Battles

 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...

  A Righteous God Isaiah 51:13 Have you forgotten the Lord who made you, who stretched out the skies and made the earth? Why are you always afraid of those angry people who trouble you and who want to destroy? But where are those angry people now? Our little homestead is in a battle with a very dangerous foe that I never thought of as anything more then a nuisance. This year we learned how destructive mice can be to everything. We have had mice chew through car parts and I think they ate more chicken feed then the chickens ate. Dealing with mice is a problem everyone has had but it never seemed to be a threat to us like is has been this year. The problem with mice is you don’t see them and when you do you only see one or two. And don’t even talk about how cute they are. There is a reason a mouse is the most famous image of a very large entertainment corporation. Mice just seem not to be a problem until they are because what you don’t see is the dozens of mice eating eve...

 Here is how you fight a wagon fort.    

  Real Joy Isaiah 51:11 The people the Lord has freed will return and enter Jerusalem with joy. Their happiness will last forever. They will have joy and gladness, and all sadness and sorrow will be gone far away. As we officially enter the Christmas season we as believers begin a celebration of the birth of Jesus that is filled with real hope and abundant joy. At the same time I also want us to see that this hope and joy is not some mythical idea but it arrives through real struggle and difficulty. The glory of God is shown in the silence that is forced on Zechariah or the questions the Joseph has about what is going on. Think about Mary traveling during the last weeks of her pregnancy that must have been some hard days. What I want to say is that the hope and glory that the birth of Jesus brings was done in the real world with real problems and the daily battles of authentic humans. The hope we have does not happen because we don’t have trouble in our lives but precisely ...