Hollywood just paid Fred Rogers a big compliment. But it's probably not the one they expected. The long-awaited trailer for the Mr. Rogers biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, dropped this past week. Mr. Rogers is being played by none other than Tom Hanks. Let that sink in for a minute. The most iconic…
I am a weather geek. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Everything about weather interests me. So when my daughter sent me her photos of incoming early evening thunderstorms a few nights ago, I just had to write about them. Those rays of sunlight that are shooting out of the tops of these clouds…
Some afternoons, it just takes coffee to make it through. Last Tuesday was that kind of afternoon. That day, I decided to walk a different route from my office to the neighboring McDonalds, walking through our parking garage and exiting on the street a little closer to the restaurant than the door I usually use.…
On a back road in Southern Illinois, heading home for a Memorial Day visit, I saw these words on a church sign in Thompsonville, Illinois: Jesus is God's selfie. I love clever church signs as much as the next guy. And I understand the desire to engage the culture "where it's at." As long as…
A spring break trip to Waco, Texas last month landed us at the Magnolia Market, the home of the design and decor empire founded by HGTV's Chip and Joanna Gaines. We were well aware of the Gaines' Christian faith before we arrived. And true to form, beautiful items of home decor incorporating Bible verses into…
Let's redirect our thoughts away from what our culture deems important, which is often non-reality, to what is real, and what is true.
I loved when my wife and I attended the worship meetings for the network of house churches to which my son and his wife used to belong. Every young man there (and they are all young men) had a beard of various lengths, and almost every young family has at least one child under the…
When a computer malfunctions, how often is the answer as simple as turning the computer off, and then turning it back on? In my experience, usually the computer starts right back up again, working just fine. Whatever went wrong before disappears. Our lives have a God-designed reboot button as well. It’s called night. As I…
My dad's nearly 20-year battle with Parkinson's disease ended last Sunday. The pastor who delivered the message at Dad's funeral asked me at dinner the night before, "So tell me, what are some of the lessons your Dad taught you over his lifetime?" Of course, a question like that opened up the floodgate of memories.…
An elderly man sits alone in a room in a skilled nursing facility. He can move around the room in his wheelchair, but he's too frail to walk without assistance, or to do much else. Two younger men walk into the room with him. Over which of the two younger men does the older man…
