The Back Table

The summer after I graduated from high school, my brother and I and some other friends went to Italy. We had 17 days, and all 17 days were accounted for, planned for, filled up...until we found Lake Como, that is. We were traveling by train and as we were coming down from the Swiss Alps, we saw it - the most amazing place. We all just looked at each other knowing that we were all thinking the same thing. It was one of the coolest and most beautiful sights I had ever seen live. We ended up staying there longer then any other spot that we had planned. When I first came to Christ it was like seeing the most beautiful place, He surprised me, caught me off guard. He was unexpected. When I began to explore him, when I got off the train and actually stayed, He overwhelmed me, I never wanted to leave. But something happens, doesn't it? I remember working and saving for over two years for that trip. I remember picturing in my mind what Italy would be like. Every time I thought about it I wo...

Last Christmas while I was shopping with my family, our youngest daughter Mackenzie decided to spontaneously leap out of her stroller for an afternoon jog through the very crowded mall. At first I stood there in total disbelief at what just happened; it was almost surreal...I mean, even for a two-year-old, who just gets up and starts running for no reason with absolutely no warnings or signs. For a few brief seconds it was silent like in a movie scene where a bomb goes off real close to someone and they can't hear anything and then slowly the volume comes back. Mine came back with my wife's voice asking me what the heck I was doing just standing there looking at an empty stroller. So I start running. Bobbing and weaving, ducking and jumping...I have to admit, it was kind of thrilling. I felt like I was invincible, nothing could stop me or intimidate me. I feared nothing. My goal was recapturing Mackenzie, end of story. I finally did corner her in a store, or so I thought. After...

What is the most annoying sound to you? What's the sound that makes you go to a unhappy place? For me, it's my alarm clock. I hate that thing. Don't get me wrong - I need it. I count on it. It saves me every day. It keeps me employed and my kids in school, but the sound that comes out of it is horrid. (The people who make alarm clock noises must really hate life. We all should be praying for them on a daily basis.) Every now and then a company will make the colossal mistake of having an alarm clock go off in one of their commercials. You know; you've seen them. They reenact someone sleeping in bed who can't get up because she didn't take their sleep aid pill. You just know what's coming, yet you don't believe they'll actually do it. But they do - the alarm starts going. Sometimes they let the alarm go for a few seconds...pure torture. I instantly turn it off. I yell at them (to myself), "Do you want people to buy your product or are you sick or...

There is this space between what I want to be, what I should be, and what I'm supposed to be that frightens, confuses, and sometimes paralyzes me. It's the space between Genesis and Revelation. Between "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" to Jesus spitting out lukewarm Christians. It's the space between grace and judgment. It's the space we live in right now. "What water temperature am I?" How do we measure that? Where's the spiritual thermometer? I think it can be so easy to fit into the church culture we're a part of. We figure out our temperature by comparing it to others around us and by what's being taught from the pulpit. That's why it's so huge to have a balanced teaching on grace and the seriousness of living as Jesus commanded us to live. It always amazes me to see people in churches get angry when the church decides to make more of an effort to reach out to those outside the church. Isn't ...

I have a confession to make. At my wedding, when I was told to repeat the vows, I wasn't fully there. It was all kind of hazy, weird - not like I thought it was going to be. Maybe it had something to do with all the booze I was drinking a couple hours before (just kidding, Honey...and Jake [father-in-law]). Seriously though, the only thing that was going through my mind was my voice not cracking, not throwing up and wanting to check my zipper for the hundredth time. I remember feeling white. I don't even know if that's possible, but it was for me that day. I just knew I was the whitest dude in the room. I could have been used as a night light. I'm sure people were thinking that too. I could almost hear the whispers in the ears from one spouse to another - "Honey, he would be great in the hallway by the bathroom." These aren't the kind of thoughts a groom should be having when he's about to make the most important promises to his almost-wife in front of...

I'm going to share something really personal. I can't find a deodorant that's nice... you know, to my pits. At first when I try one it's fine, at least for the first few hours, but then itching and then burning follow. It's horrible really. A sad story. A man who can't find a reliable deodorant - one that won't keep burning him. So there you have it, a window into my dark, red places. You'll never look at my under arms the same way again. At least now that it's out in the open I might get some help from others who've been through this same struggle. One day as I was itching and burning - at the same time - a thought came to me. How many people tried the "stick o' church" and ended up getting burnt? How many people have I personally affected in this way? It's an important question to enter into. Now I know and realize that we can't beat ourselves up over what we did "back there," in the past. And we can't blame ...

Many of you know that I can't stand bananas. I can smell one from a mile away. I blame this banana hatred on my mother. She would pack one in my lunch nearly every day through elementary and middle school, and it would make everything else in my lunch taste like - you guessed it - banana. To this day, if I pass someone eating one I sometimes gag. One night I made the big mistake of eating one in front of my wife. She made fun of me the entire time I was eating it - all 45 minutes of it - laughing, moaning. Her face was red. At one point she couldn't even breathe. I'm serious! I have to admit, it probably was pretty funny watching a grown, bearded man painfully forcing a banana into his mouth gagging and dry heaving over a 45-minute timespan. But this whole banana thing got me thinking. Is this how we treat the Bible sometimes...like a food that we get tired of? I've caught myself and others kind of mocking scriptures in the Bible. Maybe not intentionally, but sometimes ...