This mapping site is very Cool. This is where I have been in the world. Should prompt me to travel. There is so much I have not seen.



create your own visited countries map

This is where I have been in the U.S. I should visit the last few and so I can color the whole thing!



create your own visited states map

A Faith-Challenged believer

On the previous post, I thought more about it, and asked myself, why? One event brought my faith into a tailspin.

It began innocently enough. A casual conversation with my brother-in-law... I told him about a friend who experienced a miraculously successful radical surgical procedure for an otherwise-determined terminal cancer. I mentioned how prayers and faith were answered.

My brother-in-law's response was "someday science will explain away religion" and "we will someday understand the mental link to healing". I have heard this before from my wife's family.

On the outside, I made my best "loving response", but inside I was totally losing my cool, wishing to grab him and shake him. The frustration of witnessing my in-law's abject denial of anything they cannot touch and see (or read about in a psychology journal) got so intense that I lost my sense of Grace. Satan was at my elbow in a moment... what if what my brother-in-law said was true? Is my relationship with God just in my head?

I doubted, even when I knew better.

I am better now. It was all emotion - frustration, anger, fear. A little time in solitary prayer, repentance, accepting the current Grace offered, listening to the talks, was all I needed to reconnect. Praise Him!

Faith journey - hitting a pothole

My sister-in-law still checks this blog, bless her, so I had better give her something to read...

Last night, I heard talks from two men of faith whom I am getting to know through our preparation for hosting a spiritual retreat known as the Great Banquet.

The talks were "Obstacles to Grace" and "Staying Power". It appears to me that a large part of the human condition, especially this human's condition, is exemplified in the phrase "How could I forget that?"

Needless to say, I have lost staying power and encountered obstacles to Grace. How can I forget about Grace?!

James 1:23-24 says it well, "For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like."

Guilty as charged. ;-)