Kingdom of God

Time to Give It Up

Tenacious. That’s what a pit bull is. When it grabs on, it never lets go, even when it should. In May of 2015, in a peaceful upscale North Carolina neighborhood about an hour east of Raleigh, a ...

Not Loving God’s Gifts

We are offended by ungrateful people. When we choose a birthday gift, it’s exactly that, a gift. For the recipient to pass judgement on it isn’t playing the game fairly. The giver gets to choose ...

The Old College Try

We don’t use the phrase The Old College Try much anymore, but it used to be wildly popular. It’s a slang expression, more of a cheer, actually, that we might call out to someone who’s ...

The Tatters of Our Desires

The trip is in the journey. Another way to say it is that we’ll be disappointed in our destination if we sacrifice everything to get there. A well-known song by Mac Davis tells us to stop and ...

America is a country of ownership, of borders, and of legally drawn boundaries that make a difference. There are cities all across the Union that straddle state lines. It’s important to note which ...

Seeing the Wind

Sailors search for the wind. It’s vital, because they can’t move without it. There are several ways to tell what the wind’s doing. We can look to the water itself. Is the surface flat, like a ...

Making It Easy on Ourselves

No one likes to do more work than necessary. We don’t sweep the floor before running a vacuum over it, and why wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? How smart is it to do the ...

Our Relaxation Vacation

Some vacations are not relaxing. We have no “chill” time, no mornings to put up our feet, and certainly no easing of the stress that’s daily fare in our work-a-day world. A television travel ...

Working the System

In a British crime show, a con man who had duped multiple university investment funds and absconded with millions, did his time and wrote a successful book about it. He made real and honest millions ...

Lifted to a Higher Level

John Paul Mitchell Systems does $900 million a year in annual business. It was started by a man who sold newspapers and Christmas cards at ten to support his family, and who lived in a foster home as ...

The Special Blessing

Sometimes good stuff rubs off on us. We don’t have to be especially brilliant. We can be in the right place at the right time, and things fall into place. It’s nothing we do, but rather the ...

God’s Horn of Oil

A school district on the coast of Texas had a rough time achieving success on state-mandated tests for several years in a row. They were on the verge of having their accreditation pulled, and they ...

Boiling Down the Truth

Boiling down is a culinary term. Also called reducing, it means to boil a liquid in an uncovered pot until we boil away a portion of the liquid inside. We get a thicker, more intensely flavored ...