Battles

  Sheep Isaiah 53:6 We all have wandered away like sheep; each of us has gone his own way. But the Lord has put on him the punishment for all the evil we have done. My training as a historian has caused me to do quite a bit of reading. If I want to understand a particular time, I spend a great deal of effort learning not only the big things about that period but also the small stuff. Reading personal journals can give more information about what is going on in the time I am studying then any five hundred page history books. Learning what people thought and how people felt about what was going on helps shape how I see the big picture stuff like the stories of kings or the wars that happened. With more information I get a better understanding of the time and place. The fact is that information is critical to anything we do in life. Raising chickens has required that we learn about animal husbandry and though some of the things we have learned were from books a lot has been fr...

  Our Suffering Isaiah 53:4 But he took our suffering on him and felt our pain for us. We saw his suffering and thought God was punishing him. One of the most consistent misperceptions that I have run into over the years of ministry is the idea of hell. So many people do not understand what hell is and what its purpose is. When we begin to talk about hell people get scared and that is a reasonable response because hell is a terrifying place. Scripture tells us it is filled with pain and crying and suffering which should tell us this is not a place we should desire to be. In short, we could say that hell is the opposite of heaven but that would miss the deeper meaning of what hell is. First and foremost we need to know that hell is not punishment. People do not end up in hell because they have done wrong things that deserve to be punished. Yes, we have a God who does punish but the idea of punishment is to teach people that the things they are doing are headed in the wrong ...

  Great is the Lord Isaiah 52:15 But now he will surprise many nations. Kings will be amazed and shut their mouths. They will see things they had not been told about him, and they will understand things they had not heard.” We are in a spiritual battle with ideas that are so destructive and dangerous that when used those ideas wreak havoc for decades and even centuries. There are people who think they can rewrite the basic principles of humanity. Simple ideas that men and woman are broken by sin and need to redeemed if they are to be what they should be are rejected and replaced. Instead of the need for redemption it is supplanted with the idea that everyone is good and we just have to encourage the good and take away bad influences. Biblical wisdom that has been tried for millennia are thought to be old fashion and we need new ideas. The problem is that those new ideas have failed whenever tried. In America we are learning those lessons the hard way. More than ninety per...

See the Power of the Lord Isaiah 52:10 The Lord will show his holy power to all the nations. Then everyone on earth will see the salvation of our God. Five years ago we choose to make a change in our lives. When most people are slowing down preparing to retire, we decided that buying land and build a house out on a gravel road would be a good idea. My wife and I both felt that we were called to this place and there is a sense of peace here but that is not all that is here. There is a garden that takes considerable effort to maintain and takes four people to just keep up with it. Each year at some point in the summer we process thirty or more meat chickens and it is a hot bloody mess. Even when it is fourteen degrees someone has to go feed and water the chickens and check for eggs. Let’s not even talk about cleaning the chicken coop. Why would we take on all of this work and think about doing more? What drives us to do things we never had considered before in our lives? It is...

 God of Peace Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful is the person who comes over the mountains to bring good news, who announces peace and brings good news, who announces salvation and says to Jerusalem, “Your God is King.”     Yesterday we had a refrigerator clean out day.  Over Christmas we had so much food and that created leftovers that were then put in containers and then placed in a refrigerator to be eaten later.  The eating later came yesterday and it was a good time.  It did create an issue for us, we had to wash and put away all those containers and that got me thinking about boxes and plastic bowls and all kinds of things that hold stuff and how useful they are.  Without some form of containment the world does not work.  Some of the first things humans created were baskets and boxes to hold things.  That kind of thinking then moved into the idea that we as humans are actually containers.  The idea of humans being vessels goes back a long ...

 Yesterday I went over to Pittsburgh to the Soldiers & Sailors Tabletop Gamers club to run a game of Chain of Command.  Paul Lawson invited me to come and run a game at the club’s Winterfest.  This club was new to me but it turns out I was acquainted with several of the people involved.      The club meets at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum Trust, Inc. in down town Pittsburgh.  There can not be enough said about this location.  It is both a museum and an event space.  The club meets in the paneled room filled with all of the CMH recipients for the state of Pennsylvania.  The building itself is wonderful but it is filled with some great historical material making it a place everyone should visit.     The club has a good cross section of both young and old and all of them interested in playing games and running them.  It was a delight to spend the few hours I did with the club members and I will mak...