I wear plaid. I'm a blogger.

It's my birthday. One of those magical birthdays that requires me to renew my license and registration. Naturally, I have known about this ahead of time for months. Equally naturally, I have put it off until today. So I'm driving home after renewing my license at the BMV today, dressed in formal attire, and driving Katie's car (both of which are unnecessary details). In my neighborhood there live a plethora of squirrels. I have always been in favor of letting the little curious creatures live as I think they are cute and relatively harmless. Harmless, that is, until they gnaw through your gutters and roof. Now we are sworn enemies of one another. As I pull onto my street I see a squirrel sitting in the middle of the road and right then and there I decide that I would like to run it over. Now, I'm not talking about speeding up or swerving drastically--certainly nothing dangerous--but if the little fella happened to be within a wheel length of the car I could just give ...

1 John 3:1 "See how great a love that the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are." We are in the thick of the holiday preparations and celebrations at the Read household and I get a chance to experience everything with a fresh set of eyes thanks to my kids. They are toted around with their eyes "all aglow" as they see for the first time a lit Christmas tree, a waving Santa, a holiday train display, and more. This truly is a wonderful season to be a kid, with all the stories and tales candy and lights...it's just plain fun! And so this has me thinking about what it means to be a child of God. If we are called God's children (mentioned 11 times in the NT) then what does it look like to act as God's child? I asked the staff at Parkside  what attributes we share with kids as God's children and got answers like: -children are dependent on their parents for everything at first -children are  created -they lov...

Have you ever put your foot in your mouth? No, I don't mean literally placed your foot into your open mouth. You probably haven't done that since you were 6 months old and learned that you were capable of controlling those things at the end of your body. I mean, have you ever said something and then immediately regretted having said it? I have. Numerous times. The most recent was while I was teaching an after school choir class to some inner-city kids. They were acting out and being intentionally hurtful to each other with their words and acting disrespectful and I had reached a boiling point. I was talking to one of the 5th grade boys trying to show him that he was in the wrong and get him to chill out and after one too many backlashes I firmly told him to "shut up." No sooner were the words out of my mouth then I was regretting having said it. Naturally the kids who heard me say it all piped in that I wasn't allowed to say that and said they were going to ...

I was reading through the book of John today and was struck by how much the Jews seemed to despise Jesus (see John 10:22-42 for an example). Here's why I think I'm so surprised by this: The Jews were familiar with the messianic prophecies in the Scriptures. They were under Roman rule which meant that they were unable to worship God in the ways they wanted to. They had to bow to Caesar and worship him so they were under religious oppression as well as political. And yet....when Jesus shows up on the scene, fulfills the prophecies and preaches that He is the Son of God, the people want to kill him. Why is that? The Pharisees and religious leaders were expecting a political leader to step up and deliver Israel from Roman oppression. Jesus was strangely fulfilling the prophecies and all signs pointed to Him to be the messiah, and yet Jesus preached a gospel of peace. He preached of a world where you pray for enemies. He preached of going the literal extra mile , of the Kingdom ...

Ephesians 1:5 says that we have been adopted into sonship with God through Jesus Christ. As we enter that sonship, we take on a new name: Christian. And we love to march around telling the world we are Christians and that we live with Christian principles and Christian morals and a Christian government and Christian families and on and on it goes. But have you ever wondered what it means--really means--to call yourself a Christian? To call yourself a Christian is to acknowledge that you have died to your own self and taken on a new name, the name of Christ. So what if, instead of calling ourselves Christians (an overused term which really has little by way of accurately labeling your belief system) we called ourselves CHRISTIAMS?* ChristIAm Think about it. Romans 8:11 says that "the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you", and if Christ is living in me and I bear his name and I have this same power living in me, then I can walk around claiming...

Have you ever made a photocopy of a photocopy and then realized how terrible the end result was? There was a day when copy machines had such bad dpi that every copy of a copy resulted in a poor final print. Modern copy machines provide a much clearer image the first time around that is capable of duplicating itself much more cleanly. And here's the big realization: there are buzzwords floating around churches and "feel good" circles that encourage you to multiply yourself--rub off on other people in such a way that you change them in a good way. However, I don't think that should be our end goal. We shouldn't be seeking to find ways to multiply ourselves but rather just to duplicate ourselves. I allude to this in an earlier blogpost about the effectiveness of always mentoring one person at a time. But the idea of duplication helps me to better understand why this is effective. You see, if you try to capture multiple images in one screenshot, invariably you wi...

How to tell if your child is related to you, in 5 easy steps: 1) Does he choose to eat half a banana in one bite, smashing it into the deepest pockets of his cheeks to allow for maximum food storage while he chews? He probably picked up on that trick after watching you eat an entire piece of cake in one bite. Sure, he might almost gag on it, but he seems to be proud of himself so you should be proud too. 2) Does he crave seconds of chocolate milk shortly after you poured the first big cup for him? While technically you both know that milk isn't refreshing, you guzzle it down because it tastes so good. And why not tink your glasses together to create a little "cheers" moment while you do so? This is America, after all. 3) Does he request to eat cereal for lunch? Yes, lunch is technically one of those savory meals of the day, but when it's dad-and-me time, why not indulge with a little honey bunches of oats for lunch? Now that's nutrition! 4) Does he opt to ...