Christian Living

What Happens When We Don’t Understand?

Lots of things happen and we try to understand. Some situations are predictable and therefore easy to understand. Others we can make sense of even if it is not the outcome we would normally expect. Then there are the situations far beyond what we would expect. I can, with some degree of accuracy, predict that a child with an upbringing that encourages questioning for the purpose of understanding and involves laughing together but never laughing at the child when the answer is obvious, will do well. Power dynamics in which the person perceived to have the power explains what is not understood in terms suited to the other person’s intellectual limitations and mental capacity will lead to a well-developed adult. If this continues through the teenage years, there is a higher degree of success for the maturing individual and a stronger relationship with all who pour into their lives but…

(more…)

I’ve Been Thinking…

Warning – independent thought may lead to cancellation. There are days that I worry what others will think about my thoughts. It is these days that I choose not to think or at least not to think out loud. Other times I deem myself to have reached a plane of philosophical depth that my thoughts, when revealed, cannot be dismissed. Then there are regular days that my thoughts are pedestrian, no, really, they are about pedestrians, how not to hit them at a crosswalk, how not to become one by driving recklessly and losing my licence etc. These are the days when thought is limited to the things that present themselves throughout the day. No depth, just trying to make it to tomorrow.

(more…)

I a WOKE this Christmas!

Before you applaud or unsubscribe, maybe you too should consider becoming “WOKE.” As I understand it, WOKE is a term used to describe an awakening that takes place when an individual who has not experienced life the same way another individual has experienced it due to factors such as race, socioeconomic status and historical factors, views life through the lens of the people who do not share the privileges they have simply because they were born in a different environment.  While this term has become a battle cry for social Marxism (here comes the unsubscribes and the applause) this term based on the definition I have created above, can be a great way to view December 25th and Jesus’ birth. 

(more…)

What If?

It’s a strange time in my life. I wrongly assumed that the things I have done and continue to do would have reached more people. Somehow, I came to the conclusion that the things I love to do like writing blogs, plays and music, my book, leading worship and preaching sermons would lead to a wider audience. I’m not saying I expected to be famous or even well known. I’m not going to lie; I dared to dream once in a while that I could be more than I am, be someone who’s name came up when people talked about this thing or that thing  but now my dreams can be best described as backwards. Instead of a vision of what I want my future to be, my dreams revolve more around the past and the question, “What if?”

(more…)

“Start Children off in the Way They Should Go*…” and They Might Go 

I thought I would make a great parent. I believed I could avoid the mistakes my parents made and find ways to improve on what my parents did right when raising me. I think most if not all people believe that they can at least be as good a parent as their parents or maybe even better. I’m not sure where I ended up on the better than, equal to or less than scale but if the measurement is how many times we called poison control… 

(more…)

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… 

…who’s that guy looking back at me? I know it doesn’t have the rhyming beauty of the classic but to be honest some days I look in the mirror and think the Evil Queen in Snow White has a leg up on me in the looks department. Each morning, I try to peak through one eye to get some sense of what fresh horror I will see after not getting my beauty sleep for the fourteenth month in a row. Sometimes I can guess because I have already passed the same bathroom mirror in the night more than a few times. Based on this, I hear a voice inside say, “don’t look David, don’t look; this ain’t going to be pretty.” 

(more…)