About a week ago I finished reading a book which had been gifted to Jim and me. Our dear friends, Dale and Lou Ann Rogers, wanted us to read this book because it was about some of their dearest friends and the death of their only son at the hands of a drunk driver. The book is entitled Revenge, Redeemed, and was written by Bob Stewart. I highly recommend it.  Since you might read it one day, I won’t tell you all of the details. However, I will tell you that it caused me to do a great deal of thinking. I thought about the fact that children left to…

I recently did some unplanned research at one of our local hospitals. After two trips to the emergency department in less than twenty-four hours, the nice people there invited me to be their guest for a couple of days or so. I am not unaccustomed to being in hospital rooms, but, thankfully, the vast majority of my time spent in one has been as a visitor and not as a patient. Even though I have been in more hospital rooms as a visitor than I can even try to guess, I do not consider myself to be an expert about how visitors should conduct themselves. In fact, I tend to…

A little over a decade ago, a crime rocked a small community not far from where I live. A husband, his wife, and their adult daughter who was visiting from out of town were all murdered by the son of the couple. Another person who was unrelated to the family was also murdered. I remember hearing the family’s preacher speaking about the events, the aftermath, how the local church and the community dealt with all of this, and a host of other things. I honestly do not remember a lot about what he said. However, there is one exception to that. In fact, it has been in the back of…

Would you like to never say anything wrong again? No, seriously – would you like to never say anything out of turn again? Would you like to never sin or fall short of righteousness in your speech again? Would you like to never make a mistake in your relationships with God, others, or yourself ever again by way of words? Would you like to go the rest of your life saying everything 100% correctly? Think about how much nicer life would be if that were true! You’d never have to worry about unintentionally hurting someone through what you would say. You’d never have to worry about falling short in your…

Well, summer break is almost over. We’ve had a lot of great moments as a youth group this summer. Camp was great, Horizons at FHU was great (the best year we’ve ever been to, according to several who came), our Youth and Family Day was a success, and almost all of the smaller events in between have gone off without a hitch. However, there is one moment that has been my favorite of the summer, and it certainly wasn’t on my planned schedule. A couple of weeks ago, the kids in my youth group gave me a gift that I wasn’t expecting. It was genuinely a surprise to me, which…