Category: Life reflections

The Cowboy’s Coming

You have not heard from me for months. There’s a reason for that. A couple of reasons, actually.

I’ve been pastoring. And grandfathering. And marketing that modern cowboy novel—Someplace North, Someplace Wild—that launched this web page.

I believe we’re in the final stretch. Four publishers have requested the entire manuscript. Somebody’s going to say yes.

So stand by for an update in about a month.

Meantime, this lady and I will celebrate our 50th anniversary June 8! Here’s a picture we took recently on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, at the very spot I sealed our engagement with a diamond ring.

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Of Cancer, Pharaohs and Horses

This page has laid dormant too long; it’s time to wake a sleeping blog. And a new adventure is the perfect moment to do just that.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled for the first of 38 radiation treatments for prostate cancer left over after I surrendered the gland itself to a surgeon in July 2020.

Two years ago a blood test reported my PSA number at 24, six times greater than the upper limit of 4. As I recall, my wife and I stopped whatever we were doing and looked at each other. For maybe a half hour, a mist of fear washed over me. When I quickly reviewed my PSA history, it showed two years without testing. Now we knew it was aggressively growing during that time. (Brothers, get a PSA reading every year!)

My fear morphed to a few minutes of anger toward my doctor. But the anger dissolved when I remembered my theology: God holds us responsible to care for our bodies, never mind the doctor. A 66-year-old man of average intelligence has no excuse to allow two years to pass without such an important test.

As for the fear, it was soon gone as well. I asked myself, what’s the worst that could happen? An early promotion to glory! My family would miss me, especially my bride, but they would survive and move on. For the time being, death is part of life … but a day is coming!

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Stuck in 2020

My wife and I recently read Rocket Men: the daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man’s first journey to the moon, by Robert Kurson.  (Thanks, Mark Moffat, for the tip!)

Page 282 describes the astronauts, on their way home, crossing the point “at which Earth’s gravity [becomes] dominant.” From there the spaceship gradually accelerated until, days later, entering the earth’s atmosphere, they topped out at 24,500 mph.

“But that was a long way off,” Kurson writes, “and for now, when the crew looked out their windows, with no landmarks in sight, they seemed to be standing still.” That was an illusion. They were not motionless, they were flying at 5,720 mph.

“A good metaphor for life,” my wife said when she came to that page. Sometimes it feels like you’re stuck when you’re actually flying. Maybe you’ve had seasons like that.

Baby bird from America

In 1993, I spent two weeks in Ukraine teaching Cross-Cultural Communication of the Gospel at Donetsk Christian University, invited by Dr. Ray Prigodich, DCU academic dean at the time. It was my first overseas trip—after fifteen years as a missionary long overdue—and full of wonder and worry: the wonder of a foreign culture, the worry of a new assignment. My classroom skills were limited, my experience even less.

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The Fisherman on the Aisle Was Listening

Last July I wrote about a most remarkable experience in the Seoul, Korea airport. This post relates a different encounter in another airport, Sea-Tac, in Washington state.

In the 90s I traveled between Oregon and Alaska two or three times a year. Almost always I took the (cheaper) late flight from PDX to Anchorage, arriving about 1 a.m. And, on the way home, the red-eye.

One of those 2 a.m. departures from Anchorage found me by the window, and, in the middle seat next to me, a young man, a little rough around the edges. Unwashed, I think. I figured he was a commuting fishermen. Lots of commercial fishers traveled between Alaska and the Pacific NW.

He seemed grumpy (turned out he wasn’t feeling well) and I was tired. I didn’t want to talk. But I felt compelled (later I knew it wasn’t just an intrinsic compulsion; Someone was compelling me) to start a conversation in an effort to share the gospel. I could never have imagined what the Holy Spirit was up to, but I was about to find out.

He freely shared about his life. Yes, he was a fisherman. The only other thing I remember: his uncle was a preacher. That provided a natural segue to my testimony, and the gospel. He listened politely, interacted a little, but wasn’t interested. I tried to be clear that his eternal destiny was at stake, and what it meant to trust Christ. I asked him if he wouldn’t like to do that right there. But he wasn’t ready.

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