It was all wonderful.
Except for one thing. That goodbye kiss. That was hard.
Back in Abilene now, but my heart’s in Houston.
Archive for March, 2007
Someone I’d like you to meet. The subject of my prayers; the object of my joy; a new love of my life.
Reese Cope made her entry into the world yesterday at 7 pounds, 11 ounces.
Here she is with the boys. (My beautiful daughter-in-law had experienced a full day, beginning at 1:30 a.m. She thought she might wait for today for a blog picture!)
A quarter of a century ago this month we welcomed her father into this world.
I remember an old episode of “Andy Griffith” where a stranger came to visit Mayberry — a stranger who knew everything about everybody. He knew so much, in fact, that it creeped people out. They were ready to run him out of town.
As it turned out, the man had been taking the Mayberry newspaper for years and reading it, and he felt like like an insider.
Don’t blogs create that kind of scenario? We can wind up “knowing” each other pretty well — without even knowing each other.
Perhaps we need a big room to meet in sometime. So many of you who’ve been a part of this “blog community” for a long time are people I don’t even know. I’d like to hear YOUR stories. Yes, I know some of those stories wind up in comments. But there are so many other ones. Some of you feel like you know my kids. You’ve heard me blab on about faith, little league, social justice, parenting, and guacamole. (Lately, I’ve been braindead. Can you tell?) Someday, maybe I’ll get to hear the stories that have shaped you.
I grew up with a cool aunt. She was about eight years older than me, and I adored her.
We lived across the pasture from each other and often I made my way under the apple trees to see if she was in.
She always had time for a Monopoly game, and she never tried to hurry the game or rip me off with cutthroat trades. A couple times when I made a bad roll that would have wiped me out, she let me roll again.
She never got tired of sledding down the hill or of playing hide-and-seek.
She took my cousins and me to 007 movies — perhaps a little bit before we were old enough. I still owe her.
In the summer of 1968, just as I was turning twelve she and my grandmother took me to Chicago, playing tunes and preaching liberal politics the whole way. (Can you think of anything significant in Chicago in the summer of 1968?) Once we got there they took me to Wrigley Field to the Cubs-Cardinals game. And when they saw how much fun I had, they took me back the next day.
She decided that her name should be spelled Cathy instead of Kathy. That seemed bold and against-the-grain to me.
I was immersed as a child in her attention and love.
As I remember that attention and love, it makes me sad for all the children who don’t have cool uncles and aunts.
But it also opens up numerous possibilities for the church. I’ve seen how the church can provide spiritual uncles and aunts, grandmas and grandpas for children who need to be the focus of someone’s attention and love. I see it when a university student becomes involved in a Boys/Girls Club; when a high school student forms a friendship with someone much younger; when people who are retired volunteer to read at the elementary schools.
Anyone else have a cool aunt or uncle . . . or someone who, perhaps in the community of faith, became like an aunt or uncle?
I was only two for four on my picks for the Final Four. UNC lost in OT, and A&M was a point short. However, check out the third comment from that post. Congrats, Randy, for getting all four!
We’re also not having much luck guessing the date of our granddaughter’s arrival. She was due the 19th, but we’re still waiting for THE CALL . . . .
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Here’s perhaps the biggest change in my understanding of preaching through the years.
I used to think that I was supposed to make scripture relevant. It’s an old book speaking to a modern world. Now, however, I see that this is too low a view of scripture and too high a view of our “modern” world.
Now I see my job as inviting people to enter into the world of scripture — a world that is hauntingly familiar and yet mysteriously dissimilar.
The key is imagination. I think I’m to help people (including, of course, myself) imagine what a truly human life might look like in light of Easter. What might a gospeled life look like?
I used to flatten scripture, I think. It became a sermon source of rules and regs. It was full of insightful points waiting to be made.
Now as I get to live inside the story world of the Bible, I realize even more why one could say that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword.
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When I agreed to spend an hour in the dunking booth for our youth group’s Mexico missions fund-raiser, there are three things I didn’t know:
1. How cool Saturday would be with overcast skies;
2. How frigid the water would be; and
3. How many kids would have “unlimited” bracelets, allowing them to throw as many times as they want.
I have a great picture of one of our third graders holding up all ten fingers — to represent the ten times he dunked Preacher Mike.
I need to thank Randy Harris, who offered to pay for the first 50 throws by any of our ACU students who wanted to dunk me. I heard a couple of our students mumbling something about the first exam as they fired away.
Please don’t worry about me. Hypothermia lifted after a water-heater-emptying shower.
You can keep up with “Touch-a-Life” ministries through this blog. Here’s my sister-in-law’s account of life post-Oprah:
Next week I will be returning to Africa and will be able to see the Magnificent Seven first hand! It’s hard to comprehend the changes that must be transpiring within the souls of these precious children who were once living in hopeless bondage but are now experiencing freedom.
During the past few weeks I’ve felt as if I am living in someone else’s body. This someone else leads a very exciting, busy life! I’ve ridden on the wings of various emotions leaving me to feel as if I need motion-sickness medication!
In case you ever wonder–when one is featured in a New York Times article and then is a guest on the Oprah Show–life changes. It was all a divine strategy carefully mapped out by a divine being! A human could not have arranged this miraculous chain of events where orphans from around the world are benefiting from a Missouri mom’s journey. Only God can do a work such as this!
I find myself giggling out loud as I recall the past six years of my groveling and begging for money to help poverty-stricken, disease-ridden widows and orphans in third-world countries. I had known I was to be a voice to cry out for children whose cries were not being heard…yet the frustration that comes when most people refuse to listen is too painful to describe. I didn’t understand why God would so clearly give me channels to help those who were going to die if someone didn’t step in if he wasn’t going to guide and direct me to people who were compassionate, willing and generous! Most richly-blessed Americans choose NOT to look away from their blessings long enough to focus on the ugliness of reality.
I see that my choosing to remain persistent in spite of endless irritations and constant disappointment has led me to where I stand today. It’s not me–I am operating in “simple-obedience.” I have committed to remain faithful and open to be used as an instrument — the feet, hands and voice. God must have been waiting for some reason and now must be the time. A gentle, refreshing shower of blessings from people whom I didn’t even know existed has been washing over me over the past few weeks. I have discovered kindred souls who are filled with compassion and kindness and who are willing to do their fair-share to save the world (one child at a time!).
I will be traveling to Africa with Amee Molloy. Amy is a writer who has been spending much of her life “inside my head” here lately. I carefully guide her along to visit both heartaches and rejoicings as she paints portions of my life into book form. We will visit the lake where Mark and the others were rescued from the darkness of slavery. I expect to feel excruciating pain for those who have not yet been liberated. Yet, I will take hold of the hope that their day of liberation will come. Experiencing the “Mark-Miracle” has confirmed what I had believed all along: for each suffering child there is a person out there who (if that person would only step out in faith) can be delivered out of bondage!
I am sure you will be reading details of my Ghana-journey while we are there as I have someone who will keep this blog updated for me.
Until then…
Quite often the absence of immediate success
is the mark of a genuine call.
~Bruce Larson~
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Thanks to the diligent work of Keith Brenton, MP3 downloads of Zoe music are now available on our website.
I mentioned in passing on the blog that my sister is lucky her name is Nancy because I begged my parents to name her Orlanda, after my favorite baseball player at the time, Orlando Cepeda.
I just received a little package in the mail. You guessed it: a baseball signed by Orlando Cepeda. Thanks, Terry (Rush)!
Have I mentioned that I was also a fan of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays?
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“A Place to Call Home” from Larry James’s blog:
“I sleep on the street,” William told us. “I cover up with my blankets. My blankets are precious to me because of the cold. One night last week, I woke up and realized there was another person under my blankets with me! A perfect stranger just trying to stay warm. He meant me no harm at all!”
William told his story yesterday during one of our site visits by the United Way committee that will determine our funding level for our housing efforts for the coming year. Thanks to Rev. Jay Cole, director of Crossroads Community Services (a ministry of First United Methodist Church and one of our partners in outreach to the homeless in Downtown Dallas), five men joined us for the interview and tour. We met in the lobby of our recently acquired office building at 511 N. Akard, otherwise known as CityWalk @ Akard.
“The shelters don’t allow us to store our belongings,” Roger explained. “If we leave our stuff, they throw it away. What is precious to me, may not be to you, but it is to me!”
“If we look through the trash for what they throw away, they ban us from the shelters,” William added. “We just need a place to leave our belongings, a place that is ours.”
Three other gentlemen spoke–”Wild Bill,” Leon and Troy. Like their other two friends, each was articulate, clear, honest, rational and impressive.
Leon told us that he was living in a shelter at present where everything was “beans and rice and Jesus Christ!” But he said he was glad for the bed, even though the shelter turned everyone out onto the streets at 5:00 a.m. every morning. He has a job, so it works for him.
“But, what I really need is a place of my own,” he added.
“Wild Bill” described his campground home.
Troy told us about his struggle with drugs and life.
When the men were done, we all sat in silence for a few moments before the committee’s questions broke the silence.
I think we all realized what great neighbors these five men would make.
As I spoke with them afterwards, it was clear that the thought of a place of their own was beyond their ability to conceive at this point. The longer we visited, the more hopeful they became as I described apartments we would begin offering in May at another location in Dallas.
“Would the apartment be furnished?” Roger asked.
When I told him that it would be, unless he wanted to use his own furniture, he just shook his head and said, “Do you know how long it has been since I slept on my own bed?”
William told the group during our formal presentation that one of the greatest needs of all is for simple privacy.
“I’d like to be able to shut the door and take a shower or use the restroom. There is no privacy for any of us.”
“Every day we fall in line to join the ‘parade’ from place to place Downtown,” Roger told us. “We need a place to call home where this can stop.”
All the comments began when I asked these men the simple question, “What would an apartment of your own mean to you?”
I came away more convinced than ever that most of us don’t understand much at all about homeless people. Further, about all we need to understand is that they need a home, a place they can call their own.
We’re working on that right now.
I got to sit recently with a dear friend as he played for me a song that has entered his soul. I wondered, “Is this song a reflection of what’s happening inside him, or is it part of what’s happening inside him?”
I can’t tell you how many times through the years people have wanted me to listen to a song: something that meant so much to them that they wanted to share it — or perhaps they thought I couldn’t understand them without hearing it. At times the songs have been “sacred”; at other times “secular.” That’s a very thin distinction, indeed, when you’re talking about something that has moved a person’s heart. The voice of Christ breaks out in many places.
Here are some words that have been on my lips recently, from my dear old buddy Charles Wesley:
Finish then thy new creation,
Pure, unspotted, may we be;
Let us see our whole salvation
Perfectly secured by thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place.
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love and praise.
But also these (Chris Rice):
Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
O, raise your head, for love is passing by
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live.
I spoke with another friend yesterday about Easter, and somehow this morning — even with allergies trying to pin me to the mat (after the first day of baseball practice) — I can feel the lift of Easter faith.
These simple words are on my heart this morning:
He is Lord, he is Lord!
He is risen from the dead
and he is Lord!
Every knee shall bow,
Every tongue confess
That Jesus Christ is Lord.
Poor eighth graders, you might think.
They went to Washington D.C. for a four-day spring break trip, but their flight home Friday was cancelled, and they can’t get out until tomorrow. So the four-day-trip became an eight-day trip.
Best we can tell from our son on the few times he’s borrowed someone’s cell phone, your sympathy would be misplaced. They’re having a blast. I feel sorry for the sponsors!
But those eighth graders aren’t the only ones who’ve had a great time. The past week makes me think that Diane and I will survive the empty nest in a few years.
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Still no grandbaby. We do have a growing list, however, of people who do NOT want to find out about it through the blog. I hadn’t really thought about how frustrating it must be to close friends and family members to have to find out about our lives through a blog.
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Most spiritual formation takes place inch by inch, day by day. Sometimes it isn’t even noticeable until a friend helps you look back over a period of years.
But, there are those rare occasions when your life takes a sudden turn. It’s a gift of God that jolts you, surprises you, and changes you. Your vision becomes — at least during this time of transformation — 20/20. Your understanding of what’s important in life is clear.
It’s unlikely that you’ll get to stay in a zone like that. But when they it happens, you know that life can never be the same again.
(Taken from our Wineskins e-mail list.)
Happy St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Here is what’s called the “Shield of St. Patrick.”
Shield of Saint Patrick
I bind unto myself today the strong name of the trinity,
by invocation of the same, the Three in One, the One in Three.
I bind this day to me forever by power of faith Christ’s incarnation,
His baptism in the Jordan river, his death on the cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spiced tomb, his riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to harken to my need,
The wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward,
The Word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard.
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me;
Christ to comfort and restore me;
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I bind unto myself the name, the strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same, the Three in One, and One in Three,
Of whom all nature hath creation, eternal Father, Spirit, Word;
Praise to the God of my salvation, salvation is of Christ the Lord!