absent

so, where have i been for the last seven months. here. i've been here. right where i am sitting at this moment. well, actually i have been other places - my bed, the dinner table, grocery store, colorado a couple times, various trips on my motorcycle, walks with my wife, working out with chuck on my total gymn - you get the picture. but, my goal is to visit this blog on a more regular basis. the question is, will I? tune in later and find out.

Wow!

wow! can you believe it. it has been a year since my last blog. where has life gone. have i been busy? yes. is life busy? yes. is life too busy? yes. changes are coming - yes they are. maybe i was just watching that deer watch me through my office window too long. i'm just glad God hasn't been too busy to blog to me.

amazing

you know, when you think about it, life is pretty amazing. let's start with the fact that my lungs and heart keep working. pretty important, don't you think. and i don't even think about them - they just keep chugging along - for greater than 525,600 hours so far - now that is amazing. that's just the beginning. the rest of my body - well, most of it anyway - is still working. and i'm surrounded by amazing things. stores where they charge you the right price by just passing the product over a camera. amazing. how about the mountains. ever just taken a hike and sat up a trail somewhere and just looked at the creation and listened to the elk bugle - amazing. and the ocean. amazing. i have seen the ocean over a period of 40+ years and the waves keep coming in and the tide keeps coming in and going out. wow! how about the birth of a baby. now that is amazing. absolutely beautiful. i could go on and on for hours. i mean we are surrounded by amazing things - cars, tvs, furniture, air, trees, people, ipods, 'puters, pens, pencils, paper, bathrooms, houses, dung beetles, birds, baseball teams, paper clips, etc - all truly amazing. but you know what, the most amazing thing of all is God and Jesus - for in Them is the beginning of everything else that is amazing

simplicity

i don't know about you, but i like simple. i can wrap my mind around it. it settles well in my heart. but, what is simple anymore? i mean, look around. everything is complex or complicated. i'm typing on a keyboard that is wireless to the computer. how did that occur? it's complicated. i breathe odorless, colorless stuff into my nostrils and it sustains my life. i don't understand. it's complex. i drive a car; i wear clothes; i use an ipod and a digital camera - complicated, complex, it's all over my head. how about relationships - they can be very complex and complicated. is there anything that is simple. well, fortunately, yes, there is. our relationship with Jesus is really pretty simple. He went to the cross and died so that we might live. yet, even that we try to complicate with theology, doctrine, personal opinion, etc. i vote that we just keep it simple and say, thank you Jesus for the new life in You.

weird

wow! it's been over a week since i've entered anything. what's wrong with me? hey, that's a great question. i can say there was something wrong on tuesday and it took until today to right itself. i was laying in bed waking up when all of a sudden, the room tilted and started to turned. talk about weird - i mean weird. i then got up out of bed to try and walk and i couldn't. the best i could do was to stumble into the wall. i had no sense of balance at all. really, really weird. fortunately it kind of went away. but, the next morning it kind of came back, but to a much lesser degree. at least i could walk - even close to a straight line when i really concentrated on it. today, i was fine and the doc said it was just some minor inner ear infection. but it was really scary. talk about feeling totally out of control. fortunately, i had something i could turn to that provided stability and control - Jesus. even in this bizarre situation, He provided peace and direction. it's great to know that God's Son will always provide that.

heart again

wow! is it a beautiful day or what? wait! how can you say that, gary? it's been raining all night and all morning. what's beautiful about that? i'm alive, that's what. i'm alive! i have a heart and it is beating. but, it's doing more than that it's pumping life into me. yeah, sure, it's pumping that red stuff that makes me almost faint when it starts leaking out of my body - or anyone else's as far as that goes. but, let's not get stuck there. the heart is so much more than that. our heart - the inner part of us where the emotions and feelings lie, pumps life into us. it pumps love and joy and peace and happiness and acceptance and forgiveness and humility and contentment and being real and thousands of other wonderful things into us. what? you don't know what i'm talking about? then maybe, just maybe, you're not walking in the heart that God gave you. maybe, just maybe, you're walking in the hurts and pain that you carry from having your heart crushed. think about it. pray about it. i might be on to something here

heart

wow, january 29th. can you believe it. january 29th. that's the last time i wrote a blog. what's wrong with me. well, we don't have enough time to thoroughly investigate that question. busy, busy, busy. the american way of life. busy! but, hey, that's not an excuse, is it? why so busy? honestly, one huge reason. i went on a safari. i went on a hunting trip. what was i hunting? my heart. yep, my heart. and guess what? i found it. it too two weekends devoted to some serious searching and hunting. considerable pain and joy was mixed in. add in a bunch of new friends. and, of course, if God hadn't showed up it would have all been for naught. But, God did show up and i found the heart that God had given buried underneath a whole bunch of junk. and where did it happen? here, in jeff city at a hotel lead by a group of wonderful, loving, compassionate, caring people that layed their life down for me because they love me. all under the banner of grace encounter. i'm so glad God never took the heart away from me that he gave, but instead chose to help me find it again. and because of it, i am by the grace of God a courageous, victorious, accepted man of God with a big heart