Category: God

I made it to Psalms in my current read through the Bible. Psalms 1:1-2 says “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” I am starting to have a new understanding of the the times and a sense for my place in the world. I hope I am not too far off base or too cynical about the world or both. It does not seem like an accident that this Psalm follows the book of Job where Job’s friends were, in some sense, speaking for God and completely missing their responsibility–well not completely, they did sit in silence and mourn with him for seven days. The thing, though, that seems obvious to me that somehow evaded my understanding before that Job captures very well and the verses above spells our specifically is that our allegiance is to the Lord and the Lord alone. I take two things from that–my job relative to those around me, especially my friends and fellow travelers, is to show charity to them and not speak them like I am speaking for the Lord.

The other thing is that no one is good, no not one. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. I feel very much estranged from the institutional church in general and the institutional church where I was a member in particular. I have no doubt there are Christ followers in at least some of those churches, but it feels like most church culture, no matter the denomination, is driven by the spirit of Job’s friends. Psalms 1:1-2 says to stay away from that and obey the Lord. The problem is my awareness of my own sin coupled with the knowledge that fellowship is essential when it is available. Is our culture such a fellowship desert that we are all essential in the same boat as Elijah when he thought he was the only one? Of course he was not the only one and neither am I. I just am more and more aware that there are no institutions that will alleviate these feelings. Maybe that applies to the church, especially, but it certainly also applies to government, academia, business, and society at large.

I am not sure what I am supposed to do about this, but it feels correct to me and good that it has been brought to my attention. I guess the thing to do is just keep reading and praying. One thing for which I am eternally grateful is a wife who does that with me.

We had a showing at our house yesterday and the buyer said it was situated wrong on the property, was priced way to high, and gave it a rating of only three out of five. Lorena and I have been putting way to much stress on ourselves about this sale. We want to get on to the next phase of our lives where we settle in to what is our version of retirement, but we do not even know what that is. I did not sleep much last night just laying there thinking about it all. Lorena and I had a super healthy talk about it this morning. We do not know where we should be or what we should be doing, but we spent the last several months reading about what made the good kings good in the Old Testament–all of them were blessed when they threw themselves at the mercy of God, asked his direction, waited for the answer that often came from one of His prophets (they did not hear from God directly, but through the prophets), then did or did not do what God gave them to do. We decided we need to quit stressing, wait on God, and leave it completely open with respect to where we should go next or what we should do not. One answer might even be “stay where you are” and “do not do anything different.” We DO know that we do not know, so we will do our best to be happy, patient, and at peace until we know.

After that talk, we got a text saying we had another showing in 40 minutes, so I am now sitting at Panera again, still with no Wi-Fi, but that consolation. It is not lost on me that Lorena and I have values that are very much aligned and very much centered on following Christ. For that I am eternally grateful.

We are in a period of lives where there are lots of things we (Lorena and I) would like to be doing, including taking time off to smell the roses. It does not make a lot of sense to start most of those things that attract us until we sell our current house and relocate closer to Lorena’s family. Both of us realize that is a ridiculous way to think about our current situation. There is really not much stopping us from doing all of those things right now. Maybe the habits we have picked up during our marriage and the raising of our kids has us handicapped with unnecessary anxiety about paying the rent and putting beans on the table when those are no longer problems of high importance. So, we are going to continue working on getting the house sold, but also plan a trip or two starting in the fall. The time we have spent where we are right now has been spiritually profitable for us and maybe God, in his mercy, is keeping us where we are. We are thankful for that.

Lorena is reading in Genesis this morning about when Abraham was asked to take Isaac up a mountain to sacrifice him. Of course our lives have never had something as difficult as that, but now is one of those times when we wonders why everything seems so difficult. We are sinners and know we deserve nothing, but have received so much blessing over our whole lives in spite of that. Right now, though, is a confusing time. The hardest part is watching our kids suffer. As in every case with humanity, some of it is of their own doing, but a lot of it was foisted on them through as a result of their upbringing in a toxic church culture from which they were strong enough to remove themselves before Lorena and I saw the light and left, too. On the outside, they are great. The have insanely good jobs and a level of education par excellence. Still they struggle and the larger culture is not much help. All we know to do is pray for them and be available–I am not even sure we do that well, but we try. There is no point to this blog post other than to mark this as part of our family history and to acknowledge that the answers to these things only comes from God. May he help us.

Lorena and I have less to worry about in our personal lives that just about any time since we got married back in 1992. Nevertheless, we worry needlessly a lot. I am not talking about worries about our children and extended family because that is always going to be there. I think it might be because we have never been in a situation where we had enough to live through the next paycheck or two without me working. We are certainly not rich, but where we are going to sleep, whether I will keep my job or enough to eat, and all those categories of daily challenges have been so much a part of our lives that they are habits that we are going to have to learn to break. Well, at least we have identified that now and we have decided we are going to try to be better about living in the day and thanking God for it without such focus on extraneous goals and the stresses that come with that.

I started keeping track of my daily Bible reading on February 9, 2026. I read only one chapter per day when I got started and it took me three years, nine months to work my way through the whole Bible. The first read was in the KJV. Since then I have increased my pace, for awhile, reading through the Bible two and a half times per year, but now have settled back to two times per year. When I finish my current read, God willing, I will have been all the way through the Bible fourteen times not including the reading Lorena and I do together for our Sunday and Wednesday worship. I have read through the KJV ten times, but have decided to give that a rest for awhile. I am currently making my way through my first full read of the NKJV. I have done full reads through the ESV, NASB, and NIV. Going forward I hope to rotate through the ESV, NASB, and NKJV for awhile doing only full reads. For quite awhile, I read through the New Testament several times after each read through the whole Bible. All told, I have been through the New Testament fifty time if you include the full reads in that count. This has been of immeasurable help to me in my spiritual life and beyond. I will try to periodically put up a report of where I am in my reading.