My friend Alycia is in Sierra Leone this week. She arranging micro-finance opportunities and working to connect on-the-ground organizations that help kids who live in absolutely deplorable conditions. She organized and financed the trip. It’s a difficult, dangerous place for a white woman to travel alone. She might have selected a group mission trip to […]
Continue readingHow To Produce Better Fruit
Want to produce better fruit? Hook up with a better tree. # # # Well, it’s happening again. My recent focus on Luke 6:38 and the surrounding verses are yielding a bunch of unexpected insights. A few days ago I wrote about a conversation with Jesus about Becoming A Fruit Tree. I came away from that discussion […]
Continue readingHow To Get Energized
Becky and I spent a big chunk of the weekend talking to people about Front Range Freedom Tour 2013. Lots of people stopped to chat. Most had a similar reaction: I’d like to do something like that, but it looks too hard. It would take so much time. I couldn’t afford it. You get the […]
Continue readingTruth
Happy Monday! A four-year-old philosopher brings us today’s word-of-the-week… TRUTH My cousin has been emphasizing the importance of always telling the truth with her four-year-old daughter. Seems like a simple, straightforward concept, right? So after one particular heart-to-heart, the young philosopher got that look that said there was something spinning around in her brain. “Mom, […]
Continue readingA Story Of Escape
Happy Saturday! I think I live a pretty sheltered life when it comes to understanding how fortunate I am to live where I live. Grab a cup of coffee and watch this incredible story of a courageous young woman and a stranger who helped her. Can’t see the video in your email or reader? Click […]
Continue readingOne Tin Soldier
My thoughts about The Easy Button reminded me of a 1971 cult movie called Billy Jack. If you haven’t seen the film, you might recognize its theme song One Tin Soldier. Tom Laughlin plays a native-American Green Beret Vietnam veteran. The film centers on cultural conflict between leaders of an Indian reservation school and corrupt, […]
Continue readingOn Becoming A Fruit Tree
I’m still messing with the “good measure” passage in Luke 6:38. Or perhaps more accurately, it’s messing with me. Check out the background here and here. Jesus and I had to take a walk through the RUV—Rich’s Unstandardized Version—when I read past verse 38. “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree […]
Continue readingThe Easy Button
As folks in the Boston area begin to put the pieces back together, I notice a nearly universal phenomenon following tragedies: the search for an “easy button.” We want THE answer, happy endings, a fast fix. And mostly, they don’t exist. In real life, there’s rarely an easy button. When faced with significant loss, people […]
Continue readingA Good Measure Of Dog Food
A few days ago my friend Jon Swanson asked blog readers to explain how we read the Bible. I finally figured out my response by feeding the dog this morning. When it’s meal time, I tell Monte to “get his dish.” He eagerly fetches the scoop we use to measure his food. The scoop is […]
Continue readingThings I Didn’t Know
About a year ago I started seriously preparing for IJM Freedom Tour 2012. I’d never heard of International Justice Mission. I sort of knew, in the distant background, about issues of human trafficking. But there was much I didn’t know. I didn’t know… there are places where a man can order a child for sex […]
Continue readingForgiveness
Happy Monday! This weekend’s teaching on Luke 6:38 inspires today’s word-of-the-week… FORGIVENESS I’ve told you before about my unauthorized personal version of the bible. It’s called RUV—Rich’s Unstandard Version. Occasionally I encounter a conversation with Jesus in RUV when I’m trying to make sense of words from the real bible. Jesus and His friends are […]
Continue readingUnconventional Sermons…
…are some of the best. Happy Saturday! Have you watched the TV show Duck Dynasty? A friend told me about it, and I’ll confess I sort of dismissed it without giving it a chance. I think I’d like spending time on Phil Robertson’s porch. He’d likely think my handcycle is silly, just as I think […]
Continue reading