Written by the Story

Confession: life is hard. We all get that. Another confession: we're usually to blame. Aside from human tragedy, which will beset all of us at some point, most of our difficulty in life is because we're just really obstinate human beings. By this, I mean to say that collectively and individually, we stubbornly refuse the best course of action in front of us, often to our own detriment, and then we complain about how tough life is and give excuses for why. That's the human story, both from a Biblical standpoint and, well, just from simple observation. It leaves me with a lot of questions and sometimes frustration. This week we in our house had a very difficult conversation (read: "family blow up"). It was everybody. No one person lit the fuse. The fuse was already lit some time in the past. It was the accumulation of individual instances of refusing to take the better course of action.  Sure, we're all struggling. We're in a new place. New changes in life. ...

                                                                                                                                                                                                        Dear Good Shepherd and friends, I've been thinking about our lives.  I often think in song lyrics. What I mean is that I have and still do listen to enough music that often song lyrics become my language or point of connection for thinking. That ...

Dear Good Shepherd and friends, I have another car story. This one's from a friend of mine, though. The same friend, actually, who helped us out with our car troubles a couple weeks ago. He and his family were headed to Ledges State Park about a week ago. Somewhere along the way, near Madrid, their minivan began to act up. Long story short, the car began smoking and they had to slow down and pull off to the side of the road. In fact they were sort of in the middle of nowhere Iowa, between Boone and Madrid, and they had to pull off onto some obscure gravel road. It was something to do with the car overheating. But why was still a mystery. It was unfortunate timing. They were near an hour from home with four kids in the car. And on top of that, they probably felt like isolated strangers on an empty farm road and nowhere near any obvious help. Unlike our episode a few weeks prior, there was no auto store or friend nearby. It wasn't long before a car of teenage girls came up offeri...