play. You weren’t allowed to sit down, of course, because the coach would yell at you to get up. But you were stuck with inaction until the 3rd out was recorded.

In soccer, the game was played radically different. In soccer, the goal was continual flow. Very few stoppages of play were called, and even when the ball went out of bounds, it was a brief moment till it came back in and play resumed. The only true breaks in the action came at half-time and at the end.

So there’s the difference.

Baseball: a few minutes of intense action surrounded by long periods of inaction Soccer: a few moments of rest surrounded by continual flowing action

When it comes to our view of the relational life, which of these better describe how much we are truly relating to people around us? Are we going at it baseball style – a few brief interactions followed by long periods of isolation? Or are we going at it soccer style – long periods of relational activity followed by periods of personal rest?

We as a church must also be very careful in what we are perpetuating. Hosting programs and classes at the church, while good stuff, can leave the impression for followers of Christ that the Christian life is an acquisition of information and attendance of events. When in reality, the goal of all of our instruction is to equip you for a life of relational loving and engaging with others in a redeemed and transformed way.

Cellphone Discount?

Want to have dinner without the incessant ringing of your phones? Tired of the interruptions when in the middle of something serious? Now you can dine sans cells at Eva Restaurant in LA. If you want to engage people and not stare at the faint blue screen of a smartphone, now you can - and you save 5% in the process!

Just dump your phone at the door, and viola - human company with no technical difficulties or interruptions.

Owner Mark Gold hopes this gives customers a way to truly sit back and relax, enjoy their meal and actually talk to with friends and family in-person.

"For us, it's really not about people disrupting other guests. Eva is home, and we want to create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again," he explained. "It's about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone, and we're trying to create an ambience where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company."

I really hope this fad goes nation-wide. we surely need less, not more, screen time. No one has yet to exclaim at their death-bed, "I wish I had spent more time on Facebook!"

For the full story: Click here!

New Group Dynamics Training

Our new Group Dynamics Training is now out! For years now, we're been doing small group leader training and development in our own little silos: Growth Groups, DE [discipleship essentials], Men's Frat, and more - all doing our own little thing. No Mas!

Gordon Carpenter, John Hilliard, and I knocked our heads together (yes, it might have hurt, but since we're guys, we're not confessing nothing!) to bridge this obvious redundancy and come up with a better plan. We identified the common ground in all our training, and other areas we thought were pivotal to successful and effective group processing.

Viola!

We cover the key basic issues that all group leaders, regardless of context, will face in their group setting. We honestly feel like this is the best 4 hours of group leader training we've ever worked on - we love it that much and feel that strongly about it.

We had 35+ people on Monday night for our first part of the training, and the response so far has been very positive. Part 2 is next Monday night in the Life Center (7-9pm). We're also hosting the training in its entirety on Sunday August 19th from 10:30-3pm (lunch included) for any who can't make it during the week.

I am strongly encouraging ALL of our Growth Group Leaders to take the new training for one of two reasons: 1) You might want a refresher on the basics - think of it as "Spring Training for your Group"; or 2) You'd have a clear idea of how we will train future small group facilitators and leaders at Living Word.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. This is space I've set up to write about small groups, church life, community, relational life issues, and the general disconnected-ness of Americans. Like travelers busily passing by one another getting on and off trains and airplances, we often seem oblivious or unconcerned about anyone else around us. It's as if we act like we're the only humans on the planet.

Since I am the director of our small groups ministry for our church, I will also from time to time add important details, dates, and other stuff on here as well.

Since I am also a dad, I might also show pix of my kids. Who knows...

My goal in this blog is for us to wake up, Matrix-like, from the trance of that individualistic lifetstyle, and discover the real joys of people - the aches, the pains, the mess, and the glory. Because there's nothing on earth more satisfying than a healthy relationship - whether it be with the Creator, or with each other. Enjoy.