The children’s book, How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen , delights my grandsons as much as it delighted their father when he was a boy. Every time I read this book to a child, I find myself enjoying the silly, fun, and imaginative story. The protagonist is a boy – Tom – who spends most of his time “fooling around” with random items in the mud (such as sticks, crumpled paper and bent nails), playing on high-up things, and working his way inside things (such as barrels in alleys). His aunt, a woman with the wonderfully distinctive name of “Fidget Wonkam-Strong”, considers all such activities to be a monumental waste of time.  Yet all of Tom’s fooling around ultimately serves a greater end. By exploring and experimenting and continually learning about his environment, Tom is prepared to meet a challenge from some rivals: Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen. He beats these foes in a series of games he has never played. With five seasoned adults against one adoles...

For a number of years, I led the prayer time for a large Sunday morning Adult Bible Fellowship group at our church. During those years, our group evolved from a Bible study, to a connected group of people who loved each other, encouraged each other, and bore each other’s burdens. We became a community whose hearts truly beat for one another. One summer, our family was returning from vacation and our old RV caught on fire on the freeway. We smelled smoke, we pulled over, and flames emerged from under the hood. We quickly got out, and as I watched billows of black smoke pour from the vehicle, I came unglued. The seats where we had been sitting only minutes before actually melted. The windows were shattered by the heat. Our clothes and belongings were ruined: blackened with soot and impregnated with the smell of smoke. I was overwhelmed with a sense of danger, a realization of our fortunate escape, and a great sense of loss. Fear, relief, shock…these emotions and others whirled wit...

Do you ever pray…yet doubt? I certainly do. And my parents did.  My father was the youngest of five brothers. They all got married and then – one after another – my aunts and uncles all had sons. No daughters, just sons. Initially, my own parents followed that same pattern. Boys. Lots of boys.  After four sons of their own (along with two late-term miscarriages that also were boys) my dad and mom were passionate about having a daughter. They prayed fervently for a girl. They specifically asked God to bless them with a girl.  Yet when I was born, they didn’t even have a girl’s name picked out! Only a boy’s name. So I was nick-named “Sweet Pea” for 3 days while they decided what my name should be.  I find this fascinating, and so revealing, about how hard it can be for us to actually believe that God might respond to our prayers. About how easy it is for us to believe that patterns of life have been set in motion which won’t change.  Despite th...

I find myself – maybe you do too – attracted to ever-increasing efficiency, productivity and hurry. In our culture, these qualities have become the undercurrents of striving and accomplishing. The need for speed shows up in our lives and in our language: speed reading, speed eating, even speed walking. How easy it is for us to blindly follow where our culture leads, living at a pace that stretches our personal resources and strains our limits. Without realizing it, our need to “do” can become a series of unbroken tasks which make us feel a sense of being chronically short of time. Even worse, we can begin to believe that we arewhat we do.  Yet as a Jesus-follower, all of this seems to be at odds with God’s words in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God”. Our meaning comes from our connection with him, not our list of accomplishments. And we’ll never really know him fully unless we sometimes choose to be still. Furthermore, if we are not careful, our incessant bus...