You ever look around at the world or go through times in life when you wonder to yourself “What in the world are you doing God”? I think we all have wondered this several times in our lives. When I was a young child, this was a question that I came face to face with. … [Read more…]
In 2008, I was out walking on my lunch break in the neighborhood of my apartment. The walk took me past a playground at a local elementary school. There on that playground one beautiful spring day, I watched the children playing as I was walked past. Then I saw a little boy with a bigger … [Read more…]
One of the hardest things about maintaining faith in God is the seemingly unanswered prayers. We all have what seems like unanswered prayers. And it only gets harder as those unanswered prayers seem to come when we are praying for dire things. When I was young, I was bullied quite a bit in school. I … [Read more…]
I had a close friend in seminary that was going through some challenging times in her life shortly before entering seminary. In one year, she and her husband lost everything they had in a fire, her dad died, and she lost her job. Anybody experiencing what she did would have been more than a little … [Read more…]
When I was a child, my brothers used to get together with some of our cousins to go to one of the family fields to play baseball, or to go camping, or to go help my father and uncles in the wood lot, or to go fishing. I remember that I always wanted to go … [Read more…]
When I was 10 years old, all my friends were getting braces except for me. I wanted to be just like my friends. I didn’t want to stand out in any way. I remember praying to God that I would get braces like my friends. I prayed that I could be just like them. I … [Read more…]
As a child, my father thought it imperative, that my brothers and I learned about nature. We would watch nature programs together as a family and my father taught us about food chains, the birth of animals, and the power of nature. We would observe how our cats would stalk birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits … [Read more…]
I am reading a fascinating book titled Savage Continent by Keith Lowe that focuses on the aftermath of World War II in Europe. It spends a long time outlining what life looked like for citizens and the masses of displaced peoples who had been imprisoned in work camps, concentration camps, and prison camps throughout Nazi … [Read more…]
The new preschool education standards focus on evaluating and teaching lessons in social emotional skills. This is something that was never present in preschool or public school educational goals in the past. Part of the social emotional educational goals is to teach empathy and conflict management skills. However, it has occurred to me that as … [Read more…]
Do you have regrets? I would say many of us do. Do you have those things that you wish you did not do? I would say we all do. As a whole humanity holds themselves to certain standards that they don’t always successfully live up to and thus we hold others to even higher standards … [Read more…]
