Garden 2016

I like gardening. Let me rephrase that: I like getting a garden started. Every year I plan, plow, fertilize, till, prepare rows/hills, plant seeds or plants, water, and cage what needs to be caged. But then June comes, and I'm away for a couple of weeks (to go camping and/or on vacation and/or I speak somewhere and/or go on a mission trip). It never fails. During that time away from home, the weeds take over. So much so that it would take an unreal amount of work to beat them back. And that's when the heat of summer has set in.

Let me go ahead and say it: I hate weeding in the heat of summer.

So this year I am taking extra pains (during the cool of spring) to prevent weeds. I'm laying down recycled, brown, craft paper and mulching on top of it. I'm hoping this will keep most of the weeds from growing at all, and the most persistent will be sparse enough to be dealt with relatively easily.

I've spent more money this year than ever. The paper has cost about $21 (the big roll of brown recycled type that painters and contractors use from Lowe's is the cheapest), and two yards of mulch cost $44. I also bought a couple of cheap bales of wheat straw for the watermelon and pumpkin area. Other than that I think I've only invested the cost of plants, seeds, and a bag of fertilizer.

I've learned over time what grows well in our garden, and perhaps more importantly, what we will and will not eat. And some stuff is simply cheaper and better from the store and produce stands like corn, okra, bell peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and carrots (in my opinion). I've grown all of those before, but it's just much easier/cheaper/better to let someone else grow them.

I've got poor, clay soil that doesn't drain well. Three or four years ago I brought in a big load of topsoil. I probably need to have a 4H agent or UT Ag come out and test the soil. I'll probably need to mix in some lime and organic compost, and perhaps some sand. The little fence is to keep the rabbits out! They almost wiped out my sweet potatoes two years ago, and I had to replant. Wascally wabbits!

Here's a video of the garden. Forgive the poor quality.

A Girl Named Duncan

My world changed forever on February 26, 1996 when this little blonde-headed, blue-eyed girl came into my life. She immediately stole my heart. We named her Duncan, after a missionary family who God used to impact me and many others in the world for Jesus. Yeah, I guess it's kind of a guy's name. We worried she might get some grief over it as she grew.


When she was little she loved tiny beautiful things: little flowers, rocks, shells, four-leaf-clovers (which she has always been able to find with ease).

Easter 2005

As she grew up, she was a walking paradox: tender yet tough, naïve yet clever, tomboy yet girly-girl, diligent and dedicated yet lazy and procrastinating, desiring to please yet sometimes a rascal. She was almost always happy but hated smiling when people watched.

I love her more than I knew I had the capacity to love, and more than words can express. Of course I could say the same about my love for Darla (in a different way), and for Drew and Dara. Drew will always be my only son and my firstborn. There's no comparison to that. Dara is my baby (she hates that moniker), we're a whole lot alike and we've always had a special relationship. But Duncan was my first daughter, and she's always been a daddy's girl.

Something happens to a dude when he has a daughter that is completely unexpected(it was for me, anyway). He sees the world differently. He gets softer and more emotional. He becomes much more protective. He falls in love again in a totally new way. Before Duncan was born, I remember wondering why men—strong men—would struggle and cry when they gave their daughters away on their wedding days. The moment I held Duncan in my arms—I was the first to hold her, by the way—I completely understood. And I dread that day.

Thirteen. Rough year for dad.

She's had more nicknames than both my other kids combined, including Punkin, Clover, Rascal, Dunky, DES, Nummy, and Princess. Honestly, I was scared to death when she turned 13 and entered the self-focused, boy-crazy, parents-are-dumb phase we call the "stupid stage" (which we all must pass through), and I was elated to watch her grow to stand strong for Jesus by age 16. In fact, of all my kids, I was more worried about how she'd turn out than the others!

She's a lot like her mother, and this is good. She loves making things look stylish, neat, and clean. She loves cooking and serving others. She has social grace and seems to know how to say just the right thing in all circumstances. She loves the beach. She is easy to be around and loves to make things fun, meaningful, memorable. She has great skin, tans easily, never stinks, and looks great in everything from sweats to swanky dresses. She'll study hard and make an A on a test only to forget everything she learned as soon as she turns it in. She has a sincere faith and is disciplined regarding reading her Bible and prayer. She's almost universally liked by others and is always trying to gently move people toward Jesus. You can count on her to do the right thing, even if she has to do it alone.


She's also got some of her dad's attributes. She's a bit of a daredevil. She's fight (as opposed to flight). She loves pondering theology and politics and loves to debate for the sake of determining truth (she's always been "my little theologian"). She loves classic cars—working on them, admiring them, driving them. She loves fishing and hunting. She's proud of her family and her name. She's passionate about missions (living up to her name). And she's not afraid to stand and speak the truth of the Bible in front of a crowd.

Oh, the stories I could tell.

She raised and saved money to go on a trip after her high school graduation. Not to the beach to party. She wanted to go to Indonesia, the country with the highest population of Muslims in the world and share Jesus. It was an incredible summer. God used her and grew her.

I could not be more proud.

I got to spend a weekend with the family around Easter. And the day afterward, I got to hang out with Duncan.

We went trout fishing at the Hiwassee. It was like a dream from which I did not want to awaken.

Duncan casting.

A beautiful river. Spring has begun.

She caught the only Brown Trout of the day and released it.
She really is a good fisherwoman. 

That's a stringer full. We caught 11 Rainbows
and Duncan caught a really nice Yellow Perch.
We turned the perch loose after this picture.

St. Patrick's Day. Don't Miss It!

Today is St. Patrick's Day. I've always liked it. It officially marks the end of winter and the coming of spring. As a kid, I loved that it was two days before my birthday (so I was already excited). It's also one of those fun little holidays with it's own little quirks (like, wear green or get pinched) and legends! But if we're not careful, we'll miss the great message about the real St. Patrick.

In short, the guy was a sincere and passionate Christian who allowed God to turn the tragic events of his teen years into an outpouring of the Gospel in a virtually unreached part of the world.

I've blogged about him before. There are other great articles about him. To state it briefly, here are just five quick lessons from his life:

1. God uses evils and hardship in our lives for his glory and our good. It happened with Joseph in the Bible. It happened with me. It happens with you. Patrick was kidnapped and enslaved in a hostile foreign country during what should have been the happiest years of his life. He was mistreated and he suffered. His trial made him earnestly seek the Christ he had exposure to in his childhood and he surrendered to Jesus. He finally escaped and found his way home. That much alone is a testimony of God's grace! But the story wasn't over. He refused to be a victim.

2. Courage is a great gift. There are so many ways Patrick was courageous. Besides enduring slavery and escaping home. He sensed God calling him BACK to that wretched, pagan island of Ireland. He took the initiative to train for ministry—and he WENT and boldly proclaimed the truth. He faced impossible odds, dangers, and death frequently, yet was never ashamed of the gospel.

3. Creativity is a powerful tool. Patrick may not have been a scholar, but he was creative in accomplishing the Great Commission. From using the simple, ubiquitous shamrock to make the Trinity understandable, to shifting tactics and going after the Irish chiefs in order to reach the masses, he was a strategic mastermind.

4. Persistence pays off. Patrick was no quitter. He just kept sharing, baptizing, and planting churches. Truth is, he proclaimed Christ in Ireland for about 30 years, saw over 100,000 conversions, and planted over 200 churches. Thousands of leaders were trained and sent into ministry. Many institutions he founded still exist today, almost 16 centuries later!

5. Social justice and the gospel are great partners. For understandable reasons, Patrick hated the institution of slavery. He fought against it and found success. But by no means did this fight deter him from communicating the good news—it propelled him in it. The two were symbiotic in making him such an influence whose legendary status is renown. It saddens me today that many champions of social justice have compromised the gospel, and many gospel-centered churches have ignored the poor and abused. Did not Jesus come to set captives free (both spiritually and temporally)? Of course the spiritual must take precedent. The truth is the gospel IS THE ANSWER to the problems that most plague mankind.

So don't buy the made up lore of ridding Ireland of snakes, green beer, and leprechauns. Know the real Patrick and ask God to make you more like him. Then you will be remembered for the right reasons and find great joy.

What's so good about Good Friday?

The Friday before Easter is what we call Good Friday. Twice today someone has asked me why it is called "Good" when it is the day we remember something as brutal as Christ's crucifixion. It just seems so, well, bad. I think all of my kids asked me the question at some point when they were younger, and I remember asking my mom the same thing when I was a kid. The answer she gave is about as good as it gets. It's what I told my kids and all who have asked me since:

Good Friday is the day Jesus--the only person who was truly good--died on the cross in our place, cleansing all our sin with his blood. Now when God looks at believers, he doesn't see sinners...he sees us as good!

That never left me. In fact, I think her simple explanation of the GOOD in Good Friday, helped me understand the Gospel as a child as much as just about anything else I can think of.

The historical/etymological answer isn't as easy. Here is a great article about that if you're interested. But my mom's answer reveals, at least to me, yet another evidence of God's providence--even in the "accidental" way we came to call it "Good Friday."

Blessings to all this Easter season! If you have not received Christ, you can be seen as good by God, too. Read 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 10:9-10.


Rembrandt's Jesus on the Cross, painted 1631.

A Man Called Patrick

A few years ago, I wrote a little article about the real St. Patrick, one of my favorite holiday heroes. Here it is.

When most people in our country think of St. Patrick’s Day, they think of wearing green, shamrocks, and leprechauns with pots of gold at the end of a rainbow. If you ask someone who St. Patrick really was, you will probably get answers that mention an old Irish saint chasing the snakes away from the “Emerald Isle.” The problem is none of this is true! The only vestiges of truth that remain popularly known are these: a beloved man named Patricius (we’ll call him by his better-known name, Patrick) died on March 17th in Ireland sometime between 465 and 493 A.D. (the year is disputed). But there is much more. Who is the real Patrick?

Imagine the horror of seeing your hometown destroyed and being taken captive by cruel raiders and sold as a slave to a foreign land. This is precisely what happened to 16-year-old Patrick, the son of a British Roman civil magistrate in west Britain around 430 AD.

In the fall 1998 edition of Christian History magazine, Mary Cagney describes his six-years of slavery as follows:

Patrick was sold to a cruel warrior chief, whose opponents' heads sat atop sharp poles around his palisade in Northern Ireland. While Patrick minded his master's pigs in the nearby hills, he lived like an animal himself, enduring long bouts of hunger and thirst. Worst of all, he was isolated from other human beings for months at a time. Early missionaries to Britain had left a legacy of Christianity that young Patrick was exposed to and took with him into captivity. He had been a nominal Christian to this point; he now turned to the Christian God of his fathers for comfort.

God had gotten this teenager’s attention. According to David L. Brown, Ph.D. in his 1999 article, The Real Patrick: Missionary to Ireland,

Patrick had ignored the Lord up to this point in his life. But things were different now, very different. He began to remember some things that his preacher grandfather had told him. The despair of slavery and the solitude of his occupation compelled him to remember his Christian upbringing and his need of the Lord. He writes in his confession, "I was about sixteen but did not know the true God, but in a strange land, the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes, and I was converted." Patrick came to know Christ as his personal Savior and was freed from his slavery to sin. Patrick grew in the Lord. "His devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ brought upon him a nickname, ‘Holy-Boy" from his fellow slaves. Through the years, he learned to pray whether he was working or resting." It is evident by his own testimony he learned to practice 1 Thessalonians 5:17 which says, Pray without ceasing. He says this in his Confession: "After I came to Ireland, every day I had to tend sheep, and many times a day I prayed. The Love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountains; I used to get up and pray before daylight, through snow, through frost, through rain, and I felt no harm, and there was no sloth in me…because the spirit within me was then fervent."

Later, Patrick even told the Lord that he would give his life to ministry if he ever regained his freedom. After serving his godless master faithfully, Patrick sensed that the time to make a break had come. He escaped and traveled 200 miles on foot over treacherous, unknown territory to the coast, and boarded a ship of traders headed for Gaul (modern France). When the Celtic mariners arrived, they were disappointed to only find devastation. Goths or Vandals had so decimated the land that no food or buyers of their goods were to be found in the once vibrant area. Here Patrick got his first recorded opportunity to share his newly revived faith with someone. Cagney, quoting Patrick’s autobiography, reports the conversation went something like this:

"

What have you to say for yourself, Christian?" the ship's captain taunted. "You boast that your God is all powerful. We're starving to death, and we may not survive to see another soul."

Patrick answered confidently. "Nothing is impossible to God. Turn to him and he will send us food for our journey."

At that moment, a herd of pigs appeared, "seeming to block our path." Though Patrick instantly became "well regarded in their eyes," his companions offered their new-found food in sacrifice to their pagan gods.

Patrick did not partake.

Historians believe that after training for ministry for a time in the South of France, Patrick headed home where he found his family and resumed his life. But God kept bringing the Irish—those miserable, superstitious, pagan Celts—to Patrick’s mind. Once Patrick even had a dream of a man from Ireland calling and pleading, “Help us!” Patrick wrote, “I was deeply moved in heart,” and he made the decision to leave his beloved Britain for Ireland, but this time he was taken captive by God’s desire for the lost. "I dwell among gentiles," he wrote, "in the midst of pagan barbarians, worshipers of idols, and of unclean things."

Patrick explained that the false gods that the people of Ireland worshipped and feared were actually evil demons, and he beckoned them to place their faith in Christ. Things began slowly but Patrick was determined. He faced opposition on many fronts, and his life was frequently in danger. Cagney writes,

Predictably, Patrick faced the most opposition from the druids, who practiced magic, were skilled in secular learning (especially law and history) and advised Irish kings. Biographies of the saint are replete with stories of druids who "wished to kill holy Patrick."

"Daily I expect murder, fraud or captivity," Patrick wrote, "but I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God almighty who rules everywhere."

Indeed, Patrick almost delighted in taking risks for the gospel. "I must take this decision disregarding risks involved and make known the gifts of God and his everlasting consolation. Neither must we fear any such risk in faithfully preaching God's name boldly in every place, so that even after my death, a spiritual legacy may be left for my brethren and my children."

Eventually God used Patrick to bring a king, Loiguire, to faith in Christ who intended to kill the young missionary. The different accounts of this confrontation are rife with legend, so much so that it is difficult to ascertain fact from fiction. Nonetheless the King was dramatically converted, and Patrick made it a central part of his strategy to convert the one hundred or so kings first so that their subjects would hopefully follow. This tactic proved to be extremely effective.

It is understandable that slavery was an evil against which Patrick would battle tirelessly. According to Cagney,

[Patrick] was, in fact, the first Christian to speak out strongly against the practice. Scholars agree he is the genuine author of a letter excommunicating a British tyrant, Coroticus, who had carried off some of Patrick's converts into slavery.

"Ravenous wolves have gulped down the Lord's own flock which was flourishing in Ireland," he wrote, "and the whole church cries out and laments for its sons and daughters." He called Coroticus's deed "wicked, so horrible, so unutterable," and told him to repent and to free the converts.

It remains unknown if he was successful in freeing Coroticus's slaves, but within his lifetime (or shortly thereafter), Patrick ended the entire Irish slave trade.

Even though he was not considered a man of great learning, Patrick is also known for his insistence on sound biblical doctrine. Dr. Neil Chadwick writes,

Because of his deep faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Patrick made this doctrine a center piece of his instruction. To help explain the mystery of the ‘Trinity’ he used the simple three-leaf shamrock to illustrate the three persons in one God.

Most historians agree that he taught a “grace alone through faith alone” salvation, unlike that which was developing in the Roman Christianity of the European continent at that time.
Patrick boldly proclaimed Christ in Ireland for about 30 years. And talk about impact! Roy D. Warren, Jr. in his book, Patrick of Ireland: The Untold Story wrote, "he planted over 200 churches and had over 100,000 truly saved converts." Patrick writes in his autobiography,

I am greatly a debtor to God, who has bestowed his grace so largely upon me, that multitudes were born again to God through me…Hence, the Irish, who had never had the knowledge of God and worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called the sons of God.

Patrick loved the Lord and constantly trained new Believers to follow the Great Commission. In addition to planting churches, he built scores of monasteries, schools, orphanages, and other institutions for instructing people in the faith, and established hundreds of pastors and leaders. Many of these institutions still exist.

We should learn from the cultural impact that God instrumented through Patrick. Brown writes, “While the Roman Empire and occupied lands were going from peace to chaos, the land of Ireland was going from chaos to peace under the ministry of Patrick.”

So on this St. Patrick’s Day, tell someone about the real Patrick. And consider this: God wants to raise up some Patricks today. He is looking for those who are willing to lay aside the comforts of this life to find more contentment in being greatly used by God.