Household Budget Guide

This is link to a Dave Ramsey Form for budgeting. Once there, click on Monthly Cash Flow Plan

Resilience…

“When life knocks you down (and it will), and you get back up, that’s resilience” – Marcus Buckingham. 

I grew up around resilient people, shaped by the Great Depression.  They did what needed to be done.  My Aunt Ouida, as a high school student, would go down to the barn, shoot a steer, dress it out, layout the pieces on the back seat of a Model A Ford, drive to town, and trade the meat for flour and sugar.  That is resilience. 

COVID has been a stress test of resilience, a tough time for everyone.  It has brought out the best in some people, the worst in others.  Some people have chosen to see themselves as the victim; others have used this time as an opportunity.  What do resilient people do that is different than other people?   

Resilient people are curious.  They ask, “What can I learn from this crisis?”  You may not think of curiosity as an emotion, but it is.  Sometimes it is called “wonder.”  We have heard Einstein’s supposed definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Resilient people learn from failure and do something different. 

Resilient people have passion.  Passion is an internal compass that points you to true truth.  Some people call it drive.  Larry Bird, the great NBA start of previous generation, was famous for staying after practice to work on his shots.  He made perimeter shots look easy.  Resilient people hang in a little longer, give a little more effort, and do one more thing.  I asked a Mom of three preschoolers how she did it, and she said, “I am driven to be present for my kids.  I want them to know they are cherished and loved, and that starts before they can remember.” 

Resilient people know their purpose.  “Purpose” is a word describing an emotion that has no English word.  Men will talk about being “tough” or having “guts.”  Old English expressed it like this: “The King purposed to send troops into battle.”  Purpose means you know your unique contribution to the world, and you sell out to it.  Strangely, when you meet someone with a strong sense of purpose, they seem a little nutty or abnormal.  It could be they are the normal ones, and the rest of us are abnormal because we are not living out our purpose. 

Resilient people live in hope.  Hope is stronger fear.  Need proof?  Every second child born to a couple is a testimony to hope.  Fear of birth pain is overwhelmed by hope.  If you live in hope, you will still have days of discouragement; however, you will not let failure define you.  You hold onto a future better than your present.   

In 1945, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine after a secret mission.  Nine hundred men survived the sinking; only 316 survived a four-day ordeal of exposure and shark attacks.  When the survivors were debriefed about their traumatic experience, they told of men who would deliberately detach from the circles of men treading water and swim off by themselves.  These outliers would quickly drown or be consumed by sharks.  When asked why men did this, one survivor remarked, “They were the ones with no future ahead.”  They had no hope. 

You can choose to be resilient.  You can be curious.  You can live out your passion.  You can embrace your purpose.  You can live in hope. 

Resilience is a spiritual process.  The Apostle Paul spoke of being beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and beaten for the cause of Jesus.  He wrote, “We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).”  I would say Paul was a pretty resilient guy.  How did he do it? 

Paul always remembered he was a forgiven man – that is what it means to carry around the body the death of Jesus.  Whatever mistakes he made, whatever failures he faced, he knew the grace power of Jesus was greater.  The resurrected life of Jesus was able to shine through Paul because Jesus's resurrection means nothing ultimately defeats the one who follows Jesus.     

Resurrection is ultimate resiliency.  As one of my mentors said, “Followers of Jesus are Easter People.  We live in hope.”

Score One for the Old Guys…

I am old enough to remember when the only big-league team in Florida was the Miami Dolphins – and they only arrived in 1966.  Tampa, the city nearest us, built a new stadium in hopes of luring an NFL team to town.  The sports editor for The Tampa Tribune, Tom McEwen, hailed from my hometown of Wauchula (he grew up with my Dad).  He constantly wrote about the need for an NFL franchise in the “Greater Tampa-St. Pete-Wauchula” metropolitan area.  With a population of almost 4,000, we were sure that Wauchula would be the deciding factor in awarding the coveted expansion team.  Finally, in the first NFL expansion since the AFL/NFL merger, Tampa, along with Seattle, was awarded a team.  The team would be called “The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (I thought “The Wauchula Wildcats” would have been a good name).”   

By that time, we had moved off the ranch and I was attending high school in Largo.  Our band, The Largo Band of Gold, had just won a national championship.  We were selected to play the pre-game and half-time show for the first Bucs home game ever.  I still remember the electric feeling in the stadium that night.  The crowd would cheer for anything, they were so pumped.  The Bucs fell to the instant in-state rival, Miami Dolphins by a score of 28-21.  The first quarterback of the Bucs?  Steve Spurrier. 

It turned out, that first pre-season game was the highlight of the season.  Spurrier ran for his life behind an offensive line made up of cast-offs from other NFL teams and rookies fresh from college.  The team wilted to a winless season.  When Head Coach John McKay was asked what he thought about his team’s execution, he replied he was in favor of it.  The Bucs would stay winless until late in their second season.  Their mark of losing 26 games in a row was exceeded only by the Chicago Cardinals losing 29 from 1942-1945.  At least they had World War II as an excuse.   

It was hard to be a Bucs fan in those days.  Coaches would arrive, promising a turn-around and would run the team into a ditch in a few seasons.  People began to wonder if the Bucs were cursed.  There was a rumor Tampa Stadium was cursed.  A local radio station hired a witch doctor to remove the curse.  The next Sunday, the Bucs won.  The week after, the Bucs reverted to form and lost again.  Apparently curse removal is a temporary thing. 

I moved away to go to school, but those first steps on the Bucs’ field created a bond.  I followed the team through its ups and downs.  Tony Dungy became Head Coach and brought quality (as he always does).  Jon Gruden took Dungy’s team to the Super Bowl and won.  We thought the curse was finally lifted.  Not so.  Gruden coached the team right back to mediocrity.  He was fired.  A new coach was hired.  Then he was fired.  The cycle repeated, again and again. 

Like the rest of the world, I took note when Tom Brady, the Greatest of All-Time (or G.O.A.T.) left New England and Bill Belichick for warmer climates.  The Patriots had decided Brady was over-the-hill, but Brady thought it otherwise.  When he started the 2020 season, he became the oldest man ever to play NFL football.  He was already the oldest winner of a Super Bowl MVP at 40.  At 43, he was stretching retirement out even further.   

They say Brady changed the culture at the Bucs.  He got them to shake off their loser’s laments and the team start playing with a fire in their gut.  Brady convinced his go-to tight-end from the Patriots, Rob Gronkowski, to un-retire and come and play in Tampa.  Brady and Gronkowski played for Bruce Arians, the Head Coach, who at 68, also had come out of retirement to coach the Bucs.   

After losing to Kansas City on Thanksgiving Sunday, the Bucs would not lose another game.  Facing Kansas City again in the Super Bowl, in their own stadium, the old men of the Bucs dominated Kansas City and their young, brilliant quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.  Brady topped his own record and was again named the Super Bowl MVP.  Coach Arians became the oldest coach to win a Super Bowl. 

I cannot help but feel proud for my hometown Tampa Bay-St. Pete-Wauchula Buccaneers.  I was there in the beginning, suffered long, and got to see the old men score.  Being no longer young myself, it is a reminder just because the calendar turns a page, that does not mean a person is done.   

When you read the Bible, you discover God does amazing things with people in the last third of their lives.  Noah started on the ark when he was 600; Abraham becomes a dad at 100; Moses is 80 when he leads the people out of slavery in Egypt; Joshua was 60 when he led the people of God into battle; Jesus begins his ministry at age 30, remarkable when you remember the average life-span in his time was 42.  God does great things with people others think are over-the-hill. 

No matter how old (or how young) you are, God has a purpose for your life.  If you do not know what it is, ask.  Before he was even asked, Brady announced he was coming back to play next year – at age 44.  The G.O.A.T. is not done yet. If you are reading this and if you still have life, neither are you. God still has a purpose for you.  Live it.

Runaway Yearling…

At the ranch, we have half-a-dozen waterholes to provide water for the cows.  They are dug out with a backhoe, down about twenty feet or so.  The water-table is usually high enough to fill the water holes up and provide water for the cattle. 

Florida gets hot in the summer.  You may think it’s hot at Disney, but try being a 1200-pound cow when it’s 98 degrees and 100% humidity.  It doesn’t take long for a cow to discover they can get into the waterhole and cool off a bit.  The problem is the cows track mud into the waterholes and they begin to get shallow and dry up.  The sides cave in, and the waterhole eventually becomes a mudhole.  The solution: dig out the waterholes again. 

A few years ago, my brother Steve was showing the backhoe man which waterholes needed to be dug out.  They came to one waterhole that had dried up completely.  All that was left was a muddy bog.  Stuck in the mud was a 500-pound yearling (a cow about a year old).  Obviously, a rescue was called for. 

They got out a brand-new rope, eased down into the bog and put the rope around the not very happy yearling.  The plan was to tie the rope to the trailer hitch of the truck and pull the yearling out.  However, no thought was given to what to do with the yearling once out of the mud hole.  Remember this:  failure to plan brings excitement.

My brother tied off the rope and eased the truck forward.  The yearling popped right out of the mud.  Once freed, not realizing he was tied to a three-ton truck, the yearling took off for greener pastures.  Reaching the length of the rope, his neck stopped as his feet continued.  According to eyewitnesses, the yearling performed a cartoon-like maneuver, feet flying forward and up, neck and head coming back, and back meeting ground – not a natural position for any four-legged animal. 

My brother got out of the truck and grabbed the rope.  The yearling realized being on his back was not a pleasant position.  He scrambled to his feet and took off around the truck.  The backhoe man got out to help, inadvertently stepping into a loop made by the slack in the rope. 

The rope tightened around the backhoe man’s ankle, and just like in the movies, his feet were jerked out from under him. A 500-pound heifer can drag a man quite a distance.  The man later said it wasn’t bad at first, but then he started to hit piles of processed grass that didn’t taste very good.   

My brother, empathetic soul that he is, was laughing so hard, he couldn’t move.  Then the yearling tightened the rope in the opposite direction and my brother was suddenly pinned against the truck.  Once again, the yearling ran out of rope, neck jerked back, feet fly up, and was again on his back.  The backhoe man took advantage of the momentary slack to free his ankle, and the yearling takes off again. 

My brother is not a small man, but he weighs much less than a 500-pound yearling.  He tried to pull the rope but realized he was no match for 500 pounds of panicked beef.  The only thing left to do was to cut the rope.   This, however, was his brand-new rope.   I should explain that my brother is little tight.  By that time, the yearling had run to the end of the rope again, had its feet jerked out from under it and was again on his back.  It was not the smartest animal ever raised on the Buckhorn Ranch.   

Steve had no choice.  He put his pocket-knife to the rope and made a clean cut.  The yearling was last seen headed north in a cloud of dust, trailing 28 feet of rope. 

The moral of the story?  God comes to rescue us when we are bogged down in sin.  We are free to head north, or to stick close to the one who loves us enough to rescue us. 

Which way are you headed? 

PS: The whereabouts of the yearling are still unknown.  He’s probably full-grown by now.  So if you see a cow with a rope around his neck heading north, please call me.

The Stars are Telling You Something…

Days on the ranch started early.  First you put on your britches, then you went to the barn to feed up.  Then you ate breakfast.  Back then, my parents didn’t see the need for a security lamp.  It didn’t matter how dark it was, the barn hadn’t moved in a hundred years.  You were expected to navigate your way in the darkness before the dawn.  I would start the hundred-yard journey, stepping into the darkness, letting the shadows and moonlight take me down the path.

On the clear pre-dawn mornings, I remember the stars.  We were far from the light clutter of town, so you could see the light dust of the Milky Way.  The Little Dipper was open to receive and the Big Dipper was upside down.  The faint North Star, Polaris, stood as always to say, “The house is north, the barn is south.”

Some mornings I would stop, and look, and be awed.  Words can’t describe what I felt.  It was an odd combination of feeling small, of being amazed, and of worshiping the God who put it all in place and keeps it spinning.

There were other moments when the stars spoke to me: riding in the back of truck across the Mexican desert, hundreds of miles from any man-made lights.  I remember feeling very small.  I was a foreigner in a strange land.   If something happened to the truck and our driver, I would have only the stars to guide me home.  Somehow it was comforting to know that the God who knows the name of every star, knew where I was.  He would take care of me, just as he kept all the details of those stars in his mind.    

There was another ride in the back of pickup, on a different continent, in a different hemisphere.  We were driving through the Kalahari Desert on a moonless night.  The constellations were strange to me, in the wrong places.  A strange thought crossed my mind: I was probably the only person in the whole country of Botswana that had a Ph.D. in the Old Testament.  That thought did not make me feel superior.  I remember feeling humbled.  God made me a unique soul, treasured by him.  Just as God made each star unique, I was unique out of the billions of people on the planet. 

Right now, the first star I see in the evening isn’t even a star; it’s a planet, Venus, rising in the early evening sky.  Sometimes I wonder if God made all the planets in our solar system just to convey to us that earth is special and needs our care.

The stars still preach sermons to me:  Life doesn’t just happen.  There is a Creator.  He has made a beautiful creation.  Creation is a testimony to His love, His care, and His generosity.  The Creator shares his creation with me.  Whatever problems I have can be solved by this gracious Creator.

In the Bible a man named Abraham was given a promise:  he and his wife would have a child.  He waited.  No baby.  Years passed.  One day God came and spoke to Abraham: “The promise is still in effect.  I will bless you.” 

Abraham replied, “What good will that do me?  When I die, one of the hired men will get it all.”

You can understand Abraham’s response.  Waiting is hard.  Believing while you wait is harder.

So, God invites Abraham to step outside.  Not to fight.  But to look up.  To see the stars.  What do you think God was trying to say?  God told Abraham, “Look at the stars.  As they are, so your descendants will be.” I think God was telling Abraham, “If I can do that, I can certainly make your descendants more numerous than the stars.

Wait for a cloudless night.  Drive out of town, past the streetlights.  Pull over, turn off your car lights.  Let your eyes adjust to the darkness.  Look at the stars.  Think about what God is saying to you.  Maybe He is saying, “If I can do this, what do you think I can do for you?”

Is Your Character Growing?

From the Archives.

Your mind is amazing.  It thinks so fast you don’t know you are thinking.

Like right now. 

Your eyes receive light patterns.  The patterns are sent to the brain.  The brain recognizes the patterns as words.  You don’t read the individual letters.  You don’t sound out the word.  Your brain translates the sentences into meaning without you thinking about thinking.  At the end of this article, without thinking, your brain will send a message to read what’s next.

Every day you take a thousand actions without thinking.  You make a choice and take action changing your future without thinking.   You act on what you believe is good and what is bad without thinking.   You justify to yourself your behavior without thinking.

Character is the way you structure your world.  Your inside world shows up in your external behavior.  It shows up without thinking.

We do not slow down life enough to think about our thinking.  We should.  Slow down and think about you.

Your soul is the operating system of your life.  Your character is how you program your soul.  It is the system architecture.  Your character is the patterns that come from your soul.

People structure their soul differently:  People can’t stand the tension of an open ended problem.  They must decide, even if it is the wrong decision.  Their heart is in the driver’s seat.

People feel sad and sadness guides their decisions.  Or, people think someone is a bad person and they withdraw from a relationship.  Their mind is in the driver’s seat.

People have an appetite for sugar.  They eat a box of Pop-Tarts.  They repeat the pattern the next day.  Their body is in the driver’s seat.

People want a “significant other.”  They take “the first available.”  They endure neglect, abuse, and unfaithfulness.  Their relational need is in the driver’s seat.

What if you could restructure your character?  What if you could restructure your system architecture?  What if you could restructure your soul programming?  Where would you start?  What pattern would you choose? 

What if you started with the model of the happiest person who ever lived?

Jesus.

Your objection:  I’m not sure Jesus was the happiest person ever.  Wasn’t he killed?

Yes.  So?

Your response:  That doesn’t sound very happy to me.

That’s the problem.  We define happiness by what happens in a moment.  God defines happiness by what happens from birth to infinity.

We don’t know how to define happiness.  Jesus did:  Happiness is being blessed.  Happiness is life fully lived.  Happiness is satisfaction.  Happiness is being the being God made you to be.

That is exactly who Jesus was.  This is exactly who Jesus is.

The more your character is like Jesus’, the happier you will be.  Maybe it’s time for you to slow down, think about your life, and pray to grow a character like Jesus.

Lessons from Tough People…

For a hundred years, Noah built a boat.  Think about that.  Just him and his three sons.  “What are we going to do today Dad?”  “Build the boat.”  It would get tedious after the first twenty years.  People came to see this “do-it-yourself” project.  When they mocked him, he preached back at them.  You have to be pretty tough to work on a project for 100 years, endure abuse along the way, and see the project to the end. 

When word reached Abraham that his nephew had been taken as a prisoner of war, he instantly converted from a shepherd-businessman to a warrior.  He set out after the raiding party, boldly attacked them at night, and got back his nephew and most of the other ill-gotten gains.  You have to be pretty tough to take on the armies of four kings.

Moses went back to Egypt, back to the courts of Pharaoh where he was raised and laid down God’s demand: “Let my people go.”  It would have been so easy for him to be intimidated.  But he wasn’t.  He had a backbone stiffened by the promises of God.  Moses kept pushing against Pharaoh’s stubbornness, never backing down, never giving up.  You have to be pretty tough to stand and speak truth to power.

When Sisera, leader of the Israel’s enemy showed up at Jael’s tent, she lured him in with refreshments.  Then she waited until he was asleep, picked up a hammer and a tent peg, and drove it through his temple.  Jael was one tough woman.  She saw an opportunity and she took it.  You have to be pretty tough to hold a hammer and peg over a man who would think nothing of killing you, and then drive your point home.

The Israelite army was pinned by their enemies, the Philistines.  Jonathan, son of the King, was tired of inaction.  So, he went with his armor-bearer out to a Philistine outpost on a cliff.  He prayed if God wanted him to attack the outpost, then the Philistines would invite him up to battle.  Against all military logic, the Philistines invited him to climb the cliff.  He did, and he and his armor-bearer wiped out 20 Philistines in one battle.  You have to be pretty tough to fight in a battle where the odds are 10 to 1.

Nathan knew, like everyone else, that the math didn’t work for David’s new son.  His mom, the widow of Uriah, had married David after a period of mourning for her husband.  At the wedding, people weren’t sure if she had put on weight or if that bump meant something else.  Six months into the marriage, a big baby boy was born.  After the boy was about a year old, God spoke to Nathan and told him to confront David about his sin.  Nathan did, knowing the King could drive him from the city or have him killed.  You have to be pretty tough to tell the King he sinned, and God isn’t happy.

Daniel was always the guy who stood out.  He worked for the government, but the government was often hostile to his faith.  Jealousy caused other government officials to set him up.  He was thrown into the lions’ den to become a snack between meals.  Instead, it turned into a sleepover.  You have to be pretty tough to keep your faith when your life is in danger.  You have be even tougher to spend the night with the lions.

Jesus was tough.  His work demanded it.  First, he was a carpenter.  Jesus did hard physical labor.  Then he had to deal with crowds of people who wanted miracles or food, depending on the day.  Being “on” is exhausting.  But the toughest thing Jesus did was absorb the weight of sin on the cross.  This defies description.  The load of guilt both felt and not felt by every human being would drive most of us mad.  But Jesus was tough enough to take it, to add the weight of the world’s transgressions to his soul.  You have to be the toughest person who ever lived to let the sin of the world rest on you.

We live in tough days.  It is tempting to want to check-out, to blame other people, to respond to every critic.  We may want to say, “This battle is not worth fighting.”  When it is our turn to speak truth to power, or to confront someone with hard realities, it is tempting to just keep our mouth shut.  We might assess a situation and decide the price is too high to get involved.

This is a time for tough people.  Not heartless or callous people.  Tough people.  Tough people who do what needs to be done, who stand for something, who take action, who speak up about right and wrong.

All of these people in the Bible had something in common.  They believed they had a mission from God, and they believed God would give them all the toughness they needed for their mission. 

Being tough does not begin in the gym.  It begins in your soul.  It begins with asking God for strength, for courage.  It begins with you embracing whatever God-mission God gives you and doing it.  True toughness never forgets “Greater is he who is in you, than he who is in the world.”

The God I Want...

I want a God who will help me win the lottery.  If I won one of those mega-million jackpots, I’d pay off my house, maybe buy a place at the beach (and in the mountains too, why not?), buy all the land that touches my family ranch in Florida, and buy myself a big spread.  I’d be generous too.  I’d give away ten percent, like I’m supposed to, give my siblings a million each, and my brother-in-law too.  I’d probably sign up for liposuction.  But the money wouldn’t change me, no sir.

I want a God who will fix my problems.  I want him to fix the people who drive me crazy, take away all my cravings, and guide me to all the right decisions.  I want a God who will do it all for me.  All I have to do is ask.

I want a God who will make me smart.  I want him to stop me before I say stupid things.  I’d like to be smart enough to listen to TV and my wife at the same time.  I want to know which stocks will go up and which will go down every day.  If God would help me know what other people were thinking when I’m talking to them, that would be great.

I want a God who humbles self-centered people.  It would be great if God would squash the arrogant people and bring them down to size.  I have a list I’d like to give God of people I’ve identified who need to be brought down three or four notches.  A number of these people are in politics.

I want a God who agrees with me theologically.  It puzzles me how people can read the same passage in the Bible and get different meanings.  I want everyone to understand it like I understand it.  I’m pretty sure my interpretation is correct.  Maybe God could get everyone else in line with my understanding.

I want a God who punishes the wicked a little faster.  Wouldn’t it be great if every thief had their hand fall off when they stole?  Wouldn’t it be great if everyone who committed adultery grew big warts?  Of course, God and I would have to agree on what “wicked” is.  Wicked is the big stuff.  I would expect God to look the other way when I tell a white lie, or exceed the speed limit, or cheat on my taxes, or lust a little in my heart.

I want a God who never disciplines me or teaches me a hard lesson.  I want my life to be soft and comfortable.  Why can’t God make character formation easy?  Wouldn’t it be great if I just naturally wanted to do healthy things?  It would be even better if I didn’t have to make healthy choices at all – if God just kept me healthy while I downed a dozen doughnuts with a cheesecake chaser.

I want a God who will understand how hard it is to be me.  I want him to require nothing from me; instead, I want him to make sure I get parking spaces near the door, that it stops raining when I get out of my truck, and that all my decisions are easy.

I want a God who never convicts me of sin, but winks at me and says, “That’s okay.  Do what you want.  I gotcha covered.”  How great would it be if my conscious did not trouble me when I was selfish, or greedy, or unkind?

Funny, as I write each line about the God I want, the personality of God shrinks.  This God I want is no longer the great “I AM,” he is an idol of projection.  I am projecting the darker corners of my soul.  This God I want would not be the God mighty enough to save me. 

When God told his people “I am the LORD your God, you shall have no other gods before me,” I think he was saying, “You don’t get to define me; I define myself.”  When you begin to think you get to tell God who he is, you are really creating an idol, an idol you will find in the mirror.  Every idol ever made, whether in stone or in our hearts, reflects a God we want, not the God who is real.  How you think about God matters.  He decides who he is, not you.

My hunch is even if I got the God I wanted it wouldn’t work.  That God would be too small, too narrow, to bound up with my own flawed understandings.  The God I want is not the God I need.

The Other Thief...

He was mad at the world.  He had reason to be. 

His father was killed by a Roman soldier when he was just a kid.  He and his mother survived because of the charity of a few family members and a couple kind neighbors.  Their kindness, however, was given with a touch of condescension.  Kids, who have a special form of cruelty, made fun of him for not having a dad, for being too poor to even have a “coming of age” party. 

He drifted toward two other boys a little older than him.  They talked big, didn’t work, did petty crime.  He joined them in their adventures, often lurking outside town in the dark, waiting for a traveler who unwisely journeyed in the night.  The gang would jump him, steal what he had of value, beat him up, then run.  His cut was enough to ward off hunger, but never enough to get ahead.

One night things went wrong and the victim recognized one of them.  He called out the boy’s name.  They decided they couldn’t leave this one alive, so they killed him.  Knowing his body would be discovered in the morning, the gang left the village for good. 

They moved on to a bigger town, met some like-minded folks, and moved on to bigger crimes.  The gang robbed a tax collector on his way home from his booth.  They attacked a priest coming home from Temple duty and got his wallet, his donkey, and his meat from the Temple sacrifices.  Merchants in town were told to pay “protection” money, or have their marketplace booth ransacked.

He admitted to himself that he enjoyed power over people.  He took perverse pleasure in seeing their terrorized faces.  He was mad at the world for taking away his future and the world would be made to pay.

His gang drifted down to Jerusalem.  More traffic meant more opportunities.  There were always people coming and going, most of them with money to buy a sacrifice for the Temple.  They averaged a job every two or three days.  His cut was never large, but enough for him to buy women, buy some booze, and not feel anything for a day or two.

They were waiting among the rocks one night and heard the noise of straggling travelers.  By now, everyone in the gang knew their roles.  As the sound grew louder, they prepared to pounce.  They stormed out from the rocks and found themselves face-to-face with twenty Roman soldiers.  Most of the gang ran.  He, however, was filled with the memory of what Roman soldiers had done to his father.  He stabbed one of them, before being pinned with a spear.  In the moonlight, he saw another member of the gang, a new guy, had been caught as well.

The soldiers debated what to do with him.  He struggled against the rope they tied him with.   He heard them say, “Let’s crucify him and the other one.  Send a message.”

He was taken to Jerusalem, thrown into a dungeon, his feet placed in stocks.  Day after day the rats would come to gnaw on his toes.  He screamed at the guards, screamed at the rats, screamed at the walls. The other member of the gang next to him spent a lot of time crying and praying.

Then, one Friday morning, early, the soldiers came and took him and the other man out of the stocks.  They gave them both a heavy beam of wood and told them to pick it up and carry it.  This could only mean one thing – crucifixion. 

The crossbeam was heavy.  Every time he stumbled the guards would put a lash to his back.  He screamed his anger at them, but he knew he was marching to his death.  Another man joined them.  He had heard of this man.  His name was Jesus and he was supposed to be some kind of rabbi.  Some people thought he was the Messiah, but no Messiah would be going to his death at Skull Hill. 

When they reached the spot, he saw the crucifixion poles.  The soldiers lifted the poles out of their holes, roped the crossbeams onto them, and then stretched out the three men.  He screamed and cursed the soldiers as the nails went through his flesh.  Rage ran through his body with the pain as he was lifted up and his cross was dropped into the hole.

Pausing for breath, he looked to his left as he saw they had put the rabbi, the would-be Messiah in the middle and his fellow gang member on the other side of him.  The rage bubbled up again.  “Aren’t you the Messiah?  Why don’t you get down from there and why don’t you save us too?” he screamed.  He added a few choice cuss words to convey his point.

To his surprise, from the other side of Jesus, the other gang member yelled back at him: “Are you nuts?  We deserve this.  This man has done nothing wrong.”  Then, addressing Jesus in a quieter voice, he said, “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

Speaking was more difficult now for all three of them.  Jesus said to the other man, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”  What in the world was Jesus talking about?

He saw the sky darken, he heard Jesus mumble a few more words, then he saw him stop breathing.  Death was coming for him too, he knew it.  The soldiers broke the legs of the other gang member.  His breathing stopped about three minutes later.  Now they were coming to break his legs.  He cussed them again.  He heard his bones break.  He couldn’t push up to get his breath.  With his last breath he cussed the Romans, the soldiers, his whole sorry stinking life. 

Then there was bright light.  Then heat.  Fire.  Darkness.  The very voice of evil itself spoke.  “Welcome to hell.”

He screamed in rage.  He deserved better than this.  The evil voice spoke again: “Scream all you want.  You chose your hate.  Now, you get to live in it forever.”

“Where’s the other guy,” he demanded.  The evil voice responded again, this time with a note of disappointment, “He got away.  Asked for mercy at the last minute.  You heard him.  God, being God, granted him the mercy. You, on the other hand, you were full of anger and pride.  This is the eternity you wanted, because you chose hate over mercy.  Enjoy.”

Care Enough to Correct…

I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else and you were kin to most of them.  In my childhood, it seemed like every adult I knew felt free to correct me.

Alvin Simmons lived up the road and worked for my mother.  He took my brother and I with him while he did chores.  I remember discovering if I yelled “Help” loud enough, there was an echo off a dense bunch of trees.  I yelled it over and over until Alvin told me stop.  He said, “Somebody might think you are really in trouble.  Never yell help unless the trouble is real.”  Since that day, I have never yelled help unless I really needed it.

Bert Calder cleaned house and watched me while my mother worked in town.  I had a little toy pistol, the kind that with a roll of caps that made a noise when you pulled the trigger.  For some reason, we didn’t have a roll of caps, but it didn’t matter.  I would point the pistol at whatever I wanted to shoot and yell “Bang!”  One day I made the mistake of pointing at Bert.  “Bang” was barely out of my mouth when she snatched my pistol away from me and told me never to point a gun at anyone.  I must have been four or five, and even at that age I knew the difference between a real gun and a toy.  I protested, “It’s just a toy.”  Bert shook her finger in my face and said, “Toy or not, never point a gun at anyone.”  Since that day, whenever my hand holds a gun, I hear Bert Calder’s voice and I am mindful never to point it at a person.

My Aunt Iris kept my brother and I sometimes.  Aunt Iris was close to six feet tall and solid.  She wasn’t fat, mind you, but she had a no-nonsense way about her.  When I was seven, she told me to sit still on the couch.  In a fit of original sin, I said, “Make me.”  She snatched me up and put me on the couch and sat on me.  Aunt Iris brought a lot of gravity to bear on the situation.  In this instance, I cried help, because I needed it.  My brother Steve was laughing at me.  Aunt Iris stood up and I gasped for air.  “Are you going to do what I tell you?” she demanded.  “Yes Ma’am,” I gasped out.  Since that day, when someone tells me to sit still, I do.  Aunt Iris really made an impression on me.

Wayne Collier would take my brother and I cow hunting.  I rode a one-eyed Shetland pony my Uncle Larry had procured for me and tried to keep up with the big people.  I was riding behind the cows as we pushed them up to the pens and one of the cows turned back and ran right out.  I froze.  Wayne yelled, “Don’t let her get by you Clay.”  She got by me.  Wayne and Uncle Earl rode after the cow and Wayne roped her.  He drug her back to the herd.  I was a little bewildered.  Wayne rode up beside me and said, “Son, I’m sorry I yelled at you, but when a cow starts to turn back on you, don’t freeze.  You’ve got to put your horse broadside to her and turn her back.”  Since that day, every time I worked cows and one made a break for it, I heard Wayne’s voice in my head.  I might do the wrong thing, but I do something.

These people were not my parents.  I suppose in some circles today, a parent might have said, “You have no right to talk to my child like that.”  Back in those days, children were community property.  Everybody in my community thought it was their job to look out after children and teach them things they needed to know – like not to cry for help when it wasn’t needed, or never point a gun at a person, or sit still when you’re told, or even don’t let a cow turn back on you.

American bison typically run when they sense danger, but when predators approach without warning, bison form a multilayer circle of protection. The females form a ring around the young, and the males form an outer ring surrounding the females.  For a predator to get to the most vulnerable of the herd, they have to get through the whole herd. 

There is something to learn from the bison.  Our children need our protection.  They need every adult to take ownership and teach them things they need to know.  This is not a job we can leave to a smart phone or assume one teacher take up the slack.  Our children need all of us to protect them, advocate for them, support them, and show them the way. 

I think when you step in and teach a child something they need to know, even if that child is not yours, you are doing God’s work.  Every child deserves a circle of adults who care enough to correct.

Out of Control…

During my seminary days, I was a chaplain at University Hospital in Louisville. The chaplains rotated shifts in the emergency room overnight to minister to those brought in. The hospital was a level three trauma center, so we got every accident, every gunshot, every drug overdose. When I had the ER shift, I don’t ever remember getting more than a couple hours of broken sleep on a hard cot in the chapel.

In that ER, the chaplain was not only there to minister to those in crisis, he or she was an extra pair of hands when needed. My first night on duty, I was walking through the ER and a resident grabbed me. He told me to hold a man down while they made an incision into his stomach cavity to see if he had internal bleeding. I held the man down by his shoulders while they gave him local anesthetic, then cut him open. Nobody told me the ER was going to be like this.

The shift I’ll never forget happened a few nights later. A young woman was brought in by ambulance. They had radioed ahead to expect trouble. The nurse called for me. “She might need a chaplain,” she said.

The ambulance pulled up to the bay and backed in. The security guard toggled the doors. As they swung open, I saw the inside of the ambulance looked like a cat fight had broken out. Boxes had been ripped open, IV units were on the floor, and the EMT looked like he had finished third in a knife fight.

They unloaded the gurney and I got my first good look at the young woman. She looked to be eighteen or nineteen, dishwater blonde hair, and skinny, maybe about hundred and ten pounds after an all-you-can-eat buffet. She was straining against the restraints, her eyes wild, and she was screaming cuss words that would make a cowboy blush.

“Give us a hand, Chap,” called the security guard. This was my call to action, to be the extra pair of hands. “Grab her right leg, we’re going to unloose the straps and put her on a hospital gurney.” Something told me this wasn’t such a good idea. I have been to many rodeos in my life, and my intuition told me we were about to have one right here in the ER.

A nurse held the woman’s head, three security guards and me each grabbed a limb, and the EMT loosened the straps. At that time, I weighed a little over 200 pounds and was in pretty good shape. Two of the security guards looked like they topped out over 250, and the third was in my weight class. When the straps let go, this hundred-and-ten-pound young woman began to thrash and jerk. It was like trying to hold the leg of a running horse. Her leg jerked from my grasp and for a sickening second, I thought she was about to shake loose and run. I leaned my full weight onto her leg, got a firm grip and a faraway look, and held on for dear life.

Somehow, we got her onto the hospital gurney and another nurse produced a straitjacket. I wasn’t sure this was going to work. Imagine trying to capture a hundred-and-ten-pounds of cussing fury and tying it up. Extra nurses poured out of the ER. This was not their first rodeo. First one arm got tucked into a sleeve and then another. She bit one of the nurses and tried to bite a security guard. I was glad I was on the end with no teeth.

We got her belted down and she was placed in the “quiet room.” The quiet room was a bare room with nothing but concrete walls, a caged light, and door with a window. Think of a prison cell with less class and that was the quiet room.

The nurses could monitor her by video, but they told me to stroll by every so often and see if she wanted to talk. This was like asking if I wanted to talk to a charging bull.

After an hour, she had calmed down. She stopped cussing and asked me to tell the nurses she no longer needed to be restrained. I passed the message on. The medical team came, rolled her into the ER proper, and after treating her, told me she wanted to talk to me. I didn’t know why, except that I had become very well acquainted with her right leg during our introduction.

When I pulled back the curtain, she smiled, and apologized. It turned out she was a diabetic, and she had gone to her first “adult” party. Alcohol was in abundance and she partook, having no idea about the sugar level of beer. After six or seven beers, her body rebelled, and she lost control.

She told me while she was out of control, she knew what was happening, but she was powerless to stop it. Somehow, I knew to smile at her and say, “That’s the definition of being out of control.”

We talked about faith and Jesus. She said she grew up in church but stopped going when she was in high school. This experience, she said, made her think she needed to take God more seriously. I said I hoped she would. I prayed with her. She said she felt like getting some sleep. I understood the feeling.

It was about four AM when I finally made it to the cot in the chapel. I couldn’t get the experience out of head. When I checked the ER at seven in the morning, she had been discharged. That’s the frustrating part of being a hospital chaplain – you are there for the moment, not for the journey. But I could pray for her and I did.

I prayed a simple prayer: “Lord, help that young woman let you be in control of her life. Because Lord, it looked to me like when she was in control, she was out of control.” Then the Spirit spoke to me: “Remember Clay, that goes for you too.”

Cravings…

I’ve stood with the refrigerator door open, searching for something to satisfy my hunger. I see carrots and apples, but I’ve craving something sweet. Or salty. Or fatty. What’s inside is not what I am craving.

I’ve opened the cabinet and inventoried the contents: crackers, chips, cookies, peanut butter. There is an old Southern expression: “I’ve got a hankering…” There’s good stuff in the cabinet, but that’s not what I have a hankering for. I’ll sample a couple of items, but nothing seems to satisfy.

I’ve seen a sign for a restaurant on a highway, remembered the taste of their food, and before I know it, I’ve turned into their drive thru. I wasn’t really all that hungry, but their sign triggered a memory. I was convinced I needed and deserved that taste.

I’ve taken my family to a special restaurant, where the prices are high, and the food is tasty. I was taught never to waste anything, so I eat everything put before me. Even if I am full, I call for more free bread so I can get full value.

I’ve been known to drink five to six glasses of tea at a meal. Maybe it’s a result of growing up in Florida, but I drink a lot of tea. More than once I’ve jokingly told the waiter to bring me a glass of ice, a pitcher of tea, and twenty Sweet and Low packets. A waiter once told me it was a good thing I was hooked on tea and not beer.

I’ve been on a diet (more than once) and sat down to a meal where some favorite item is being served – my sister’s fried corn bread, or guava cobbler, or Paula Deen’s mashed potatoes – and have eaten myself sick. The diet is forgotten in the face of food that is special. Because I can’t get these things whenever I want, I overeat when they are available, until there isn’t any left. I seem to be missing a stop button.

Now for an amazing reality: within a few hours of trying to satisfy my cravings, I was hungry again. I’ve actually walked out of restaurants and stopped to get something to drink at a drive through (especially after Chinese or Japanese food. MSG makes me thirsty).

That’s not so unusual I suppose. I’ve also known people who have sacrificed hours and hours to get a degree and few days after graduation, they feel kind of flat. I’ve known people who wanted wealth, got it, and wanted more. I’ve known people who wanted a certain kind of house, finally got it decorated the way they wanted, and then they started over. I’ve even known people who prayed for kids, got them, and then spent as much time as possible away from them. I’ve known people who desperately wanted to be married, got married and found it wasn’t enough to heal the hurt in their heart. I have other friends who, if they start drinking, they can’t stop. The craving isn’t satisfied. Other people I know are always looking for attention. They can’t get enough. Your soul can crave a lot of things.

We keep searching for something to fill us up: achievement, relationships, food, possessions. It doesn’t work. We get hungry all over again. The cravings take hold. Whatever we’re looking for to fill the hole in our soul isn’t big enough; we keep putting stuff in, but it just passes through – sometimes literally.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry.”

Maybe Jesus is saying if you chase your cravings, you will never get full. If you follow Jesus, the big hole in your soul finally gets filled. Whatever your craving and whenever it hits, first pause, and talk to Jesus. Tell him what you crave. Listen. It might surprise you to hear him say, “Satisfying that craving will only make you feel good for a while. I will fill you forever.” Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he talked about the “peace that passes all understanding.” That is a peace only Jesus can bring, a peace that stops you from being controlled by the cravings.

The Box...

When my mother and father first married, the preacher at my family’s church came to welcome my mother to the community.  As the pastor made inquiries about my mother’s spiritual status, he found out she accepted Jesus in her teens, at a revival in the Methodist church in Venus (Venus, Florida, not Venus, the planet).  A week or so later, my mother, grandmother, uncle, and aunt were baptized in a pond, and brought into the fold of the Baptist Church.

In the midst of finding out my mother’s spiritual journey, the preacher saw a deck of cards on a side table.  In those days, some Baptists objected to the playing of cards.  I’m not sure why.  It might have been because playing cards was associated with gambling.  Or maybe, as comedian Chonda Pierce extrapolates, playing cards was thought to lead to beer.  Beer, at that time, was considered the root of all evil.

The preacher concluded his visit, and my mother thought no more about it.  That is, until the next Sunday.  In his sermon the preacher railed against the loose morals of the young people in the community.  He roundly condemned drinking, dancing, going to the movies, and working on the Sabbath.  Then in shocked tones, he gave the example of visiting a newlywed couple and discovering playing cards in their home.  It was a small church and my parents were the only newlywed couple in the church.  It was as close to naming a name without naming a name as he could go.

I remember my mother telling me the story years later.  She said she almost died of embarrassment.  Never mind my father’s father had been a preacher.  Never mind that she lived with her mother-in-law, who did not object to having a deck of cards in her house.  Never mind her sister-in-laws, their husbands, and their children were in the congregation that day and met the preacher’s denouncement with icy stares.  Mama said she wanted to crawl under the church and never come back.

That day in September 1945, the preacher drew a box and told everyone that if you followed Jesus, you had to fit in his box.  If you liked to cut a rug, you did not fit in the box.  If you went to the movies, you did not fit in the box.  If you took a drink of alcohol, you did not fit in the box.  And, if you liked to play cards, you did not fit in the box. 

Church people still draw boxes and demand people fit inside them.  The boxes change from church to church.  There are not too many churches left that tell you not to dance or go to the movies or play cards.  Maybe they all went out of business because they were majoring on the minors.

I have known churches that build a box around a certain translation of the Bible.  If you do not read that translation, you are not going to heaven.  Another church I know says your truth can be anything you want it to be.  If you were to participate in that church and suggest there might be such a thing as absolute truth, you would find their box is just as restrictive as a church that insists on using a specific translation. 

Not too long ago, a woman asked me, “If I follow Jesus, do I have to become a Republican?”  Of course, the answer is “no.”  Partisan politics are just another box that church people try to insist you get in.   When a church insists on adherence to a box, they usually tie the box to the promise of heaven.  “If you want to go to heaven,” they say, “then you have to get in our box.” 

Jesus never talked about boxes.  Instead, he said, “Follow me.”  If you follow Jesus, you arrive at heaven, because you have a relationship with him, not because you fit in a box.  Ironically, it is harder to follow Jesus than getting in a box.  If you get in a box, all you must do is stay in the box.  Staying in the box is passive; following Jesus is active.  If you follow Jesus, you must stay close enough to see where he is going.  You must talk to him about your journey.  When Jesus says to stop and rest, you stop and rest.  When Jesus says, go, you go.  Your focus is on him. 

When that story my mother told me flits across my consciousness, I cannot help but wonder: What if my parents let the preacher’s box chase them away from church?  What if the preacher’s box chased them away from Jesus?  Then I get a picture in my mind.  I do not know if it is true or not; but the picture is of Jesus and the disciples, gathered around a fire in the cool Galilean evening, going over the day, Jesus explaining his teachings.  Then, as conversation lags, Jesus turns to Simon Peter and says, “You want to play a game of cards?”

A Daughter Takes the Plunge…

Her father abandoned her family when she was a child. Unless that has happened to you, you cannot know the pain and confusion it causes a six-year-old. She wondered if it was something she had done. She longed to hear her dad’s voice, to have him explain why he left. A girl needs her daddy.

Contact through the years was sporadic. A phone call now and then. Lots of missed birthdays and Christmases. Like a lot of girls with father pain, she sought comfort in the arms of boyfriends. She was willing to do anything for their love. She got pregnant, married fast, got divorced, remarried. Her Dad was not there to guide her, encourage her, or stand by her.

Now she is forty-eight, and the call comes: Her dad is dying. Does she want to see him one last time?

There are many reasons to say “no.” The rest of the family has said “no” with a finality that deafens. Old memories and hurts flood her soul. She thinks about all the times she could have used a dad and he was not there. But something has changed for her. She found Jesus. She prayed to forgive her Dad. She tried her best to release her hurt. So, she makes the long trip to see her biological father one last time.

God was not in his picture, but death was. His steady decline was accelerating. Death was not at the front door, but it was walking up the sidewalk. She knows her Dad never went to church, never had a relationship with Jesus. Something in her soul says, “Tell your Dad about Jesus.”

So, she asks the “significant other” of eighteen years if she could talk to her father about Jesus. Bewildered before death, the woman said “yes.” In forty-eight-years she has never tried to lead another person to Jesus. She has heard the sermons, been given the material, but never has she felt the urgency like she does now. Her prayer is blunt, honest. It is not, “God, help me know what Jesus would do;” but “God, help me remember what my pastor said when my husband accepted Jesus.”

There is fear, naturally. But she takes the plunge. As best she knows how, she tells her Dad about Jesus, about God’s love, grace, and forgiveness. Her father listens. Then he indicates he wants Jesus in his heart. She leads him through a prayer. This man who hurt her so much asks God to forgive him and to take charge of his life.

An amazing moment follows. Her father’s other family, that she does not know, most of whom do not know Jesus, join hands, and she leads them all in prayer.

Three days later her father dies. Are there still issues? Of course. Part of the family is spitting mad at her. How could she go to their father’s side when he had hurt them all so much? They have not yet done the hard work of forgiveness. Part of the family is bewildered. They only know in his final days, the old man turned to God. It sounds too good to be true, that God would forgive a man like him.

But she can face the funeral because she has a peace. She took the plunge. She shared Jesus. Her Dad accepted grace.

I know this woman. She is a regular person who has hobbies and children and bills. She is an ordinary person, just like you. Just like me. But at a crucial moment, she summoned courage to take her next step – and help her father take his. She shared Jesus.

When God opens the door, when you feel the tug of your heart to speak of Jesus, when you feel the fear telling you to play it safe – take the plunge. It is your next step. Talk about knowing Jesus. Use your own words. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe a miracle will happen. You never know until you take the plunge.

I know there is one man in heaven who is glad his daughter took the plunge. Maybe there will be someone in heaven who is glad you took the plunge too.

God Bless America...

Irving Berlin was born into a Russian Jewish family.  The family fled Siberia, looking for a better life in the United States.  Berlin was five when the family arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor.  The family did not find instant wealth; what they found was opportunity.

Berlin became a successful songwriter and singer (his first hit was “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”).  When World War I broke out, he was writing songs for Broadway musicals.  It was then he wrote a song called “God Bless America” for a patriotic revue.  The song, however, didn’t work in that show, so it was shelved.  There it gathered dust for 20 years.

In 1938, war clouds were gathering in Europe.  Patriotism began to surge in the United States. A patriotic radio special was planned for November 11, 1938, Armistice Day.  Berlin was asked to contribute a song.  He pulled out his old song and reworked it, writing a new introduction for Kate Smith to sing:  "While the storm clouds gather far across the sea / Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free / Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, / As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer."   Though the introduction is seldom sung today, it stated Berlin’s clear intention: this song was a prayer, like a psalm.  His father was a cantor in the synagogue.  Berlin would have known all about a song containing a prayer.

The song became an instant hit, a second, unofficial national anthem.  It was sung at both Republican and Democratic conventions and rallies.  Communities would sing the song at War Bond rallies and 4th of July celebrations during World War 2.  The song made its film debut in 1943, in an Army film called “This is the Army (not a great title).”  The star of the film was Ronald Reagan.

The song had detractors, of course.  The KKK opposed the song because it was written by a Jewish immigrant.  Arlo Guthrie thought the song glossed over the troubles of the United States, and in response wrote “This Land is Your Land, this Land is My Land.”  Others were troubled by the overt religious tone of the song. 

Though Berlin was culturally and ethnically Jewish, he did not actively participate in Synagogue.  Speaking about “God Bless America,” he said: "To me, ’God Bless America' was not just a song but an expression of my feeling toward the country to which I owe what I have and what I am."  Apparently, though his faith was not personal, he sensed he was blessed to live in a country where he had the freedom to be more than Russia would have ever allowed.

“God Bless America” is now 102 years old.  It has seen its way through two World Wars, a Great Depression, a Great Recession, wars in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iran, and Afghanistan.  Three Presidents died since the song was first written and nuclear bombs were exploded.  Communistic Russia was created and died during the lifespan of the song.  In 1918, when Berlin first wrote the song, there was no paved coast to coast road in the United States.  “God Bless America” has witnessed the rise of radio, TV, computers, indoor plumbing, the internet, and air-conditioning. 

In times of crisis, it is still the song we reach for.  Who can forget members of Congress standing on the steps of the capitol building on the night of September 11, 2001, Republicans and Democrats, singing together “God Bless America.”  We sing it when we dedicate memorials, when we gather for a sporting event, when we celebrate the 4th. 

In this strange year, we need to reach for this song again, not just to sing it, but to offer it as the prayer it was meant to be:

God Bless America,

Land that I love.

Stand beside her,

And guide her,

Through the night,

With the light from above.

Dry Rot in the Soul…

I was hauling my boat to the lake to meet up with my family.  It was just me, pulling the boat up the interstate.  About an hour into the trip, I felt a jerk.  I look at my rear-view mirrors and saw my boat trailer leaning to the right.  Flat tire.

I should say shredded tire.  I pulled over to the emergency lane, put on my flashers, and got out to inspect the damage.  The tire had simply come apart.  I didn’t understand it.  I had checked the air pressure before I left and greased the bearings.  But these things happen.

Because of my recent knee surgery, I decided to call for assistance.  When the man said it would be an hour and half, I decided I could tough it out and change it myself.  This was not the smartest idea I had ever had.  But I got the trailer jacked up, the lug nuts loosened, and unbolted the spare.  Traffic flying by at 80 mph is motivation to work quickly and pray hard.  I had to dig out underneath the axle to fit the spare onto the hub.  Good thing I carry a shovel.

Once the tire was changed, I knew not to venture too far without a spare.  I Googled for a tire shop at the next exit (thank you, God, for smart phones), and picked up a new spare.  Back on the road.

I was about forty miles further down the road, when I felt the trailer jerk again.  I looked up and sure enough, another flat on the trailer.  On the right side again!  The spare, which had plenty of tread, had blown.  When I got the truck and trailer stopped, and ventured out to examine the tire, it was shredded, just like the first one.  Was the right side of my trailer cursed?

I Googled tire stores in the next little town, mindful it was twenty minutes till five.  I explained the situation, and the man said he could send someone right out and bring me another tire.  The service man arrived pretty quick, and he had the new spare, bought 40 miles ago, on the trailer in no time (every job is easy if you have the right tools).  Then he popped another new spare on the rim of the shredded tire. 

I knew this man knew more about tires than I did.  I asked him, “What made this tire shred like this?”  I figured whatever caused it, probably caused the last one too.  He smiled because this was not his first rodeo.  He said, “You see this a lot on boat trailers.  People don’t use their boat very much in the winter, then they take it out on a long haul.  When you don’t use it, dry rot sets in.  You probably didn’t notice the small cracks or the tread being brittle.  When a dry rot tire hits the road, it disintegrates like this, because of the pressure and the heat.  Your spare probably had dry rot too.”

His words made me wonder about dry rot of the soul.  Your soul is the sum of your life: your decisions, your thoughts, your feelings, your body, and your relationships.  I think dry rot of the soul happens when you don’t use your soul.  Being self-centered is the first sign of soul dry rot. 

I wonder how many Christians have soul dry rot.  If faith is something a person does not nurture or cultivate, but only calls on in a crisis, is that why people have a faith blow out?  Maybe their faith has not been used enough.  I do not know this for sure, but I think some people who lose their faith have let it sit, unused.  The compound that holds faith together has broken down, like a tire. 

I know going to church (or watching online these days) is not the same as having a relationship with God, but it is one small way to take your soul out for a spin.  Obeying nudges from the Holy Spirit to do acts of kindness, or to speak words of witness, or to speak for those who cannot speak can keep your faith fresh.  If you really want to keep your faith well exercised, try serving the least of these.

In these days, I’ve thought a lot about our nation.  We seem to be going through a national spasm, fed by fears of COVID, financial pressure, and an awaking to the racism that still exists in our country.  I remember 1968, which also felt like a spasm in our history.  These spasm years feel like – well, like a boat trailer jerking and swaying and telling you it is time to get into the emergency lane. 

A nation has a soul, just like a person.  Collectively we make decisions, share thoughts and feelings, and have relationships based on being Americans.  Our nation is a body that expresses its will through our government.  We don’t seem to care about truth or compassion anymore.  We assumed that our Judeo-Christian ethic could be taken for granted, that everyone would respect each other and make an effort to get along.  It’s not happening.  It takes effort to get along.  I think our national self-centeredness has caused dry rot to set in. 

Someone asked me the other day if I thought the turmoil of 2020 was a sign of the end times.  I wish I had thought to say, “I’m not sure, but it may be a sign of a dry rotted soul.”

Waiting…

I had a surgical procedure done on my knee this week.  Nothing big, the surgeon did a great job, and I am recovering nicely, thank you.   But with the COVID virus, the pre-surgery routine has changed.  My wife could not go back with me for the pre-op routine. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the pre-op routine, your name is called as you sit in the waiting room.  You follow a nurse back to a small room.  She will ask your full name and date of birth (this will happen many times).  She tells you to take off your clothes (yes, all of them) and put on a gown.  The gown, designed to make sure you do not leave the hospital, leaves you feeling exposed – because you are.  Various people come in and out, all asking your full name and date of birth.  You are repeatedly asked questions about your health: Ever had cancer?  Ever fainted?  Ever had a reaction to anesthesia?  Ever had a splinter?  Ever use a band-aid?  

Then you wait.  The nurse tells you it won’t be long.  There is no TV, my phone is bundled up with my clothes, and my wife is in the waiting room.  I am waiting alone. 

I began to pray.  Sure, I prayed for myself, for the surgeon, and for rapid healing.  I prayed for my family, my sister who has cancer, for people in church I pastor.  I prayed for the President, the Governor, and the Mayor.  I prayed for my city councilman.  I prayed for the church I shepherd.  

After an hour, the nurse came back in and explained the surgery before mine was taking longer than expected.  It was hip-replacement and there were complications.  I would have to wait a little longer.  No problem.  I understand these things happen and I want the surgeon to be thorough with all his patients, but especially me. I prayed some more.  I prayed for my neighbors, I prayed for people I work with, I prayed for people I know who are far from God.  

After waiting an hour and a half, I ran out of people to pray for.  So, I started thinking about chores I need to accomplish: spraying for weeds, changing the air-filters, cleaning out a desk drawer.  After I made my mental list of chores, I started one of my mental games: name all 46 counties in South Carolina (Horry, Georgetown, Charleston, Dorchester…).  I remembered 43, but I could not get the last three.  

The nurse came back in and said it would a little longer.  By now, I realized medical people have a different understanding of the word “little.”  When they say, “This will sting a little” they mean “This will sting like having a swarm of murderous hornets attack you.”  When they say, “You will feel a little pressure” they mean “This will feel like the garbage truck unloading the dumpster rolling across your chest.”  

I napped a few minutes.  I counted the holes in the ceiling tile.  I thought about lunch.  Finally, the man arrived to roll me back to surgery.  After three hours, I was on my way. 

I was only waiting for minor surgery.  There are people waiting for their cancer to go in remission.  There are people waiting for their spouse to keep his or her promise.  There are people waiting for the phone call from their child, telling them where they are. 

Whole groups of people are waiting to be treated justly.  They are waiting for racism or sexism to die. Children are waiting to be loved and adopted.  Young adults are waiting to be hired.  

People are waiting on God.  They are waiting on God to right the wrongs of this world, to clean everything up.  Sometimes, in our impatience, we tell God our timetable.  I wonder, when God hears those prayers, if he laughs or cries. 

God also waits on you.  He waits for you to get serious about your relationship with him.  He waits for honest prayer.  He waits for you to actually follow him, instead of yelling at him to come over to where you are.  God waits on you to accept his love, his grace, and his peace. 

God understands what it means to wait.  He waits with you.  He waits on you. Maybe the best thing you can do while you wait is ask him, “What do you want to talk about while we wait?” 

When Should You Have Church Again?

In the past month I received several emails asking, “When are we going to have church again?”  Some of these inquiries come from folks eager to get back to normal.  They long for the rhythm of Sunday: getting up, getting dressed, singing the songs of faith, hearing God’s word face to face.  Occasionally the message will say something like: “If people can go to Walmart or Lowes, then it should be safe enough for us to have church.”  I’m not sure we can trust Walmart’s or Lowes’ motives are the same as God’s.

I talked to my fellow pastors.  We tried to figure out what data point to use to show us it is safe to gather in the building again.  The problem is there is not a data point specific enough to make that decision for us.  This is the problem with data: it is good at telling you what is happening, but lousy at making decisions.  One of the pastors said, “I think we can’t wait till it is safe enough to remove people’s anxieties.  We will just need to trust God to tell us.”  Amen, brother.

Some church members have informed me they will not return to corporate worship until a vaccine is developed.  They are in the “at-risk” group and do not want to risk exposure.  I respect that.  Every person is responsible for their own health.

I saw one church’s plan for re-gathering.  The writer of the plan must have been in the military.  Every detail, every possibility was spelled out.  However, a German general once said, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”  Every church that regathers knows a lot more after the first Sunday back than they did before they regathered.

Some of the problem is the way we think about church.  The word translated “church” in the New Testament is “ekklesia.”  It is a verb that means “to gather a group of people to do something.”  When translated over into Old German, they used the word “kirche.”  It is a noun originally meaning “castle” or fortress.”  The word came over into English as “church.”  Maybe this is why we began to associate the word “church” with place.  Maybe this is why some churches regard their building as fortress, a place to be safe from the world.

I know churches that value “place” over “gathering.”  They make idols of their buildings, complete with fifty-page documents detailing how the building is to be used (mostly “not used’).  Funny that Jesus never had his disciples build a building.  When his followers pointed out how wonderful the Temple was, he told them it would torn down.  Jesus was not into buildings for building’s sake.

The answer to the question, “When should I go to church again?” is to be the church right now.  Church is being the body of Christ.  Bodies are designed for action.  We can be the body without a building.  We can love our neighbors.  We can sow masks for medical personnel.  We can call and check on our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We can listen to good teaching of God’s word.  We can even sing songs of faith – you do not need a building, or an organ, or a fog machine to lift up your voice in praise.

Most of all, we can encourage one another.  Jesus followers can remember that we are Easter people.  Our greatest fear is not death.  Our greatest fear is being distant from our leader.  When Paul wrote, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his purpose,” he was telling us no matter what situation we are in, God is at work.  Find where he is at work and join him.

In the Bible the word for “worship” also means “serve.”  Serve God right now.  Do what he wants.  Love the people around you.  Going to a building is good; being church is better.

Patience…

I am not a patient person; few people are.  On a scale of one to ten, my urgency is in the high nineties.  Being a Southerner, I know not to be rude, but I do not understand why people at the Drive-thru window take ten minutes to give their money and get their food.  Come on people, I have places to go, people to see, fish to fry. 

COVID19 has slowed me down.  I have no places to go, no people to see, no fish to fry.  Being stuck in the house all day long brings my anxiety out in full force.  When my wife asks me how my day went, I feel like a broken record: answered email, made calls, got ready for Sunday.  Setting fire to the furniture is starting to sound exciting, just to break up the day. 

Technology is not helping me be patient.  If I must wait in line or wait for my doctor, my phone beckons me to check my email, send a text, read the news, or play a game.  I thought about downloading a meditation app the other day, but I’m afraid it would take too long.  Though I don’t agree with the protesters who demand opening the economy and letting people die, I understand them.  After nine weeks of quarantine your judgment gets warped in the direction of “Let’s do something!”  When urgency and anxiety take control, wisdom is the first casualty.  One definition of patience I saw said, “Patience is what you have when there are too many witnesses.”  One dictionary says patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”  When I was a child and asked, “How much longer till we get there,” my mother defined patience as “Be patient or I will give you something to be patient about”  That definition made no sense to me, but I kept my mouth shut the rest of the trip. 

In the Bible, patience is waiting with hope.  When God is present in your life, he brings patience to you.  Patience flows out of your soul as resilience, peace, and steadfastness.  A good Biblical word, “long-suffering,” is a byproduct of patience.  You hope because you know you are not in charge; God is. Jesus, perfect in every way, was patient.  He is never described as being in a hurry.  Once a man begged him to come and heal his daughter.  Jesus agreed and was on the way to the man’s house.  A woman touched him and was healed.  Jesus stopped his errand and focused on this woman, pronouncing a blessing over her faith.  When word came that the daughter had died, Jesus did not say, “If only I hadn’t stopped for that other woman!”  Instead, he calmly proceeded to the home and brought the daughter back. Jesus was cool under pressure. 

Over and over God is described as patient. He was definitely “long-suffering” with the Israelites, who would give themselves completely to him one moment, then turn and worship other gods the next.  If I were God, I would have wiped them out on the second mess up and started over.  But God stuck with his people for centuries.  He tried to get their attention with prophets, with foreign conquerors.  If patience was graded on a ten-point scale, God gets a million points. 

Think how patient God is with you. You promised him over and over you would improve your life: you would start that diet, stop your temper, work on your relationships, be more generous.  Maybe you know you need to stop the pattern of self-destruction in your life.  The cycle of self-sabotage and shame needs to end.  You want to fix it all today, but your soul doesn’t seem to work that way.  But God does not let go of you.  He does not give up on you.  He hangs in there with you, patient with the messiness of your life. 

My favorite verse in the Bible is Isaiah 40:31: “Those that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.  They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.”  Learning to wait on God is energy renewing.  It requires surrendering your timetable, your agenda, your anxiety, your urgency to God.  To wait on God means you open yourself to receive his gift of patience. 

How do you do this?  Take a minute, just a minute.  Still your soul.  Close your eyes.  Repeat: “Not my will but yours.”  Feel your heart-rate slow.  Feel your breaths lengthen.  Say it again: “Not my will but yours.”  Hear God’s gentle whisper back: “Now you are on the right timetable. – mine.” 

Small Signs of Hope…

This week I drove past a mom and her three small children riding bikes on the sidewalk.  The mom was bringing up the rear, like a mother goose herding her goslings.  The oldest child rode confidently at the head of the line, showing the way.  The two smaller children had training wheels on their bikes.  They would peddle a little way, turn and look back to make sure mom was there, and then peddled again.   

As I passed them by, I thought how training wheels are small signs of hope.  They are there for the time between when you first mount a bike and when you can balance on two wheels.  The training wheels seem to say, “One day you will not need us; you can ride on your own.  But right now, we are here to give you enough stability to get to the future.”  Hope is what carries us from here to there. 

I checked my small garden one afternoon this week.  My tomato plants are growing like crazy.  I see the small yellow flowers that very soon will be red tomatoes.  I thought how every flower on the vine is a small sign of hope: something is growing here.  It is not here yet, but it will be.  Hope always has a starting point. 

I did a wedding for a couple last year.  Not too long ago, they sent me a picture of their ultrasound (pregnancy came quickly!).  I could make out the baby’s head, arms, and legs.  This baby in just a few weeks of growth has become a complex being.  He has months to go before he is ready to enter the world, but the pictures are a small sign of hope.  There is new life coming.  He will be greeted with joy.  But his arrival must not be rushed.  Hope needs time to grow and mature. 

I talked this week with someone who has cancer.  She has been waiting to see her treatment team.  Waiting is the hardest work of all.  The meeting happened this week.  The doctors laid out their recommendations and showed her the plan.  Her team is optimistic.  A treatment plan is small sign of hope.  There is a direction now, a schedule.  Hope flourishes when there is a plan. 

I’ve been preaching a message series about Body and Soul.  I’ve gotten dozens of emails telling me the messages are speaking to them.  Most the messages I’ve received share the same thought: “I never thought about my body that way before.”  When someone tells me that, I know it’s a compliment to God, not to me.  But the compliments do give me joy.  People are thinking differently.  Thinking differently about your body, your marriage, your friendships, even your kids is a small sign of hope.  Hope requires a shift in thinking. 

Where I live, in South Carolina, we are having the prettiest spring in 20 years.  We’re between the dark, damp days of winter and the baking heat of summer.  Normally spring in South Carolina lasts a week.  Right now, we are on beautiful week number eight.  Every day seems to invite us to go outside, to enjoy the weather, the birds, and flowers.  Each cool morning is a small sign of hope.  Each cool evening invites us to live in this moment, to savor the gifts of breeze and refreshment.  Hope requires you to savor the moments, because they come only once. 

Each day I listen to the news and hear another report about COVID19.  Each day brings news of more deaths, more cases.  I wish the newscasters would share the number of people who are recovering.  I try to remember to do the math.  In South Carolina, 6,757 confirmed cases. Deaths: 283.  I’ve forgotten how to do ratios, but it is a small sign of hope that most people with the virus are not dying.  Hope needs to be reminded about reality. 

I think God sends us small signs of hope, no matter what our crisis.  It is his way of encouraging us, telling us he is still at work, even when things look bad.  We don’t need to be led by our fears.  Maybe a prayer for you to pray is for God to show you small signs of hope.  They are out there.  It’s not a matter of just opening your eyes; it’s a matter of opening your soul.