We are now two weeks past the launch event for Seasons of Sorrow and one week past the official release date. Overall I think things went well. The Getty Music Sing! Conference, where we held the launch event and where I led a breakout session, was my first conference in more than two years and it was a blessing to meet so many of you there. I can’t say I really missed conferences and travel during the pandemic era, but it was still good to be back to it. I (perhaps inevitably) picked up a pretty good case of Covid there and though that knocked me off my feet for about a week, I then made a reasonably quick recovery. I trust I’ll stop coughing and recover my sense of taste before long!

I am very thankful for all the support and well-wishes related to the book and very grateful to each of you who purchased a copy. The song from CityAlight has also seemed to resonate and I look forward to hearing how you’ve introduced it to your own churches.
CityAlight shared some neat pictures from that launch event in case those are of interest:

I want to remind those of you who may be giving the book to families that have experienced a loss, that I’ve prepared a letter you can consider printing and including with it. It will help explain the background to the book and perhaps guide grieving parents to a couple of the chapters that may prove most helpful in the earliest days of their sorrow.
With the launch of Seasons of Sorrow behind me, I am planning to escape to a quiet location for a few days in October so I can begin to plan out my next writing project. I have what I think is a solid idea and one my publisher is behind, but I still need to tease it out and make sure it can be feasible—and be interesting enough to hold my attention through a year of writing and editing.
On the family front, Aileen recently began a part-time job—essentially a personal assistant in the real estate industry—and is enjoying it a lot. She sometimes works here and sometimes from the office, but considering her boss is a neighbor and has her office in her home, the commute is measured in mere meters. To this point it has been a good fit and a blessing to her.
Michaela did her first solo cross-border travel last weekend, flying down to the US to visit a friend and surprise her for her sweet sixteen. Sixteen is the generally-accepted age where people are allowed to fly without adult supervision and permission (though we still filled out the requisite paperwork just in case). She has traveled with us plenty in the past so had no trouble adapting to doing it on her own. She’s loving her online schooling and benefitting a lot from her classes. These are still early days, but so far she has no regrets in withdrawing from her former school.
While Michaela was going, Abby and Nate were arriving. Nate is a lifelong fan of the Blue Jays (rather convenient, considering the family he married into) but had never been to a game before. We decided a playoff run was the perfect time to remedy that, so he and Abby swung up for the weekend to go with us. I don’t get downtown as often as I could or should, but it sure was nice to take in a game at the Rogers Centre. It wasn’t a tremendously good game of baseball, but the Jays did come away with a solid win over the Orioles.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago I shared some thoughts on the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. I’ll add a few more thoughts today.
There was lots of chatter before the series debuted about whether or not it would be Wokety Woke Woke. We are now four episodes in and I’d say this is still not clear. What is clear is that the show’s creators are just making up their own story. And while the story is loosely based on Tolkien’s world, its characters tend to think, act, and speak like they live in ours. I suppose I could try to enjoy it on its own terms instead of trying to enjoy it as something related to The Lord of the Rings, but, as it happens, The Lord of the Rings is the only fantasy I’ve ever enjoyed. This show only means anything to me because of its connection to Tolkien—a connection that is increasingly tenuous.
To this point I’m finding the series drab. After four hours of television, and midway through the first season, very little has happened and no characters have been introduced that I have come to care about. It’s boring, boring, boring. Perhaps the worst thing of all, though, is that the central character is obnoxious, self-centered, entitled, and unlikeable. Why would you base a whole show around someone who is so brash and grating? And why would you make her so very different from who she was in the books and films? This is absolutely baffling to me! And don’t even get me started on the cringey action scenes where she single-handedly kills a snow troll or somehow shoves five soldiers into a prison cell even though she is unarmed. Galadriel is a beloved character from a beloved story and this adaptation completely eviscerates all that people love about her. I suppose you could say the writers are envisioning some kind of character arc in which she will eventually become the Galadriel we know and love. But I don’t think I’m alone in hoping that she comes across another snow troll soon—I know which of them I’ll be cheering for. (And yet that’s part of the difficulty with the show, isn’t it? We know she is in no great danger because she’s alive and well in the events that take place centuries later. We know she will survive every battle.)
Whatever the case, it’s hard to believe that this is the most expensive show in the history of television, not to mention one of the most hyped. At nearly $60 million per episode, and with some of the greatest intellectual property they could ever hope to work with, the creators have made a show that is, through the early episodes, mediocre at best. It truly could turn into one of the great entertainment disasters of all time. Of course it’s still possible that they can turn it around. But at this point I’m not holding out much hope. And, lest we lose sight of a key fact, let me repeat it: $60 million per episode and this is the best they can do! It’s almost unbelievable.

As I share this update I am just setting off to begin the project I have titled Worship Round the World. The premise of Worship Round the World is that I will visit 12 different churches in 12 very different places to get to know those congregations and to join them for a Sunday service. Each of these churches will worship in a way that is consistent with Scripture, yet also faithful to the local language, customs, and culture. In this way each worship service will be unique yet distinctly biblical. I will be making the journey with my friend Tim Keesee.

This was a project I dreamed up a few years ago and fundraised for in 2019. I had intended to set out in 2020, but then the world slammed shut because of the pandemic and is only now getting back anywhere near to normal. If all goes well, the great majority of the travel will take place by the end of this year. In 2024 we will produce a book and video series based on all we saw and experienced. Our great hope is that it will encourage us all to praise God for what he is doing each and every Sunday as his people gather together to join in a worldwide chorus of praise to his name.
While we very nearly reached our fundraising goal in 2019, travel costs have increased substantially since then and we know we will fall short. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the project through Frontline Missions. (Click and then scroll to the bottom of that page.)
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In other news, I have a new site design that will be launching in the days ahead. This is a huge project that has been underway for some time now. When it launches you will quickly see that things look a lot different, but I hope you’ll also find that things function better. I’m sure there will be some initial bugs and errors, so please just bear with me through those. I’ll have more to say about this project soon.
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Last month I undertook what I think may prove one of the most difficult things I have ever done: I changed my keyboard layout. I learned to type, as you did, on a keyboard with a standard QWERTY layout. In fact, I learned on an actual manual typewriter back in ninth grade, the teacher tapping a yardstick while together we rhythmically chanted (and typed) “A … S … D … F … G … H … J … K … L … semi.” I learned well and have been able to type at nearly 100 words per minute ever since with almost perfect accuracy. Yet it is now well-known that while the QWERTY layout may have made sense for typewriters it doesn’t make as much sense for computers. And it has the unfortunate problem of putting the most-used keys in some of the most awkward spots—spots that often require stretching the weakest fingers. I deal with significant pain when typing and, having exhausted most other solutions, decided it was time to take this radical step. 
I researched the different options and landed on Colemak (in the “DH” variant for those who follow such things). It has been extremely difficult to overcome 30+ years of muscle memory but bit-by-bit I am getting it and my typing speed and accuracy are slowly recovering. I expect it will be ages before I am back to my old speeds, but I am, at least, getting closer to being able to type at the speed of my thoughts. I am also correcting some bad typing habits and forcing myself to strike the right keys with the right fingers.
I probably didn’t help my cause a lot by also changing to a new keyboard at the same time. I picked up the strangely-named and strangely-shaped Moonlander which offers some very helpful functions, such as a way to eliminate the shift keys (thus mitigating a lot of wear and tear on pinky fingers). Anyway, the whole process has been extremely difficult and frustrating, but I am hopeful the results will be good in the end—and that eventually my brain will clue in to where the “d” key now is, since that’s the one that continues to torment me the most.
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As for the family, all is well, I think. Abby is into the second semester of her junior year at Boyce College while her husband Nate is working full time and taking classes online through The Master’s University as he works toward finishing up his degree in business. Michaela is pressing on in her final year of high school and looking forward to beginning at Boyce in August. Ryn is working full time at a coffee shop in Louisville while also auditing some classes at Southern Seminary. Aileen is still enjoying her job as a personal assistant for a neighbor who works in real estate. The Lord continues to bless us in so many ways and we continue to wish only that we might honor and serve him.

Comparison comes as naturally to us as eating, breathing, laughing, weeping. From our youngest days we begin to compare ourselves to others and quickly find the old adage to be true: Comparison is the enemy of joy. Though we so readily compare ourselves with others, we discover that this fosters a deep unhappiness. What promises joy actually delivers misery.

The reason is that comparison is intrinsically competitive, so that we don’t really want to be merely pretty, but prettier than the other person; we don’t really want to be merely wealthy, but wealthier than he is; we don’t really want to be merely successful, but more successful than the other person. No follower count is high enough until it is higher than hers, no church big enough until it is bigger than his. If we fail to get the things our hearts desire we grow in envy, but if we do get them we grow in pride. Our comparison is never rewarded with contentment.
Even in our Christian lives we can be prone to comparison. We can judge ourselves righteous by comparing ourselves to others’ depravity, we can judge ourselves faithful by comparing ourselves to others’ sinfulness, we can judge ourselves committed by comparing ourselves to others’ apathy. We can become like the Pharisee Jesus introduced in a parable—the one who went to the temple to pray and said, “I thank you, God, that I am not like other men”—especially like that traitorous tax collector who stood nearby. With such an attitude it is little wonder that Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.”
Yet if comparison is most naturally the enemy of joy, it can supernaturally become its ally. However, comparison can only become an ally when we use it to compare ourselves to the right standard and if we do so for the right reason. It can only become an ally when we compare ourselves to Jesus out of a longing to be more like him. The way to grow in holiness is not to compare ourselves to other people, but to compare ourselves to the Savior.
If you are at a theme park and want to ride the rollercoasters, you need to be a certain height. It doesn’t matter if you’re taller than anyone else—all that matters is if your head comes up to the top of their measuring tape. The Pharisee fell into the universal temptation of judging himself a good man by comparing himself to people he considered worse. But that’s like trying to ride the coasters by saying “I’m taller than this other person!” That doesn’t matter because that’s not the right measure. What matters is if you come up to the mark.
Similarly, we love to compare ourselves to other people because it’s a comparison we can easily win. We only need to look around long enough to find someone who is worse, and that’s never hard to do. But it doesn’t matter if we are holier than the person who is next to us or the person who is on the TV screen. What matters is if we are as holy as Jesus, for he is the one who perfectly demonstrated how to live an unblemished life, how to love the Lord with his whole heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love his neighbor as himself. When we compare ourselves to him we will always be confronted and challenged—we will see our shortcomings, we will repent of them, and we will take up the challenge to be more and more conformed to his image. It’s a comparison we will always lose, yet instead of growing in envy and pride, we will only ever grow in humility and the godliness that it fosters.