Rick Nier...Woo!

I’ve been thinking about something. It all started with a paczki. What’s a paczki? You might know what one is, but didn’t realize it was spelled this way. It’s pronounced poonch-key. Still confused? It’s the delightful ‘doughnut on steroids’ that only comes out on Fat Tuesday. I look forward to it every year. I may be guilty of forgetting Valentine’s Day, but I don’t forget Fat Tuesday. I celebrate it. But celebrating Fat Tuesday was never meant to be a 1-day affair. Of course, Fat Tuesday comes right before Lent, the season that seems to have lost all meaning except for giving up stuff. What we see is many people celebrating Fat Tuesday without celebrating Lent. This is a problem. First of all, is it celebrating when you give something up? This may just be semantics, but every time I celebrate something, there seems to be dessert involved. We have cake for birthdays, candy for Halloween, pie for Thanksgiving and cookies for the end of each day. That last one may just be ...

I was once about 10 feet away from Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson, who had recently helped Michigan State win a National Championship. Never heard of them? That’s ok, it’s college basketball.From 1999. I got to meet the members of DC Talk backstage after a concert. Never heard of them? That hurts a little, since they are a favorite band of mine that is no longer together, but I understand. Then there was this time I was in the same room as Mel Gibson. He was speaking about this new movie he had made. It was about some guy named Jesus. Wait, you’ve heard of him? Or do you mean Him? Ah, Jesus. You may have heard of Mel Gibson as well, but if you’re like me, being in the same room did not change my life much...or at all. Neither did meeting DC Talk or seeing some basketball players. But the same cannot be said for those who met Jesus. People who met Jesus never forgot the experience. If they were blind, they went away with sight. If they were deaf, then all of the sudden...

It hadn't happened in awhile, but I should have been better prepared. My wife asked for my help rearranging furniture. It hadn't happened for awhile because there is really only one way our living room can be set up. Unless of course someone wanted the furniture to point away from the television, but as long as March Madness and college basketball still exist, that would be dumb. Then we received some carpet for our basement, making it a bit more livable down there. That meant the furniture which had been in a youth-group style circle now needed to be rearranged. I don't know how it works in your house, but my wife and I have 5 phases for moving furniture in our home. #1 She asks for my opinion and help. #2 She shoots down my logical ideas. #3 I stop offering opinions and just become the guy moving chairs. #4 I offer to draw a diagram of the room and furniture, which would be lighter than the actual furniture. #5 I go back to moving furniture. It's not that Jennifer doe...

In a move that has dead pastors rolling in their graves and live pastors shaking their heads, Moses shocked a nation. This is a section in Scripture that your pastor doesn't ever want you to read. In fact, if I suddenly disappear after this post is published, somebody come looking for me. Because I'm going to tell you anyway. There was once a time when Moses decided not to take more offering from the people of Israel. WHAT!?! I know. I hope you were sitting down. It was wrong of me not to ask that ahead of time. (Somebody get that senior pastor an oxygen tank. He doesn't look well.) You can't make stuff like this up. I've heard senior pastors mention in a circle of other pastors that they considered not taking an offering. Then they pause for effect and all the other pastors start laughing. What's next, Pastor? Are you not going to preach a 32-point sermon either? Go ahead, look it up. Exodus 36:1-7. It's all there in black and white. But why? Why would Mose...

There should be awards for packing ability. Like when a man can pack enough for a two week trip in half the space that a woman would use for the same trip. Or when close friends can exchange as much information in a knowing glance as teens can in a week of texting back and forth. Or when Thomas Jay Oord fills 157 pages with reams of insight in his book The Nature of Love: A Theology . Thomas uses surgeon-like precision when he tells us exactly what he wants to do and then does so in this book. After an introduction of ideas and direction he provides us his definition of love. To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic/empathetic response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. His goal is to dissect and take the best parts of love theologians from the past, of whom he says there have not been nearly enough. He wants to see Love returned to its rightful place of honor as THE core attribute of God. He begins by tackling love theologian Anders Nygren, (not literally...it...

Without really talking about it, I've done my first ever series on my blog. I know it all seems to be quite aimless and drifting with a few cute stories of children and my long-standing insignificance. I guess it is that. However, if I had to choose something to create a series around first, I'm glad it was prayer. I didn't actually choose it. It all started because of some ideas I had about Pharaoh . Then it got me thinking some more. I revealed those thoughts here , here and here . The reason I like it being about prayer is that I am not an expert on prayer. I don't know if anyone actually can be an expert on prayer, but if there is an expert, it's not me. In fact, most of my lessons about prayer come from actually feeling guilty that I don't pray enough. I don't keep my insignificant role in view nearly enough. If I did, I would pray more. If I wasn't so focused on my own needs, I would be praying more. It's simple, really. I focus on myself. I ...

I'm Type-A. I've only recently come to accept that, even though people have been calling me that for a while. For awhile I assumed that the 'A' in Type-A stood for Awesome. So I was pretty stoked when people would gawk at me and ask me if I realized how Type-A I was. I'd puff out my chest, pause for dramatic effect, then humbly respond, 'That's what they tell me." But then I found out that's not what the 'A' stands for. (By the way, it also doesn't stand for arrogant, although I've been accused of that as well.) Type-A is for people who like order. While my life does not always glow with nuclear levels of organization, I do enjoy having a list to check off each day. I hit the general areas of order pretty well. My movies and music are all stored in alphabetical order. The books in my office are arranged topically. Even my strategy for keeping clothing neat and folded has an order to it. But what I have come to realize is that as much...

Driving to school one day, I had to move into the opposite lane of a 2-lane road. A truck was coming from the opposite way but it was easily a football field away. After safely making it back into my own lane, my daughter, ever the drama queen, cried out, 'Whew, God saved us again!' My immediate reaction was, 'I'm not sure I needed God on that one.' Fortunately I said it only to myself. Otherwise, one the preacher's kids in the back were sure to give me a 3-point sermon on how we need God for everything. Which is true. And which I should have remembered. The Bible tells us a story of a business man, and a successful one at that. He worked hard and he saved. Then he saved some more. In fact, he saved so much that there came a day when he stopped saving. He stepped back, breathed a sigh of relief and patted himself on the back. What happened next was not the thing of romantic comedies. No guy would be kissing a girl in the rain. No girl would come back and choose ...

Growing up, I did not know very much about the financial situation of my parents. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. Everything I knew can be summed up by what they told me about money: 'We don't have any.' Clearly this wasn't true. They weren't keeping things from me, but whether it was Christmas-time or vacation time, expectations were balanced with the idea that we had enough for what was needed, but maybe not everything that was wanted. If you're getting the idea that I went to school in cereal box shoes or that meals consisted of small bowls of porridge, you've gone a bit too far. I had everthing (and more) that I ever needed. Plus, as a teenager, my Mom was always magically able to make a $20 bill appear when I asked for some cash...although I still don't know if my Dad was aware of my Mom's ability. But I became quite confident that if I asked Mom, she would be like an ATM machine. Fast forward almost 20 years and I am wondering ...

Last year I was on a Bible reading plan that would take just 1 year. Many days had me zooming through four and five chapters at a time. It was a great read. But this year I've started a new plan. To say it is a tad slower than last year would be like saying that Katy Perry has skewed just slightly off the path her parents planned for her. Three months into this year I am in the middle of Exodus. I'm not a math whiz, but 1 book of the Bible each month has me finishing in about 2016. (Though I could probably crush some of those Minor Prophets in less than a month.) One positive from all this is that I am paying more attention to smaller details. Recently I breezed through the 10 Plagues on Egypt. In Exodus 8, frogs have overtaken the land. Clearly there were no French chefs in the land, because no one seemed to think this was a good thing. But a couple of things stand out in this story. First of all, why did the Egyptian magicians make more frogs? If they wanted to show their pow...

The first time I heard the phrase, 'Mickey D's Steakhouse', I was in the 7th grade. Our band teacher was taking us through a school-wide survey on dating. I'm not sure what a band teacher would know about dating, but I knew even less, so who was I to judge? The survey was all about what we would do on a date, something I had plenty of expertise in when I was in the 7th grade. And by 'plenty' I mean 'none' and by 'expertise' I mean that I was socially further from getting a date than Pluto was from the Sun. One of the questions asked where we'd take a first date. One of the options was Mickey D's Steakhouse. I hadn't remembered seeing that restaurant in town, but I thought, 'Hmmm, a steakhouse. That'd probably be nice.' Check. I refer you back to the amount of expertise I had in this area. That would be less than none. I don't remember any of the other questions, due in large part to the fact that I was still trying to ...