Stopping to Think

  It’s 5:30 am. The morning is in transition from the grey of first light into something more approximating daylight. I look out over the porch, through a gap in the pine trees, to the wheat field across the road. I remember them mostly growing bluegrass in that field, but maybe wheat prices are up this year. Or maybe they thought they would be before the COVID mess. My baby girl is laying on the floor to the right of me, intermittently sucking on her bottle and pulling it away to smile. She’s so happy. I wish he could have met her. This is the first morning I’ve slept in this house, my grandparent’s place, since my grandpa died last December. I came out in June when we did a belated memorial service, but the house was packed with family from all over the country, so I just crashed at my brother’s place in town.  We never called them our “grandparents”, always Grammie and Pak. When or how Pak became our equivalent for grandfather I’ll never know for sure, though I’m told it wa...

I wrote a post about a year and a half ago on family devotions . While I have been pretty inconsistent and at times lackadaisical in my application of what I wrote there, I am encouraged as I look back over the last year plus and think of how much Scripture we've been able to read together at the dinner table.  However, as you may know, it's sometimes hard to discuss with your 2 year-old child the complex theological arguments of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Not that we shouldn't make that effort, but it just might be difficult. You'll have to do a lot of simplifying in your language, and trying to take abstract ideas and connect them to concrete realities. Some people are pretty good at this...I'm not. I need help. I have to learn how to talk and think like a small child, because that is a completely foreign world to me. And so, if you're in that same boat, I think it's good to martial some allies to your cause. Let me suggest three that I use. ...

The title describes exactly what I want to do.  Two years ago today a young man who has left an undeniable mark on many lives, was taken home by his Heavenly Father.  Why God decided Alex needed to go so soon, I honestly have no idea.  But the impact he made and the lives he touched in his short time here, is undeniable. Now I realize, as I hope you do, that Facebook is a poor measure of reality.  But I could not help but noticed as I pulled up my home page today, the number of statuses reading something to the affect of  "Alex, we love and miss you, RIP."  Obviously everyone put their own twist and touch on it, but that was the sentiment.  How does one person touch so many? Part of it was simply a function of his personality.  The dude was a show-off.  And he was good at it.  He loved attention, he loved the spotlight, and more than that, he loved to make people laugh and have fun.   Making people smile was something Alex absol...