Thank you for reading my website and blog. Now it's time for you to show me some love! Go ahead and make a comment or two on my blog posts. I wrote them just for you! Let me know you are reading, but remember what your mother told you: if you can't say something nice then don't say anything at all. Blessings!
To my parents who took me to the mountains,
To my wife who allows me to return to them,
To my friends who endured me talking constantly about them,
To my junior high Sunday school teacher who took me backpacking,
To my Lord Jesus Christ who saved me from myself and gave me abundant life,
-Thank You
"The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word. He is evil in the imagination of his heart and when he looks in the mirror what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, and slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn't believe them or doesn't want them or just doesn't care. In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Zacchaeus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. Altogether they are the truth." Frederic Buechner: Telling the Truth-The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.
"The quality of the astronaut corps is reflected in the fact that every time NASA says it's seeking twenty-five new astronauts, some three thousand candidates apply. Those selected for training are the best. Those selected for flight crews are the best of the best. The astronauts are a national resource and it was absolutely terrific to be back in that kind of atmosphere again, free of pettiness and filled with purpose." John GlenI love that phrase: "free of pettiness and filled with purpose." In my ministry I have quoted it often to the people I work with to remind us that we are working for a purpose...not a paycheck...not the weekend...not to impress others. So often it is pettiness that steals our time, saps our energy, robs our joy, and distracts us from the true focus of our life. In the past, I have found hiking to be helpful in focusing my heart and mind on the important things in life--like how to keep snickers candy bars from melting in the desert heat. Ok, that might not be so important, but you get the idea. What is your purpose? Rise above the pettiness and pursue it with passion.
"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things." Philippians 3:12-15
“The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.” -Elisabeth Elliot
"There is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." George Leigh Mallory
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| George Mallory is in the back row, second from the left. |
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28For years we have quoted this verse to make ourselves feel better when things don't seem to be going our way: Our English translations of this verse suggest that God is working behind the scenes, much like the wizard behind the curtain, to make sure the circumstances of our lives somehow end up making sense to us. Our role in the process ends up being passive-we wait and trust God for the good things he promised. It's all true of course; God is good, God is in control, and we must trust Him when things don't make sense. But I believe this verse has a more important message for us.
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| Robert Farrar Capon |
"Our pride drives us to establish our own righteousness. We strive all our life to see ourselves as keepers of rules we cannot keep, as loyal subjects of laws under which we can only be judged outlaws. Yet so deep is our need to derive our identity from our own self-respect – so profound our conviction that unless we watch our step, the watchbird will take away our name – that we will spend a lifetime trying to do the impossible rather than, for even one carefree minute, consent to having it done for us by someone else." Robert Farrar CaponI know this is not a PCT/hiking post, but if you are curious about this specific PCT thru-hiker, you need to know this. One of my favorite authors is Robert Farrar Capon. He passed away in September of 2013, at the age of 88. He wrote 27 books, most of which are focused on theology and the theme of grace, but his other passion was cooking and he wrote several cook books as well. I was introduced to Capon in college and immediately fell in love with his writing. It was his book on the outrage of God's grace that forced me to see that I had not truly experienced God's grace and that most of my life I had been living on the bus fumes of religion and my own righteousness rather than in the pure air of God's grace and the freedom it offers. Just getting the book is a story in itself, and as soon as it arrived, I began reading. After finishing it the first time I was angry...how can he say that? How can he make it sound so easy-so cheap? The second time I read it I was scared...what if he's right? What if God really is that in love with us? And after reading it a third time, in less than a month, I remember waking my wife up in the middle of the night, in our first year of marriage, and with tears in my eyes telling her: "God loves me! And it's even better than that. He likes me too! He doesn't just love me because He has to; He likes me and has invited me to the party." GOD loves me. God LOVES me. God loves ME!
"The life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed and to live in relationship with that person, whether we achieve or not. If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else rising like a tide in the ruins of our death.” Robert Farrar CaponThat someone else is Jesus. Just say His name. He is there and He is listening.
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| Cowboy Camping on the PCT |
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| Click image to view original |
