After Christmas Offer!

For the rest of January you can get a personalized copy of any of my books for yourself, family, or a friend for the regular book price. Go to the online book store, order the book (or books) you are interested in and make sure you note how you want each book personalized in the text box. No need to check the box to have it personalized. Just pay regular book price and let me know how to sign the book. Personalized books make a great and thoughtful gift for others. Looking forward to hearing from you! Blessings and grace, Dave
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Can I Trust God’s Directions as much as my GPS?

My lovely wife returned from a luncheon engagement with an insight I was more than willing to borrow. “My GPS took me on a path that was completely counter-intuitive to me.” Joni reported. “I even wondered if I had entered the wrong destination. I learned later that there was a major slowdown on the normal route and this strange path got me there on time. The GPS could see things I could not and knew how to get me there. I began to think I do the same thing with God. I wonder about the path He has me on and if He knows how to get me to the place I want to be. But He sees things I cannot and I need to trust Him more.” I love that metaphor. I think part of the answer is that we fail to recognize how big our God really is. I am going to borrow a bit from my book
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Losing This Weight Will Make a Big Difference in 2020

Most of us see New Years Day as a fresh start. We make steadfast resolutions of how we are going to do better next year. The reality is that January 1st is just another day. We could just as easily resolve on May 18th or August 3rd that we are going to change how we live. But there is something psychologically powerful about a New Year. The most cited resolutions generally include things like exercising more, saving more money, getting out of debt, and reading the Bible all the way through without getting bogged down in Leviticus and skipping directly to the Psalms. The most popular resolution year after year is losing weight. I thought I would be doing a real service if I gave you God’s Weight Loss Plan to take into 2020. This weight loss plan will make you healthier, reduce stress, give you more joy and cause you to grow in your relationship with the Lord. By following this no
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Don’t Pack Your Christmas Hope Away

This weekend we finished one of my least favorite tasks of the year. Taking down the Christmas decorations always makes me melancholy. I love Christmas and the message of hope it brings. That God entered human form and gave us hope in a Savior who understands our struggle. We packed up a treasured Nativity creche that has been a part of our family tradition for decades. That miracle in Bethlehem is where I place my joy as I head into a very unstable New Year. I find my joy in the Messiah, the Lord – who was born in the city of David. It is so easy to remember the reason for hope during Christmas. But now that we are past this wonderful season it is very easy to pack my hope away and unpack lots of worry. The twenty-four news cycle feeds on negativity. Hearing the message of gloom and doom over and over has it’s effect on even the most steadfast
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My Christmas Wish For You

Amy Grant recorded “My Grown-up Christmas List” for her “Home For Christmas” album. The lyrics imagine an adult going back to Santa with a different perspective on what matters most in life. Instead of material things the writer now asks for good things for others. I love the sentiment of the song. No more lives torn apartThat wars would never startAnd time would heal all heartsEveryone would have a friendAnd right would always winAnd love would never endThis is my grown-up Christmas list “My Grown Up Christmas List” I thought about my “grown-up” Christmas list this week. I would love for all of the things in the lyric above to come true. But I have lived enough to know they will not. Everyday lives are torn apart. Wars start too frequently. Time does not heal every heart. Some who are reading this are lonely. Right seems to lose way too often and love ends for many. So what could I wish for that
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The Power of that Silent Night

One of my favorite Christmas stories happened during the horrors of war. The Christmas carol “Silent Night” was actually responsible for a wartime Christmas truce. The year was 1914 and soldiers were having to spend Christmas Eve night on the World War I battlefields of Belgium. After only four months of fighting, more than a million men had already perished in the bloody conflict. The bodies of dead soldiers were scattered between the trenches. Enemy troops were dug-in so close that they could easily exchange shouts. On December 24, 1914, in the middle of a freezing battlefield in France, a miracle happened. The British troops watched in amazement as candle-lit Christmas trees began to appear above the German trenches. The glowing trees soon appeared along the length of the German front. Henry Williamson, a young soldier with the London Regiment wrote in his diary: “From the German parapet, a rich baritone voice had begun to sing a song I remembered my German nurse singing to me…. The grave and tender voice rose
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What Noise Were the Cattle Making????

(Today is a re-gifting of a “Christmas Classic” from earlier. How does a blog become a classic?  It is your blog, your site, and you pay the server charge so you can call it whatever you want. So enjoy a classic from Christmas past) One of my contributions with these modest little musings is to continually ask the tough questions. While listening to  “Away in a Manger” my inquiring mind kicked in. You likely know verse three of the song. The cattle are lowing The poor Baby wakes But little Lord Jesus No crying He makes As I listened an important series of difficult and probing inquiries popped into my head. What noise, exactly, were the cattle making when they started lowing? Was this normal cow talk? Did lowing just sound better than mooing in the lyric or is lowing a more spiritual and reverent cow sound? And then the most important question came to mind. What is wrong with me? I can’t answer the
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