Walking The Walk . . .

"For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God." ~Romans 1:20 Today something truly inspirational happened for the first time in a long, long time.  NASA launched the first new space vehicle into orbit today in more than 40 years.  It's the beginning of a new era of space exploration and discovery! This happened in the midst of so much bad news lately.  Pandemic. Politics. Violence on our streets. All wildly exaggerated and hyped by a dishonest news media driven by ratings and advertising dollars. But this is the way the world has always been--in one way or another. There's a lot of good things that are happening in the world today also. Those don't make interesting news stories so we don't hear much about those things. But if you look for them, they are there.  As

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." ~1 Corinthians 13:4-5 We all have those people in our lives that try our patience.  Kids.  Family.  Co-workers. If there's one thing I've prayed about and worked on over the years, it's been in trying to be more patient.  My wife says I'm doing fairly well considering I started out with zero! With me, it's people that take things that are simple and make them complicated. The world is full of them.  I'm a simple guy. I'm a problem solver.  My solution to problems is to start with what needs to happen to resolve the issue, and then find the easiest way to get there. My first boss and mentor was a master problem solver.  He told me that there are no big problems. He taught me to tackle big problems the same way I tackled small problems. Figure

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." ~Proverbs 22:6  I saw this wonderful story on social media recently about a Chinese family.  Back in 1980, a new father took his one year old daughter on a trip to a lake in China.  Once there, they had their picture taken beside the lake.  The father loved the photo, and the next year, he decided to take his daughter to the same lake and take the photo again.  They continued to do that every year, except one, for 35 years! I probably spent an hour looking at the collection of 34 photos.  You can find them all here .  They went from black and white to color.  The lake background changed from a wilderness area to being more of a public park.  One of the photos of the girl in her teens showed without question she didn't want her picture taken--I know that phase of female adolescence well.  And then the granddaughters arrived--first one, and then two! And as

"And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive,  if you have faith." ~Matthew 21:22 I see the sarcasm often on social media--after any natural disaster, shooting, terrorist attack, and now during the pandemic.  Somebody invariably makes the comment, "instead of so many people saying 'hopes and prayers' why don't you do something useful?" Do something useful they say.  Like what? What can I do to stop a hurricane from slamming into the coast of Florida? What can I do to change the heart of a terrorist determined to kill innocent people? What can I do to stop a virus? What can I do to stop children from dying from a horrible disease? Sure, there's a few things I can do on my own.  I can support causes like the Shriner's Hospitals and St. Jude's.  I can donate to relief efforts after hurricanes and tornadoes.  I can volunteer in my community food bank or homeless shelter.  I can protect myself from the virus by doing th

I was so relieved the other night.  I'm a contributor on a podcast, and we were having a conversation between the four of us about the pandemic.  I've heard over and over the last few weeks how happy everyone will be when we can "return to normal" again.  One of my friends on the podcast said something that I'd been thinking a lot about for the last few weeks.  That's always a relief when you get confirmation that someone else is having similar thoughts.  And that thought?  Well, it's this: I have absolutely no intentions what-so-ever of going back to what I considered "normal" before. I have been habitually and chronically busy my entire adult life . . . and adding to my schedule every chance I get. I have aspired for 35 years to fill every waking moment with some kind of activity. Then on St. Patrick's Day everything came to a screeching halt. Over the last 43 days, I've gone from pacing the house about to go nuts because I have