Random, Disconnected Thoughts

1. Joy is much more powerful than I ever realized.
2. Despair goes deeper than I ever imagined.
3. My hope is not enough for you, it can only point you in the right direction.
4. Grace is good. Really good.
5. My kids know more than I do. Really, they do.
6. For instance, Jacob knows that 10 minutes is a long time.
7. Aislinn knows that she has me wrapped around her finger with a wink and a smile.
8. I take my wife for granted way too often. Thanks, Rita, for sharing this life with me.
9. Reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy helps me rekindle my faith. It's too complicated to explain, but the story moves me in very deep ways.
10. True friendship is a gift that can't be easily replaced. I'm learning how valuable my friends are.
11. I give gifts because I want to be accepted, to be received and embraced. And I want to offer the same.
12. I have an amazing job. Thank you, God, for letting me serve you this way.

Hope Rekindled

Here's another piece I wrote for our Sunday evening gatherings, called Immersion:


We came from hope. There is light that cannot be touched by darkness. Beyond this world; beyond this dark and cold desert of despair, there is the God of hope. There is the one who gave birth to a world full of hope, and who watches it descend over and over into the depths of despair.

He watches, and sometimes he watches the hope die inside of us. Some days it is crushed under the insufferable weight of earthen expectations incapable of being fulfilled. Other days hope is drowned in the icy waters of loneliness and isolation. And still other days hope dies a suffocating death at the hands of those who seem bent on our destruction.

But as often as hope dies, there is the possibility of its rebirth. The flame may be extinguished for a moment, but the God of hope will not long leave us drifting in the dark and cold. Flames can be kindled again. Whether buried in earth, quenched in the water, or suffocated, they can rise again. They must simply find their way back to the source once more.

For as much as we might believe that we have lost hope, the enduring, beautiful reality is that hope has never lost us. While we may sit in the ashes of dreams long ago extinguished, he sees us, and he knows us.

He is the one who was not content to watch the descent from a distance. He is the one who, in the form of a man, experienced the blackness and coldness that is death. He is the one who saw hope fail while his own blood brightly stained the rough wood of a crude cross.

But somehow, impossible as it might seem, hope has escaped from despair. Death did not have the last word, there was life, and light, again. You may have lost your way, but the Way has not lost you. He is finding you, longing to ignite your candle once again to burn bright with his hope.