HAPPY MONDAY! A personal dilemma has me thinking about today’s word-of-the-week… FOG Lots of ways to get lost in the fog. Loneliness. Addiction. Depression. Grief. Fear. Pain. Fog descends, clarity dissipates, confusion reigns. In the darkness of the fog, once-obvious choices become impossibly obscured. Decisions that ought to be simple become impossibly complex. In the […]
Continue readingA Key To Making Good Choices
“You have to decide in advance.” The guys sitting around the circle looked confused so I let it sit for a few moments. Finally one guy asked, “How can you do that? How can you decide in advance when you don’t know what’s gonna happen?” “What do the rest of you think?” Quiet…the kind of […]
Continue readingA Table, A Church
“The table I long for—the church I hope for—is a place where we let others see where the spirit meets the bone and help heal the wounds. The table I long for—the church I hope for—has the grace of the Gospel as its magnificent centerpiece. The table I long for—the church I hope for—is where […]
Continue readingIt’s Only One Life
How much difference can you make by impacting a single life? If you or I encountered Amber in August 2013, perhaps we would have turned away. At that point she felt completely trapped in addiction and saw no way forward. She couldn’t care for her son and had no idea how she’d deal with her […]
Continue readingGrateful When You Don’t Feel It
I’m really grateful for this RICH’S RIDE thing I get to do. Frankly, sometimes I can’t imagine where I’d be without it. Since I wrote last week about Driving Without Hitting Stuff I’ve been thinking about how I don’t think Jesus cares much about darkness. I mean, He does in the sense that He doesn’t want […]
Continue readingMistakes
HAPPY MONDAY! A thought-provoking statement brings us today’s word-of-the-week… MISTAKES “Mistakes are a great opportunity to ask for help.” An athlete said a coach once told him to stop regretting his mistakes. Instead, the coach advised him to find someone who could help him learn from every mistake. We’ve all heard about learning from our […]
Continue readingStarting…And Starting Again
Jesus said some inconvenient stuff. My friend Liz talks about pick-n-choosers, folks like me who occasionally ignore the less warm and fuzzy parts of Jesus’ teaching. When we confront issues of social justice, I suspect we all have to be aware of biases that lead us to pick-n-choose. As I’ve worked with the men at […]
Continue readingDriving Without Hitting Stuff
Would you agree that there’s more to good driving than “not running into stuff”? As a kid I developed the really bad driving habit of staring at oncoming traffic. Makes sense, right? Oncoming traffic is the biggest danger, so why wouldn’t you watch it carefully? The problem, of course, is that you tend to steer […]
Continue readingTen Things Someone Might Need
How can you help someone who needs you? A while back I was asked to do a workshop for folks who are working in difficult areas of ministries. Since I’m a wheelchair user, I was supposed to offer a seated perspective of things people have done that have been helpful and some that haven’t. At the […]
Continue readingSalt, Yeast, Shade
Unfortunately, most of my secular friends … view the church not as a change agent that can affect all of society but as a place where like-minded people go to feel better about themselves. That image of church stands in sharp contrast to the vision of Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave […]
Continue readingWhat If One Guy Just Did Something?
I love it when someone sees something that needs doing and does it. Louis Gray is a self-described technology geek. He works for Google and writes a blog about early-adopter tech stuff. Last month he decided to combine his love of gadgets with his desire to challenge himself and support a cause that matters to him. I […]
Continue readingA Parable
Once upon a time, a teenager acted out and made some bad choices in rebellion against a lifetime of abuse. One group of people felt bad for her and resolved to pray for her. One group felt bad for her but didn’t want her around because they feared she’d be a bad influence on their […]
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