*Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.* It is probably not the best thing to admit today, the day that I will be standing before the entire Presbytery for…
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4) There are certain traditions that just scream Christmas. For as much as I am spontaneous and adventurous, I also really revel in patterns and…
They say that if you want to be successful with a project, you ought to begin with the end in mind. This has proven to me to be good advice, as I am one who typically picks up a hammer and nail and dives into a project without so much as thinking about the directions, let alone read them. Typically this leads to hurt fingers, curse words, and tremendous frustration, as I will have to undo 30…
While most of the time I am a road cyclist, occasionally I get the itch to explore somewhere new on my mountain bike. This will inevitably include a season of finding myself completely and hopelessly lost, usually in a deep valley where any choice I make will involve lots of hill climbing. A mistake will mean lots of spent (and ultimately, wasted) energy. And so I’ve found myself suddenly with a d…
When I was in the 5th grade, my family moved to Murrysville to our new home. We lived on the corner of a cul de sack, which was the epitome of cool for a young child growing up. That circular street would over the years be the arena for all manner of sporting events. It was our hockey rink. It was our baseball field. It was our battlefield for snowball fights. It was a legitimately safe place,…
