Sniffing out the work of God in the world…
When I was 25 I became a father. We were finishing up our Memphis days at Harding Graduate School, and we were about to enter ministry in North Carolina.
Now 25 years later that son is a father. He’s just getting ready to enter his fourth (last!) year of medical school at Baylor.
So . . . for the first time to my son . . . Happy Father’s Day! (And to all the other dads who are readers of this blog.)
Edith Rodriguez, a 43-year-old mother of three, couldn’t get help in an emergency room at an inner city hospital in LA. So she called 911 and was rejected. People around her saw her struggling, and no one did anything. She died waiting for help.
Is this a parable?
Jerry Rushford sent me a link to this wonderful piece by Jeff Strauss in the L. A. Times, wanting to know if I’d really written the article under a pen name.
Here’s part of the piece:
Every year, I tell the kids that I have four goals: 1. to have fun; 2. to help the kids become better baseball players; 3. to help them become a better baseball team; and 4. to have fun. (Twice? Corny? Yeah, I know.) From my point of view, this was an excellent year on all four counts.
So congratulations to everybody! And thanks to my assistants and to all the parents for the applause and waters and snacks and sunscreen. You were great and made coaching a constant pleasure.
That’s it. You can have your children back now. But if you’re driving by the John Burroughs Middle School on a late Tuesday afternoon and you see a guy with a touch of gray in his curly hair wandering around on the field looking a little lost, toss your kids and maybe a ball and a Gatorade over the fence. I’ll have ‘em back by dark. Or just after.
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Don’t miss Larry’s insights about the immigration law debate.
“Reality came starkly home to me nine weeks ago today when I was driving on a winding road in Colorado. Suddenly, I missed a curve and my Ford Explorer slipped off the pavement and started tumbling side to side at 60 miles per hour. An ambulance appeared, and I spent the next seven hours strapped to a body board, with duct tape across my head to keep it from moving. A CAT scan showed that a vertebra high on my neck had been shattered, and sharp bone fragments were poking out next to a major artery. The hospital had a jet to fly me to Denver for emergency surgery.
“I had one arm free, with a cell phone and little battery time left. I spent those tense hours calling people close to me, knowing it might be the last time I would ever hear their voices. It was an odd sensation to lie there helpless, aware that though I was fully conscious, at any moment I could die.
“Samuel Johnson said when a man is about to be hanged, ‘it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ When you’re strapped to a body board after a serious accident, it concentrates the mind. . . . I realized how much my life focused on trivial things. During those seven hours, I didn’t think about how many books I had sold or what kind of car I drove (it was being towed to a junkyard anyway). All that mattered boiled down to four questions: Whom do I love? Whom will I miss? What have I done with my life? And am I ready for what’s next?”
- Philip Yancey (from a sermon given at Virginia Tech two weeks after the shootings . . . from Christianity Today)
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From yesterday’s baby blessing at the the SW Central Church in Houston. Here are two of the three babies who were blessed: Reese Cope and Truitt Ross with their mommies.
Today I’m heading to Orlando for our Zoe conference. Thanks to Randy Harris for being willing to fill in for me.
First, I wasn’t going to go because I hoped our team would be in the baseball tournament this week, so Randy agreed to go if that happened. Then, I thought I probably could because the team got off to such a poor start, so it looked like Randy would have a weekend off. Then, we beat the undefeated team and it looked like we might get in the tournament, so Randy was back on. But on the last day we lost to the 1-15 team, so . . . I’m heading to Orlando.
Back to Houston tomorrow evening for my granddaughter’s baby blessing at her church!
My favorite part of the Ascending Voice conference (other than being with friends) was the MorningSong sessions with Ken Nafziger from Eastern Mennonite University.
Each morning he shared this saying with us:
The people I speak with are my fellow human beings;
The people I sing with are my family.
Tuesday morning he led us in simple, powerful songs — mostly unfamiliar to me — from around the world.
One song picked up on the “mothering language” of scripture to speak of God’s nurturing presence. He explained that since it’s been shown that the earliest note an infant can imitate is E, every chord of the song has one part singing an E.
Mothering God, you gave me birth
in the bright morning of this world.
Creator, Source of every breath,
you are my rain, my wind, my sun;
you are my rain, my wind, my sun.
Mothering Christ, you took my form,
offering me your food of light,
grain of life, and grape of love,
your very body for my peace;
your very body for my peace.
Mothering Spirit, nurturing one,
in arms of patience hold me close,
so that in faith I root and grow
until I flower, until I know;
until I flower, until I know.
Yesterday, we sang without words or music before us. He took simple, more familiar songs (”Jesus in the Morning”) and invited us to find harmonies to express our faith. I don’t have words to explain the power of this experience.
Jack Reese and I are hoping to bring him to ACU and to Highland sometime this next year.
I’m returning to Abilene from Malibu today, where I’ve been attending “The Ascending Voice” conference. It’s so interesting to be in touch with devoted Christians from several other a cappella traditions. The singing, as you can imagine, has been amazing.
The best part, of course, is staying with Darryl and Anne Tippens. It’s a reminder that the deepest friendships of life survive even when you don’t have the advantage of proximity.
This open note of apology to my buddy Richard:
The NBA playoffs are not as bad as I have always claimed. At least this year. Lebron last night? A game to remember! And the Spurs . . . . All right, the Mavs stunk up the place, but that contributed to an element of unpredictability.
I’ll still take March Madness any day. The worst March Madness game is better than the best NBA playoff game. But, still. I have enjoyed watching a few of the games with my son.
So this note to Richard: It doesn’t stink as badly as I had said. There you go.
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Last night was little league baseball at its best. We had to beat the 15-0 team to stay in the running for the tournament. We won in the bottom of the 10th inning, 3-2. I wouldn’t want to play that team again. But for one night, we came out on top.
I always love that game. But some nights I really love it!