In his book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-boggingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the [drug store], but that’s just peanuts to space.” Space, the universe, is big.…

She about gave me a heart attack. I was changing lanes on 59 coming back from Victoria when Clariza suddenly let out a blood curdling scream. The kids jumped. I swerved. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “You about gave me a heart attack.” What I hadn’t noticed was the small roadster riding in my…

On February 18, 2002, Sports Illustrated placed a seventeen-year-old basketball player on its cover. The headline read in all capital letters: “The Chosen One.” The seventeen-year-old’s name was LeBron James. He was only a junior in high school at the time, but people were already calling him the next Michael Jordan. LeBron James was unlike…

I read a quote a while back which made me think of my dear wife. “Life is like a roller coaster; you have your ups and downs. Just be careful you don’t fall off.” You see, my wife Clariza does not like roller coasters. And honestly I’m still not sure if it’s because she doesn’t…

When I was in college, a family moved into our basement. The new math teacher and basketball coach at our Area Lutheran High School had just moved to our part of Michigan with his family. The problem is they were having a hard time selling their home in Minnesota. They couldn’t buy a new house…

The 1989 movie, Dead Poets Society, took place in the late 1950’s at the Welton Academy, an exclusive all-boys prep school in Vermont. At one point, one of the young men from the school, a guy named Charlie, published an anonymous letter in the school newspaper calling for the acceptance of girls at Welton. When…

On June 11, 1962, three prisoners, Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin and John Anglin, placed Paper Mache heads in their beds, bunched  up clothes and blankets to appear to be their bodies, and escaped from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island just off the coast of San Francisco, California. They escaped through an abandoned corridor and…

There is a famous urban legend which tells the story of a department store in Kyoto, Japan. According to the legend, a number of years ago, the store placed a rather unique display in its main window for Christmas. In the middle of the Christmas presents and decorations was a life-sized Santa Claus hanging from…

Every year our church has a Children’s Christmas Program on Christmas Eve. Have you ever been to a Children’s Christmas Program? They’re cute, right? This year we’re doing one called “A Barnyard Christmas.” All the children are the different animals in the stable, telling the Christmas story. The donkey tells how he carried Mary from…