life. faithful.

Every once in a while, I read a verse of Scripture and think, "I wonder when that got put in there..." because it catches me as something I've never noticed before. As we are nearing the remembrance of Easter, one of those verses caught my attention: " When Jesus was on the earth, a man of flesh and blood, He offered up prayers and pleas, groans and tears to the One who could save Him from death. He was heard because He approached God with reverence. Although He was a Son, Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered   And once He was perfected through that suffering He became the way of eternal salvation for all those who hear and follow Him" (Hebrews 5:7-9) As they prepared to enter Jerusalem, Jesus knew what He was about to face. He even pulled His disciples aside to tell them plainly (because He had already told them a couple different times and the just didn't get it) that He was about to be mocked, tortured, executed, and raised from the d...

 My mom once asked her own mom what she thought was the hardest part about raising kids. I'm not sure when their conversation took place, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was after one of the many... spirited disagreements... we had when I was growing up. Part of Memaw's answer was, "If you can love them through junior high, you can love them through anything." Honestly, junior high was one of the reasons I left teaching. The politics were the main reason, sure, but I'm not going to lie to you and say I loved teaching hormonal young teenagers. I've often said that it didn't seem like my students could really connect with my odd sense of humor and bluntness until they hit about sophomore year. That's the year they would start saying I wasn't too bad, then by junior or senior year they actually seemed to like me a little. 7th through 9th grade, though? Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of love lost between us. I remember telling my mom once tha...

 For a long time, I was of the persuasion--as were so many others who consider themselves politically conservative--that the differences between the political right and the political left were ultimately minor. After all, we all want what's best for the country and best for each other, right? Sure, there were differences in how we wanted to go about reaching the end goal: those on the left were for higher taxes and welfare programs while those on the right were for lowering taxes and teaching people to support themselves, but the end goal of both was for the individual to become successful. Both sides wanted to see a furtherance of the beliefs of our founding fathers: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In recent years, though, I've come to realize that the right and the left don't have the same end go...

  Like every generation before us, we bemoan the current state of the younger generation. And like every generation before us, it's our fault. Go back a couple generations to those known as the "Silent Generation," and you find a group of men and women who grew up with a focus on work. Their parents knew the struggle of the Great Depression and the Great War, and the Silent Generation was taught to rely on themselves and their families. These are the ones who "walked uphill both ways" to school, the ones who often dropped out of school to work and help take care of the family. They grew up and had kids, and many of them wanted to make things better for their kids. After all, their parents were hard on them, so they don't want to be so hard on their kids. The Silent Generation had to work hard, often missing out on the small joys of childhood because of the family responsibilities they had to take on, so they wanted to make sure life wasn't as hard for t...

Lies surround us. That in itself isn't a surprising thing--Satan has used lies since the Garden. Not so long ago, I wrote, " Lies don't have to be silenced. The truth is much stronger than the lies, and even if truth is whispered while lies are shouted from the rooftops the truth will always win out in the end." I'm not surprised by the lies that are being spewed out by so-called journalists who seem to have just become talking heads who read what is handed to them instead of researching and studying and delving into matters deemed newsworthy. I'm not surprised that lies are being fed to our children through the media they consume--movies, books, television shows, and social platforms that feed them a constant diet of "self-affirmation" and "live your truth." What I am surprised by is how many of us are just standing idly by, letting the lies take over. I've been guilty of it myself, way too many times than I want to admit. I've...

 There's a relatively new song that gets played on K~LOVE quite a bit. It is called, "God, Turn it Around," by John Reddick. It's a simple, catchy tune that I've found myself singing a lot since it was first released last year. There's always been something about it that has bothered me just a bit, though, and until this morning I wasn't exactly sure what it was. The lyrics basically amount to this: I'm praying God come And turn this thing around God, turn it around I'm calling on the name That changes everything, yes All of my hope Is in the name The name of Jesus Breakthrough will come Come in the name The name of Jesus He is up to something God is doing something right now He is healing someone He is saving someone God is doing something right now He is moving mountains Making a way for someone God is doing something right now   I've left out a decent amount of the repetition, but you get the picture. Great song, right? The thi...

For the past few years, our little church has been reading through the Bible in chronological order. We took the outline put together by the Blue Letter Bible that schedules the whole reading for a year. I think it took us almost 3 years to make it through the first time... and this time through is taking even longer! I have to tell you, though--it is a wonderful study, and you're invited to join us. We meet in the tiny white building across from the salebarn in Green Forest. Breakfast and coffee at about 10:15, then the study right after. Come sit around the table with us. Eat, talk, laugh, cry, and truly study God's Word. Right now, we are starting Paul's letter to the Ephesians. I was reading through the first three chapters this morning in preparation for our study this weekend. When Pop introduced the letter Sunday, he asked us to read and take note of how many times Paul wrote about things being "in Christ." Just in the first few verses, you can see why he p...