Situational Awareness

As part of our 45th anniversary last February, we chose to celebrate it at a time share resort in northern California’s Clear Lake, and took off from SoCal. Waze did a fine job, usually, and bypassed us off the crowded 101 in the Bay Area. We approached the appropriate exit, with a lot of backed up traffic: three lanes for normal traffic, one empty lane on the right for FasTrak. She told us to get in the FasTrak lane, but we had no transponder, and I had no desire to lose the $271 fine without one, so I slowed down in one of the three lanes. Then…I noticed a decent sized sign on the FasTrak lane…

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Do Words Matter?

I’ve seen this post multiple times, and can’t express how profoundly these words offend me. The purpose, often put up by people whom I know love Jesus, attempt to justify bad and offensive language by leaders and ourselves, and this can be from both political persuasions. However, this Unconventional rant is NOT political—but spiritual. The question: do Churchill’s words represent or oppose how Jesus and the Bible view words?

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Mean People Suck

While driving on a traffic-engorged freeway, a red Honda Civic cut in front of me so close I had to slam on my brakes to keep my F150 from ramming him. Yeah, likely lost a number of miles of tread with the skid, but he would have paid a high price apart from that braking. And I got close enough to read the sticker on his window: “Mean People Suck.” Honestly, the humor of the hypocrisy mellowed my madness somewhat. Somewhat. It seemed like…

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Reaching Unbelievers

Call this a coincidence, call it a divine hint. Frankly, I’m not sure which, although I lean to the latter. But this topic arose twice in one day, both hitting me hard, and the repetition seemed to multiply the impact. At our North Coast Men’s Conference last Saturday, Rickie Jenkins, pastor of Southwest Community Church in Indian Wells, spoke on “The Missing Fruit,” referring to two facets of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 that we often ignore. We focus on love and joy, but our energy seems to run out by the time we get to kindness and gentleness. They’re important because they…

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Kind to the Bone--The Spirit's Fruit of Kindness

Remember the old rock song, “Bad to the Bone,” about a guy who bragged his badness went to the core of his being? Let me tell you about another. A real one. At 20, he committed armed robbery and escaped. Two months later he was arrested for fraud, sentenced to three to five years. Upon release at 23, he was arrested for the earlier robbery and sent to Leavenworth. Upon getting out, he joined the army and soon got discharged for having syphilis at 26. At 27 he quickly married a young country girl, got her pregnant and more quickly left, only to marry another young girl two days before his son was born. With no divorce. Once more going to prison. He spent the rest of his life as a con man, dying early at 52 from his syphilis. This dude was bad to the bone. In his wake, he left only loss and deceit and pain. He was my…

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Try Some Road Kindness

Brad and I stopped to stroll to the General Sherman tree at Sequoia NP, then hopped back on the bikes heading for the north exit. As luck would have it, we quickly caught up to a very slow pickup towing a very big trailer, with double lines on the road, meaning “DON’T PASS,” so we obeyed. Yeah, we got frustrated a little at the pace, but the driver kindly took the first chance at a turnout, and our bikes became bikes again. As we carved the turns I pondered…

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