"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:16

I like this scripture verse from Ecclesiastes 11:5. We tend to think in our world that we know it all, and we don't:
"As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mothers womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the [...]

Life is hard.  Do you ever feel so overwhelmed, so downhearted that you find it hard to literally and figuratively put one foot in front of the other?  When doing even the most routine and little things seems impossible or too much to handle?  When you can burst into tears at the drop of a [...]

Recently my mentee at UIUC GSLIS asked me to look into my crystal ball and articulate some thoughts about what lies in store for technical services librarianship. What follows is my response. I publish this here because although my points aren’t polished and well-defined, what I wrote to my mentee expresses some of [...]

We were able to watch part of the Grammy’s last night. I normally don’t pay a lot of attention to award shows like this, but last night’s show stood out to me for negative reasons. Make it three negatives: the three women who make up the Dixie Chicks. It would be really difficult for me [...]

I am enjoying a quiet Sunday morning, with everyone else still in bed. The house is peaceful and quiet. Outside, everything is covered in fresh snow. Since we cleaned last night before going to bed, everything is fairly tidy for once. Moments like this are pretty rare so I am savoring [...]

My thoughts today turn to an acquaintance who is very gravely ill and may not live much longer. Her name is Ines and she has a twin sister, Eva. I’ve known them all my life and also known that they have a rather interesting, and tragic, history. You see, they are survivors [...]

We are going through a series at church about dealing with this crazy, hectic, overstressed life we lead. Last week the focus of the sermon was on the need to pause and reflect, using Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a prime example. It says in the Bible that when the angel Gabriel [...]

Giving thanks is something I need to do on a regular basis, not just around the Thanksgiving holiday. Let me start, then, with the following list. I am thankful for:

My family, especially my wife and my children
The knowledge that God loves me in spite of myself
A comfortable house to live in
A good job
Many [...]

The capacity for evil in this world continually astounds me. The violence against innocent girls in an Amish country school yesterday haunts me, as does the killing of a girl in a school in Colorado and the murder of a school principal in rural Wisconsin. Another incident that I can’t get out of [...]