The Baltimore Sun recently ran a piece that detailed how a Chevy Chase woman paid $720,000 between 2015 and 2017 for Hindu priests in India to pray to shield her from federal investigation of her $20M Ponzi scheme. A scheme that drained the elderly of their life savings, including $816,805 from one family. In a […]
Christian Couple Gives Up $15,000 to Recognize Old Jewish Practice
Out of Seattle comes a story of a Pentecostal Christian couple who gave everyone in their 11-unit building free rent last month – a $15,000 hit. The reason? They have owned the building for 50 years and are recognizing the ‘Year of Jubilee.’ Jubilee – literally ‘ram’s horn’ in Hebrew – is defined in Leviticus […]
How My Son’s High School Marching Band Thrives on a Small Budget
Last August, Grey burst in the door of our house: “Mom, Dad, Pip, you need to go to the Poly football game on Friday.” “Whoaaaa there,” I said, pretending to restrain a rambunctious stallion with my air reins. The school year hadn’t even started yet. I loved that he was excited about his new school […]
What a Bible-Based Audit of Our Investments Reveals
When Inspire Investing saw the post I did on socially-responsible investing from a biblical perspective, they asked if I’d consider having them evaluate our retirement investments to see how ‘dirty’ they are. Sure, why not. This time, ‘knowledge is power’ wins out over ‘ignorance is bliss.’ So I submit our retirement holdings and allocations, then, […]
Coincidence or Not? The Uncanny Timing of a Tow Truck to the Rescue
We have Baltimore friends who graciously invite us to their West Virginia mountain retreat every year, and we usually take them up on it. Their house in the woods is in the Canaan Valley, where they typically get bushels of snow. A couple winters back, we were cruising along a snowy road, rushing to relax. […]
Are You Investing in Porn Without Knowing It? Socially Responsible Investing from a Christian Perspective
If you’re like me, you have a Trump-caliber wall erected between Sunday and the rest of the week. On Sunday morning, we have an intense and sometimes-moving worship experience, followed by attending adult Sunday school or teaching the 3rd-5th graders’ class. Come Monday, it’s back to work and kids’ activities, without much reflection on whether […]
500 Years After Luther, Why Do We Still Try to Buy Favor with God?
Why is it that 500 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a Catholic church (commemorated this past week), we still think we can buy favor with God? Is it because everything else of value in this world has a price? That if we want something bad enough, we can find a seller […]
It Was an Expensive Foreign Service Trip – Then She Broke Her Hip
A couple years ago, my mom had the opportunity to serve as a member of her church’s mission team on a trip to an orphanage in India, and she went for it. Like my wife Nora, mom never misses an opportunity to travel…and, oh yeah, there was a missions opportunity as well. Mom is in […]
The Formula for Happiness – Seventeen Magazine Vs My Mom
In the March/April 2017 edition of Seventeen Magazine (please don’t ask how it came into our house), the cover grabbed my attention: No, not Camila Cabello, who, for some whack reason, was like totally unknown to me. (But between you and me, I’m totes down with why she just had to leave Fifth Harmony. I […]
When Nora’s Credit Card Was Stolen And She Went Without Fries
I got a call recently from Nora at the end of the workday. She started with a little sigh and an anxious voice. But even when she’s stressed, Nora hardly ever gets straight to the point. “So I was bringing Grey home from school and I asked him to pull my credit card out of […]