As part of my message yesterday morning, I quoted the following lines from a Relient K song, released around 10 years ago: “’Cause we’re all guilty of the same things; we think the thoughts whether or not we see them through.” I shared these words because as Christians, we don’t need to “go it alone;” we can have genuine community with other followers of Jesus. We might think we can’t or won’t or shouldn’t reach out to others in Christian fellowship, but we should make a decision to step out and seek authentic relationships with other followers of Jesus.

Reaching out in this way is risky and scary, but we all have something to hide, so how dare we condemn and shut out others who are only doing the same thing we are? How can we not be safe people to share with? I’m no better than you and you’re no better than me, not in God’s eyes. There’s too much at stake—for ourselves, for our Christian brothers and sisters, and for a world that desperately needs us—to “go it alone.”

It’s Monday morning and it FEELS like a Monday! I’m sleepy and groggy, and yet happy to be in the church office. Just for kicks, I decided to google the phrase, “Does the Bible say anything about sleep?” Wouldn’t you know it? I ran across an article that posed the following questions: “Can a lack of sleep indicate a spiritual problem? Does the Bible say anything to guide us in our sleep patterns? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is ‘yes’ to both questions.”

I like the “yes” answer to the second question, but I’m not so sure about the first one. I’m a lousy sleeper, both in terms of quantity and quality. I don’t want to believe that my problem could be spiritual. Does God love me? Do I really trust Him completely?

When David asks God for relief from his distress, he comes to the conclusion that, “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8). Does my inability to sleep reveal a lack of trust in God? And what about the troubling words of Solomon: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for He grants sleep to those He loves” (Psalm 127:1-2). Yikes! Am I getting up early and staying up late for no reason? Am I not sleeping because I’m not one of “those He loves?”

I’ve been a “grown-up” for around 30 years now, but at times it feels like yesterday when I was “just a kid.” I still miss those younger days when I didn’t know so much or worry so much or have to do so much. Mark Twain said, “It is not likely that there has ever been a civilized person 65 years old who would consent to live his life over again.” I understand the reason for those words, yet there are times when I wouldn’t mind living like a child again, even if only for a moment.

I miss having recess during the school day, and snack time, and gym “class,” and field trips. I miss summertime, when it was an actual break and each day seemed endless. I miss riding my bike to my friend’s house in the morning and not having to be home until dinner time or later—and these long absences caused no concern for my mother. I miss playing pickup games of basketball or football or baseball with all of the other neighborhood kids, just for the fun of it. I miss wondering what I would do when I grew up and thinking my dream of getting paid to throw baseballs for a living would actually come true.

I miss my innocence and my ignorance of how rotten I can be and how awful other people can behave. I miss that place in my mind where anything was possible and friends never deserted you and people never gossiped and kids weren’t abused and mommies and daddies stayed together forever. I miss that feeling of immortality, even if, deep down, I knew it wasn’t real.

Wherever I looked, fireworks lit up the sky. Wherever I heard (if that is a phrase), booming sounds rang out almost continuously. If you would have told me that I’d literally traveled back in time, I might have believed you. As bizarre and surreal as this experience was, it also refreshed in my mind a sense of childlike wonder. Maybe I’m not so grown up after all. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…no, wait, that quote opens up a famous novel that’s a work of fiction, and yet it feels so much like real life right now. Currently, we reside within the friendly confines of a fifth-wheel trailer. First and foremost, we are beyond grateful to our friends who are allowing us to live on their property. Having said that, however, life in a trailer is much different than life inside a large house.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world…. Next door to the wonderful, large house we just vacated (no, we were not evicted!) sits another fine trailer, hitched to a truck, and ready to embark on a journey that’s completely unlike ours. Our former neighbors are heading to the Oregon coast (my favorite place in the world) for a two-week vacation marked by fun, relaxing times with little or no “real-life” responsibility. You might say they are experiencing the “best of times” while we, despite our immense gratitude, are living through the “worst of times.”

Of course, I’m exaggerating to a fairly absurd degree; we are nowhere near the “worst of times.” I really don’t care how big or small or fancy or plain our living space is, as long as we’re together as family. But in comparison to our neighbors, the contrast is stark. And, as is the case with many things in life, there are spiritual truths and vivid reminders of what’s ultimately important. Life in this world can be wonderful, even better than spending a vacation on the Oregon coast. And life can be terrible, far worse than calling a trailer “home” for an extended period of time.

We’ve lived in the wonderful home that we’ve rented for four years, which for our family is actually a pretty long stretch. We would stay even longer, but the owners have decided to sell since they live in Seattle and right now, Spokane has quite the hot seller’s market. You may not care about this (you don’t have to move, right?!) but our situation has led to an interesting discovery. As a result of the painstaking task of going through everything thing we own in every room, closet, drawer, cupboard, etc., we found a remote-control garage opener that we never knew existed.

We’ve been lucky enough to rent a home with a three-car garage and two of the spots have one large door that opens and closes with the remote we were given when we moved into the house. Then there’s the third spot with its own smaller door and no remote-control opener, or so we thought. As you’ve probably put together by now, for this entire four years, we have opened and closed that garage door without the convenience of a remote. My wife or I would open the door, pull out the car, stop the car, walk back in and through the garage, close the door, go through the house and out the front door, lock the front door, then get into the car and drive away. When we returned home, if one of our family members was already there, we could text “G” from the driveway to ask someone to open the door and prevent us from having to park the car, unlock the front door, go to the garage, and, well, you get the picture.

FOUR YEARS we have gone without realizing this great power of convenience, this incredible time-saver and hassle-preventer that was right under our noses. This whole deal, while probably hilarious to everyone outside of our family, brings to mind all the of power we have as Christians that we tend to neglect or fail to harness:

• We have the Holy Spirit, and because He is God and has all the power of God, He can help us to overcome our inadequacy and live a life that honors God.
• We have the Bible, the living and active Word of God, that gives us God’s power for salvation among many other things.
• We have the power of the blood of Christ, shed upon the cross, that assures us of God’s power to forgive sin.
• We are God’s children with the power of access to God’s throne in heaven. We can come to God with our prayers, anytime and anyplace, and expect Him to hear and answer.

We did it! Or, should I say, he did it. I’m talking about high school graduation, but as you probably know (and I’m trying to learn), the day was all about my son, despite my efforts to make it about me. Watching him walk across the stage, my emotions embarked on a roller-coaster ride ranging from extreme pride and gratitude to choked-back tears of grief over what I’m “losing.” But could it be that my loss is really a gain?

SoulFeed blog. This led to her writing a book: Release My Grip: Hope for a Parent’s Heart as Kids Leave the Nest and Learn to Fly. I highly recommend this book, especially for those like me who have a child graduating and heading off to college.

There’s so much I love about Gilmour’s writings, but if I had to narrow it down to one quote that’s helped me the most, it would be this: “Be fully present to support them and look forward to the future through the lens of their life, not backward through the lens of my life.” While I grieve letting go, my son is excited to leave the nest and experience the freedom of young adulthood. While I long for the days when he needed me, he is eager to live in a much more independent way. While I sit here wishing he had chosen a college close to home, he is beyond thrilled to live in a completely different part of the country.

Since my family must move from our rental home by the end of June, we spent our holiday weekend doing work. Lots and lots of work. In fact, my lower back seems to be “telling me” that perhaps we did too much work. I know that Proverbs 16:31 says that “Gray hair is a crown of splendor” but what about my back? It must be experiencing something similar to whatever causes the grayness on my head, but I don’t know a term for an aging back. Lumbar-challenged? Vertebrae-ging? Ligament-ia?

During my trip to New Life Northwest last summer (that Youth Minister-Joe-guy talked me into it), we went on an afternoon excursion involving a trail hike to a large waterfall. That powerful, cascading water was a beautiful sight to behold, for sure, but what sticks out in my mind is a man dressed in “hippie” type clothing—sort of a dress for men with tie-dyed designs and the like. He had some “peaceful” music playing (maybe sitar?) and smelled strongly of incense. As he approached the area at the base of the waterfall, he stopped, looked up to the skies, and then raised his hands in an apparent act of worship.

My youngest daughter, Addi, loves to help mom and dad with chores around the house, whether it’s dishes, laundry, or cleaning the wood floors with the dust spray mom gave her to use. Speaking of that last chore, our carpeted stairway has narrow sections between the steps, made of the same wood as the floors. This means my daughter cleaned those wood sections as well. Later that day, I walked down the stairs, slipped almost violently on the aforementioned wood areas, and very nearly fell down the stairs. After this near-miss, my wife asked Addi how much dust spray she put on the cloth, only to discover that enough spray was used to saturate the cloth completely. A dripping wet dust-cloth leads to icy-slick stairs, which leads to quite the stumbling block for an unsuspecting, sock-wearing dad.