Joel

Forest Gump hit it on the head. "Life is like a box of chocolates." Indeed it is, but maybe not for the reality that "You never know what you're going to get" but rather because---you never know when it's going to make you sick. You can just be chowing down on a delectable cream-filled, chocolate wonder that comes in a box one minute and in the next be holding your stomach in agony. As grim as it is, the "never knowing" means the bad has as much of a chance as coming your way as the good. Life can be tough, but it is THE VALUABLE because you can't tie a price tag onto it. It's [...]

We live in a violent world. People kill each other. Parents kill children, "friends" backstab, very often the race in the job market means people stepping on other people to somehow get to the top, and some people die of hunger while others feed their faces. The world is cold in its perversion. Seriously, it makes me sick. There is only so much I can handle, but what is worse, I have a habit of being as humanly flawed as the next human. But there is serendipity, a surprise, and it is nothing short of a miracle. It's the phone call from an old friend. It's someone seeing your gifts on a hard day when you [...]

The Sovereignty of God: Something deeper than the unfathomable depths of the places you've never thought of. You know, sometimes you just have to give up. Right now I feel like I have to give up on this subject. Not because it's hopeless, but because it's too big. I could go on to talk about how God created the ocean, Grand Canyon, or a daffodil. And you might say, "Oh, that's nice," not quite impressed that it is more exciting than watching llamas at the zoo. It always seems that we sell God short. Short, that is, to each other, the people at work, at home, or the people that we see on Sunday mornings when [...]

I'm not a morning person. I really want to be a morning person someday. It's in the mornings where I recollect my thoughts and, hopefully, my sanity; I try to remember the goings ons of the 24 hours before, and with that, also the deluge of failures and things that I wish I did different. I'm sort of a living illustration of the Fall of Mankind. In the morning I'm as fallen as a human can be, and throughout the day God (in His grace) redeems my day (and me). Mornings were created to be beautiful, but my blaring alarm clock pisses me off. And then alarm clock #2 goes off. And then alarm clock #3 [...]