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We rise before the sun. I check the weather on my phone, its 24F outside. I shiver at the thought and dig out a thermal undershirt, fleece skull cap, gloves and jacket. Without much conversation, we crawl in the car and drive to a desolate parking lot. I crank the old diesel box van and it clatters to life. A few minutes of window scraping, and we are off. After what seems an arduous journey that's actually a 15 minute drive, we pull into a dark parking lot where a couple people are setting out cones and erecting a finish line structure for the brave soles that will run in this cold. "Crazy people", I think to myself as we unload our tent, tables, and a pallet of cardboard boxes. Volunteers arrive and begin assembling boxes in the cold darkness. As the sun begins to rise, I see more bodies begin to arrive and race registration begins to setup inside the warm building. I walk in and see that the early registration the day before has netted about 800 lbs of can

Book Review: Unfinished: Believing Is Only the Beginning by  Richard Stearns Richard Sterns throws down the gauntlet in Unfinished. Believing is not enough. It is not OK to become a believer and then live the rest of our lives focused on ourselves. If Jesus meant all that stuff He said that we see in red ink in the New Testament, then becoming a believer and then devising our early retirement in the Bahamas is probably not what He is calling us to do. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We were commanded to complete the work He started when He walked the earth. Did we somehow miss that part? Many believers wonder when He will return. Sterns suggests that He has not returned because He is waiting for us to complete the work we were tasked to do when He left.  Over the last two years working in a nonprofit working to help eliminate hunger in our community, I regularly wonder why so many churches and so many believers seem so unconcerned with the suffering in thei

In late August of 1982, I made the four hour drive from my rural hometown (population 5,000) to Statesboro, GA to begin my freshman year at what was then Georgia Southern College - now Georgia Southern University . This was an exciting time that I had anticipated for years - making my break from the watching eyes of a small town, the rule of my parents, and being on my own. I had managed to coast through high school tossing my books in my locker at the end of the day and going fishing on the Flint River or hunting in the woods of South Georgia instead of studying course materials. Being the first in my family, I did not have the advise of anyone in the family of what to expect in the college experience. And, even if I had, I am sure I would have blew it off. Looking back, I can remember my high school guidance counselor cautioning me that I would need to take my college classes more seriously than I had my high school coursework, but I had heard the same advise before going into hi