7 June 2026

Dear Friend,

“Here’s Your Hat. What’s Your Hurry?”

I don’t know where my dad got the expression, but he frequently would say, “Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?” if someone had to leave quickly. (And, come to think of it, I heard him say it when he wished someone would leave!)

Like I said, it’s a long trip!

Well, even though I don’t normally wear a hat, I am in a hurry packing to leave tomorrow, June 8th, for a long ministry road trip. When I say long, I mean that Google Maps tells me that I’ll log over 3,500 miles (about 5,600 kilometers) between now and when I get home (around July 2nd). My spirit was uneasy until I postponed a July 1st doctor appointment so that I could extend the trip just a bit. As soon as I did that, I was released in the Spirit to finish planning.

So this short newsletter is mainly a prayer request [continue reading…]

Palm Sunday, March 2026

An Easter Verb

(See image credit below.)¹

Dear Friend,

I’m writing these words on Palm Sunday 2026. And I’m putting off the conclusion of our series on Little Faith and God’s Faith because a word has been impressed on my heart. It’s a Greek word that sneaked up on me during my morning Greek research this past week; but now it’s also an abiding Easter verb for me because of its special association with the Resurrection.

Here’s the background: Oikos (οἶκος) is a very common New Testament noun. It means a house or dwelling or just about any place a person might live; and by simple extension, it also means household, that is, all the people who live in the oikos. There’s a closet full of oikos-related words in the New Testament, some of which come down to us in English, like our word economy (oikonomía / οἰκονομία — management of a household).

A related verb—oikéō / οἰκέω—means to dwell [in a home]. It’s used of a married couple dwelling with each other (1 Corinthians 7:12-13), and of [continue reading…]

14 February 2026

Blurry, Busy Winter Months

Dear Friend,

In the walk of faith, sometimes the way forward is clear, and other times it’s blurry…¹

It’s been so long since our last newsletter that folks were beginning to wonder if we’re okay. Okay? Certainly, and blessed. But busy? Oy vey, yes! Although things are settling down a bit and coming into focus now, life has been somewhat of a blur since November’s newsletter. For instance:

• In December I spent a week back in our old stomping grounds of Chesapeake, VA, flying back to help with arrangements, and doing the memorial service of our friend and next-door neighbor of 30+ years. I visited other local friends with what time I had free.
• From Chesapeake, I brought back a “souvenir” flu that laid me low for an entire week. Normal energy levels didn’t return for another two weeks.
• We’ve been praying our way through a series of potentially difficult family “firsts without daddy” — our grandkids’ [continue reading…]

6 November 2025

Dear Friend,

I’m showing a magnification of black mustard seeds here, but lest you think that they’re anywhere near this big…¹
…here’s a small pile of “yellow” and black mustard seeds compared with 2 centimeters (20 millimeters), or a smidge less than 13/16 of an inch.

In the last newsletter, we explored our human state of oligópistos — “little faith.” I say it’s a “human state,” because each of us, created in the image of God, has a measure of faith. But like all the elements in natural man, that measure of faith is diminished, enervated, and spoiled by sin. Human faith can accomplish certain things (the old phrase from the 50s and 60s—“positive thinking”—comes to mind), but in Kingdom matters it has its limits; and all too often we crash up against those limits.

The original “ye of little faith” Apostles were keenly aware of such crashing failures, and each of the Synoptic writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) has Jesus addressing these men when they’ve reached their limit. Two incidents are similar. In Matthew 17:19-20, nine of the Apostles, perplexed by their inability to deliver a demon-possessed boy, ask Jesus, “Why could we not drive it out?” “Because of the littleness of your faith,” is Jesus’ reply. And Luke 17:5-6 records their plea to Jesus at another time: “Increase our faith!” (As for Mark’s contribution, we’ll get to that in a bit.)

In both cases, Jesus’ response is the same: “If [continue reading…]

30 September 2025

Dear Friend,

This concept of “little faith” is important enough that the Apostle Matthew seems to have made up this special word—oligópistos (ol·ig·OP·is·tos)—to describe the condition Jesus was pointing out. The word doesn’t seem to appear in pre-New Testament Greek.

Sincere, godly Christian lawyers—is that an oxymoron? No, there are many, as it turns out! The first two with whom I ever interacted were in the city where I was saved, first pastored, and came to spiritual maturity—Costa Mesa, California. I can’t even remember the reason we had to seek them out, but I do remember their names. Norm Juggert, the principal of the firm, was the son-in-law of a saintly Lutheran pastor named Andy Anderson. But it was Norm’s partner whose name keeps coming back to me in my current season of prayer and meditation, because of the way he introduced himself: “Hi, I’m Kenneth Yee. Yee, you know, as in ‘YE of little faith.’” (Hey, his memory trick worked. Fifty years later, I still recall his name!)

Much of my focus before the Lord lately has been to know why we aren’t seeing [continue reading…]

24 July 2026

Dear Friend,

“…yet because of his persistence he will get up
and give him as much as he needs.”
An illustration
of the Parable of the Midnight Visitor
by British artist John Everett Millais¹

Long, long ago, in a prehistoric time when there were no digital tablets, no smartphones, no personal computers, no Internet, and no artificial intelligence, I found myself far from home for many weeks without my second-most-important possession. (My most important possession was my Bible, which was at hand.) Yes, in driving nearly 3,000 miles across the country, from California to upstate New York, I had left my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance at home. Horrors!

There I was alone on the porch of a friend’s home on a lovely summer’s day, wanting very much to pray Biblically. I hadn’t quite finished reading through the Bible for the third time (I was a few weeks away from my third spiritual birthday), so God’s Book wasn’t as familiar to me as it is now, 54 years later. I knew that there were two important passages in the Gospels where Jesus specifically responded [continue reading…]

25 May 2025

Dear Friend,

One helpful benefit of extra shelving: my grew-up-in-Africa missionary-kid wife gets to display many of her African treasures and mementos in special ways.¹

At long last we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel of unpacking and “moving in.” As our three recent family deaths fall farther behind us, the Lord has been enabling us to give more focus and energy to completing our task of getting settled. In practical terms, the most helpful step forward has been the building of bookshelves. Those erected in Denise’s office and the living room have allowed the emptying and displaying of many boxes of books, photo albums, family photos and heirlooms, as well as other memorabilia. Two new bookcases for my office have added sufficient shelf space for the rest of my boxed books.

What’s ironic is that all the time we’ve been building those bookcases and emptying boxes, I’ve been thinking about “being shelved” spiritually for the last year or more. There are those times in our Christian walk and ministry during which God takes us and sets us aside— puts us “on a shelf,” so to speak, taking us out of normal ministry and duties. These times of “being shelved” used to be very worrisome for me: Was God displeased with me in some way? Had I offended Him? What could I do to get back in His good graces?

One advantage of being an older Christian is [continue reading…]

31 March 2025

Post-Resurrection Miracles

Dear Friend,

Last month I shared about the spiritual prosperity that comes from meditating on the Bible. I’d like to re-visit the subject of the Scriptures from a slightly different angle this month. It so happens that the material coincides well with the upcoming celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection. As an early Holy Week gift, I offer the following meditation.

“First Dinner” Discrepancy?

If the “Last Supper” was the last meal Jesus and His disciples ate the night before His crucifixion, would it be too much of a stretch to call the first meal they shared with Jesus after the Resurrection the “First Dinner”? Three Gospel writers record the event (Mark 16:15-18 ∥ Luke 24:36-49 ∥ John 19:19-23). Luke and John, in their reports of that gathering, seem to focus on different things that Jesus emphasized. Each records a miracle Jesus performed on those who were present; but they don’t agree on what it was.

Or do they?

In Luke’s mind, the supernatural change that [continue reading…]

28 February 2025

Dear Friend,

“In Whatever He Does, He Prospers”

¹How blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
³He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.
–Psalm 1:1-3 NASB–

“He will be like a tree…”
(in this case, a date palm)¹

A new year is well underway, already bringing with it sadness (we’ve had two deaths in the family since I last wrote) and gladness. Let me dwell on the gladness a bit, because it has been a source of wonder and joy.

I finished reading through the Scriptures again in January. No, I wasn’t behind schedule; my reading schedule follows a non-calendar fiscal year which ends on July 31st, my spiritual birthday. Theoretically, I could have [continue reading…]

12 December 2024

Dear Friend,

Intervening According to Jesus’ Example

Among the many reassuring messages of the Christmas season, this one is speaking especially to me this year — God lovingly and personally intervenes in the affairs of human beings. He got so “involved” as to come and live among us before dying in our place.

2024 has been a year of upheaval for us. We’ve lived in transition for most of the year, shuttling back and forth to Virginia, mostly living with our daughter and her family. Having been led to move to Florida to live out “being family,” we have obeyed; yet obedience has meant a loss of personal space, privacy, and (at times!) sanity . But after more than 15 months of living together (including 4½ months in 2023), we still love each other.

More importantly, Denise and I have been knit, stitch by stitch and day by day, into the life of our daughter, who is about to lose her husband, and the lives of two of our grandchildren, who are about to lose their daddy. Those stitches can only be made one [continue reading…]

9 September 2024

Dear Friend,

So shalt thou find favor and good understanding
in the sight of God and man.
– Proverbs 3:4 kjv –

The slip of paper is long since lost; but the spiritual direction hasn’t changed.¹

Something happened this past month that put those two verses (above) into a different focus. Way back around October 1969 I attended a Saturday morning meeting somewhere in Southern California, where I lived at the time. The speaker was evangelist Dick Mills, a man soaked in the Scriptures, and a great Bible teacher (as I recall) with a one-of-a-kind prophetic ministry.

After Bro. Mills preached, he would invite folks forward for prayer. Then he and his wife would go down the prayer line. He would pray over each person, after which he would speak forth a Bible reference or two as the Holy Spirit led. Let me be clear: he wouldn’t speak the text of the scripture(s). Rather, he would give out [continue reading…]

26 July 2024

Dear Friend,

I’m pondering something as though I have learned it for the first time: we are to seek the shalōm of those around us.

Here’s our word shalōm
the way it looks in Hebrew,
along with one of its English definitions:
welfare.¹

Much is made of the last two verses of that passage: “I know the plans I have for you,” etc. But rarely does a person who is excitedly “claiming the promise” ask one of our favorite questions [continue reading…]

4 June 2024

“Life” Deferred by Loving Service

Dear Friend,

“Chinese curse?” No, but it’s certainly a day-to-day challenge for faith!

“May You Live in Interesting Times!” Someone once pointed out to me the humor of a Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times!” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that quotation, nor even if it’s actually Chinese in origin. Nevertheless, Denise and I are “living in interesting times” right now. Note that it doesn’t seem so much of a “curse” as it does a long-term challenge and test of faith and endurance and loving service.

One of our son-in-law’s “homes away from home” (HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital)¹

Within 27 hours of our arrival here in Florida in early April, our son-in-law had to be admitted to the hospital for ten days; thus, we immediately went into full-time [continue reading…]