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When most people think of the book of Joshua, they don't think of the word hope. After all, there are some kings that get hung from trees, a man named Achan and his family stoned to death because of their sin.... death, destruction, war. These are not exactly cheerful buzz words. But I find many of the words in Joshua comforting. I guess because there is no logical reason that blowing trumpets would bring some walls down. It doesn't make any sense those spies survived the trip to Jericho without getting caught, or that a bunch of stones could part a river to allow the Israelites to cross. It was crazy to think that all those men who were circumcised just before going to battle would actually be able to fight at all. Ouch. All the odds were against God’s people. But there is one great truth that lies over the whole book: “The Lord fought for Israel.” (10:25) Over and over you read impossible story upon impossible story… and God is always faithful to his p...

Today a classmate of mine was buried. After a long battle with cancer, preceded by a brain aneurysm in 2004, the Valedictorian of my class died early Tuesday morning. I found out via facebook. He and I were not close, though there were only 20 kids in my graduating class (I'm a farm kid from the rural mid-west. My town had 370 people in it.) J.P. was always kind of an awkward guy, very interested in classical music, science and learning in general. He seemed kind-hearted to me, and one thing that always sticks in my mind was his unwillingness to compromise. You see, he was what a rural mid-west town would call "nerdy". He wore the same grey corduroy pants every each, and olo shirts of various colors. He had big thick glasses and very pale skin. He was too uncoordinated to play sports and could barely manage to march to the right beat in band. Yet he was light years away from the rest of us on his understanding of math and science. He was proud of that, and didn’t c...