Riding along in the Hope Coach
As soon as I pulled myself into the right front seat of the Phoenix Rescue Mission’s Hope Coach (a late model Hyundai van), the case manager who shares my first name jumped into the […]
“Good things can happen in mom’s flower shop”
Pat Follis (1933-2020) Here is my mom in the flower shop she owned for a few years when I was boy. The summer I was 8, mom was 29. That’s about when this picture was […]
“Boys, would you please pay attention”
Way back in the day when I was 12, my brother Bob and I sat in church on Sunday morning next to each other and made paper airplanes with our church bulletins. Or kicked each […]
Some things we hear or say are not gossip — really
“The words of a gossip are like choice morsels. They go down to the inmost parts.” Proverbs 18:8 —– Having had the privilege of counseling or mentoring hundreds of pastors, I know what a sacred […]
Driving west through the mountains is good for the soul
—– It happens every time I drive west in the summer, heading for the Rocky Mountains. Somewhere near the Iowa-Nebraska border, my mind shifts into neutral. It happened again 3 weeks ago. Late in the […]
One of my favorite morning prayers
The Rule of Saint Benedict is a set of directions for monastic life written by Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century in Italy. Nearly every week I am drawn to pray Benedict’s morning prayer. […]
Even one of my favorite pastors & writers, wouldn’t you just know, had very clay feet
Over the weekend I read the authorized biography of Eugene Peterson by Winn Collier. In A Burning in My Bones [Waterbrook, 2021], Collier paints a picture of a man who wanted to be a saint […]
Here’s a prayer I know I can pray
One summer when I was in college, I worked on a paint crew that included several guys who one day aspired to be pastors. During our lunch break, we often got into theological discussions. Two guys […]
