The Dirt Road to Mercy: How an Ancient Biblical Outsider Taught Me to Care for My Dying Stepfather
Ebed-Melech shows us that even those who stand outside of “preferred teachings” will be noticed by God. This can be missed or even ignored by those of us who consider others outside our faith to be “less than.” As we grow older, a few things become true.…
“You Are No Angel Yourself”: Why Jonah’s Bitterness Reveals the Uncomfortable Truth About Our Own Hearts
Oh, Jonah. What a hard man you seem to be, so determined to draw the heat away from yourself and aim it toward another. Yet I am not inside Jonah’s mind. I cannot know every thought that moved through him. From where I stand, however, it looks very much…
Jezebel Isn’t Just an Ancient Queen—She’s a Mirror: The Dangerous Path of Unchecked Appetite
Jezebel’s story is found primarily in 1 Kings 16–21, with her death recorded in 2 Kings 9. She enters the biblical account as the wife of King Ahab, one of Israel’s most corrupt kings. First Kings 16:30 says Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord, more…
The Financial Toll of Cancer: What Nobody Tells You About Medical Debt, Fear, and Serious Illness
There is a part of the cancer journey that people do not talk about very much. It does not even have to be cancer. Any serious health crisis will do. There are the bills. In the beginning, there is fear and chaos. You wonder what will happen. You wonder…
Living in the Shadow of Cancer: An Honest Look at Survival and Loss
“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks…” Wait. Are we sure this is how all great pieces of writing are supposed to begin? Over the past few months, I have tried my hand at prose. Well, writing. Let’s not get carried away and…
Trying to Find Their Way Home
Pull up a chair. This one is being written by your old uncle, the one you rarely speak to, and that may be too bad because you might have missed something. He is a little strange, sure. Around here, we call him Disco Grandpa. He has been known to chair…
Balaam’s Donkey and the Road We Wanted
Sometimes the problem is not that the traditional lesson is wrong. The problem is that we have become too familiar with it. We hear “Balaam’s donkey,” and our minds go straight to the usual picture: stubborn animal, angry prophet, angel with a sword, and…
Finding Your Way Home
Give me a partially washed-out dirt road with gravel on the side. Not a perfect road. Not a smooth road, or one of those polished streets with painted lines and lights telling everybody exactly when to stop and go. Give me the old dirt road. The one with…
When The Pond Woke Up
When I was a boy, there were places that looked empty most of the year. Dry ponds. Cracked dirt. Low spots in the field that held nothing but dust, weeds, and the memory of water. You could walk past them and think there was nothing there worth noticing.…
A Letter to My Siblings: The Old Coat in the Trunk
Dear brothers and sisters, I have been thinking about an old song “O Death.” It has that ancient Holler sound similar to that I grew up with. It is thought to have been written in and around 1902-1910 attributed to Baptist Minister Lloyd Chandler. But…