Parchment & Pen Blog

I was just diagnosed with “severe degenerative disc disease.” This is a lower back issue. For the last five years, the pain has been tremendous, keeping me from doing many things including my work-out routine and playing basketball. There is a constant pain that goes down into my left hip from a nerve that is [...]

My friend was not a Christian, but he was seriously considering it. He was one of my wild friends that I hung with in my crazy days. I reconnected with him a few years ago. I remember the days of driving around from bar to bar (what we called “bar hopping”) looking for nothing but trouble. [...]

Here are some notes from what I taught at The Discipleship Program last night on Suffering and Evil. I think it is very important that we give Christians a solid induction into this subject immediately. In other words, this is not a “closet doctrine.” There are too many destructive ways for people to go wrong [...]

I like second service Christians. Wait. Let me rephrase. I like second service Christians better than first service Christians. There. I said it. I remember when a church I was attending switched from one service to two. It was not pretty. Most certainly the church needed it. It was packed. The general rule is when [...]

I am different than a lot of people. When things are consistently falling apart in my life, I don’t only like to hear from others that are having train wrecks in their own life, but from those who are actually making it. Though I have become increasingly skeptical of people’s own interpretations of how things [...]

I think one of the toughest challenges that Christians struggle with is the issue of unanswered prayer.  It raises doubts.  It leaves us wondering if there was something we could have done differently to change the outcomes.  Did we pray right?  Why does God not want to answer that prayer?  We pull out all the [...]

I have often heard it said that the problem of evil (why does God allow so many bad things) is the biggest problem of our generation. Watching the news lately, I have been overwhelmed by the burdens of bad news that I had to take on within just a few moments. There was a shooting and [...]

Dear Angie, We just passed the 6 year anniversary of your death. I guess it was the evening of January 4, 2004 (that is what the medical examiner said), but Kristie (your sister, not my wife) thinks it is January 5 because that morning her back door blew open. Remember, she had Drew that night. [...]