Last week we spent our first few nights as a family in our "new" house. It is not anything fancy, and it is not really new at all…just an old brick farm house somewhere in Middle Tennessee. And it is not even ours, since we are only renting this year. But it will be home for a little while, at least, once we get everything moved and can find our bearings. This first trip felt kind of like vacation at a cottage or cabin, where you are working with very limited supplies and furnishings. The difference was that we did…

A quote read in the book on my nightstand, a line of a song sung at church, a phrase heard on a podcast, a passage of Scripture copied in my journal. . .each little exposure to thoughts of others on this voyage through life adds to the sea of ideas in which I find myself. I may be reading books whose overall theme is totally unrelated, but a sentence will strike me in such a way as to remind me of something I read somewhere else. Lately this has been happening more and more. It seems that related ideas keep…