I had a job on a paint crew my freshman year of college. I also worked the paint crew at a youth camp in Orr, MN that year. One of my jobs was to varnish floors in the A-Framed cabins at the camp. I loved the natural wood and spiral staircases in these buildings, but I had never done varnishing before. So…my first day, I worked hard to prep a floor all morning and then I varnished half the floor. It was lunchtime, so of course, I took a break. I didn’t realize that if the varnish dried during my break, it would never blend with the new varnish when I went back to work and finished the second half of the floor. I tried it, but there was a clearly obnoxious line in the middle of the floor wher

I remember one of my first paying jobs was working with my then-girlfriend’s father bringing-in hay during the summer. Bailing and stacking hay in a hot hayloft has to be one of the toughest jobs ever! I remember the first day. It was 95 degrees and the barn was even hotter. We had no airflow and the dust from tossing bails up into the loft was as thick as proverbial “pea soup.” One by one, the bails would come up the elevator and we’d toss them up to someone who would stack them. By the end of the day, I could barely breathe. I was gasping and choking, wheezing and coughing-up black slime. (Gross I know—sorry). All for minimum wage...almost. Maybe this is why I have little sympathy for peo

You know the old philosophical challenge, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well...I have another version of this: "If a pastor is teaching and nobody is listening, SHOULD he be silent?" My version of this can be modified to include teachers, writers, keynote speakers, seminar presenters and others. The point is whether or not it's a waste of time to continue sharing the message if and when your audience isn't tuned-in or, over time, seems to be missing the point.... The obvious answer is, "Yes." Why bother talking to the wall, so-to-speak? Still, with human audiences, there's another factor here: the subconscious mind. Even if we're m

When my wife was younger, she had a few encounters with angelic protection. Once, she entered an elevator in a high rise apartment building only to be attacked by a man who had boarded immediately after she did. She shouted, “No!” and tried to push him away. Still, even SHE was shocked when he didn’t just back up a step or two, but instead, he FLEW across the elevator and slammed into the wall. His eyes as big as softballs, he seemed stuck against that wall until the doors opened and Karen slipped away. The man was terrified and Karen was shocked to witness what seemed to be the unseen force of an angel protecting her. The Bible speaks of angels and our possible contact with them without bei