Duck & Run

After we learned more about the status of things, the race was even more fun.  Cardinal Center apparently has lost over 3/4 of a million funding dollars and have had to lay off 20 employees, with remaining employees taking a 4% cut in pay.  We were a little more ready to 'run', knowing some of our effort was helping a good thing for our community.

Click for more pics...

Trees & Pornography

If man were a tree, pornography is like taking an axe to his roots.  It cuts off his source of strength, weakening his whole being.

"Blessed is the man...

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
       which yields its fruit in season
       and whose leaf does not wither.
       Whatever he does prospers."

-- Psalm 1:3

...and trees wait, while pornography can only think long enough to say, "Why wait?".

Chicago

Amazing view of Chicago's skyline!  Click for more pics....

Endless Good

We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in.

-- George Macdonald

Hanging On

You don't hang on to God, He hangs on to you.  Believing that is where you come in.

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

A recent re-viewing of this great story reminds me again of the power of mercy in life...in my life. I am grateful for Hugo's telling of life.

"Mercy triumphs over judgment!"

-- James 2:13

Great Things

I am done with Great things and Big things, with great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces, that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world, like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, but which give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of men's pride.

-- William James

Parenting Adolescents

When I observe the families where parents seem to be doing a good job of living the Christian faith in relation to their children, it is readily apparent that actual practices vary widely.  Particular rules, techniques of discipline, variation in strictness and permissiveness – they run the gamut.  One thing stands out:  these parents, seriously, honesty, joyfully follow the way of Christ themselves.  They don’t define adolescence as a problem and try to solve it.  They are engaged in vigorous Christian growth on their own and permit their children to look over their shoulders while they do it.

…they don’t have to live perfect lives, but they must take seriously what they are doing, which is growing up in Christ.  They must do it openly before adolescents so that the adolescents can observe, imitate, and make mistakes in the context of care and faith.

-- Eugene Peterson, Like Dew Your Youth