“Do you want to swim with the sharks?” Not a question I face every day and one I certainly didn’t expect to hear from John David as I neared the University technology booth at the health and benefits fair. But as John David stated, “I’ve seen photos of you swimming with dolphins, it’s now time …
Category: Spiritual Life
Junk Food
“I bet you don’t eat stuff like this!” This comment was made by my colleague as our paths crossed in the bakery section of our local grocery store. Within his hands, located between an aluminum tray and a plastic lid, was a Danish-style pastry with cream cheese that looked delicious. Just a brief glance into …
Worry’s Kryptonite
How do we eliminate, or at least minimize, the state of anxiety and uncertainty over problems that can often be described as Worry? Believe it or not, there is a time-tested solution that is presented to us in a letter from a man named Paul to a group of people he dearly loved; and the …
Take Courage
Two pounds, five ounces. Not the metrics a parent desires to hear when describing their little boy’s birth weight. Seventy-seven days Benaiah Dew endured the NICU at a Nashville hospital until he graduated to five pounds, five ounces and was able to leave with his adoptive parents on a spring day in 2019. It Takes …
Everyday Faithfulness
“Well done, my good and faithful servant!” Don’t you desperately yearn to hear those words from Matthew 25 spoken over you as you enter into the Savior’s presence when your time on this earth is complete? As you walk into the Open Arms of the One who sacrificed it all, you are enveloped into a …
Bean-Eatin’ Appointment
“You and me, Partner. We meet center of town, high noon.” As a fan of movies and television shows set in the wild west, I’ve heard some variation of this phrase thousands of times, but I must admit that the latest GEICO commercial caught me by surprise with its application to our modern culture that …
River We
In exploring the behaviors necessary to cultivate the Habits of a Flourishing Life, I find myself being extremely cautious about how much emphasis is placed on the self-reflective tasks necessary to engage in a Habit of Awareness. And yet, I firmly believe that for true transformation to occur, for us to become Christlike, we must …
Odometer Reading
Climbing into the Jeep on my way to West Jackson one recent Sunday morning, my eyes glanced across the dashboard as I placed the car in gear and took notice of the Odometer Reading, probably because it was a nice, even, rounded-off number: 14, 200. I like nice, even numbers; so much so, I almost …
Just Walk
“Ten thousand steps. Roughly, that’s the distance you travel sunrise to sunset, each and every day of your life. It adds up to about 115,000 miles in a lifetime—or more than four times around this big blue planet of ours. With that said, just one question: Are you using your steps wisely?” This challenge comes …
Ordinary Blog
“Routine, usual, to be expected in the normal order of events, of common quality”—all of these appear as descriptors in the dictionary for the word Ordinary. Not necessarily an appealing adjective, and certainly not the word most of us desire to hear being used in a description about us--“Oh, Julie, yeah, she’s this Ordinary professor …