Becky and I will be away this weekend. There is a very important ballet recital to attend in Michigan. 

I sent a text message to a friend the other day reminding him to double check one thing or another.  As I pecked the word “double” onto the screen, the autofill feature on my phone quickly suggested that the next word might be “bacon.”  I thought about bacon for a moment before continuing on with my reminder to double check.

I am not exactly sure how the autofill feature on a smart phone works, but I know my phone has a good memory.  I’ve tried to replicate my double bacon results, but now every time I type in “double,” my phone suggests I use “check” for my next word. Continue reading →

As did so many others, I felt a pain-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach sense of loss at the news of Monday’s fire Notre Dame de Paris. And as for many others that sorrow was not just at the destruction of art and history and beauty wrought by the flames, but at the violation of memories deeply personal and important.

Of course, Becky and I were but two of the millions of people who visit Notre Dame every year.  But none of the others among the many at Notre Dame in October eighteen months ago were there to celebrate our fortieth anniversary.  No apologies for personalizing this sad news. Continue reading →

No surprise.  More Americans plan on hunting Easter eggs this coming week than on going to church.  Barely a third of us consider the religious aspect of the day most important. Only 42% of us identify Easter with Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  That’s what the surveys say, anyway.  Candyindustry.com predicts we will spend $2.5 billion on candy this Easter season. Chocolate is three times as popular jelly beans.  All in all, though, Easter makes it only to number five on the favorite holiday list. You can google it yourself.

Easter week – all eight days of it – begins Sunday.  Palm Sunday and then Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and finally Resurrection Day.  Most American don’t care about all that so much as they care about getting chocolate instead of jelly beans. Continue reading →

I received a letter from Caleb this week. It’s the best thing that’s happened all week, and this was a good week.  Caleb is our 8-year old grandson.  He and I carry on a correspondence the old way. Paper, stamps, envelopes.  I do most of the writing, but every so often Caleb sends a return letter and receiving it is always the best thing that happens the week it arrives.

We tend to write about dinosaurs, pyramids, space ships, wild animals, and other things of common interest. In my previous letter I had told Caleb how Becky and I had seen a red-tailed hawk when we were out walking.  It turns out that Caleb is currently into birds and he was excited to tell me all about it. He can hardly wait to get a pair of binoculars and sent along a drawing of kestrel. Continue reading →

Short-term mission trips are a ubiquitous feature of the lives of many American churches, LPC included.  Over the past thirty years or so millions and millions of American Christians have donned brightly colored team t-shirts and traveled the globe to build houses, run Vacation Bible Schools, serve soup, pass out tracts, offer medical care and much more.  LPC has opted out of the brightly colored team t-shirts, but we’ve done our share of short-term mission trips.

At their best, short-term mission trips are of a help to our global mission partners and open the eyes of North American Christians to the reality of life in the “two-thirds” world.  At their worst, their affect has been summarized by an important book, “When Helping Hurts,” and by the online hucksters who offer sucker churches an opportunity to give their members “a vacation with a purpose.”  “Vacationaries” they call us.  One week to change the world. Non-sense. Continue reading →