My father died on March 20. He was the oldest of four and, in our family, the last of his generation. My brothers, sister, and I are now the ones responsible to continue the legacy of faith we received from our forebears. I pray that we have the wisdom to do so with courage and compassion…. MORE

I’ve heard the assertion several times, “Since God instructed us to not worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34), it violates His will to plan for retirement.”

Can this be? … MORE

The return address read “Internal Revenue Service.”

Oh, no. What does that mean?

I opened the envelope to read the summons. My wife and I were invited to meet with an IRS representative to discuss a tax return filed two years earlier. We were being audited… MORE

O LORD, you have given me a two-year-old who knows everything I do.
He knows when I sit and when I rise;
He perceives my thoughts of escape from afar.
He discerns my going out and my lying down;
Nothing eludes his scrutiny.
He chooses the topic of conversation
and tells me when my response is incorrect.
He refuses me a chair at the dinner table.
He lays his oily hand upon my clean shirt.
Such an existence overwhelms me
and pushes me to the brink of sanity.
Where can I go from his constant chatter?
Where can I flee from his presence?
If I sit at the computer, he is there.
If I take a shower, suddenly he is there.
If I wake from a nap, I find him staring at me.
If I work in the garage, he finds me;
Even there I hear, “Hi, Papa.
What do-ning, Papa?”
If I say, “Surely bedtime will bring quiet
and the night will blanket the house in silence,”
even slumber will not muffle his cries;
the night will amplify his voice
while the world lies still with sleep.

But you, O LORD, created this two-year-old;
You knit him together in my daughter’s womb.
I praise you because he is fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
His frame was not hidden from you
when he was made in the secret place.
When he was woven together in the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw his unformed body.
All the days ordained for him,
even the days in the NICU,
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious are your thoughts for this two-year-old, O God!
How vast the sum of them!
Were this Papa to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
Protect him from the wicked, O God!
Keep the bloodthirsty at bay!
May your goodness and mercy go with him
all the days of his life,
And may we all dwell in your house forever,
where there are no tears,
where there is no night.
O LORD, the God of two-year-olds and Papas,
how great is your grace and love.
~Keith Schwanz

The full-color graphic on the front page of the Kansas City Star was nothing like I expected for a Thanksgiving Day (2009). A tiny, token cartoon turkey sat on the top of the narrow left column. In contrast, a large graphic splattered two-thirds of the front page: a spherical depiction of the northern hemisphere of the earth with the middle part of the earth crumbling and cascading into the southern hemisphere which took on the shape of a box. “What just happened?” the article began. “The first decade of the 2000s—a decade that nobody can agree what to call, but ‘uh-ohs’ has been suggested—is nearing its close. Expectations of 10 years ago have been blown apart, more than once, and re-assembled” … MORE

We sometimes hear the call to do away with the Covenant of Christian Conduct in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene. After this discussion I wonder if the real issue here is that we no longer engage missionally in ways that help the Covenant statements make sense. We don’t see the rationale, for example, of the statement concerning total abstinence of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or gambling because we are not sharing life with those struggling with addiction. The response to questions about the validity of a Covenant statement or lifestyle issue, then, would be missional engagement, not merely discussion or debate. Or maybe it needs to be missional engagement, then discussion.

Our eagerness to serve masked our lack of experience and know-how. Here we were—ten members of a Work & Witness team in a foreign land with the responsibility to set about 2,400 square feet of porcelain floor tile. After a quick training session, a couple of guys on the team set up the cutting station. The rest of us divided into work groups and began laying out the plan for each of the rooms. We quickly discovered the rooms were not square—not even one corner formed a 90-degree angle. What amounted to a small variation the length of a 12-inch tile could be more than an inch at the other end of the room. We saw up close the fact that small things can make a big difference… MORE

I stood in the exhibit hall at the 2009 General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in Orlando. As I gazed across the large room, I heard someone say, “Hello, partner.” I turned to see my friend, Francisco Cardona, from Guadalajara, Mexico. We embraced, glad to be together again… MORE

Tooth Fairy; Christmas Gift for Sister

Summer; Vacation in Alabama; Joke

Trip to Portland; Nysha’s Dogs; Lessons at Church

Joke; Mother’s Day Gift; Money for Children in Africa

Crafts; Joke

For months, the financial crisis has dominated the news. Pundits speculate on the bankruptcies of automakers and the ripple effect it may have on the economy. City officials look closely at foreclosure rates in their neighborhoods, calculate the shock on city budgets and services, and assess the impact on perceptions of livability. Some people wake up on Saturday to discover their bank failed on Friday and the federal government has brokered a peaceful takeover by a solvent bank… MORE