December 1, 2019 Advent 2019 We spent the weekend with Jon-Mical and Jakson, our grandsons. Jon-Mical is 11, almost 12 and in that awkward place between the silliness of a child and the self-imposed seriousness of a young man. Jakson, on the other hand, at 8, is right in the middle of the joyous delight… Continue Reading
Today would have been my father’s 87th birthday. He died a couple of years ago after a battle with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, basically black lung disease without the coal mining. I was with him a lot in the weeks before he died, something for which I am grateful, but left his house in northern Kentucky… Continue Reading
His name was Mike Taylor. He was a neighbor kid, a couple of years older than me and big for his age. He had the IQ of a kumquat, I’m sure, but when you are 11 and he is 13, that really doesn’t matter. What did matter is that he was a bully and all… Continue Reading
Today is March 1, 2019. I started the year looking ahead to 2020 with an ambitious plan for discipline and self-improvement by the time that new year rolls around. I called it 20/20 Vision. My goals were fairly common, lose 25 pounds, read through the Bible, be nicer to my sister, stuff like that. I… Continue Reading
Sorry I missed yesterday. I have been writing these blogs on my IPad and after 10 days my battery finally ran down. (and my IPad was out of juice too.) I have been blessed for the last four days to wake up to the sun rising over the Golan Heights on the other side of… Continue Reading
Okay, yesterday was a bad day. Even in the Holy Land you can have bad days. We started the day at Caesarea, a manmade seaport on the Mediterranean, that Herod the Great constructed just before the time of Jesus. It is an amazing, ancient ruins, complete with a theater, a hippodrome, and the well preserved… Continue Reading
I have been to Israel 3 times. Each time I have enjoyed especially the visit to Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus. This time Doris and I were amazed at the changes from our last visit 15 years ago. Then, the Nazareth Village was just a fledging idea. It is a plot of land, not very… Continue Reading
John 20:1-8 “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out… Continue Reading
I had the privilege of speaking and then leading communion for 400 pilgrims tonight at The Garden Tomb. Before that we prayed at the Wailing Wall. I prayed for my friend Derek. Here are my thoughts at commuinion. I am amazed at the layers. Jerusalem is a city of layers. We stood at the Western… Continue Reading
Today we started at a place that not many tour groups see. On the southern slopes of Mount Zion is a Catholic Cemetery that houses the grave of Oskar Schindler, the Polish factory owner during the time of Nazi Germany that was depicted and made famous in the 1993 movie, Schindler’s List. Much of what… Continue Reading