something that, at first glance, appears absurd: the execution of an innocent man on a Roman cross.

By the standards of worldly wisdom, that looks like failure.

Yet “the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’” (1 Corinthians 3:19, echoing Job 5:13). The very solutions humanity expects — power, control, triumph — are not the ones God chose. Instead, the story of salvation turns on apparent defeat.

The problem with many modern tellings of the Gospel is that they start by portraying humanity simply as villains in the story. But the biblical pattern is different. Scripture often presents mankind less like criminals awaiting punishment and more like captives crying out for liberation.

Think of Israel in Egypt. They were slaves under Pharaoh, ground down by labor and fear. Their cry rose to heaven not because they had cleverly solved their own problems, but because they couldn’t. Their freedom came through an act of God that no strategist or philosopher could have predicted.

The cross works the same way.

From a purely practical standpoint, it makes little sense. If you were designing a rescue plan using ordinary logic, you would not begin with humiliation, suffering, and death. Yet that is precisely the point. What looks like weakness becomes the turning of the tide.

The pattern runs through Scripture: the last becomes first, the rejected stone becomes the cornerstone, the end becomes the beginning.

Anyone who has spent time reflecting on the world eventually arrives where the writer of Ecclesiastes did. Under the sun, everything seems to dissolve into vanity. Knowledge grows, yet sorrow grows with it. Pleasure offers distraction, but not permanence. Even wisdom itself eventually runs up against limits it cannot cross.

Michael Card captured that tension in his song “Under the Sun.” Solomon searched for understanding everywhere — through learning, through pleasure, through experience — only to discover that none of it could anchor the human soul.

And yet Ecclesiastes does not end in despair. It ends with remembrance of the Creator. The darkness drives us toward the light.

That is the strange wisdom of the cross.

God did not redeem humanity through a display of overwhelming force, nor through philosophical argument. He entered the brokenness Himself and allowed the worst the world could do to fall upon Him. What appeared to be the end became the beginning of liberation.

To the calculating mind, it is foolishness. To those who recognize the chains of this world, it looks very much like freedom.

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Happy April Fool’s Day!

In His Name, Mikal

Rather than making resolutions, I am thinking more about personal goals.  Jesus was constantly connecting with people on the margins of his community — tax collectors, Samaritan women, the poor, sick, and hungry. Jesus taught that God looks carefully at how we treat these people — people he refers to as “the least of these.” That led me to ask myself — who are the people with the greatest needs in my community, and how close am I to them?

Jesus was often criticized for spending his time with the ‘wrong people.’ “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2). I am not often accused of this. Most of my friends are very healthy, functional, and respectable people — some of them are even Presbyterians! Who are the people in my community that others may be unjustly looking down on or excluding, and how often do I eat dinner with them as Jesus often did?

Some of my family seems to be better at this than I am. Last Sunday, I was waiting for the service to begin at 1st Pres, and I received a text message from my youngest daughter. A refugee family in Vermont that she is close to has been struggling with bed bugs, and our daughter asked for our help in collecting money to buy their kids a new metal bunk bed frame and two mattresses. I was so impressed with my daughter and also struck by how close she is to this family. She met them when she lived in Vermont. She now lives in Austria but is still close enough to this family to know their needs. I do not currently know any refugees, and I don’t even know if there are any in Kootenai County or how I would connect with them.

My daughter has long been a magnet for the people that Jesus refers to as “the least of these.” People who are marginalized, outcast, or struggling are drawn to her, recognizing that she will love them, care for them, and fight for them. My wife has spent years working and volunteering at Union Gospel Mission’s (UGM) Center for Women and Children in Coeur d’Alene, walking alongside women seeking a path out of poverty and homelessness.  My wife has never experienced those things, yet she can connect with these women and walk with them as they find their way out.

I don’t know how much of this is a natural gift and how much of it is a commitment to love people to reach beyond one’s own social circles. I know that it is a mix of both. The natural gifts do not seem to be my strong suit, unlike my wife and my daughter. I sometimes find it awkward and uncomfortable to try to connect with people from very different walks of life, and I often feel I am not able to offer the kind of empathy and connection that seems to come naturally to some others, my wife and daughter included. 

I was quick to send money to my daughter for beds for the refugee family, something that I am able to do. I also seek to help “the least of these” with regular financial support for UGM, the 1st Pres Neighborhood Closet, and other programs. This year, I am challenging myself to go beyond that and find ways to be more personal in reaching out to people outside of my comfortable social circles.

One way I have found to do this is by volunteering with Family Promise. We have served several times as overnight hosts. I was nervous about it at first, feeling inadequate to know how to talk to and connect with the families that are staying overnight at the church. Overnight hosting with Family Promise has turned out to be a better fit than I anticipated. Some of this is the reality of the guest family’s situations — after dinner, they have kids to take care of and get ready for bed, and in the mornings, they are focused on breakfast and getting family members off to work and school — there really isn’t a lot of time for conversation. The main responsibility of overnight hosts is simply to spend the night at the church and be available if anything comes up — which it rarely does. I have not made lasting friendships with Family Promise guests, but I have had some wonderful conversations with people listening to their stories, and hopefully, I have been an encouragement and will continue to be. 

Attending a Family Promise training recently at 1st Pres, I was struck by this statistic — over 700 volunteers worked with Family Promise last year in Kootenai County. 700 people in our community are committing some of their time to walking alongside struggling families to encourage and support them, and now I am one of them. I was also reminded that not everyone needs to have my daughter’s ‘people skills’, as they can use drivers, cooks, food servers, etc. This is a small step in the right direction for me, but who knows, maybe someday I can expand my social circle as wide as Jesus did!
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In His Name, Tom

smallish terminal, we feel stress melt away. We have gone often enough to know the routine of the customs line: ​Hand over the paper we filled out on the plane, walk past the food sniffing dog (yes, the dog checks for food and you have to throw it out if caught with a breakfast burrito or some such thing), find our luggage and try our luck at entering the country. There is a button you push for your group. If it turns green, you go through and into the main room to find a taxi, and ‘whoosh’ you are on your way to your apartment. But if it turns red, you have your luggage scanned and searched. We got green this time.

We love the nature and quirks of Melaque. The nature is the flora and fauna of palm trees, flowering trees, the plants, the ocean, the mountains, the birds, the iguanas, and the heat. The quirks are quirks to us because we are used to federal safety codes and clean water. There isn’t much risk anymore because clean water is available by the bottle or a big jug for your living habitat.

There are other risks to being in Mexico: the crazy traffic, for one, but this is also where the cartel is rumored to be alive but invisible, until this year. This year, we made plans to go on a day trip to see a salt mine in Cihuatlan, take a boat ride through a lagoon, and then a little further on to see where they raise sea turtles and release the hatchlings. We did not get very far before traffic was stopped and backed up at a bridge where we had to turn to go toward Manzanillo. This road is important because it is the only way to get to the airport and the city.

The tour group we were with all thought there must have been a wreck. It didn’t take long for the guide to learn that a cartel in Jalisco called the New Generation had stopped a bus, told the people on the bus to get off and leave, and then set the bus on fire.  We decided to turn around and try again later in the week. When we got back to Melaque, we learned about the death of the leader and the chaos that ensued. We were told to shelter in place and be careful to discern where we get our information. Rumors run rampant. We did as we were told. Shops closed, schools closed, and grocery stores closed. Within a few days things opened up a bit, but we still do not go out at night. This is the season of Carnival for the town. We have learned it can get pretty rowdy, so we are careful when we go to the city center to see the action.

This cartel is at war with the police and another cartel located in Colima, and it will rear its ugly head. They won’t hunt tourists down because we are one of these small towns’ sources of income. However, we don’t want to get hurt because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So where am I in all of this? Power, money and sex can corrupt. I am blessed to live in the USA. But there is corruption here, too. The cartels in Mexico and the gangs in the USA prey on the poor. They promise money and power. The corrupt prey on the poor. I recommend we take a stand. In Ephesians it says we need to change to: speak the truth, demonstrate peace, encourage, forgive, use self-control, and keep in God’s Spirit. 

I am blessed, and I know it. I love God, and He knows it. I love my neighbor and the immigrants who may need our help. We give to help those whose life circumstances are different from ours.

In His Name, Teri

flip phones so our roaming distance could increase, and now we all depend on our smartphones. (Does that make all other phones “not” smart?)

The book of Ecclesiastes goes into detail on seasonal change. Chapter 3:1-8 describes the inevitability of those seasons.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven”.  We may not understand or thrill to these ordained shifts, but if we stop to think about it, they are all part of a divine, orderly plan.

Change is constant. Because we are constrained by time, it is difficult to fully grasp the beginning or end of God’s time. Understanding the fact that the shifts in our lives are not random, we can fully engage in our “current” season and trust God through the transition.

Doesn’t it fall upon us to be resilient in that knowledge and stay constant to our faith in God?

“A time to gain, a time to lose”. Be glad for the “gains”, be humbled in our losses, and find strength from the fact that the loss also has a purpose.

“A time to laugh, a time to weep”. Laughter is medicinal, just as weeping is also medicinal and perhaps just part of God’s “purpose” to guide us through times of great trauma.
We should be grateful to God for ALL the seasons, consistently thank Him for his wisdom in the purpose under heaven, and then perhaps we can be at peace for those difficult moments in our lives that we don’t comprehend. The Byrds sang about it in 1965:

​In His Name, Craig

from society. Soon after, Karen and her two sons began delivering lunches to people experiencing homelessness on the streets of New York. ​

In 1986, Karen learned of the homelessness affecting her own community in New Jersey and knew she had to do something. She brought together people in need and people who wanted to help, including the existing community resources, the religious community, the YMCA, a car dealership, and most importantly, volunteers.  The first “Interfaith Hospitality Network” opened that year. The community was working together.  

In 1988, the National Interfaith Hospitality Network was formed using Karen’s community model. In 2003, the name was changed to Family Promise. The new name refers to the promise and the potential inherent in every family. The organization continues to grow around the country. They have over 200 community-based affiliates across 43 states and help well over 100,000 children and adults per year. Family Promise has trained and mobilized over one million volunteers over the past thirty years. In 2026, Karen Olson now serves as President Emeritus. She has published one book, “Meant for More,” and is working on her second book. Family Promise now has a national board as well as local boards.     

The Family Promise mission is to end homelessness among families with children, one family at a time, by respectfully empowering them to achieve lasting independence and stabilization through a community-wide response from faith-based groups and civic organizations. The four key areas of focus are: eviction prevention, shelter diversion, shelter, and stabilization. In 2024, our local network served 43 families.  

First Presbyterian Church is one of 16 congregations in CDA and Post Falls that participate in Family Promise. Each year, a schedule of host churches is created.  Our church hosts families about five times a year for a week. Guests arrive on Sunday mornings and depart for their new location on the next Sunday morning. We provide sleeping rooms, upstairs in the Hunter building, including rooms for two volunteers! Dinners are provided by church volunteers. We also coordinate at least two host volunteers to be present during dinner to serve, socialize, and help out in any way. The sign-up board for any of these volunteer duties is put out a few weeks before we welcome our guests. You will see us standing there to answer your questions and get you signed up! Each morning, our guests leave for jobs or go back to the Family Promise offices at St. Luke's Episcopal Church up the street.  Family Promise offers many opportunities to serve in addition to helping out at church. Please feel free to contact them directly or talk to us. Our next guests will be arriving on March 8. 

Special thanks to all of our wonderful volunteers!

In His Name, Rondi
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For it is in the giving that we receive. 
- St.Francis of Assisi