Race Relations: My Journey

What follows is just what the title suggests, my personal journey with race relations as an American-born United States citizen. I was born just after the “end” of what history has come to call the Civil Rights Movement. Greenville, South Carolina, a town with its own infamous history of racial tension, was my birthplace. From […]

Ferguson and Immigration: Root v. Fruit

So I had a mostly-written article on immigration that I started over the weekend and then on Monday evening came news from Ferguson, Missouri of the the grand jury’s decision. I opted to scrap much of what I had written and lean into the heat of the Ferguson situation, as I see them both in much the […]

Scrapping My Plans

We were asked to write in my senior yearbook about what we thought we’d be doing years down the road. I don’t remember the assigned numeric value of said reach. Of course answers ranged from silly to sillier with a dash of serious. Without searching through dozens of boxes for the exact words, I can […]

Preparing for the Holidays

The holidays are upon us. I’d like to challenge all of us to consider now (at the beginning of the season) how we prepare for these days of wonderment. My heart is that you and I could enjoy the trappings without falling into the traps that so often come during this time of year. Allow […]

Hitting the Wall Can Be A Good Thing

Hitting the wall is almost always seen as a bad thing. Certainly in auto racing it is. Baseball players try to avoid it. And in the world of writing it even has its own pet name… writer’s block. So for the last two weeks I have been in one of those places. Stuck. Just not […]

Prejudice and A Better Way

Recently there was an important document drafted called An Open Letter from the Asian American Community to the Evangelical Church. Two of my good friends (one since childhood and the other pastors in the denomination I am proud to be part of – the EFCA) are signatories. What follows is a re-post from this summer and […]

Determined: to Live Healthy

I want to follow up on this post from two months ago. The very fact that I first wrote about it two months ago and am only acting on it now, is testament to how difficult this subject can be. It is also a testimony to the fact that if you press through… you can do […]

The Original: Why We Only Like New Stuff (sometimes)

I find it interesting/strange/bothersome that modern Christianity often seems to be waiting in the wings for the “next big thing”. As a community, evangelical Christianity seems inextricably linked to the new and now. The questions we ask often have little to do with actual historicity and focus more on “how old it is”. Why is […]

Friends: A Place to Start

Almost all of the images that were coming up for starting were showing runners on their mark and at the ready for a sprint. I can tell you right now that this kind of friendship is much more like a marathon. Forming new friendships almost always demands much of us. Then add to the mix […]

Unintended Results of Isolation

In the movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ character is stranded by himself on an island for the majority of the film. What makes this movie most captivating is the exploration of how isolation eventually affects even the most well-disciplined mind and life. So what does that have to do with anything remotely (pun intended) spiritual? […]