Pilgrim Footsteps

It was a normal late Sunday morning in Guatemala. A grandmother took two of her granddaughters to visit relatives in San Miguel los Lotes. A father's motorcycle sat in the repair shop. The rest of his family was at home with him, his wife and boys. In villages all along the mountainside, families were enjoying yet another day, making tortillas for lunch, playing outside with colorful plastic balls, and laughing with family members. An explosion of fire from Fuego's mouth turned a normal day into a nightmare that sent panicked villagers running. While everyone was running away, one man was running closer and closer, desperate to find his daughters. It's as if I am listening to someone describe the plot of a movie they saw, but as I feel the sweat beading on my skin from the baked air within the house of corrugated tin, I feel the heavy reality of a father's incredible story. Seeing two girls laying on their beds, special socks on their feet and one with dres...

I realized something that, really, we should all realize a lot earlier than I did (which was just the other weekend): True laughter is not from something being funny, it is from feeling joy.  It seems like a pretty simple concept, but I really think that many people miss the point.  I mean, think of it this way - everyone who goes to a third-world country sees destitute and starving children who laugh and giggle often and wonder why they are laughing.  Because they have joy!  They do not need "funny" or things to make them happy, they have joy!  And yet in America and other world powers have everything they need to make them "happy" and hanging out and joking makes things "funny," but what about true joy?  Happiness and joy are most definitely not the same thing. True joy makes you laugh.  True joy is a tangible taste on your tongue.  True joy makes you want to dance and sing.  True joy comes from God.   So, I started right i...

We as Christians are consumed with safety.  My question is, why?  We aren't supposed to be "safe."  Jesus told us that we should expect the world to hate us, because they first hated him (John 15:18). Our parents, our  churches , our other  relatives , all want us to do nice, safe mission trips and then settle down for a nice, safe life.  I have no idea why.  Jesus went from place to  place  teaching and almost got stoned quite a few times.   The  Apostles traveled from place to place and were hungry, beaten, imprisoned, stoned,  shipwrecked ...the list goes on, and many were martyred.  So...tell me again why we need to always be safe instead of using our lives - which are no longer ours, but God's - to bring glory to His name? No really, I do understand.  All parents love their children - just as God loves us, I might add - and want the best for them, which to most does not  include  ha...

Hello, fellow pilgrim. You may wonder how you are a pilgrim; but aren't we all?  This world is not our true home; we have a Kingdom waiting for us in Heaven.  In Hebrews 11 we read about all the Old Testament heroes of the faith, such as Abraham, and how they were pilgrims.  Verses 9-10 say, "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Ephesians tells us that Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone of our foundation.  Don't you want to go to that city?  What a glorious city it will be, with no need for the sun, because there is where the Son dwells!  A few verses later in Hebrews 11:13-14, we read that "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were...