Stumbling Over the Truth

     Influence,  the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something is an interesting conversation.  We chide the young about the importance of avoiding bad influence, encourage the inexperienced to learn how to exert influence, and lean on the mature to gain the impact from their influence.  Influence is all around us, which leads us to analyze, scrutinize and emphasize the how, why, when, and who.   It is the "who" of influence that I wish to talk about.        Recently I read a story (unverified) about Albrecht Durer, a German artist of the late 1400's to early 1500's.  According to the story, Durer grew up in a poor but large family of eighteen children of which he was the third child.  Early in life he displayed talent in artistry.  Because of this a close friend of his offered to work in the mines for Durer to pay for him to be able to attend school for his art. ...

I can remember my father telling me that boys are easier to rear than girls. Perhaps for the first ten to twelve years of my son's life I would have agreed. My son is 16, nearing 17 years of age. Lately, I find myself wondering what happened? Mark Twain, I believe, said that when a boy reaches his teen years you should put him in a barrel and feed him through a hole in it, and when he turns 16 you should plug up the hole. There are times that I wonder if I shouldn't have followed Mr. Twain's idea. In retrospect, the issues that I have in dealing with my son come from inadequacies on my parenting. That is what is so frustrating about teens! Young children lull us into believing that everything is wonderful, so all we have to do is sit back and watch them grow. Then, as if out of some horror story, that sweet, fun loving child turns into a teen laden with all kinds of issues. What is hard for parents to face is the responsibility in the shaping of our children when t...

     It has been a long time since I last wrote.  I have often intended to, but never took the time to just write.  There have been many things on my mind that I have really wanted to write about, but maybe the most pressing is on the thought of value.      In an economically challenged world, value has become hugely important.  Our lives have become inundated with practicality and productivity.  No longer do we take the time to live, laugh, and love.  Value is given to everything, and unfortunately value drives our visions and goals.  Our time and more often our sanity is sacrificed doing things that we believe bring value to our lives in hope that we will achieve some level of worth that will make us satisfied with our lives.     One of the biggest questions of Jesus was, "What profit (value) does a man have if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?" [Paraphrase]  Something we all...