It was a Tuesday morning in July when I sat down in President Corey's office and told him the news that I had accepted a new job and would no longer be working at Biola University. With tears in my eyes I told him how hard it was for me to leave. I'd worked at Biola for nine years and met my wife Kira here. I loved my job working in the Office of the President. I was not looking to leave. 

Yes, our individual stories matter, but mostly because they are subplots and microcosms of the BIG story God is telling. Each of our lives can be a reflection of the redemptive story God authors on a massive scale. Each is a compelling chapter in the epic of creation.A movie that I think illustrates this well is Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life.

I've been very honored to be a part of the initiatives coming out of the new Biola University Center for Christianity, Culture & the Arts, which launched at Biola back in September.

The Internet makes it easy to be alert to everything that's going on in the world, to know what all the important people are saying; but I think we must remember that we can get all that and more in the smallest of things, well observed—even in a grain of sand, William Blake might say.

The world is far too complex, troubled, beautiful and dynamic for us to ever just exist in. It beckons us to make sense of it. To carve at least some comprehension out of the vast incomprehensibility of existence. This is what education is about. For anyone who cares about the destiny of this world, education is a high calling: a pursuit without end that is never wholly futile and never fully satisfying.

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the end of the world. No, it's not because there seem to be massive earthquakes happening everywhere in the world this year (though there have been a lot); and it's not because I saw 2012 a few weeks ago (a wonderfully absurd film). 

Traveling changes one's life. I'm sure anyone who has done much of it--especially abroad--would agree. There's something about the displacement and discomfort of being in an alien place, coupled with the awesomeness of seeing things you've never seen before and blowing open the doors of any prior conceptions of "what this world is." Travel enlarges one's view of existence.

The start of every summer is always so full of excitement—the promise of endless free time, lazy mornings, late nights, swimming in pools and oceans, climbing trees and mountains, reading books. Every year around late May, the summer looms so large. It seems so immense. Those endless days! Those boozy low-pressure thunderstorm nights! And so little that must be done!