A few summers ago, Claudia and I along with a few friends drove up to Tombstone Pass, parked and hiked the trail to the Iron Mountain lookout tower. Beautiful at every turn, the trail first goes down through a cedar forest then up through at least three eco-zones until it emerges onto a bald summit with glorious views.

Back earlier this summer, as the rain slashed against our windows and the lightning boomed nearby, Claudia and I settled in on the couch, warm and dry, to do some Netflix therapy. We watched a Rom-Com called Letters to Juliet where the predictable story arc unspooled. The characters and slow development of the tale made it an enjoyable diversion.

Woody Allen supposedly said, “Life is hard, then you die.”

When I turn one way, I see a younger friend ambushed by cancer. Looking the other direction and there is a family quietly grieving while standing in the ashes of their burned home.

Think back to how many times you didn’t know what to say.

• At the hospital bedside

• In the reception line at a funeral

• Over coffee as a friend shares a heartbreak

• After the wildfire burns down a house

In case you slept through the weekend just finished, last Sunday was Father’s Day.

On behalf of all the dads out there, thanks for the thoughts and tributes, even though most all will agree that our families are the best gift we could ever receive. Still, it’s nice to be noticed.

After OSU, I worked as a college intern at NWHills Church in Corvallis for three years. Commuting to Portland for seminary part time, holding down a job in a steak house and doing ministry at the church made for a full life. But being young and full of fuel we ran with our hair on fire and thought nothing of it.

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.