Fatherhood

I’ve been writing thought cards for the past year. Short pieces, usually a page or two, where I try to capture a principle at the moment it forms. I started because I wanted to remember what I was learning. I didn’t realize I was building something. Over the last few months, a pattern kept surfacing. Every card I wrote about how principles form, how conviction develops, how people actually grow, connected to the next one. Not because I planned it, but because the same current kept pulling me back. Looking at them now, they trace an arc I didn’t see while I was inside it. ...

The Box There are five of us in a rental car heading from the airport to the hotel. A friend is talking about a book. Nikki Erlick’s The Measure. The premise is simple: one morning, everyone on Earth wakes up to find a small wooden box on their doorstep. Inside is a string. The length of the string is the length of your remaining life. The question the novel asks is the obvious one. Do you open it? ...

Why you’re accountable for warning, not for results, and why silence isn’t neutral Ezekiel was a priest with no temple to serve in. He was thirty years old, living in exile by a canal in Babylon, watching his homeland crumble from a distance. The first wave of exiles had been taken in 597 BC. Jerusalem hadn’t fallen yet, but it would. His purpose had been stripped away. And then God showed up, not in the holy place, but in enemy territory. ...