Category: Freedom Tour

Students taught me to be wary of absolutes. Once you say never or always, you can pretty much count on two things. First, people will test the boundaries. So you have to decide how invested you are in the rule, how much time and effort you’ll spend enforcing the lines. Second, no matter how carefully […]

Last time I asked a question. What will it be like to meet Jesus face-to-face? I don’t know what that heavenly greeting will be like, but I don’t have to wait to talk to Jesus. He and I have conversations, especially when I’m cranking my handcycle. And I think He’s telling me the kingdom is […]

What will it be like to meet Jesus face-to-face? I imagine a big smile, a hug, and “Welcome Home.” I know that moment will be more glorious and awesome than anything my human brain can imagine. Still, it feels good to create a script of how the meeting might happen. I picture a conversation, a […]

Imagine your boat is floundering. The boat will sink, everyone’s gonna drown, unless you lighten the load. Someone suggests getting rid of the heavy anchor. “We can’t! The anchor was very expensive.” It’s an example of a persistent phenomenon known as the sunk cost fallacy. Same reasoning explains why we sit through a boring movie […]

Ever been overtaken by a sense of gratitude? I’ve been working for a while on summarizing FREEDOM TOUR 2022. Flipping through photos, I was struck by the sheer number and range of people who came together to make it happen. Literally hundreds of cyclists, walkers, runners, donors, and volunteers. Stepping into a wide variety of […]

I get lots of emails offering to help us grow our ride. It’s tempting. It would be kinda fun, and perhaps a bit of an ego boost, to be The Biggest Ride Around (TBRA). Once in a while I let myself imagine hundreds (thousands?) of FREEDOM TOUR cyclists crisscrossing Northern Colorado. All those jerseys and […]

“I’m in” might mean different things. For some it means joining, stepping into the circle. What’s expected? What’s going to happen? What’s it about? For others, “I’m in” means all-in. What can I do? How can I help? How can I contribute and even become a leader? Tempting, I think, to focus on the second […]

We’re supposed to avoid extremism, right? Don’t be one of those wild-eyed radicals, they say. Moderation. Compromise. Common ground. Sounds great, as long as you’re not following Jesus, because Jesus was a radical extremist. Jesus said love our neighbors. Jesus said welcome strangers. Jesus said care for orphans. All of them, not just the ones […]

We’re great at constructing them. Once created, we set them in stone and pretend there’s no other way of thinking. So in the U.S. you’re BLUE or RED. And we all know wat that means, right? I’m thinking about human trafficking, about our kids and their mothers who have been so horribly abused. What should […]

It’s “review season” at the FREEDOM TOUR. Especially at the ten-year mark, it’s time to evaluate. Look at data. Ask hard questions. What’s working. What isn’t? Where do we want to go from here? And the tough one: What needs to change? Because here’s a tough truth: Insight is easy. Change is hard.** We can […]