Tuesdays are long days for me. I usually leave the house around 7:30 and I don't typically leave my office until about 9:15 that night. Usually, the trip home is punctuated with a stop at the dumpster to throw trash out. For a couple of months, I would transport the trash from our Grand Rapids…
Why haven't you been _______? I was recently asked, "Hey, why haven't I seen you at ________?" I left the place blank on purpose because it doesn't necessarily matter what you put in that blank, you probably haven't seen me in a lot of places. Some people have asked from, what I believe, is a…
The following is a post I wrote for a local publication regarding the upcoming school year and dealing with the unknown. I’m not a big fan of July. I especially dislike the middle of July. Not because of the heat. It means school is right around the corner. I hate that because I love having…
I'd like to think that we all want to listen to each other. I would like to believe that almost everyone I meet wants to be an excellent listener. And yet the chaos of our world often feels overwhelming. It can often seem like everywhere I turn, I see people who are not listening Even…
I can’t save every one of those kids that is on that 140,000 list. And I can do everything in my power to help the ones that I can help. And here’s the whole point of the story: when you are truly passionate about something, it will affect the people around you.
To fight injustice, live a life of justice. Call those around you to live a life of justice. Show mercy to those around you. Show love to those around you. Walk humbly in the world around you. Life is hard and can be difficult to navigate, but it really shouldn’t be that hard to navigate what it means to be kind and to treat people-even people who have committed crimes with dignity.
There was an ancient writer who once wrote that it is better to go to a funeral than to a party. Because when we go to a funeral we are more likely to take account of our lives. At a funeral we are more likely to measure the number of days that we have which of the same writer wrote is a great way to get wisdom.
Our greatest opportunities will often come with the greatest possibility of failure. May we engage those opportunities with courage. May we welcome all who come as competition and simultaneously want to beat them.
May we elevate ourselves and those around us to greatness. And may we define greatness as the ability to put everything we have into whatever endeavor it is that we’re doing.
We all have arguments and disagreements. It seems to me in the past, we have decided to stop having uncomfortable conversations because they typically go wrong. Here are ten skills that you can start incorporating into difficult conversations right away. I believe they will help us all have better difficult conversations. Seek to understand the…
We have to develop the ability to hold two things in our minds at once. I pray that we return to being people who value questions. We need to step away from our identity politics and embrace that those who disagree with us are also people just like us. We have to fight against our normal nature of craving certainty. Certainty is good until it becomes the thing destroying us. There is no such thing as a life or a relationship without danger and disagreement.
