My wife and I just spent a week in Canada visiting my family. Gasoline in Canada is sold by the litre (that is how Canadians spell it), and it is expensive – north of $1.30 per litre, over $5 per gallon. The gas prices turned out not to be an issue for us because, following my sister’s advice, we did not drive our vehicle while in Canada. With the increased tariffs and our president’s talk of annexing Canada, there has been a surge in national pride and an increased dislike of the United States expressed in the vandalizing of cars bearing American license plates.

Years ago, I was displaying a friend’s rare Bible collection at a pastor’s conference. He put me up in a nice hotel. The next morning upon exiting my room, I walked to the bank of elevators and pushed the down button. The doors opened, I stepped inside, pushed the “L” button, then stood facing the doors, staring ahead as the elevator made its descent. The elevator slowed, stopped, a chime sounded, but the doors did not open. I had the sense that I was being watched. Turning around, I discovered it was the rear doors that had opened, and other guests, smirks on their faces, were waiting for me to exit.

We have had some beautiful sunsets of late on the Florida panhandle courtesy of drifting smoke from some Canadian wildfires. On behalf of my fellow Canadians, “You are welcome!”

The wider culture has designated this Sunday “Father’s Day,” but if you attend the worship service at COMPASS Church, you will hear me refer to it only as the Lord’s Day, just as I do on the Sunday designated “Mother’s Day.” Our culture is eagerly jettisoning any reference to God, so I have taken this small stand to preserve Sundays as the Lord’s Day, at least among believers. Nonetheless, we do honor our fathers and mothers on those Lord’s Days because it is biblical to do so, not just one day a year, but every day.

The young man I give guitar lessons to each week in exchange for him mowing my grass has graduated from high school and, after a few summer vacation trips with family, will be heading off to college. That means – gasp! – I am back to mowing my own grass! That prospect sent me searching online sales sites where I found a used riding mower for sale locally.

Whenever my wife and I visit a restaurant for the first time, we ask our server the same question: what one dish on this menu would make us want to come back? The servers typically smile and cock their heads to the side as they ponder a question they have never considered. Their recommendations rarely fail to satisfy.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of seeing or hearing a bird fly into a picture window. Our home backs up to a woodlot and birds, seeing the woodlot’s reflection in the kitchen window, attempt to fly to it. Whenever that happens, regardless of the species, I mutter, “Crazy cardinal.”

I used the Waze app on a recent road trip and was a good “Wazer,” reporting and confirming road hazards along the way. “Vehicle on shoulder ahead,” the digital assistant would announce, sounding to me like she was annoyed. Sometimes there was a vehicle and sometimes it was there no longer, and I would dutifully give a status update by selecting the appropriate button. It was on that road trip that I realized that I needed to have my eyes checked. Sometimes I reported that the vehicle was no longer there when in fact it was. I needed a “whoops, my bad” button.

With the recent death of Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church has scheduled a conclave to begin on May 7. As a former Roman Catholic, now a born-again Christian, and a protestant pastor, I am interested in the conclave’s election process, so I decided to watch the 2016 Oscar-winning movie “Conclave.”

One of the required courses in the seminary from which I got my degree was apologetics. For those not familiar with the term, apologetics is not a course in which you learn how to say you are sorry in meaningful ways. The term comes from the Greek word apologia which means “to make a defense” and is found in the Apostle Peter’s first letter to the churches in Asia Minor. He exhorts Christians to turn away from evil and be zealous for what is good, and “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” Knowing that such a life will be noticed in a world that does not honor Christ the Lord as holy nor is typically zealous for what is good, he continues, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” The field of apologetics is engaged in teaching Christians how to defend the Christian faith.