A Tale of 3 Cities: #2: Jefferson
East Texas is home to the delightful, historic town of Jefferson, once the sixth-biggest town in the state. The whole place is like a beautifully well-preserved museum and makes its money from tourism. From 1845 to 1872 Jefferson was the terminus for riverboats that carried people on the Red River from there to north Texas and Oklahoma. The place bustled and thrived with people traveling and doing business in this prominent Texas town on the edge of the expanding frontier. It is said that the railroad magnate Jason Gould wanted to build a railroad through Jefferson and make it a…
A Tale of 3 Cities, #1: Shreveport
For countless hundreds of years along the Red River, periodic flooding washed trees and brush from the soft soil along the banks and into the river. Eventually this formed the biggest logjam the world has ever seen. The native Caddo tribes said the wide river had always been covered with this logjam. They couldn’t imagine the river, or life, without it. At its peak in the 1830s, this heap of dead, tangled trees stretched off and on for more than 160 miles. They called it “The Great Raft.” To open navigation on the Red River, the US Army Corps of…
Meeting O.J.
Kim and I don’t normally sit next to famous people on airplanes, but there we were next to the one and only O.J. Simpson. No, we didn’t ask for his autograph. And we only took the photograph because Kim wanted to, and as I’m writing this post, I’m glad she did. We elected not to make judgments or treat him like a celebrity. Mr. Simpson said that through his years of trials, he had a genuine encounter with God. He spoke like a true believer. We told him about ourselves, and he answered my question about how Fantasy Football worked….
Older and Closer
The late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen asked a question of himself, “Did getting older bring me closer to Jesus?” I ask myself a lot of questions as I get older. What am I doing with my life? Am I fulfilling what I was created for? Why have I not achieved what I thought I would? If a believer—a follower of Jesus, not just a religiously inclined person—does not get closer to Jesus as he or she gets older, isn’t it likely that something is probably wrong, or at least improvable? If a married couple doesn’t get closer as they age,…
God’s Deterrent Force
I’m standing on the airfield of Barksdale Air Force Base, three miles from my house, and home of the Air Force Global Strike Command. It’s their annual air show, and the big B-52 bombers are lined up in both directions far into the distance. In front of them are jet fighters, old and new, and gigantic transport planes, inside of any of which you could fit a house—unbelievable that such behemoths could ever rise into the sky. But they do. And the bombs on display… I ask about them and learn how even the smaller ones pack such shock waves…
