The Pastor's Perspective

     Missionary John G. Paton Ever feel like you're surrounded? Not by well-meaning friends bearing casserole dishes and well wishes. Instead you feel surrounded by a hostile force, a looming dread that threatens to consume everything you know or love? Yeah...me neither, well not in a literal since that is. However I have had moments in my life when I felt I could not breath, and life seemed overwhelming. I have been in some situations in my life that I did not know how I was ever going to make it.       But imagine this: you're a missionary, deep in the South Pacific, and a war party of angry locals has encircled your humble headquarters, torches flickering, intent on making you and your family a human bonfire.       That's exactly what John G. Paton faced. One night, the air thick with menace, he and his wife did the only thing they could: they prayed. Not a casual "bless this mess" kind of prayer, but a deep, desperate plea for d...

    Have you e ver been mesmerized by a chameleon? That incredible little lizard with the superpower to vanish into its surroundings, changing colors and patterns in the blink of an eye. It’s a survival tactic, a way to stay hidden, undetected. God's creation is pretty ingenious, right?     From the way they walk, to the way there eyes move independently from one another. The creature is pretty fascinating. Yet the one thing most people remember most about chameleons is how they can change there color's to blend in with the rest of the world. That is probably its most distinct and remembered characteristic.       But what if that incredible ability, that instinct to blend in, started creeping into our spiritual lives? What if, as followers of Jesus, we began to adopt a similar camouflage, subtly (or not so subtly) changing our colors to match the world around us? For many Christians this is a very distinct possibility. It may even be something th...

My Great Grandpa Roy Stonewall Johnson with his perpetual motion machine      My great-grandfather, Roy Stonewall Johnson, a man of many talents— served in both the Army and the Navy, and a serious tinkerer. He had a dream, a wild one at that: to build a perpetual motion machine. You know, the kind that runs forever without needing any extra juice. A machine that could power your car without gas, light your home without bills. Sounds like a sci-fi dream, right?      Humans have been chasing this dream since the Middle Ages. So my great-grandfather was not alone in his desire to make such a machine. Imagine, a device that defies the need for external energy! The possibilities are mind-boggling. But, as my great-grandfather likely discovered, there's a tiny, or rather, a huge problem: the laws of thermodynamics.      Those pesky laws, the first and second, tell us that in a closed system, energy inevitably dissipates. Kinetic energy, the energy...