Just Another Blog

All too often we are reminded that God is using this time in our lives to prepare us for the future. I believe this to be true and remind myself of this daily. When I was in the Marine Corps, the approach was "no pain, no gain," or "what doesn't hurt you only makes you stronger." The reality is that there will be pain without gain and sometimes you will get hurt, very hurt, and it may actually make you weaker. But Scripture says "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance" (James 1:2-3). Sometimes I wonder when God is going to stop developing my perseverance. However, today I was reminded of another viewpoint: God has been preparing you all your life for this moment. When I heard that, I began to think about what that meant for me. When I look at where I am in my life right now, the trials that I am enduring, the frustrations that I feel, I fee...

The other day I had the privilege of going to the park with my family. We had sandwiches and soda. The kids played on the playground and it was an all around picture perfect time. I had stopped at the store on my way out to pick up a couple of kites for our children. Neither of them have ever flown a kite, and it was a pretty windy day, so it seemed perfect. The first park we were at was nestled down inside a valley. There were occasional gusts of wind that would come down, but unless you had a great deal of string to get your kite up pretty high, there was no way you could really get one flying. After a while, we went to another location. This open field was great for flying kites. The wind was blowing just right, there was plenty of room to run and no trees or lines in the way. The kids were having a blast. The cheap kites that I picked up at the store were taking a beating, but we kept making little repairs, and up they'd go. Tyler was very good at flying his kite an...