I live in Huntsville, Alabama, in a $9,000 home on a decent-size corner lot in a simple little neighborhood. I would guess that it takes me almost an hour to mow my lawn. Often, neighbors will stop by my house and offer to do some work. I remember one particular day not long after I …
Dear Police Officer, My name is Roger. I am a white 54-year old living with my wife, Joy, in Huntsville, AL. I am a pastor, and I sell stuff online. I have four children and seven grandchildren. A few months back, I was pulled over by a police officer. He gave me a ticket for …
My 2013 Christmas season was definitely not perfect. We got a really late start putting up the Christmas tree and decorations. We traveled hundreds of miles and slept in eight different beds. On the road, it was hard to fix or find “good” food, and I put on a few extra pounds. My brother, Bruce, …
At the prodding of a friend, we decided to build a raised bed garden in our side yard. I really didn’t have to be prodded much, since I love fresh garden vegetables, especially tomatoes. This love goes back to summers of my childhood spend on my grandparent’s farm in Murfreesboro, TN, where sliced garden tomatoes …
Tired walkers, street vendors, goats, and uneven concrete flashed outside the windows of our taxi as it darted and bounced through the streets of Ethiopia’s capital city, Addis Ababa. As the driver slowed to find the exact address of the orphanage, I wondered what to expect. What would children, robbed by AIDS of their …
What? Someone else just launched a blog? Make that blog number 164,586,782. Someone just published a book? Great! Now, there are ONLY 138,461,822 books in the world. Come on? Do we really need someone else writing a book? Do we really need someone else launching a blog (he asks in a blog post!)? Hasn’t everything …
We are all wannabe detectives, which is, I think, part of the fascination with detective shows down through the years (Perry Mason, Hawaii 5-0, Dragnet, NCIS, CSI,) The show presents us with several possible suspects, and we look for “clues” to determine who committed the crime. The reality is that we are hard-wired to do …
Trolling my Astrovan’s radio dial for classic rock on a recent drive, I happened across two voices. It was talk radio. I immediately picked up the voice of a caller who spoke fluent Christianese. What was wrong with the world, at least for that hour’s discussion purposes, was single moms whose families were supported by …
So, when a man who’s spent his share of time in homeless camps breathes his last, where do you have the memorial service? At the local soup kitchen he loved, of course. That is how I ended up on a Sunday afternoon at the Rose of Sharon soup kitchen/thrift store, celebrating the life and …
Janis Ian’s 1975 song, “At Seventeen,” still runs through my head sometimes “To those of us who knew the pain Of valentines that never came, And those whose names were never called When choosing sides for basketball. It was long ago and far away; The world was younger than today, And dreams were all …