Last week our family went camping up in the mountains - our last hoorah of summer. The drive was gorgeous. A few hours into our trip, we passed a sign informing us we were 16 miles from our destination. Twenty minutes and we’d be there.

As I looked around at the mountains I noticed an odd plane flying low in the foothills. We’ve had a dry summer in Idaho with many grass and forest fires. I wondered if there was a small fire in the area they were trying to put out.

The road wrapped around a curve and we saw it. A huge cloud of smoke was pouring out the side of the mountain (actual photo from iPhone above). It looked like the beginnings of a forest fire. The crews were arriving, assessing the situation and awaiting their orders. It was an eery feeling as we drove closer and closer. My first instinct was to turn around and head back towards Boise.

Have you ever sent an email, text, or some other message you wished you could take back right after pushing “send”? A few months after college graduation I was getting my hair cut in Breckenridge, Colorado. The lady cutting my hair noticed I was reading The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Leslie Newbigin.

Figuring I might know a little about theology, she asked if I could explain why there was so much evil in the world. Since I had just taken a class on apologetics, I decided to tell her everything I knew about why God might allow evil. Every time she had a question, I had a quick retort.

From my perspective the conversation was going great. But all of a sudden she started crying and said, “This is a bunch of &$%! You have an answer for everything. It can’t be that easy.” I was completely taken aback. This made me a bit nervous, especially since she was holding scissors next to my head! 

There is one more story I’d like to share as I end the series on life lessons learned while living overseas. It’s another one from Russia but it’s a special one engrained in my heart.

The Russian town I lived in was small by Russian standards, only about 100,000 people. There was one small and very old hospital. The previous year I had an emergency appendectomy there and soon realized there is not much to do during the day. No televisions, no food service, nothing – just some radios that didn’t work that well. Visitors were greatly treasured.

A teammate and I began weekly visits with the patients in the women’s ward. The women on this ward were in the hospital for 4 weeks. Needless to say they were eager to talk with anyone who walked through the door.

I’ve always had a fascination with Russia. As a child, I remember sitting and watching the hockey game in the 1980 Winter Olympic games, USA versus the USSR. The Soviet players appeared so serious and void of emotion. “Why do they look so mean?” I asked my father.

He explained the Cold War to me in age appropriate terms. An “us and them” mentality began to grow in my young mind until my dad said something that broke this chain of thought. “You have to realize it’s not the people we are against, it’s their government. It is a group of people forcing evil ways on their country. We must pray for the people in the USSR, for God to help them.”

Fourteen years later I found myself preparing to live in part of the former Soviet Union. I was headed to southern Russia as a missionary. The Iron Curtain had fallen a few years prior. The world had experienced crazy change practically overnight. I couldn’t believe it - had God heard the prayers of my father and thousands and millions of others?

[This originally appeared on the Mars Hill Church blog]

I was originally assigned the task of looking at advice on how to be a man from a men’s magazine. Problem is, there wasn't any.

Esquire's June/July 2010 issue was called How to Be a Man. Appropriate. With a title that declarative and a tagline of “Man at His Best,” I was anxious to comb through it to see what they had to say about manhood. With a base circulation of 700,000 and competition like GQ, Maxim, and Details, Esquire is arguably one of the largest and most influential men’s magazines in the world. They've got to know what they're talking about, right? Esquire’s website describes their audience as "the affluent and successful man." Should be exactly what I'm shooting for here.

With Irony As Our Guide

At first I was intrigued as I read an article on the BBC about today's minimalists who are getting rid of their stuff and living in sparse looking apartments. I was attracted to the idea of shedding stuff and perhaps gaining new spiritual insight through the discipline of reduction.

I'm keenly tuned to my own attachment to things because I'm a person who has had to pack and unpack the stuff one too many times. Things, things, things. I've moved them between 6 countries on 3 continents. I've also gone through a house fire which took most everything I had of material value. Topping it off, I live in a developing country that reveals my standard of simplicity as relative. I live simply compared to friends in the States. I live like a flippin' crazy person compared to most Africans. I know full well that my local friends must think we're nuts to "need" all of this.

Mosques, cathedrals and synagogues make the most interesting bullies. There they crouch, architectural annoyances flaunting their crosses, spires, and stars at the playground. That glowing white dream castle in Salt Lake City kicks sand in everybody’s face, and Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral thinks it’s God himself. If only these buildings could just leave everybody alone.

Now everybody’s having a fit over the new kid who’s moving in, thanks to the Cordoba Initiative, the proposed Islamic cultural center at Ground Zero. Its controversy stands up there with Justin Bieber as part of The Summer Debate 2010, and its symbolism is far bigger than the acreage it plans to cover. If allowed to play at recess, it will be larger-than-life, the kind of presence that no one will be able to ignore.

In the same way you can learn about what someone values by what they buy, you can learn about a group by looking at what a store sells them.

URBN

Urban Outfitters has 130 stores in the US, Canada, and Europe. On January 31st, Urban Outfitters Inc. reported $1.94 Billion in annual revenue (nearly doubled in the last 4 years). Their website claims that their "established ability to understand our customers and connect with them on an emotional level is the reason for our success." They also claim to offer a "lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual in the 18 to 30 year-old range".