A night to eat steak and watch the NCAA play-offs with my boys. Tonight, life is very, very good.
Archive for March, 2004
Once again last night I came home from an elders’ meeting saying to Diane, “I ought to have to pay to be there.” To be someplace so full of prayer, pastoral care, and encouragement is a huge blessing in my life.
One of my elders, John Willis, writes a daily meditation from scripture. Here is the one from this morning:
The author of Psalm 31 concludes this poem in verses 21-24 by calling on fellow followers of God to love God for all he has done and to be courageous in troublesome times:
“Blessed be the Lord,
for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me
when I was beset as a city under siege.
I had said in my alarm,
‘I am driven far from your sight.’
But you heard my supplications
when I cried to you for help.
Love the Lord, all you his saints.
The Lord preserves the faithful,
but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord.”
1. The psalmist is deeply impacted by Yahweh’s “steadfast love,” to which he refers three times in this psalm (verses 7, 16, 21). Human love tends to be fleeting, like a morning cloud or dew that is here for a brief time and then vanishes (Hosea 6:4); but God’s love is tenacious; God’s love is there for us when we succeed and when we fail to serve God faithfully. Praise God for his steadfast love, which he showers on us daily.
2. When trials come and enemies multiply, it seems we are far from God–and we panic, at least in our hearts. Recall Psalm 22:1-2 and Jesus’s quotation of this on the cross in Matthew 27:46. Yet, even when we think all is lost, God hears our cries and comes to help.
3. How can on but “love” a God who is so merciful and kind and generous? In fact, loving God lies at the very hub of everything godly and everything Christian–Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Matthew 22:34-40.
4. There is a sense in which humankind may be divided into two groups: the “faithful” and the “arrogant” or “haughty.” The basic characteristic of the former is that they depend on God completely for everything and are deeply grateful for all God is and does. The basic characteristic of the latter is that they feel they can confront, deal with, and solve all life’s problems by their own wisdom and power. May God give us the wisdom to put our whole trust in him–see verses 5 and 14.
5. The charge God gave Joshua and the Israelites as they prepared to enter the promised land and fight against the nations living there and conquer them and settle in their new land was: “Be strong and very courageous”–Joshua 1:6, 7, 9, 18. The composer of Psalm 31 concludes this psalm by encouraging fellow believers to do the same as they faced every challenge in life. May God help us to be strong and very courageous–and to wait on the Lord.
As I near the graduation of Son One from ACU, I’m thinking back to my own four years of college. Recently I wrote about how influential Jim Woodroof and Terry Smith were in my life. But there were others . . . .
Jerry Jones. The man who taught me my earliest lessons about preaching. (I don’t blame him for my excesses!) But beyond that, the man who filled me with a passion for preaching. And even beyond that, the man who drew me into his life. It wasn’t always serious stuff. Often it was playing ping-pong. Or jogging 5 miles at night. But he wove a love of Christ into all of that fun. He never could figure out why I wore my hair on my shoulders, but he’d joke about it and move on. One of my most vivid memories of my years at Harding was the night the two of us stood in his front yard and prayed after jogging. He prayed for my life of ministry and for my upcoming wedding. It’s a quarter of a century later, and I still remember that prayer.
And there was Neale Pryor. One of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life. He was funny, kind, and full of knowledge. Sitting in his Hebrew prophets class (and several others) was a joy. I remember waking up in the mornings excited to know that I’d be going. I still can’t open up Amos or Micah without hearing his voice. (Several years later when I was preaching at the College Church, he and Treva drew Matt into their lives — so he blessed me once again!)
And there was Cliff Ganus. What a Christian college president should be. He never looked past people. He knew the name of everyone who worked for him at the university and cared about each one of them. While he couldn’t name every student, it was still evident that he loved every last one. Powerful preacher. Insightful historian. Amazing athlete. (One of my favorite memories of Dr. Ganus — sorry, still can’t call him “Cliff” even after being his preacher for seven years! — was in the summer of 2000. We went to live in Uganda for a month following Matt’s graduation. Turned out Dr. Ganus, now Harding’s Chancellor, was there for about the same length of time. One day when Diane and I were going out to a village without the boys, Dr. Ganus sat down at the Source cafe with Matt for a couple hours, telling stories, asking about his life, and encouraging him. Maybe that will one day prove to be the most significant part of that whole trip!
Tom Eddins. He was the young guy on the Bible faculty when I was there. His dry wit and his cynicism — to say nothing of his brilliance! — drew me in. Little did I know at the time that he’d become one of my closest friends during the College Church years, 1984-91. (And speaking of dry wit, there was Bob Helstein, my wonderful German teacher.)
Jack McKinney was my Greek teacher. I had seven years of Greek (counting graduate school), and Jack is the one who launched me on that journey. Whether it was sailing through Johannine material or plowing through Blass/Debrunner/Funk, he helped me fall in love with the study of scripture in the original language.
And, of course, Jimmy Allen. He took me verse-by-verse through Romans and Corinthians. And his fervor for being God’s man made an impression that went way beyond those semester classes. An amazing man, really. Someone said he’s the Billy Graham of the Church of Christ. I don’t know about that. But I know this: he could take the ball to the hoop (and you didn’t want to wait on him to call a foul!) and he could convict of sin and he could encourage young preachers.
There were other men and women, of course. But these are some of the men who helped shape my life from 1974-78.
How about you? Who are the people who helped mold you?
Two wonderful rites of Spring. . . .
First, THE MOWING OF THE BASEBALL PRACTICE FIELD. Yes, Steve and Josh Hare and Christopher and I got out there with mowers, weedeater, and trash bags to get the field ready for 5:30 this afternoon. (My other son, former co-owner of the Matt and Chad Lawn Service, was out of town for spring break.) In a few hours I’ll be summoning all my coaching experience and yelling this piece of advice: “Don’t throw the ball when no one is looking!!”
Second, the posting of the NCAA brackets. Our problem right now is that we don’t really have a team. For many years, it was North Carolina. (The first church I went to out of seminary was in Wilmington, home of Michael Jordan, whom we met in the parking lot of the mall one day.) After that it was the Razorbacks. But who now? Texas Tech? Nope. Texas? In football, for sure, but haven’t really been able to get into Longhorn hoops. Duke? Well, possibly. But there’s still that lingering rivalry from our UNC days. Maybe we’ll just root for the underdogs. Go Liberty! Valparaiso! Texas-San Antonio! Princeton (special OT rules: highest average SAT scores advances)!
RATTLESNAKE FAJITAS AND THE ATKINS DIET
I have fixed a wide variety of fajitas including dove fajitas, quail fajitas, and sandhill crane fajitas. But this morning’s Abilene newspaper has a recipe for rattlesnake fajitas. Only in Texas . . . .
And while on food . . . I spent a day in Ft. Worth this week and was amazed at the influence of the Atkins diet. Tom Thumb was advertising their low carb section. Del Frisco (think: expensive slabs of steak) was promoting their Atkins-friendly selection. In Central Market — the mecca of grocery shopping! — right in the middle of their amazing bakery with the smells of incredible loaves of bread all around — there was a sad little display for “low carb bread.”
Probably some blog readers are giving it a try. Good on ya. For a short-term kick, maybe it works.
But isn’t there a reason to be suspicious of a diet that cuts back on bread and fruit? As I think of what the staples are around the world, those have to be high on the list. Cut out bread, fruit, and wine, and much of the world starves. (I’m trying to imagine telling the people in the villages we’ve visited in Uganda that they need to cut out bread and fruit.)
I wonder if we’re always looking for some new gimmick in diet in our country (it was low-fat a decade ago) because we don’t have the discipline to do this: eat less and exercise more. In a land of excess, we don’t like balance.
We need some balance on the whole weight thing. Yes, as a country we need to lose weight. Our children are getting heavier each decade. Again: eat less (especially of junk food) and exercise more. This just in: apparently not many calories are burned sitting in front of a screen with a Play Station.
But it would be nice if we’d also quit obsessing so much about weight. In the leisure of middle-class and upper-class America, we have the privilege of obsessing on the body beautiful. People hate their bodies because they’re a few pounds overweight. Young women feel like they have to get boob jobs so their bodies curve like on the magazine covers.
A formula for better health: eat less, exercise more, obsess less, be with good friends more. Plus rattlesnake fajitas. And, of course, guacamole.
This little clip from a recent Steve Rushin editorial in SI will explain a lot about many of us:
Some minds are steel traps. My mind is a lint trap, retaining only useless fluff, so that I know why .406 is important, but not why 1066 is. If you were to remove, with a flourish, the top of my head–like the silver dome from a serving tray–what you’d find underneath is potluck: batting averages, song lyrics, palindromes, advertising jingles, trivia questions, jersey numbers and movie dialogue. They’re all strewn about the ransacked room of my brain . . . .
I can’t tell you the atomic number of magnesium, but I can tell you the uniform number of Manny Saguillen (35), who hasn’t played big league baseball in 24 years. The only poetry I’ve committed to memory is a Hormel hot-dog jingle from the Metrodome that goes, “Great for lunch, great for dinner, You will be a wiener winner. . . .” My brain, in short, has made bad choices, and those choices now define me thusly: Can’t quote Kerouac, can quote Caddyshack.
Just finished speaking at the funeral for Carolyn Salmon. What an amazing woman — someone who’s definitely in my Hebrews 11.
When her husband left her, she moved to Abilene in 1974 with her six children. In the Highland family, she raised them, knowing there were people like Wally Bullington who would be role models for her kids.
This woman was an encouraging machine. She often said, “I’m the most blessed person in the world.” She rejected the way of bitterness. She constantly told people how much she loved them, how deeply she admired them, how often she prayed for them.
After the funeral, one young mother told me that just recently Carolyn saw her 11-year-old at a basketball game, called her over, hugged her and told her how impressed she was with her. This mother choked back tears as she told me that her daughter will never forget it.
And she did this all the time! The Monday before she died, she dropped by McDonald’s to tell the women she met there each week that she couldn’t stay but she just wanted them to know she loved them.
Years ago someone wrote a history of the Highland Church and called it FROM ROOTS TO WINGS. If it’s updated, I want to see a whole chapter in there on Carolyn!
Good news: McDonald’s is no longer going to be Super Sizing their soft drinks and french fries.
Now . . . how about credit card companies that will quit encouraging people to get into debt over their eyeballs? or automobile manufacturers who’ll quit making machines that get under 10 mpg just because people like to drive tanks? or convenience stores who’ll quit selling cold beer? or Wal-Marts who’ll quit abandoning buildings just because they want something new and bigger? or businesses who’ll stop advertising “nothing down” and “easy payments”?
I know, I know, I need some time off. I’m getting testy.
Two words that fit together so well: SPRING and BREAK.
As the father of an 11-year-old son, I love this column by humorist Bruce Cameron. (He kindly gave me permission to print it on the blog. But please note the copyright and subscription information.)
Someone once asked me, “if you could be any person in the world, who would it be?” To which I responded without hesitation, “my eleven-year-old son.”
My boy’s life is one where the less pleasant elements of reality rarely intrude. His eyes unfocused, his mouth emitting sound effects, he drifts around in serene oblivion, almost never concerned about anything.
Last Saturday I interrupted his reverie and asked him to check to see if the mail had arrived. He responded agreeably enough, though it took several reminders before he actually was out the door. I went to the window to observe his progress. He made a strong start, striding purposefully toward the mailbox at the end of our driveway. Then something caught his eye and he stopped, frowning. He bent over and picked it up: a stick. It fit into his hand like a Colt pistol, and he swiveled, eyeing the trees for enemies. He spotted a couple and dove for cover, firing as he rolled. Airplanes swooped down and he switched to ground-to-air mode, jubilating when the missiles hit their targets. He spoke into his radio and did something to his forehead, probably putting on his night vision goggles. I lost sight of him as he snaked around the corner of the house.
Half an hour later he tromped in, exuberant over his military victory. I stopped him in the hallway. “Did you get the mail?”
He stared at me blankly, and I wondered whether he even knew who I was. “You were going out to get the mail,” I reminded him.
His focus cleared. “Oh, yeah.”
“Did you get it?”
His expression indicated he wasn’t sure.
“Why don’t you try again,” I suggested.
Back out the door. I winced as he glanced at a tree branch, but he didn’t appear tempted. His eyes acquired radar lock on the mailbox, and I sighed in relief.
Lying next to the mailbox was a football which had drifted there at the end of a neighborhood game a few weeks ago. He scooped the ball up in his arms and swerved, dodging tackles. Touchdown! I put my hands on my hips and watched him toss the ball into the air, calling for a fair catch. First down. He took the ball, fading back, out of the pocket and in trouble. I shook my head as I was treated to the spectacle of my son sacking himself for an eight-yard loss. He jumped up and shook his finger, urging his blockers to stop the blitz. They seemed to heed his admonitions*on the next play he rolled left and threw right, a fantastic pass which found him wide open thirty yards downfield. He trotted into the end zone and gave the crowd a mile-high salute.
When I checked back at half-time to see who was winning, mankind was on the brink. The football was jammed up inside his shirt, and he was struggling forward on his knees, looking like a soldier crawling through the desert. He had pulled the lawn mower out of the garage, and as he fell toward it, gasping, he pulled the sacred pigskin from his shirt and, with the last reserves of his strength, touched it to the engine. He died, but civilization was saved by his heroic efforts.
No word on whether, with this triumph, mail would be delivered.
I met him at the door, pierced through his fog, and asked him to get the mail. He agreed in such as fashion as to indicate this was the first he’d heard of the subject. There was a skip in his step as he headed down he driveway, and he was making so much progress so quickly I felt my hopes growing, particularly when he reached out and actually touched the mailbox.
Alas, he was only stopping to talk to it. Conferring in low tones, he nodded, squinting into the distance. He raised the mail flag, igniting the retrorockets strapped to his back. He throttled to full power and then dropped the flag, firing off into space with his arms outstretched like Superman.
He was nowhere in sight when, half an hour later, I went out to get the mail.
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