From Soil To Soul
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The Marches of Life
March! Of all the months of the year, March is probably my least favorite. One day it feels like a warm spring afternoon. Birds are singing and you can sense the grip of winter loosening. Everyone is out of their houses and even the grumpy ones are smiling. It’s a beautiful day. Then, almost in…
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Rain on the window…
The other morning I woke early to the sound of rain tapping against the window. It was still dark outside, and for a moment I just lay there listening. My first instinct was the familiar one: You should get up. There must be something that needs to be done. But as I listened to the rain, another…
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The Robin
This morning I saw a robin. You might be thinking, What’s the big deal? The big deal is that the robin is one of the first birds to return in the spring. This morning it’s cloudy and damp, with rain falling steadily, yet there it was—a robin hopping around in my yard. The sight of that…
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The DNA of Doing
I come from a long, long line of hard workers — Amish and Mennonite dairy farmers. It is in our genes and woven into our way of life. Let me illustrate a couple of powerful truths that flow from that heritage. Milking and tending dairy cows is not a seasonal hobby. It is a continual,…
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Boxes, boxes and more boxes
As I look around, it seems as though chaos abounds. It’s enough to drive an Enneagram One nuts. I thought we had packed in an organized way — kitchen things, office things, and so on. All labeled carefully so nothing would get mixed up. But try as we might, after six months of temporary living,…
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🎵 Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
When I speak of hymns, I know I’m dating myself. My teenage years in the late ’60s and early ’70s came at the heart of the Scripture songs and choruses. It was the beginning of what we now call the contemporary music movement in the church. While I enjoyed those songs greatly and sang them…
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Significance
Before we begin our search into the lives of these great biblical characters, it is worth pausing to reflect on something deeply human—our need for significance. If we are but dust, then we want to be important dust. At least to someone. I recently found myself pondering a strange but revealing question: If all of mankind were…
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Grace To Self
This part of the series is the most deeply personal. I trust you won’t judge me too harshly. There is no one harder on me… than me. I have called myself more names and scolded myself more deeply and more often than any boss—or even enemy—has ever dreamed. You know how it goes. You look…
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Seasons
Part Two … Seasons When my wife and I moved to Los Angeles for college, we had a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and an eighteen-month-old son in tow. Neither of our children really remembered anything about Indiana winters. Their earliest memories were formed under the sunny skies of Southern California. The only snow they ever saw was…