The Keener Way

  You know, the Bible is oddly full of "what ifs". Verses that pose the idea of "what if the Lord fails me?" Think of Daniel's three friends who were thrown into a furnace. "Even if our God does not save us from your fire, we will still serve him." Think of Job. He was convinced that God was doing unjust evils to him. He was questioning how God could be so cruel as to torture a righteous man. And he still said, "even if he kills me, I will serve him." Habakkuk 3:17-18 says, " Even if the fig tree does not bloom and the vines have no grapes, even if the olive tree fails to produce and the fields yield no food, even if the sheep pen is empty and the stalls have no cattle-- even then, I will be happy with the Lord . I will truly find joy in God, who saves me." 1 Peter 3:14, " Even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened." Psalm 23, known and loved by so ma...

    Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. From KJV. I had someone give me the thought this morning that this may not mean what most of us think it means. On the surface, it looks like "There is a specific way to raise your kids that guarantees they will stick to those ways all their lives". Except then parents all over the world bemoan their misfortunes as they watch their kids stray from their upbringings. "We trained them as trained as we knew how to. How was it not enough?" Here's the thing. I don't think that's what Solomon meant. The individual who spoke to me this morning suggested that Proverbs 22:6 is saying "Train a child according to his inclinations/personality/interests and when he is old he will still be doing these things with excellent success." Which is entirely valid. Maybe you want your child to be good at math and become a rocket scientist. But maybe they have no inclination...

  There's a lot of things involved in being a man. More things than I know, certainly. I'm far from the apex of manhood. But there's one thing about being a man that doesn't get talked about a lot. I don't even really think about it much, except I came across this song earlier today and...wow it hit hard, knowing what some men in my life have gone through... So to all the men out there, this is for you, my brother-at-arms. Know that we see you. Know that we love you. I was fortunate to grow up with a loving father. A strong father. One who raised nine kids and shepherded a church community, and seldom let anyone see him reach the breaking point. Meanwhile, too many families out there struggle with an unloving father or no father at all. Men who didn't have what it takes to be a man. The first sign of stress, they bailed. Or they turned toxic. Or whatever else. And that's a topic for another manhood discussion. But most men aren't like that. Beyond my fat...

  Hey, it's me again. I know, I know... Kinda overdue for a blog post. It's been like a month and a half. I guess I've been biding my time cuz I was waiting for inspiration to strike on what to write about. Then a very close sister of mine randomly suggested the parable of the prodigal son. The idea was very random. But as I thought on it, the idea grew on me. So here we go. The parable begins in Luke 15:11, and we've all heard it. A rich man has two sons. The younger demands his share of the inheritance, he goes to a far off place, and he wastes his money. Reduced to working a job feeding pigs, the son is so hungry that he starts craving the food that the pigs are eating. So he decides to go home and become a servant to his father, deciding that he is ill-suited to be a son. But what he finds is that his father has been waiting for him. The father welcomes the son and throws a feast. Now the older brother enters the story, upset that his selfish, wasteful brother is ge...

Some time ago, a very dear friend and sister in the Lord got me started on picking word for the year at the new year. So with today being January 1st, I started thinking about what my word was going to be. As I was thinking and praying about it, the number 73 passed through my mind. When it comes to scripture, there are a few books that have 73 or more verses in a chapter. Numbers 7, Psalm 119, Matthew 26, and Luke 1. But there is only one book with 73 or more chapters, the book of Psalms. So I turned to Psalm 73. Here, a man names Asaph speaks of how he almost slipped up. He became envious of the wicked, the boastful, the proud, because as far as he could see, they were not plagued with troubles like Asaph and the other righteous men around him. Asaph says "I've cleansed my heart and washed my hands in vain, because I have been plagued all day, and rebuked every morning." And this is so relatable these days. But even more relatable is what Asaph says next. Basically, he ...

  Happy January 1, 2024! One of my friends and sister in the Lord asked me the other day, "What were the highlights of this past year?" I have no short answers. This last year has been insane. At the start of the year, I felt like my word for the year was 'Selah', which we can't prove with 100% certainty, but we think it means "praise the Lord" How did the year line up? Well... January: I traveled solo all the way to Florida, I experienced the ocean for the first time in over a decade, and for the first time completely of my own free will. I found myself in a sticky situation where my actions caused some hurt to a very good friend, but that led to a long late-night discussion where we really opened up a lot more with each other and agreed to talk things out whenever one of us managed to hurt the other. February: I got a part time job at a gun shop. My maternal grandma died, the last living grandparent I had. When I watched my mom and uncles closing her c...

       In Matthew Chapter 3, we see an odd ritual being preformed by John, cousin of Jesus. He is dipping people in the Jordan River. We're never really told why he was doing it. It's kinda just assumed that the people of that era knew why he was doing it.      But the fact that we're never told the purpose of this ritual always kinda bugged me. Baptism just never made sense. Really, it seemed a ludicrous thing. And even from a young age, I hated things that didn't make sense. Why do people get dunked in a giant bathtub in front of a bunch of other people? What in the world does that have to do with anything else about being a Christian?       Over the years, I put forth various excuses as to why I elected to not go through with it. Part of my inhibition was the extreme insecurity I had of doing anything in front of a crowd. Especially being dipped in a giant bathtub. Super awkward. But the other part was, I didn't feel right doi...