I was thinking over a Father’s Day sermon I was preparing as I headed out to take a hike in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve on a recent morning. It was already over 80 degrees at 7:00 am on its way to ...  Read More

When I was in the fifth grade, our class assignment was to write a report on one of the states in the US and build a small float to represent that state. After finishing my report on Vermont, my mothe...  Read More

Growing up in Terra Linda, CA in the 1950’s and 60’s, I had several best friends. I have had dreams about returning to visit these friends in the neighborhood where we grew up.Tom McCart lived down th...  Read More

A couple of months ago I received a text from a friend in Texas who was in a financial crisis. He had previously told me that he had personally guaranteed a real estate loan on a commercial project th...  Read More

I recently read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. Musk has a vision to start a colony on Mars. He started Space X in order to make reusable rockets and a profitable company that will one day f...  Read More

My friend Bill Saleme sent me a baseball cap emblazoned with a message:PASTOR WARNINGAnything you say or do could be used in a sermonThe following story illustrates the truth on the cap.I unloaded the...  Read More

On a sunny Spring morning during the first COVID outbreak, I sat in our backyard marveling at the abundance of life in front of me. I watched hummingbirds flit around the feeders Kristina had hung fro...  Read More

Dilemma: a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially equally undesirable ones.A dilemma is what it means to be between a rock and a hard place. ...  Read More

Malcolm Gladwell has written several excellent books. One of my favorites is Outliers, in which Gladwell describes a close knit community of Italian-Americans who lived in Roseto, Pennsylvania. This c...  Read More

Kristina and I celebrated Mother’s Day this year at Talon Lodge, Kristina’s favorite place on earth. Talon is an eight-acre island two miles off the shore of Sitka, Alaska. The lodge and guest houses ...  Read More

I was in California recently to meet with pastors, get together with my brothers and sisters, attend a memorial service on Saturday and preach on Sunday. A month earlier, I had a similar schedule, inc...  Read More

I watch movies on TV and airplanes, but Jesus Revolution was my first trip to a theater since before the pandemic. It was well worth the visit.I had met four of the characters in the movie during the ...  Read More