Chip Shots

One of the favorite volumes in my library is a tattered Bible that once belonged to Aunt Nora. Nora wasn't a blood relative, but as long as I can remember she shared in all our family celebrations. When she died, my grandmother saw to it that her Bible was given to me. I noticed immediately that Aunt Nora was not the type to keep her Bible hidden away until Sunday mornings. Virtually every page was littered with red pencil underlines and notes written in the margins. The fore and aft blank pages were cluttered with pithy comments and sayings, notes taken from her reading, or sermons she had heard. As I read them I imagined the immense depth of her spiritual life in comparison to my own. One poem in particular caught my eye. I don't know its origin, but the effect on me was dramatic and unexpected. I'm a little embarrassed to tell you that it choked me up to read it. I read the simple words, imagining myself a frightened bystander at Jesus' execution. Blood stained his h...

It was an auspicious beginning. I crawled out of bed at 3:45, threw a few clothes on, woke up Kurt, our oversleeping son, and squeezed into the van parked perilously close to our other car. We were, as usual, touching the edge of tardiness. By 5:00 he needed to be at the home of a family who had consented to take him to an important soccer tournament in San Diego. We were sleepy-tired, a little late, and sad that he would miss Thanksgiving with the family. Our two older children had come in from California the evening before. We enjoyed some pre-Thanksgiving pumpkin pie and a few blessed hours of conversation. The joy of last evening was stabbing me deeply as I contemplated Kurt's absence this afternoon. We're immensely proud of the success, independence, and strong Christian character of our three children. It's bittersweet to see them grow up and out, but deeply gratifying to observe them making life decisions that make us proud. Being together on Thanksgiving eve made Mo...

Nemo was crestfallen. Created to live in the wide open spaces of the sea, he was trapped inside a dentist’s aquarium. It was his own fault. His father had warned him not to leave the reef, but he’d wandered out there anyway. Sure enough, a diver had captured him and taken him to his office in Sydney, Australia. Most of the other fish had never lived in the sea; aquarium life was all they had ever experienced. Oblivious to their true identity, they had devised an elaborate system of religion and entertainment. It was tragic and comic at the same time. But Nemo knew better. He knew the freedom of the sea: he would never again taste it. He would never see his father again. He would die inside this glassy tomb. And he knew he had no one to blame but himself. What he didn’t know was that his father was risking everything on an incredible journey to rescue his wayward son. He’d already fought and defeated three sharks, he’d navigated a dangerous jellyfish forest, and he was currently swimmin...

Judging by his family tree, I'm not sure you would have expected him to amount to much. Growing up in a culture that prized ancestral purity, his was, to be honest, a little embarrassing. We would expect these family skeletons to be kept safely in the closet but there they are are in plain view. To start with, one of his ancient relatives, though prized for her heroic actions, never lost the demeaning moniker "the harlot." Even though her bravery was canonized it was always in the context of her formerly seedy lifestyle. Like many of us, she was never able to fully restore her reputation. Still, she became one of the maternal grandmothers of our famous figure. And that's not all. Another relative left an even more dubious mark on the family tree. What happened was this: a man's son died before his wife was able to grant him any children to continue the family line. In the custom of the day, the dead man's brother was given to the woman to marry. He died too. T...

For as long as I can remember, Kurt, our 15-year-old son, has been a helpful guy to have around the house. Even when he was very small, he loved to help Mom and Dad. He was just a little tyke when I needed to move twelve tons of dirt into our backyard. He had a little toy shovel which he used to help me fill the wheelbarrow. Shoveling dirt was never as much fun as it was that day. Of course his contribution to the load was miniscule compared to my own. Still, we had a blast working together. I loved working with him, and I loved the fact that he wanted to work with his Dad. For me, the important thing was not how much dirt he moved, but that we were doing it together. There is an important spiritual lesson in this little walk down memory lane. Many of us treat God like a spiritual MapQuest. “Show me the way,” we ask, assuming that God’s will is like locating the high school: east on Carefree Highway, right on 56th Street, left on Dove Valley. Make a wrong turn and you miss it entirely....

Call me Gollum. He and I are brothers, as are all who cannot part with the very thing that destroys our lives….  It started innocently enough. Smeagol was fishing when his brother found a shiny ring in the river. Fascinated, Smeagol asked for it as a gift since, after all, it was his birthday. A fight ensued and, shockingly, he killed his brother in order to gain the ring.  That was ages ago, a distant memory. Smeagol treasured the ring, called it a birthday present, always kept it with him, and shunned all human contact for the sake of his “precious.”  It was all he could think about, and all that mattered to him. The gift rewarded him with long, albeit subhuman, life. It didn’t matter that he’d become a shell of his true self, an offensive creature called Gollum for the strange, guttural sound coming from his mouth. The ring was all the comfort he desired. He was alone and happy.  Until the day fate intervened. The ring changed hands, first to Bilbo Baggins and the...

I always liked Chuck. He was a good old country boy who loved to 'coon hunt. Born and raised in Arizona, I knew nothing about that kind of thing. In fact, I knew nothing about most things in rural Indiana. I remember talking to the man who owned the farmland around our home. He wasn’t a member of our church so I thought it was safe to ask him a stupid question. “I recognize the corn around me, of course,” I said. “But what’s that smaller stuff I see growing everywhere? And what’s that huge tractor-like thing in the barn behind my house?” “Those are soybeans, and we call that machine a combine” he said, suppressing a smile. (Asking that question in Indiana is like asking someone in Arizona, "What in the world is that prickly thingy?") On another occasion I visited a neighbor who proudly showed off his flower garden. The front of his house was filled with every kind of bloom I could imagine. He told me about all the stuff he planned to add next year. “Where will you find ro...