Archive for the ‘Living’ Category

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Neo = Renew

March 12, 2026

Apple just released a new laptop. You can get one choosing from among five cool colors for $700 or less. The laptop is called MacBook Neo.

Neo means something more than “new.” More like “renewal.” Think of stripping away accumulated baggage returning to the basics. Simplifying things. 

Writers and podcasters who follow Apple are in love with this stripped down, but still powerful, computer. One of my favorites, Om Malik, wrote a thoughtful piece.

The neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, remain among my favorite philosophers. They stripped several hundred years of accumulated gunk on Plato’s philosophy. The returned to the thinking that everything in the universe came from The One. They sound almost Christian without the theology.

Jesus announced the beginning of his ministry saying, “Change the direction of your life! The Kingdom of God is all around you, here, now.” I think you could look at that first word as a form of “neo.” Renew yourself. Strip away the accumulated gunk of the burdensome laws the Pharisees have loaded upon you. Step into God’s Kingdom. Or as we like to say, live a “with-God” life.

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Now What?

March 11, 2026

Some people worry that AI will put an end to writing. Maybe it will—for those who don’t think. Many of us, on the other hand, write to think.

I wrote yesterday to think through the horrible comment by a church leader somewhere up the road from me—Grace is for sinners; Laws are for Christians.

Yes, I am still shocked by that philosophy. One that would be hard to justify biblically. At least, from a New Testament perspective.

I’m still thinking about grace (and I wish the joke from Christmas Vacation would leave my memory). “Grace, she died years ago.”

Sorry for the digression.

There are other people who think that grace is like a vaccination (I guess they aren’t anti-vaxxers). One dose and you’re cured of the disease. Same as education for some.

As Paul guides our spiritual formation process in his Letter to the Romans, he devoted about a third of the text to discussing life after receiving grace. Read those last few chapters as a guide to living with Jesus after receiving your first big dose of grace.

After all, Matthew records Jesus’s teaching as “Change your life’s direction, for God’s Kingdom is right here.” (Usually rendered “Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand.”)

I think we forget the “change your life” part. Living under Grace (and not Laws like the Pharisees whom Jesus battled) doesn’t prevent us from ever sinning (we could wish) but it does enable us to live differently. And better.

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Live An Integrated Life

February 23, 2026

Jesus hated people whose words and actions were not integrated. These reveal hypocrisy. I’ve recently pondered some of the political leadership class who are going around preaching one message, yet their personal life is completely opposite.

We have seen far to many of the religious leadership class whose cup is burnished bright on the outside, yet the inside is coated with crud. (To paraphrase Jesus.)

Do not be like these. Strive to align your words and life with the teachings of Jesus around love. 

As one rabbi said, after the commands to love God and love one another, all else is just commentary.

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Posted in Attitude, Living, Love | Leave a Comment »

One Represents Many?

January 2, 2026

One media theme I’ve observed for decades that continues to generate smoke concerns acts by individual people.

You’ve seen it. You may have participated on social media. You may have been influenced. This is not an American thing. It’s a people thing.

One person does something—good or bad, but usually bad. People in media immediately extrapolate from the one to the many. Instead of this individual doing something, the reports make it seem that all people like that person are the same—gender, nationality, race, religion, age.

If you got caught doing something—bad or good—how representative would that be of people like you? Maybe you wish that it would reflect well on people like you.

Maybe 2026 will be the year where we truly represent what it means to be a Jesus-follower. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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Posted in Attitude, Living, Witness | Leave a Comment »

Stuck in the Middle

November 14, 2025

“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”—Stealers Wheel

That lyric speaks to me on so many levels.

For today, I’m thinking of the middle. Our middle. The place where the heart and lungs reside. Our core (not in the Pilates sense).

My meditation teacher has us exploring the middle. 

We had been exploring breath by focusing on the sensation at the upper lip. The rhythmic cooling caused by the breath.

Now it is the lungs with the rhythmic rise and fall, and the rhythm of the heart.

My exploration of the core led to realization of Jesus’s concern for the status of the heart. Not at an intellectual level, which tends to divide mind and body, but at the core of our being. It is from that core that our following lives. And from that following come the action verbs we learned from Isaiah yesterday:

  • Cease to do evil,
  • Learn to do good,
  • Seek justice,
  • Correct oppression,
  • Bring justice to the fatherless,
  • Plead the widow’s cause.

These are things pleasing to his sight. Just as Paul wrote in the concluding chapters of the Letter to the Romans. Life doesn’t stop with realization of grace—it begins. That is new life. And then we live according to the new heart.

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Four Useful Tips For Living a Full Life

October 8, 2025

I’ve written about these tips for a few years. Axios Finish Line recently published these in a succinct format. Check them out. Where are you on top of it? Where can you improve?

These four steps — all available for free — will help you thrive, personally and professionally:

🤖 AI yourself. Starting today, learn how to use ChatGPT, Grok or any free or premium LLM to optimize your personal obligations and professional work. AI will make you exponentially more efficient and more capable. Soon, AI inequality — the gap between proficient AI users and the rest — will be the defining characteristic of success vs. struggle at work, especially for those newly entering the workforce. Replace social media or gaming time with AI practice. It’s more fun and useful.

🧠 Bionicize your brain. Social media algorithms are controlling more and more of our brains, often pumping nonsense or anxiety into them. Few of us are powerful enough to resist the algorithmic addictiveness. But, if you unplug your brain from social media and fill it instead with high-quality information — available via podcasts, books, YouTube, Axios, Substack and more — you’ll flourish.

🥦 Optimize you. Almost every expert who studies any dimension of mental and physical health comes to the exact same conclusions. So listen to them. Eat real, healthy, protein-packed foods. Purge fake and ultra-processed garbage. Exercise daily, even if it’s just a walk. Lift some weights. Sleep 7+ hours. Make and keep real, human friendships. Minimize booze and screen time. Do all of this, all free, and you’ll be in the top 5% for setting yourself up to lengthen your healthspan.

😇 Be moral. Another free, easy, life-changing hack: Take the time to read, listen to, and think about values you want to live by. What are your personal red lines about how you treat yourself and others? That is your compass, your morality. Set it, or you’ll get lost. Read, pray, meditate, study those you admire. Form your own personal moral structure — then reinforce it, and lean on it when tough times hit.

Posted in Disciplines, Habits, Living | Leave a Comment »

Change Your Behavior

September 25, 2025

You can study scripture as diligently as possible, but if it doesn’t change your behavior, then you have wasted your time.

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New Life in Christ, Spiritual Formation Part 6

September 5, 2025

What happens after God declares you righteous? 

Several people in a Bible study class I led were fixated on “the decision.” Just say you believe in Jesus, and that’s it. 

Me, being me, asked, “What comes next?”

Blank stares greeted my question.

Paul answers that question specifically in this letter in chapters 12-15:13. Paul lays out a story or picture of what someone living in grace acts like.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

John Wesley thought on these things. He described this as a manifestation of living in God’s grace.

Sanctifying Grace – This grace works in believers after justification to gradually transform them into the likeness of Christ. Wesley emphasized that this is an ongoing process of spiritual growth and moral purification that continues throughout the Christian life.

Let us think on this outline. Think about how much of it sounds like Jesus. I am amazed at how much Paul writes that sounds just like Jesus.

  • Living sacrifice
  • Genuine love
  • Hate evil
  • Love one another, etc.
  • Subject to authorities
  • Love your neighbor
  • Don’t judge
  • Don’t make another stumble
  • Please others before yourself
  • Jews & Gentiles (again)

Reading these thoughts periodically will refresh us and restore us to a proper way of life. We can try living in the spirit.

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Finding Your Rhythm

February 4, 2025

[After some experimenting and searching for a good tool, I began writing to the web—blogging—in December 2003. I started this blog in 2012 initially as a church project. Between the two, I’ve now posted 7,000 articles.]

I was perhaps 7 or maybe 8 when dad took me in a car to the house of a guy who had been a percussionist with the Air Force Band. I became a percussionist.

With percussion, it’s all about rhythm.

Perhaps our lifestyle has a rhythm. Our body definitely has a rhythm. Can you feel when yours is out of rhythm? I certainly can.

Same with my daily life. Meditating, writing, working out, eating, reading, socializing. I created a rhythm and need that rhythm so that all remains in sync.

When life circumstances intervene, the best actions we can take is to grab hold of our rhythms and try to return to them.

Have you thought about the rhythms of your life? Daily, weekly, monthly? Do they need tweaking? Perhaps a total makeover?

Each stage of life has its own rhythm. Have you adjusted your rhythms to your new circumstances?

The beat goes on—Sonny and Cher.

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I Haven’t Learned That Yet

January 23, 2025

I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working, by Shauna Niequist.

How does one deal with the crash and burn of a famous father’s career (dragging down theirs)j along with the body beginning to act in strange and mysterious ways? Add a physical move to a completely different environment and way of life.

Shauna Niequist (NEE-kwist) blends fifty vignettes into a book that explores how she coped with the grief of sudden upheaval of life.

This is an excellent book club read for those groups not too timid to discuss dealing with painful real life.

Maybe you or someone you know currently deals with some shock of life and the resultant emotions and physical reactions. Don’t offer advice or ignore them. Buy this book and simply hand it to them. It would be like giving them a friend to walk along with them on the journey.

But the writing contains neither hopeless nor despair.

Oh, how do you deal with it? One day at a time. Seek out some joy—walking, cooking, gathering with friends over food and wine and conversation. Find a good therapist. In a weird way, it’s a celebration of life over pain.

Posted in Compassion, Faith, Friends, Living | Leave a Comment »

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