life skills
A Time for All Things
Catch The Foxes
Courage - Michael Bourterse
How Deep Is Your Love?
The english word ‘love’ gets a lot of unmerited airtime in our bible translations. Mostly when we read ‘love’ in an english bible something significantly different is meant by the author. Love is a catchall word we use to mean a lot of things and its roots are neither Greek nor Hebrew. It’s a Swiss Army Knife english word that covers a range of priorities, choices, emotions, and chemical reactions we experience, but it is actually extremely shallow.The 1977 Bee Gees song ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’ highlights the problem. It’s a question that can be asked a couple ways: "How much do you love me?" or "To what extent do you love me?" or "For how long will you love me?" or "Under what conditions will you stop loving me?" The song asks something humans always ask each other, "what is your definition of love?" as if love is a subjective thing. We ask these questions because love is exactly a subjective thing.Male Voice Dexterity
Six year old Bridger Walker is my hero, if I ever grow up I want to be like him (see article link below). He’s not perfect, I’m sure. He has character flaws and he makes mistakes like we all do, but when it counted he knew how to meet violence with appropriate violence, not too much, not too little; like a man, he had control of the full range of his voice.
In July 2020, Bridger’s younger sister was attacked by a dog. Bridger came to her rescue, leading her away and helping her hide from the dog and taking the full brunt of the attack on his own body. I’m sure he fought back with all the strength available to him. But he still received 90 stitches for his efforts, the World Boxing Counsel awarded him the honorary title of Heavyweight Champion calling him “the bravest man on earth.”What impressed me most about Bridger is that when he saw his sister being attached he stopped to think, the tiniest fraction of a second; and what he thought was: “If someone has to die, I think it should be me.”I believe Bridger made that choice long before this incident, without the aid of a sociology degree, a class in moral philosophy, or a state education this boy had decided to be male in the full range of its ethic.Psalm 145 - Mindy Loux
Psalm 145
Psalm 73
Psalm 73
The Power of our Words 1 of 3
Proverbs 18:21
The Power of our Words 2 of 3
Mark 5:19
The Power of our Words 3 of 3
Romans 1:7
The Storms of Life + Pastor Appreciation
You Can't Lead from the Trenches
Matthew 14:23 “After dismissing the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Well into the night, he was there alone."
The trenches are messy, dangerous, and inhumane but unavoidable in warfare.
I think since WWI most people know what I mean by “the trenches”. Down in the thick of the fight, hand to hand combat, with the chaos and the carnage of battle. It’s where dreadful things happen; where weapons are used that were devised to inflict traumatic injury and death.
It’s not a place for the faint hearted or the coward.
The trenches are unavoidable, and only a bad leader demands others into them without going there himself; but he cannot successfully lead from them.