life. faithful.

  I'm thankful that home for my family is down a rough dirt road that doesn't get a lot of traffic. I know there are people who would never dream of living out in the middle of nowhere, but when I see the craziness of this world I can see the blessing of being surrounded by fields, trees, hills, and animals. I'm glad that my kids play in the dirt and feed livestock and haul rocks and build fence. Don't get me wrong--they spend way too much time in front of screens, too. But they wander in the woods and splash through mud puddles and climb trees and catch snakes.     To some extent, they are shielded from the horrors of this world. Our family is tucked away, hidden in the beauty of the hills. We can step outside and hear the water rushing over the rocks in the spring when rain is common.   We can pick honeysuckle, rose petals, persimmons, chicory, wild onions, sassafras, blackberries, and chamomile. We listen to the bullfrogs, coyotes, and owls at night. We can gaze up

 "Equity, not equality" has become a bit of a war-cry lately. You see it and hear it everywhere--in researching for this post, I even found somebody relating it to the story in 1 Kings when King Solomon was faced with a decision between two women who were each claiming the same baby to be hers. I bet you don't have to think too long before you know what conclusion they reached, because right now all we hear is how things should be equitable, not equal. I've got to admit, it sounds good. I mean, how wonderful would it be if we could ensure that everyone's life turns out spectacularly? That each individual is successful--you know, happy, healthy, and wealthy? It would bring about that elusive utopia, right? We would all happily get along and love each other and everything would be all hunky-dory. The problem is, in a fallen world a utopia simply isn't possible--and that's exactly what the current definition of "equity" would require. Granted, the w

Easter is coming. Those words have come to mean a lot of different things. In recent years, they've mostly just come to mean that people will get together to let kids hunt for eggs stuffed with candy. Many will step through the doors of a church building, the only other time besides Christmas that they get dressed up and make an appearance, usually with a big family dinner afterward. It means pictures with chicks, bunnies, and tulips to send to the relatives--a celebration of spring more than anything else. I read an editorial the other day that talked about how the "true" meaning of Easter was reawakening and "spiritual and moral transformation." Then today I saw a comment on social media about how Jesus was just a man, but a man who died believing it would save the souls of the entire world, so that made him a man worth following and emulating. So is that the case? Is this weekend about simply the death of a good man who thought he was dying for the world, a