toddcast

I don’t like being sick, but it might be even more difficult to see your child sick. You try to comfort them and help them heal, but there’s only so much you can do. There have been times when I would say to my child that if it were possible I would trade places with them. And it’s true. If you’re a parent you’ve probably had the same sentiment. We would gladly bear their pain if we could spare them. But as much as we want to take their pain, we just can’t. One of the prominent pictures of God throughout the Bible is that of a father. God is our father providing for us, guiding us, teaching us to walk, and even disciplining us. And I get this sense that just as I hurt when my children hurt, he hurts when we hurt. And as a compassionate father he nurses us back to health. He helps us heal just like we do for our kids. And I imagine that God has those same feelings I have for my children when they are sick. He too would gladly bear our pain to spare us. Though I can’t do that for my chil...

Today I said goodbye to a good friend.  Just to be up front, no one died so this naturally doesn’t rise anywhere close to that level of sadness. But I did say goodbye to something that has been a part of my life for the last 21 years. My 2001 Honda Odyssey van has gone to the big car lot in the sky. I sadly confess that it took me more than two years to finally scrap the old vehicle, but today was the day, and it was just as hard as I thought it would be. It was towed from the curb outside my house and left in a sad scrap metal facility populated by similarly old cars and other objects that had outlived their usefulness. I’ll remember this moment as much as I remember the moment we signed the papers to take ownership of a pristine new vehicle that would serve our family of four. That family would grow to five and then to six, and oh the memories we made. Road trips to South Padre Island. Football games and band trips. Tennis matches all across north Texas. School drop offs and pick...