What does it look like to be an apprentice of Jesus Christ in America? What does it look like to be a community of Jesus Christ apprentices in America?

Since Jesus Christ didn’t live in America, I look for Americans who live or lived like Jesus Christ.

History seems a good place to start. Yet in the American pantheon, we find mostly men of war.

The life and teaching of Jesus Christ is out of place among such men. The one who taught love for enemies, mercy for those who don’t deserve it, and peacemaking as the DNA of God’s children seems out of place among our American heroes.

And yet there is one man in the American pantheon who put the teaching of Jesus Christ into public practice. There is one man in the American pantheon whose “beloved community” resembles the kingdom of heaven.

That man is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In Dr. King’s time, the men who ruled America told us...

This is what it looks like for an overachiever to grow older and wiser.

Saturdays used to be for impossibly long to-do lists. I would sometimes spend an entire hour of a Saturday morning making a list of 20 - 30 projects or tasks to get done that day.

By early afternoon–when it became clear that I would not check off even a small fraction of my list–I would sink into depression and self-hatred.

For most of my life, then, I saw the great quest of my life as this: Be good enough and smart enough to get 20 - 30 projects or tasks done on one day. This was how I would measure the man that I am.

I believed my life was only as good as what I could get done.

And that’s how I remember most of my teens, 20s, and 30s.

Thank God for the maturity and wisdom of my 40s!

Yesterday (a Saturday), my to-do list had five items on it. It’s Sunday morning now and I can see that I only crossed off...

We’re doing New Year resolutions all wrong.

In the context of the New Year, the dictionary defines “resolution” as “the act of resolving or determining upon an action, course of action, method, procedure, etc.”

*The act of resolving.“

What is "resolve?”

The dictionary defines “resolve” as “to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine to (do something).”

In short, to make a resolution is to make up one’s mind.

So, a resolution is not quite setting a goal to lose 20 pounds.

Rather, it is a decision to change one’s mindset about one’s weight:

“I am resolved that food and vanity will no longer be my masters; I will master my appetite and my self-esteem. I will eat to live, not live to eat. I will enjoy the unconditional acceptance and love of my family and closest friends rather than obsessing over what strangers think of my appearance. I will cultivate inner beauty...

Recent science shows that our brain size limits the number of acquaintances and friendships we can handle at one time.

We can have a loose network of about 130 to 150 acquaintances–coworkers, Facebook friends, folks we see at church, professional contacts, schoolmates, etc.

When it comes to close family and friends, we can handle about five very close relationships and up to 15 fairly close relationships.

This applies whether you’re a billionaire or a panhandler, a beauty or butt-ugly, famous or obscure.

You can be famous, powerful, and rich, but that does not give you greater access to loving relationships with close family and friends. The quality and quantity of those relationships has nothing to do with fame or money or power. When it comes to relationships, every one of us has equal access and equal capacity.

Yet we often work so hard for fame, money, or power as if those...

Randall was a friend who lived two doors down in our college dorm. The night before we graduated from Harding University, we were riding around in his pickup truck. He was 21 and on his way to grad school at Kansas State University. His dream was to be an English professor.

On a family vacation a few weeks after our graduation, Randall drowned.

Just a few weeks before Randall and I graduated, we watched the mass shooting at Columbine High School on live TV from the student center. Fifteen high school students (including the two shooters) died in the school.

Cassie Bernall, 17, was shot execution-style. Her parents later wrote a book about her. I read it in almost one sitting. That an ordinary teenaged girl could go to an ordinary school on an ordinary day and die from a bullet at point blank range haunted me then. It haunts me still.

Thirteen years later, I’d confront the same...

Do you have a spare room in your house?

When we bought our house in 2012, we looked forward to having a third bedroom where we could offer guests a place to stay. At the time, I imagined our home as a place where dozens of out-of-town visitors would find hospitality and a quiet place to sleep.

This has not quite worked out the way I hoped.

Our spare room, in reality, is a dumping ground for all the extra stuff that doesn’t seem to belong anywhere else in the house.

The double bed we thought would always be ready for a tired visitor is now buried under assorted junk we tossed there. The closet where we thought guests would hang their clothes is stuffed to the top with our own odds and ends. The floor is covered with piles of stuff everywhere.

We’ve had a few close friends and relatives stay in the room over the last five years, but nowhere close to the variety of strangers and...

Last night, we got home after a ten-hour drive from my parents’ house in eastern Tennessee. We unloaded the car at around 11:30 p.m. and crashed into bed well after midnight.

When we awoke this morning, the scene was depressing as could be for a neat freak like me: The stuff we unloaded from the car stands in piles on the kitchen counters, living room floor, and table.

Or, I should say, in piles on top of the piles we left a week ago when we were rushing to get out of town on time. Tracy was wrapping gifts and left bags and boxes of gift-wrapping supplies in the dining room. The sink was piled up with dishes we quickly rinsed and left behind. Daniel’s toys cluttered the floor all over the house.

And everything is dirty. We didn’t have time to clean before we left. The bathrooms are looking crusty. The floors are looking crumby. Surfaces are looking dusty. The whole place smells...

About two years ago, I began keeping a daily journal. Every morning before the sun comes up, I fill one page with thanksgiving. Whatever gratitude brings to mind, I write it on the page in no order.

Going back through several hundred pages of thanksgiving, it is interesting how many times “fresh, hot coffee” shows up.

It’s not a surprise. The first thing I do when I come downstairs in the morning is grind some coffee and make a fresh cup. I’m drinking it from one of my favorite mugs as I write in my journal.

I’ll tell you what, though: Gratitude journal or no gratitude journal, a fresh cup of coffee at 5:30 a.m. is the champagne of morning time.

The first sip that passes my lips makes me glad to be awake.

It’s a little thing, but after two years of practicing thanksgiving, the little things are the ones that make life good in a big way.

Eating cereal with my five-year old.

...

In my teens, 20s, and 30s–most of my life!–I thought that only a “loser” would stay home.

By “loser” I meant me…staying home.

By “staying home” I meant…

…not being out with attractive, luminary, well-connected people on a Friday or Saturday night…

…struggling to build a home-based business rather than get a “real job”…

…not going out to the most interesting places around town so I can tell everyone else I went there.

“No,” I thought. “Only a loser would be at home on a Friday or Saturday night. I don’t want to be a loser.”

Then along came Tracy and Daniel and our home.

Now, I cannot imagine anyone more attractive, luminary, or worth knowing than my wife and son.

I can’t imagine missing so many special moments that I now enjoy with my little boy because I’m a work-from-home dad.

I cannot imagine a more interesting place than my own home when my family is gathered there.

I...

“Tracy loves. Tracy loves.”

That’s what Marilyn said one summer eleven years ago. Tracy and I were just coworkers then, but we were coworkers becoming fast friends.

By autumn, the leaves were falling and so was I.

On October 5, 2006, Tracy agreed to go on a “real” date. Two years later, on October 3, 2008, we came together in marriage to form a new family.

“Tracy loves. Tracy loves.”

Marilyn knew the facts at the time, but she didn’t know that Tracy’s love is actually something like a miracle, a superpower.

For nine years, I’ve seen “Tracy loves” put to the test again and again.

At least a million of those tests came from me.

But Tracy loves still.

That’s what she does. That’s what she is.

Her love is so unexpected that it seems to be channeling through her from some place beyond the edge of the universe. A divine love from a divine somewhere coming into our world...