Occasional family and ministry updates
It is amazing to me, but it was almost eighteen months ago that Crossway published my book The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. I finished writing the book nearly a year before that. It all seems so much more recent. The reality is, though, that it has been a long, long time since I’ve actually been…
A long time ago I added to this web site a little counter. It is way down at the bottom right of each page and it increments by one number each day. It simply tracks the number of days since I made a commitment to blog every day. That was back on October 1, 2003.…
Last weekend I enjoyed participating in the Ligonier Ministries National Conference, both as a blogger and an observer. It was a joy to gather with almost 5,000 other Christians so we could spend three days focusing on the holiness of God. This marked my third time going to this conference and each one has proven…
Every now and again I give myself a writing assignment. Typically I write about whatever is on my mind, but occasionally, as a way of attempting to not always take the easy way out, I give myself an assignment. Yesterday I took my car to the mechanic and knew I had a couple of hours…
Mom always shovels the driveway. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed time and again. We live in a neighborhood that has a lot of single moms. I suppose the statistics dictate that most neighborhoods have more than their fair share of single moms. But ours seems to have an unusual amount. I think it is related…
I’ve been to my share of conferences in the past few years and quite a few of these have been geared toward pastors. There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed at the beginning of these events. In many cases these conferences are an opportunity for old friends to reconnect. Many times pastors have been attending the same…
Some light-hearted fare for a Friday… Among friends, family and perhaps even readers of this site, I have achieved the reputation of being something of an Apple-hater; that is, a hater of all things Mac. MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pro’s–I have often spoken out against all of them. They are overpriced, underpowered, toys for yuppies or…
(Continued from yesterday) My friend and I had taken hours out of our weekend to clean Barb’s squalid, rundown house. But then, when she got home, she was angry–very angry. Now there was one thing I neglected to say about Barb. Beside her couch/bed was one of those Rubbermaid containers, the kind with several drawers.…
Barb claimed to be a psychiatrist, but my guess is that she was not a very good one. One day she had asked our friends, her next door neighbors, to help clean up her house a little bit. She was having trouble with her finances and wanted to sell off a few valuable possessions. But…
Continued from yesterday and the day before. And so it was that I found myself an entrepreneur–the owner of my own company. The story of this little company cannot be separated from the story of this blog. I’ve told the story of this blog’s early days, but will tell it again here. In September of…
Continued from yesterday… It was almost seven years ago that I was laid off and started my own company. I began without money and without loans. Since that time we have never lacked for anything important. There have been times where we have had to be frugal to get by, but God has always provided.…
In April of 2002 I was bored. Not just a little bored either, but mind-numbingly, depressingly, discouragingly bored. Having recently been laid off from a job I had held for several years, I was now working at a new job where I was system administrator at a small company in downtown Oakville. Though the pay…
Some years I make new years resolutions; some years I don’t bother. This year I haven’t sat down and narrowed in on one or two things I’d consider resolutions. Instead I am going to continue on a trajectory I began several months ago–a trajectory leading toward control and simplicity. In a wired, digital world, I’ve…
Here is a brief introduction to a Challies family Christmas. It’s really the only kind of Christmas I’ve ever known and it’s one I’ve come to love. I grew up as part of a tradition that celebrated Christmas but did not generally emphasize it as a day to remember the birth of Jesus. It was…
In recent months my family has been discovering (for the kids) or rediscovering (for Aileen and me) a love of board games. We’ve had great fun playing games like Ticket to Ride (an amazing game for the whole family), Lost Cities (a fast and fun strategy game for two adults or older children), and a…
It must have been a couple of months ago now that Aileen and I got rid of cable TV. We didn’t get rid of the television altogether–we kept it so we could watch DVDs and enjoy the Wii. But we got rid of cable and now have access to precisely 0 channels. Today I paused…
You may have seen me mention Liam’s name in a previous blog post. Liam is the son of our friends Kim and Jason and a friend to Nick. Today he is having a major surgery to remove a tumor from his brain. Even if the surgery is 100% successful. he will be in the hospital…
Earlier today I was thinking about my favorite hymn lyrics (not hymns overall-just particular lyrics). I think my all-time favorite is and remains the final stanza of “And Can it Be?” The last two lines just grip my soul every time I sing them: No condemnation now I dread;Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;Alive…
Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at Chinese Gospel Church in downtown Toronto. It’s a church right in the heart of the city in the area known (not so creatively) as Chinatown (if you ever go there you will quickly find out why it has this name). I told the people there that, when…
If you’ve been reading this site for a few years, you may remember the time I wrote about my old van leaving me stranded on the side of the highway. My lease was nearly over and I had to drive across town (about one hour each way) to visit a car dealer and have him…