Picturepocket's Blog

Category: family

  • The Real Real

    The hard thing about our seasonal Bible studies is that people come in with years of pain and sorrow and suffering just to have an hour and a half of being around people who will listen to them. What do you think of church, and Bible and religion? Is it not fancy churches or massive…

  • The Check In 

    It’s still January of 2026. At the beginning of 2020, I wrote about all my hopes and dreams for the decade. Now it’s all whipping by like a car with no steering wheel and a brick on the gas.  In a few hours, I will pack up the kids and drive them two and a…

  • 1 Corinthians 16: Living Saints 

    In the last chapter of his letter, Paul encourages the church in Corinthian to put aside money to support the saints in Jerusalem and a talks about his missionary travel plans. Here, he uses the term “saints” not as a wall of dead icons, but living companions and ministers of the faith.  He asks the…

  • Home

    I had a reoccurring dream last night. One of the classics. It’s where I am running in slow motion. It’s not a nightmare, and I am not struggling get away from something, but trying to get back to something. The locations I am slo-mo traveling through are old neighborhoods of places I used to live…

  • Jump to Recipe

    While making telephone calls at work, sometimes I gently scroll the Internet, looking at recipes to make for our evening meal. Here are three features in a recipe that catch my attention. Number one. It has to have a great photo. Number two. The ingredients have to be affordable and accessible. I order from Walmart…

  • 1 Corinthians 7: Happily Single

    (If anyone quotes you this book in regard to sex and marriage, please do yourself a favor and read the whole thing first before taking any further action. Paul clearly states that he is telling his opinion in response to a question that the reader posed in some earlier correspondence. Since Paul doesn’t restate the…

  • Light in Darkness

    Every year, during the holiday season, as we approach Christmas, the events increase and things get crazier. This last week was nuts. In the midst of an atmospheric river of rainfall, we had to procure outfits for the kids for a middle school dance and choir performance. There was also a birthday gift to shop…

  • Philemon: The Slave is Our Brother

    I finished Romans and wanted to read another scripture, but didn’t want to launch into a whole new book, so I present: Philemon. It’s a one pager. In fact, after an extended introduction and conclusion, it’s a one paragrapher, a plea for freedom.  Like most of Paul’s writings it’s a letter, but unlike the others…

  • Wild Mombot

    I watched the movie Wild Robot with my kids yesterday evening after dinner. It’s beautifully rendered, but am I the only one to relate to the robot when it comes to raising kids?  In the movie, if you haven’t seen it, a robot is accidentally dumped into the sea, and washes up on an island…

  • Romans 11: Grafted 

    Paul asks and answers his own question, is God rejecting his chosen people? He reminds the reader that he too an Israelite, descended from Abraham and Benjamin, just like Jesus, with a personal stake in this debate. God is not rejecting his people, even though as a group they have acted against his ways many…