About this time ten years ago, I was sitting on my bed in my attic bedroom near Manchester, England. My greatest adventure to date was drawing to a close, and I was trying to figure out what came next. Should I find a way to stay in England as a missionary? Should I return home…
This past winter I traveled to my childhood home in the northern woods of Wisconsin. My soul hungers for the inky dark nights and the quiet forests, and when I’m there in winter, I spend a lot of time staring out the windows at the trees and the snow. The temperatures hung below zero during…
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” (Psalm 103:2 ESV) In nearly every relationship and association with another, human beings deal with benefits, at least subconsciously. We consider getting them, losing them—even offering them and sometimes forgoing them. We rarely truly forget them, and we most often choose to trust in…
I have watched the sunrise from the top of Sarangkot in Nepal, and I’ve scaled Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. I’ve topped Bob’s Peak in Queenstown, New Zealand, and I’ve reached a high point of Machu Picchu. I’ve been as close to the top of Mont Blanc in France as I could get, and I’ve…
A couple of years ago, our lawnmower broke just as the neighborhood deer began to foal. Over the next couple of weeks, we found four beautiful, tiny fawns hidden in the tall grass of our Texas hill country front yard. Initially, we were shocked to discover newborn babies seemingly abandoned, but we soon learned that…
The room was dark as pitch. I lay wide awake, concerns flooding my mind. Then I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. In the inky blackness, the formidable creature lay almost still. Was there a feral hog in our room?…