merry christmas

We are grateful to you, our friends and family, and want you to know how you bring joy to our lives.

With these pictures from the past year, we hope you catch a glimpse of our family.

Love,
Josh, Amy, and our Boys

the bigness and smallness of the Kingdom

Tonight I found myself talking with my oldest son in our kitchen about the reality of the Kingdom of God. I want him to understand at an early age how big God's Kingdom is and how he gets to participate in God's work wherever God is present. So here I was talking with a little boy about this huge idea that many brillant theologians, let alone me, have a difficult time explaining in a clear and brief explanation. In fact, Jesus only tells stories about the Kingdom because it is so hard to explain and understand. Stories help illustrate the beautiful mess that the Kingdom is.

I tried to explain how big God's Kingdom is by raising my arms as high as I could and said, "The Kingdom of God is bigger than Daddy." I didn't see it click in his eyes, so I pointed at our house (or the walls of our kitchen) and raised my voice (slightly) and said, "It's bigger than our house!" Again, I didn't see it click so I stretched my arms out as far as I could stretch, raised my voice again and said, "It's bigger than Legoland!!" By the way, he had just gone to his favorite place on earth (atleast for the moment). His eyes got real big and he had a huge smile on his face like he understood.

May we be people that learn to communicate the Kingdom of God through story...our story, God's story and even stories that little boys can understand.

what we will do for our kids

There are times in life when I must chuckle about the circumstances that I choose to live in. It is 5 am in the morning on a beautifully dark day and I am sitting with 5 other perfectly quiet people on a sidewalk.


See, after a long, long day of work, I set my alarm for 3:30 am, which by the way didn't go off because I rolled over 3 minutes before to see that it was time to get up from my short nap. I needed to get up and sit on this sidewalk before 7 am so that our 2 year old son can go to preschool next year...I am in line to turn in his application. By the time I arrived this morning, there were 4 others already in front of me - reading or sleeping. One guy looks as is he slept here all night as he has his whole camping gear set up.


I wonder at times why we do this to ourselves. Why we are willing to camp out for our kids so they can go to preschool. Isn't this bizarre?

Life as a Dad

So I haven't blogged in awhile and it is time that I try on this silent night...my wife is gone to a high school retreat and my son is fast asleep.

About a month ago, I heard a story about an acquaintance who got up out of bed in the morning to do what he always did in the morning...go to the bathroom. As he was sitting there minding his own business, his daughter, who is a little older than my son, barged through the door with a facial expression that I can only imagine. He soon realized that he had been barfed on by his daughter and there was nothing he could do. When I heard this story, I was chuckling like a middle schooler about any barf story and then thought to myself, "I hope that never happens to me."

In the last week, I have experienced my greatest fear...my son was sick and I experienced again and again the process of laundry. Now, I share this story because I am a Dad before many of my other roles in life. It is one of the roles that is precious for me like being a husband and loving my wife. This is a picture of my as a Dad and to be truthful, I wouldn't trade this role for any other. It is a priceless role.

These are the stories of my life that I get to share with others. I hope you get a pubescent chuckle out of this story.

Josh

A Blogging Daddy

Blogging has become a unique way for me to express thoughts and (I hope) coherently write about certain topics that I face on a regular basis. Especially topics that relate to God, culture and the Church.

I have a friend, Wes, that seems to have more time and energy than me because he ends up blogging much more frequently than I can imagine; he's also been at it a lot longer than I have. I realize its not a competition to blog more than your closest friends but I want to try this blog thing on for awhile and see how it fits. So, I will try to blog on a regular basis but I am a husband and a dad and these roles take significant time and energy.

So when I have the chance, I will catch up by writing about current events and how I see God interacting in this incredible world of ours.

Until the next time I blog,
Josh