You probably saw the heart-wrenching photos in the news, and maybe even said a prayer. On November 8, 2018, a massive forest fire, whipped by 50 mile-an-hour winds, virtually razed the town of Paradise, California.

When the devastation ended, the town of 27,000 people was nearly erased. 13,000 homes and many businesses—some 85% of the town’s structures—had vanished in a few minutes. Abandoned cars melted down to their axles as people fled. 

Worse, not only did this most destructive wildfire in California’s recent history destroy structures, but it also obliterated a once tight-knit community of families, friends, neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and churches. In the months that followed, people fought to put their lives—and community—back together. Many had to find new homes, new jobs, new schools, and new relationships. Ultimately, a new normal.

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I was dumbfounded. Truly dumbfounded and probably more bothered than I should have been, considering what was happening was not any of my business. Yet, as person after person ignored the two signs, five people, plastic-wrapped food, and active mopping happening while the Delta Skyclub crew turned over the food service area from breakfast to lunch, I found myself personally invested in the undoubted frustration of the Delta staff.

I was sitting there when they put out the signs. I was sitting there when the staff made the very public announcement over the loudspeaker, “the upper food area would be closed to turn it over for lunch. Lunch is available, however, in the lower area.” There were only about twenty steps between the two areas, mind you. But for what seemed like an eternity, though only about twenty actual minutes, I sometimes watched but mostly heard the staff people repeat the same refrain. “Excuse me, ma'am (or sir), but this food area is closed for the next several minutes while we turn it over for lunch.” 

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In the early 20th Century, though India had been the target of long-term missionary efforts since the early 1900s, these efforts had done little to change it from its resolutely Hindu foundation. This ancient religion dominated every sphere of life, and from a young age, children born into the privileged caste were taught to study the Hindu texts carefully.

Pandita Ramabai was only twelve years old when she had memorised some 18,000 verses from the Hindu Puranas. Her family was so committed to their religious devotion that her father impoverished their family by hosting religious pilgrimages.

Ramabai’s mother, father, and sister were so weakened by poverty-induced hunger that they would eventually die. Pandita was sixteen.

Though they had been a resolutely Hindu family, Pandita’s father had advocated for women’s education against the wishes of most Hindu leaders.

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On April 9, 1906, a multi-year revival known as the Azusa Street Revival began in what formerly was an African Methodist Episcopal Church turned horse barn at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles. The Revival continued from 1906 until roughly 1915. William J. Seymour, the one-eyed 34-year-old son of formerly enslaved people, was the primary leader of this explosive Revival. It was in 1906 that Seymour, who had been pastoring in Houston by way of Mississippi, was invited to preach at a small holiness church pastored by the Reverend Julia Hutchins in Los Angeles. 

Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, and within two days, was preaching at Hutchins' church at the corner of Ninth Street and Santa Fe Avenue. During his first sermon, he preached on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and when he returned on the following Sunday, March 4, he found that Hutchins had padlocked the door, barring him from entering to preach again. The church elders had barred him from preaching anymore because they disagreed with his message about the Holy Spirit and the associated gifts.

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Robert Smalls is a legend that, unfortunately, you likely do not know. His is a story that Hollywood should make into a movie because it is so incredible. He may be the most remarkable man ever to live.

Henry Louis Gates, Harvard professor and historian, writes of him:

Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow enslaved people, in the absence of the white captain and his two mates, slipped a cotton steamer off the dock [in Charleston harbour], picked up family members at a rendezvous point, then slowly navigated their way through the port. Smalls, doubling as the captain, even donning the captain's wide-brimmed straw hat to help hide his face, responded with the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter and other defence positions. Cleared, Smalls sailed into the open seas. Once outside Confederate waters, he had his crew raise a white flag and surrender his ship to the blockading Union fleet. In fewer than four hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: Amid the Civil War, this enslaved Black man had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) from slavery to freedom.

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Become historians, for in knowing our past, we can learn to avoid the pitfalls of our present and shape a preferred future. You see, history tells us that despite preconceptions about blackness in Colonial America; and despite a purposeful subordination of African people in the Americas in the seventeenth century, there is evidence that where European Servants and African Slaves found themselves with common problems, common work, a common enemy in their "masters," they behaved toward one another as equals. 

One scholar who specialises in studying the American Slave Trade, Kenneth Stampp, records that African and European servants of the seventeenth century were "remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences" between them. 

The two despised groups initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament. It was expected, for example, for servants and enslaved people to run away together, steal hogs together, and get drunk together. It was not uncommon for them to make love together. They worked together and fraternised together. In fact, laws had to be passed to forbid such relations.

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Today’s post is a “guest” spot from my lovely wife, Breanna. Breanna is the cofounder of Renovation Church and the love of my life!

Boredom. If you think about it when was the last time that you were truly bored? I mean genuinely and honestly by the dictionary definition of "bored." Here's the definition in case you need more help remembering the last time boredom hit you).

“Feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity.”

Let me ask it another way. When was the last time that you were "unoccupied?" Ok, now I bet you have a hard time pinning it down.

The truth of the matter is that we are rarely unoccupied. We live in an age where entertainment is constantly at our fingertips. We ALWAYS have something that occupies our minds. Our eyes always have something to look at, and our brains always have something to keep us occupied... or rather "checked out."

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At the national wrestling tournament, in March of that year, during the medal rounds of my sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma, I snapped my knee. The sound of it was so loud and reverberating that my parents and coaches later told me they could hear it from the mat side and the stands.

Over twenty years have passed since, and I still vividly remember that moment. Everything slowed down. I heard the crowd near the floor let out a collective gasp as searing pain shot up my leg, into my lower back and seemed to distribute itself over my entire body. And then, I collapsed as the sound returned with referee whistles and a gaggle of voices.

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About sixteen years ago, I was invited to speak at a Revival service at a local church in south Florida. Breanna and I were young in our marriage and just trying to make ends meet. She was teaching school and pregnant. I was working for Ricoh Lanier, attending school, coaching wrestling, and travelling to preach as God opened up new ministry opportunities.

The first night of the Revival was pretty uneventful, not in a negative way but in a normative way. We praised and worshipped in song. The gospel was preached. People made decisions to follow Jesus' love and leadership.

The second night, however, took a different turn. I have never publicly told this story, and even now, I feel hesitant, but here goes…

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