It is said that you can’t be in two places at one time. I once tried to prove the adage wrong. While my wife, dog and home was in White Rock, I pastored a church in Regina for a year. I commuted between my two worlds and Westjet stocks soared.

My wife and I have become trailer travellers. The statement suggests more proficiency than is appropriate. “We are learning to be trailer travellers” is more accurate.

You can expect a three-point outline jammed with historical insight, mined from biblical languages targeted at cultural context; all of it framed by a good joke at the beginning and an emotional poem at the end. Bible preachers, teachers, and readers tend to approach the Bible solely as a source of information, looking for instructions or directions. We employ a Google methodology, hoping for instant answers. That’s what we do, but there’s another way.  

Anne Lamott is a rare recipe that blends spirituality with laughter. She leans on Jesus and writes books that solicit insight with a chuckle. Consider this quote as an example. “My mind is like a bad neighbourhood. I try not to go in there alone.” In one sentence she admits a common struggle of the mind and our need for guidance.

Eye contact is an intimate act. If you intersect a passing glance with a stranger in a restaurant, it's cause for a smile. But if the stranger locks eyeballs with you and won't break the stare, you will get uncomfortable. Sustained eye interaction is reserved for people we know and even that is proportionate to how well we know them. Why? Because looking someone squarely in the face is an intimate act.

Miriam and I have purchased a travel trailer. It’s something that has been on our minds for a while. Those dreams recently found both the opportunity and ability - so we now have a trailer! Here is the irony. Before we got the trailer, we bought a small SUV, expecting it to tow our future trailer.  So imagine my surprise when I hooked the new trailer up to the new vehicle and discovered that this is not going to work!! So our hope arrived, but I have no way of moving it anyplace. I feel stuck up a blind alley. Trailer or no - you also have found yourself in a blind alley once or twice.

I have had the privilege to grow up on a farm. This has instilled in me a desire to grow flowers, berries, fruit - even on our small lot. I remember walking behind a 16 horsepower rotor-tiller, cutting down the weeds and softening the rich soil. When we bought the raspberry farm, raspberries had grown on the same land for forty years.

Recently I read “The Robe”, (1942) written by Lloyd C. Douglas. I had heard about the book for years, but never took the opportunity to read it. Finally, the time came. Here’s a synopsis of the story: A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe - a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity and is set against the vividly limned background of ancient Rome.

My first view of the Rocky Mountains was as a teenager. I was to spend a summer serving churches in the lower mainland as a student intern. After training in Toronto, I flew to meet my parents in Calgary and we drove to Vancouver. Anyone who has made the trip knows that you see the Rockies on the horizon from a distance and it takes forever to reach them! But the wait is worth it.

“Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts,  go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever!” Ps.48:12-14