life. faithful.

Tomorrow morning, my hometown is saying goodbye to one of the best men I have ever been blessed to know. Joe "Buster" Powell was one of those special people that are hard to really describe in words. He was the most honest, true, humble, hardworking man, a soft soul who could put anyone at ease. His heart was for his farm, his people (and if you ever met Buster, you were his people), and most importantly his God. When I was growing up, Buster served as a deacon at First Baptist in Green Forest. The deacons took turns on Sunday mornings, with a different man reading a Scripture and saying an opening prayer each week. I always looked forward to Buster's turn--he could preach a better sermon in that five minutes than most of us could in a full day. He usually had a story from his farm to share, something he had noticed the week before because Buster was so much better than most of us at noticing the little ways God speaks. And then he would pray. I've heard a lot of...

I've been trying to figure out what to write, but I'm at a loss for words. That's not a normal thing for me...words are my strength (the written word, at least). Right now, though, my thoughts and feelings and words are all jumbled up in my brain. It's like a big knot--a lot like when I've got a ball of yarn that's gotten all mixed up and tangled. I start pulling on one thing and start to think that I'm making progress, but then the knot just starts getting tighter. So I move to a new piece and start pulling on it...only to find that it is connected to the knot in another way. Right now, I wish I could tie all my thoughts together. I wish I could come up with a nice, neat way to explain all the chaos that's in the world right now. But to be honest, I just don't understand. I don't understand why people seem to think that violence makes things better. I don't understand how burning down businesses honors a life senselessly taken. I don't u...

There's a big emphasis lately on the wedge that's constantly being driven between faith and science. It seems like people think you can only have one or the other ( I've written about it a few times ), and somehow if you cling to one you have to push the other away by default. I hear people talk about science in such strange ways, and it comes from people on both sides of the conversation-- "I don't trust science because it's just trying to take the place of God." "It doesn't matter what you think, it's science and you have to trust science." If you ask me, both statements are equally ignorant. I'm a huge fan of science--I've spent a huge chunk of my life so far learning as much about it as I could (and cried way too many tears over the parts I didn't understand), and I'm one of those nerds who lights up when somebody asks me a question about it. Honestly, I get lost enough in answering that it usually takes me a w...

We are living in strange times. I never imagined that the world would be in such a state of lockdown, and I honestly don't understand what we're seeing. Things don't make sense, and it's easy to get lost in a state of fear and confusion. We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, let alone how life is going to look in a month's time. There are so many unknowns that most of the time I don't even know where to start listing them. Fear is a crazy thing. It's one of those feelings that starts a spiral--a little bit leads to more and more, and before you know it your mind is consumed with it. You start to lose sight of all the blessings and promises and get pulled down so far into the dark that you start thinking the light is gone for good. Despite the unknowns in the world around us right now, all of this is known to God. He knows exactly how things are going to turn out, and He hasn't forgotten us or left us to fend for ourselves. After a...

The cross--an instrument of execution that was so intense a word was invented just to describe the pain: excruciating. It was a humiliating, agonizing way to die, hanging there exposed to everything and everyone, your death long and drawn out and on display for the jeering crowd. What a terrible way for an innocent man to die. Add to that the taunting and torture Jesus experienced before His death--lashes so severe they often left the victim dead simply because the body can't recover from the combination of shock and blood loss. Slaps and curses and a crown of thorns from Roman soldiers. Struggling to carry a cross down the same streets where, just days before, people had shouted praises and thrown their cloaks down before Him as He entered the city. Looking out at faces full of hatred, at people demanding His life. And on the other faces, fear and confusion as they tried to reconcile this broken, bleeding man with the idea of the conqueror who would save God's people from...

There's no doubt that we are in a strange time right now (though the difference is more pronounced in some places than in others). Outside there seems to be a hush, as if all of creation is holding its breath. It's the beginning of Holy Week, but it isn't unfolding the way so many of us expected. For us, today was going to be the day our church family joined together to commemorate the Passover--though I'm sure it would have looked very different from the dinner Jesus shared with His disciples. If we look back, God so often works in the unexpected. Take today--Palm Sunday. The people of Israel were looking for the Messiah, the Liberating King who would free them from Roman oppression. They were looking for the Conqueror, the Lion of Judah who would rise up and establish the kingdom. They had started to follow this Jesus, a powerful miracle worker who could cast out demons. They were likely recalling the words of the prophets: "Cry out with joy, O daughter o...

Well, apparently you've made it. It hasn't been the ending you expected--you were unceremoniously told that because of circumstances outside your control, if you were in good standing as of the end of the third 9-weeks, you're considered a graduate. There are a lot of unknowns right now--about prom and graduation and cap & gown pictures--and a lot of things that I'm sure tempt you to feel sorry for yourself. So now, you have the first choice of your official "adult" life. You can feel sorry for yourself and focus on all the things you might be missing out on, or you can keep moving forward. I've watched you since middle school (most of you, anyway). In 8th grade, most of you were uncomfortable in your own skin. You were struggling to figure out where you fit in the world of high school, a time of decisions like nothing you'd faced before that. I watched you try on personas like they were hats--class clown? flirt? brainiac? jock? thug?--and was...