following – Page 4 – 300 words a day

Psalm 1.

(First published July 13, 2011) When you pick up a book of poetry or a book of song lyrics, you have to work. You cannot read Gerard Manley Hopkins or W.H. Auden or Bono the same way you read Malcolm Gladwell or Donald Miller. With poems, you have to stop often, read out loud at […]

by Jon Swanson

Why I quit running.

I was doing great. As of July 22, I had run at least a mile every day for 425 days. In a row. On July 23, I didn’t run. I wasn’t injured. I didn’t forget. I made a choice. I switched my focus from running every day to training for a marathon. I asked a […]

by Paul Merrill

Always lead?

My bike shoes have it all wrong. And the major message we hear today is wrong too: “Being a leader is the only way to succeed.” Jesus has a different idea. He wants us to follow. As he was calling people who would spend the most time with him, Jesus didn’t ask what degree they […]

by Paul Merrill

Grooves

Our minds love to go back to things, over and over. We obsess about what we did wrong, what we should have done, what we want to get or who messed with us. The image that came to mind is a record player. The needle traces a groove from the edge of the record to […]

by Jon Swanson

Working on who we are.

A guest post by Jeff Arnold. I have a love-hate relationship with my career. I love the work, but hate to be part of an industry that has been dying a slow, painful death for years. When people ask what I do, I can’t get the word sportswriter out of my mouth fast enough. My […]