Last week I sold a bike on Marketplace.

After a few days with little interest, I lowered the price a bit and started to get action. A guy I’ll call Jeff was the only one who messaged me and asked to come see it, so we set a time that afternoon.

The last two weeks we looked at two questions God asked among the hundreds posed in the bible. And in each we discovered the point was for revelation rather than God needing information.

Adam and Eve got exposed to their leaving home and choosing independence when God asked Where are you?

Last week I wondered about God asking questions and mused that since he is omniscient, his asking has nothing to do with information and everything to do with revelation.

Every question God asks prompts listeners to understand a bit more of who he is, and who we are, and who we are in light of him.

Ours is a God who asks questions.

And when you pause long enough to think about that, it seems strange that he does. After all, he’s God. To get even a human-sized understanding of who he is we take concepts we know and slap “omni” in front of the term.

OK, let’s take a stroll through a small sample of life these days as we know it…

Crazy local and larger politics. Days fly and nights drag. Iran. Traffic. National debt. Personal disappointments. Social dysfunction. Ukraine. Congressional division. Gas prices. Shootings. Immigration. Kids these days.

It dawned on me recently that I’ve been at this weekly email thing for over six years. It started in early COVID days to keep contact with a few folks from church and morphed into whatever this is. Claudia graciously prints them out and we have them in a binder for no apparent reason, so the other day I pulled it off the shelf and scanned some of the entries.

Riding my bike around Bend to run errands, visit, and just doing life, I see so much more than when in my truck. I enjoy looking at and into the cars that pass and wondering about the driver. Where are they off to?

While cruising around Substack recently, I came across a blog post that included the story repeated below. It’s worth the read.

I witnessed something at a coffee shop. Teenager working register. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen. New uniform, still stiff.

Fifty years ago I was on the backside of squeezing four years into five at the Mother of All Universities, Oregon State. Along the way I developed friendships with a number of dudes who enjoyed the same stuff, had similar goals and made me better for being around them. We were young and full of life.

There sure seems to be a bumper crop of evil in the world these days. Perhaps one result of technology’s instant feed of all things everywhere is that the outlook looks worse than ever and that everything lies in shadow, or maybe we really are devolving worldwide…I don’t know.

Once again we stand almost midweek in Holy Week, bracketed by Palm Sunday and Easter.

Each day of that week was packed with memorable events and like a river picking up speed toward a set of falls, the pace quickened with each passing day.

When I’m not otherwise occupied solving the world’s problems, I enjoy reading or listening to novels.

Mostly I’m waist-deep in murder-mysteries, spook and spy twisties, period thrillers and the like. One author I enjoy is Daniel Silva.

A simple stack of stones.

Doesn’t seem like much of anything special, but it would remain a touchstone of reminders for generations. After 40 years of wandering, a new generation of Jews finally crossed the Jordan River and began their quest to establish their home in the promised to them by God.

Teaching history in high school was not unlike bowling with the “bumpers” in the gutters.

Those bumpers kept me in the lane, provided boundaries (that I often kinda fudged) and helped prepare the students for the inevitable exams, whether from the state or the AP board.

This past fall, Claudia and I went on vacation. Far from home and thrown together with mostly strangers and predominately British, part of the adventure was getting to know people and hearing their stories (I’m looking at you, Nigel and Sue!).

We are just about done with the first full week of Lent. Like me, many of you have not been raised in liturgical traditions that followed this yearly 40 day trek to Easter weekend, but were at least aware of the season. It remains a bit of an unexplored region for me, and I like looking into new ways to grow in faith.

Skipping a stone across Moses’ life reveals a 120 year roller-coaster ride.

• Born at a time of great danger and slavery but rescued by royalty

• Raised in privilege gaining great power and influence

His name is… well, let’s just call him Ralph.

He lives out in the dirt east of Redmond. Plenty young and apparently healthy, Ralph can’t seem to get out of his own way. He sports numerous tattoos, several piercings along with barrels in his ears and always welcomes us when we roll up in the Share Van.

If the weather isn’t too sketchy, I usually ride my bike around town rather than drive. Often I can get where I am going fast enough for me because of traffic, and the bonus is a little exercise and really seeing, feeling, smelling and being part of the world around me.