Love Is In The Blair

It's not about Ferguson...   And on Thanksgiving Eve(and always) I'm thankful for that! There will always be a Ferguson ... or an ebola ... or a Crimea. .. or an Isis ...or a Ray Rice ... or a Pistorius trial ... or a Benghazi ... or gay marriage ... or gun violence ...or someone trying to take our constitutional rights away ... or a conspiracy theory ... or an NSA scandal ... or an Obama ... or a Bush ... or even further back an OJ ...a Vietnam ... SOMETHING!  In a few months it will be something else that everyone is upset about, that we don't even know about yet.  But, to some extent, it's all the same thing with different clothes on.  There will always be issues that are unpleasant (maybe even miserable) to at least some, and I'm not here to state opinions on any of them specifically.  But these issues quite often become nothing more than anxiety filled and hate feeding distractions. If you are a Believer, could we consider (myself include

You could have done an entire World Race, 11 months, since this happened... Some people did. So…  I’m a little tardy, but hopefully, it’ll be a better blog than it would have been, had I typed it in 2013. It was month 3 for S squad. I was with a couple of teams in Nicaragua. We were fresh off of our debrief, which was nice, but, make no mistake, Nicaragua was a difficult month, particularly from a squad leader perspective. Sickness swept across the squad, there were a lot of attacks of a spiritual nature, people wanted to quit and go home… some did and/or had to. A lot happened, but that’s not what this was about. This is about September day… and a lesson, though not exhaustive, that sticks with me. Some of the healthier folks that day had gone out for door to door evangelism in another town. I was at the camp. Why I’d stayed I don’t completely remember, but as late afternoon rolls around and the visitation crew gets back. I’m pulled aside and informed that

We stood over his bed and prayed fervently. We prayed intensely for healing, just as we'd done over so many in the hospital a couple of days prior. The same refrain that has come from countless groups I've been a part of that have interceded for healing played, as whispered petitions filled the quaint dwelling we found ourselves in. Once again, as has seemingly always been the case when I pray for diseased and bed-ridden people, we left a man lying in his bed, not yet healed. It was our third week in Honduras, and the team I was visiting for the week, was in the midst of the final week of ministry of their second month. We'd joined the pastor and doctor for a house visit to see... let's call him, Alejandro. Alejandro was a skeleton with skin to the naked eye. He laid in his bed, emaciated, a blanket covering his diapered mid-section and homemade colonic bag, which appeared to be not much more than a plastic baggy held on with scotch tape. It's fai

Blogs are supposed to have pictures, partly because people have short attention spans, partly because they are "pretty," and partly because they are "worth a thousand words." But there are some things in life that a thousand pictures could not convey... I hugged her, closed the door, and the car pulled away. She was off on likely the longest five or six hour journey of life... Some situations are so surreal that you can't ever imagine how you could adequately put them in words, but something in me knew, even before she rode away, that I needed to try. Honestly, even as I'm writing this, I can't help but think that it deserves more... More feeling... More words... More than I can give. An hour before I was sitting, preparing to read my Bible, Sally walked in... "I need someone with a pastoral heart to come with me..." ...I grabbed my shoes and got Jake as I left the driveway. Five minutes later we were walkin

You know how sometimes cool things happen and you know you SHOULD type about em, but you don't really have the words to express it in as eloquent a way as you'd want?  Of course you don't... your diction is flawless and your vocabulary is expansive.  But some of us (this guy) just have to suck it up and type it out anyway. Well... About 17 months ago I took off around the world on this whole "World Race" thing you might have heard of.  I was incredibly blessed to journey far and wide with some remarkable people (pictured above) growing in the Lord in large part thanks to the selfless donations of "viewers like you" (However, Juicy Juice did not help sponsor me).  Such support from so many people in the form of prayer, financial, and equipment contributions were so wonderful beyond what my words could say, and allowed me the opportunity to have and share an incredible experience.  For those of you who helped me in that journey I thank

THE APPETIZER I recently posted this link on Facebook discussing the potential court martial of people who share their faith in the military... which is shocking I know, because I NEVER post links to Facebook.  Some of you, no doubt, have seen it. As is often the case, a conversation ensued, following my request that those who don’t like it sign the petition available to express disagreement, because, as we all know, the world’s problems are solved with electronic signatures, Facebook profile pictures, and Twitter avatars.   I was then asked… “Constitutionally speaking, do you feel like religion should be a part of our military in any form?” My retort was… “’Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;...’" Then I was prompted with this… “Maybe if everyone was respectable about it, I could potentially agree with your point of view. But since that's not always the case,