Occasional family and ministry updates
Friday morning seems like a good time to give you a couple of personal updates and to ask you a question about this web site. But make sure that you don’t miss today’s A La Carte and Free Stuff Fridays. Quality I have been thinking a little bit lately about the quality of the content…
I have returned from my week away–a week away from home and a week away from the day-to-day. On July 9th we bundled ourselves into the van and drove 1100 kilometers pretty much due south. That took us to a state park in Virginia–a state park far from civilization, one that is accessible only by…
As you read this, I’m on my way home from Orlando, Florida. I’ve been here with the family for nearly a week now, first to take in Ligonier Ministries’ National Conference and then to grab a few days’ vacation. This is part one of our two-part vacation this summer–a bit later on we’ll be headed…
One of the unexpected blessings of writing this blog is that it sets in stone things that that have happened in the past or even just things I’ve been thinking about months or years before. I use the blog, in some ways, as a record of spiritual development. I return quite often to articles I’ve…
Today at my church home of Grace Fellowship Church I was ordained as an elder/pastor (we make no distinction real between the two). I share this with you because, well, because I’ve shared so much of my life with you and this is quite a significant event. Our pastor preached from Titus 2:15: “Declare these…
So here I sit at 8:09 AM on a Thursday morning wondering what I am going to say today. There are times when I find writing this blog a great joy and there are times where I find it a heavy burden. Those tough times are blessedly few. Today I feel neither; I suppose I’m…
One of the strange things that happens when you write a book is that other authors begin to ask you if you would endorse their own book. There is a strange little economy whereby people in a particular genre all endorse one another’s books. This is true in the Christian world as it’s true for…
Yesterday I was in Orlando, today I’m in Savannah. Throughout this year I will be consulting with Ligonier Ministries, working with them on developing content for their web sites and other digital platforms. We had planned this two-day series of meetings and they needed to include two groups of people. The halfway point between these…
Let me give you a brief update as to what I’ve been up to the past couple of days. On Sunday night I hopped aboard a plane and jetted down to Orlando, Florida for some meetings with the good folks at Ligonier Ministries. Flying from Toronto to Orlando is, obviously, an international flight and, hence,…
Two days ago I officially began 10MillionWords. This is a year-long project in which, for 2010, I am going to read all of the New York Times bestsellers (non-fiction, that is). The purpose of the project is something that has maybe evolved a little in the months since I dreamed it up. It began as…
I am feeling unusually pensive this morning. Sometimes a new year dawns with barely a whisper. Sometimes it arrives with a shout. This year I sit here on January 1 with more than a little apprehension, feeling like the new year is screaming at me. There is little doubt that this is going to be…
A little while ago I participated in one of those silly memes that made its way around the Net, filling out a list of really boring things about myself. My mom enjoyed it but figured she could do better. Today she and Aileen got a couple of my sisters together (since we’re all together for…
Yesterday was a good day. How could it be otherwise, really? We were together as a family: my parents, my brother, my three sisters with their husbands and children and, of course, my wife and kids. It was a wonderful kind of chaos as the twenty-one of us crammed into quite a small house to…
Our Christmas morning began at a reasonable hour here in Atlanta, Georgia. For the past couple of days we’ve been staying with my sister’s family and we enjoyed watching our kids and their kids open their presents. In just a few minutes we’ll be heading to Chattanooga, Tennessee (about two hours away) to meet up…
I found myself reminiscing this afternoon about old Mr. Tweedle–a man I hadn’t thought about in ages. Years ago, when we were members at a Reformed church in Hamilton, Mr. Tweedle had shown up at the church. He was an elderly man already, probably well into his seventies. He was a refugee from Canada’s United…
It is Thanksgiving Weekend here in Canada–about as early a Thanksgiving as we ever have, I think. It comes a long time before the American equivalent, at any rate. The Canadian Thanksgiving is a fair bit like its American counterpart, though without the storied history. Where Americans have great stories about Pilgrims and the Indians…
A couple of days ago I sat down with Aileen and a blank piece of paper. On the top of the paper I wrote, “If we were better parents to our children we would…” and then, between the two of us, we began to jot down ideas. We thought of some of the things we…
When I need to travel by plane, I often catch a shuttle to the airport. This is one of those little buses that will pick me up at my door and drop me at the terminal. The service is a little bit expensive (and getting more so), at least compared to having Aileen drive me,…
You’ll have to bear with me today as I ramble a little bit on the subject of book reviews. Because reviews are such an important part of what I do here, I thought it would be worth covering just a little bit of how and why I do reviews. I generally try to review at…
Just about a week ago Aileen and I celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary. The Lord has been kind to us and, though in many ways we feel like we’re just getting started, at the same time we can look back on an ever-lengthening legacy of God’s faithfulness to us. Last week I paused a few…