Author: Jon Gauger

Why do we like our music so loud? Go to a concert—whether rock, pop, country or Christian—and your ears are almost melted off by the end of the evening. Go to most restaurants that are considered “in”….and chances are the music is cranked up so loud that you have to yell to carry on a conversation. Driving an expensive car is not enough to be truly cool.  What you need is a subwoofer that’ll blow out glass.  LOUDNESS.  That’s what makes you cool. And the question, again, is why? Well in the restaurant world, there actually are some answers.  Research…

Have you heard the story of Irena Sendler from World War II? When Hitler took over Irena’s beloved Poland, he set up ghetto camps where Jewish families lived before being crammed into cattle cars and hauled off to concentration camps where most died. But Irena Sendler’s heart was touched by the plight of the Jewish people, especially their young children. She knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children."   Irena offered an escape from near certain death, offering to take the little ones to Roman Catholic…

Do you and I worship “niceness? I say…quite possibly. As Americans, we prefer nice churches in nice neighborhoods with nice seats in nice auditoriums. Gone the days of squawky P.A. Systems, our churches rumble with the latest and greatest in audio gear.  The sound is…pretty nice.  The job of doing PowerPoint and creating video clips is now the domain of a “Pastor of Visual Arts.”   The stuff on the screen, frankly, looks pretty nice.  Nothing wrong with any of that.  But niceness—as a frame of reference—can go too far.  It comes to a crash up against an old hymn that’s…

Where’s all the music? When I fill in as host for Moody Radio’s morning show, we do a feature called “Breakfast for the Soul.”  Essentially, it’s a brief devotional that I try to follow up with a song that fits the reading.    But I’m often stumped. Example? Where is the chorus that reminds us fasting is the expected behavior of a normal Christian life?  Ever heard a song about the persecuted church?  Or loving people living a homosexual lifestyle?  Good luck finding that kind of stuff. So I’ve taken the liberty of crafting an opening verse or chorus on some…

Crawling across the plywood of our attic, I spied the tan plastic bag and knew exactly what was inside: Daytimers. Before there was Google Calendar and Evernote… Before there were Palm Pilots… Back when Windows referred to the glass in your living room—not an operating system—we needed a way to keep track of our schedules. Many of us in the business world used Daytimers—a spiral bound pocket book with calendars and appointment pages.  And in that tan plastic bag up in my attic were several years’ worth of old Daytimers. You know what caught my eye as I flipped through…

I should have known the pleasant looking cowboy before me was an imposter.  But his gloves, hat and gun all looked legit.  He invited us to a sandpit where we could pan for gold (okay, it was actually pyrite—but it looked like the real deal). I have to confess, it was exhilarating swirling the shallow pan, exposing the yellow glow of gold—just like I'd seen in the movies.  We carefully dumped our gold into miniature cloth sacks, pausing now and then to see what kind of fortunes we'd amassed. I saw “we” because it was me, two young nieces of…

He's back at it again—my buddy Jack.  He's the one that's trying to build bridges with his neighbor across the street.  In a previous blog, I promised to keep you up to date. Here goes. All winter long, Jack has taken his snow blower over to his neighbor's driveway and blown it out.  In return his neighbor—we'll call him Steve—has blown out Jack's driveway.  But the best part is they've had opportunity to work on their driveways together.  Even shoveled side by side.   They wave at each other in their cars—and often chat when getting the mail. Jack and his…

Are you a drug addict? Don't answer too quickly. It's possible you've never smoked a joint in your life…never popped a pill the doctor didn't prescribe.  But you could still be addicted.  I'm not talking about heroin or cocaine or meth.  I'm talking about the drug of connectivity—the need to have access to your email or Facebook page. Recently, I was reminded of my own addiction. They did a major re-work of our email system at work on a Friday, and–BOOM–I was without remote access to email all weekend long. You wanna know the really sick thing?  I actually sat…

She was born in 1903 in what was then Austria-Hungary. Alice Herz-Sommer was raised in a German speaking Jewish family. Early on, she displayed enormous talent at the piano and at sixteen, she was the youngest student of the Prague German Conservatory of Music. She toured Europe, impressing thousands. Then came 1943 and the rise of Hitler. By now, Alice was married and had a young son. German soldiers ultimately hauled off Alice and her family. Not before she watched hopelessly as her neighbors ransacked her home, gleefully helping themselves to her clothes, art and furniture. Her husband was taken…

At 37 thousand feet, you see life–not just terrain–more clearly. I’m writing this piece shoehorned into an airplane whose rows are so tightly spaced the seats do not recline.  But it’s only a two and half hour flight to Denver, so I suspect we’ll survive. Minutes ago, why wife, Diana, observed that this budget airline offers a type of first class option: four seats across instead of six.  It was actually tempting. Now I don’t mean to offend those who choose to pony up for wider seats and meals served on china instead of plastic (someday I think I’ll try…