Failure to Thrive
Gabby Williams was born in 2005; she had some complications at birth, but she was able to fight them off and eventually her health stabilized and she went home, but, as the weeks and months passed by, Gabby hardly developed or grew. Eventually, doctors told Gabby’s parents that her rate of aging was much slower than other children, but there was no known genetic condition or abnormality to explain it. It’s a disorder that affects just a handful of people…
If It Looks Like a Duck . . .
On April 23rd, 2013, the television network Logo TV broadcast the documentary What? I Think I’m an Animal, featuring interviews with teenagers who believe their physical human bodies do not reflect their spiritual animal identifies. These people call themselves Therians or Otherkins, people who identify, in some intrinsic way, as an animal that exists or has existed on earth. Some believe that their soul is that of an animal while others believe the cause of their animal identity is psychological….
Know It To Do It
If you are going to do anything well, you must understand it, and the better you understand it the better you will do it. I was a soccer player in high school and college and I was able to learn much about the sport of soccer, but imagine if you tried to play the sport without understanding it. If you didn’t know the rules, you might try to pick the ball up with your hands or tackle your opponent to…
While the Dad Sleeps
Once when my youngest son was just beginning to toddle around the house, I was tasked with the job of watching him for the afternoon. I was in seminary at the time and it was rather difficult to be getting the sleep I needed while balancing work, school, and family. I decided to lay down on the sofa with my son on my chest hoping we would both be able to catch some much needed z’s; however, only one of…
There Is No Need, for Needless Worry
Five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” According to Don Joseph Goewey, “Now there’s a study that proves it. This study looked into how many of our imagined calamities never materialize. In this study, subjects were asked to write down their worries over an extended period of time and then identify which of their imagined misfortunes did not actually happen. Lo and behold, it turns out…
If the Foundations are Destroyed . . .
I’ll never forget the way I felt the night Bill Clinton was elected. For a bit of context, I grew up in the height of the Moral Majority and the Reagan presidency. As a result, the Christianity that I experienced was one of heightened political awareness and involvement. I was not old enough to vote in 1992, but as a freshman in high school, I remember many political discussions in classes and around lunch tables. So, the night of the…
Two Families – Two Results
In one of my former ministries, there were two families that barely preceded me there. One was brought to faith and discipled by my predecessor and the other had recently moved to the area and were looking for a good church. They both had kids of a similar age and they were both broken families. The one had been married previously, then divorced, then reconciled after the wife had three kids from a mediating relationship (they had one child together),…
Change Demanded
STEP 1: Imagine you received a diagnosis from a doctor that you have a condition that will kill you in a week. This fast acting disease will destroy your body from the inside out and you last week of life will be incredibly painful and miserable. However, there is some hope (Humor me for a minute, please). This disease can be stopped dead in its track by following two simple steps. First, you must stop eating all processed sugar for…
Changed Life
I had a girl in my youth group whose life was drastically changed over a weekend. We were headed to a youth conference in MN and this girl was constantly asking if we could stop so she could use the bathroom. Now if you’ve ever been that guy or that girl who is asking that question, you know how that goes over. On the way home we were kind of in a hurry because we were supposed to be rendezvousing…