If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Or you can select your feed type by clicking on the "Subscribe" button on the right. Thanks for visiting!
(The Twelve Ways of Christmas, Part 7: The Way of Warfare)
December 23
The first thing Ryan Fisher felt when he awakened was an obnoxious cold wind, pelting his face with sleet. The searing pain coursing down his legs and across his chest further aroused him. Opening his eyes, he saw movement outside, but the angle of his SUV in the ditch made it difficult to tell what was happening. One thing was sure – the distant siren and flashing lights were for him.
Another thing became certain pretty quickly. Assuming he lived, Ryan Fisher would spend Christmas alone. There’d be no plane to catch, and nobody boarding a plane back to Birmingham. Not in this storm.
It was the end of the day from hell, punctuating the week from hell, capping off the year from hell. And now, freezing and in shock, Ryan Fisher closed a mental door. He was done. [click to continue…]
Aunt Ruth was neither my aunt, nor was she named “Ruth.” Through a set of circumstances I don’t have time to relate, “Aunt Ruth” was what I wound up calling her.
Aunt Ruth had eyes that danced long after her feet were unable to. She defied aging – said she didn’t have time or sense enough to grow old. She detested religiosity and people who took themselves too seriously. “Fuddy Duddy Christians,” she called them. Aunt Ruth was wise. Through her sometimes-sharp exterior, she loved me. And she taught me one of the most important lessons I ever learned.
“Life’s full of mysteries,” Aunt Ruth said. In fact, she said it a lot. Aunt Ruth loved mysteries. Not the murder-type, but those principles in life that defy logic. It always amused her to get me in an argumentative mode and throw out one of her “mysteries.”
Like the time I was angry because someone had been spreading lies about me. “I’m gonna find out who started it, and set them straight!” I informed her.
“Forget it,” Aunt Ruth said. “Get to the bottom of it, and all you get is some stirred up mud and a mad catfish.” [click to continue…]
Tense Truth: Jesus, the Light of the World, will sometimes allow us to experience seasons of darkness in order to teach us to trust Him, not guarantees. But He warns us not to turn back to that other kind of darkness – a world of evil or self-initiated “light” in order to find quick-fix relief.
First I’ll give you the pieces, then I’ll put them all together.
A couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend and he made a profound statement: “When your world is dark, the temptation is to turn deeper into the darkness for relief.” So true. And yet it makes about as much sense as digging your way out of a hole.
Someone once asked me if I’d ever had a midlife crisis. I blurted out instantly, “Yeah, I’ve had about a dozen of ‘em.”
I’ve noticed a recurring pattern lately. I’m dealing with a significant number of professional men, all of whom could be classified as successful. In fact, they’re geniuses at what they do – so good, they can do it without a lot of thinking. And yet they’re bored, restless, or even depressed. Before my very eyes, they’re starting to act dead-before-they-die. In fact, my most common deep spiritual advice to them is, “You’re not dead yet!”
Have you ever noticed that people who are living “in the darkness” are also the loudest to predict a dark future? Wonder if that’s just a coincidence?
More than once somebody or something has rocked my Zippity-do-dah world and faith and, for lack of a better way of describing it, “turned the lights off.” What’s ironic is that it didn’t happen because I’d screwed up or was somehow running from God. In fact, the darkness happened while I was pursuing the Lord and, by all accounts and purposes, growing. [click to continue…]
Real people, real stories, real living Christ! If you’re in the South Plains (Texas) area, please help us get the word out… no matter what you’re facing, a Risen Lord changes everything. Join us at Turning Point for our Easter 2009 celebration on April 11-12. Saturday service: 5:00 pm. Sunday Services: 9:00 and 10:30 am.
Click here to go to the web site for directions and more information.
If you live elsewhere, please pray for us, and let me know in the comments section below how we can pray for you this Easter season.
Sittin’ here watching the bowl games, wondering – is this the fix we’ve been looking for?
Hardly…
I grew up fuming at the whole college bowl game situation. Too many conference/bowl tie-ups. Too many great teams (my favorite in particular) unable to play for a national championship, while every single other NCAA sport and division had some sort of playoff system.
The solution? What we have now as the BCS system, complete with
uneven conferences being treated as all equal.
four or five conference championship games that are either really meaningful or dangerous to a great team.
other conferences (Pac 10, Big 10-actually-11, etc.) with no forced championship game, getting a free pass into the bowls.
twice as many games so that everybody gets a chance – after all, we’re ALL winners, aren’t we? (We used to joke when a team had a lousy year that they were going to the Toilet Bowl. Now, lo and behold, we actually have a half-dozen of ‘em!)
EVERY SINGLE bowl game of ANY type has a conference tie-up. “Big 10 #6 vs. SEC #8.” Are ya’ KIDDIN’ me? There is now no such thing as an at-large team.
A single championship game decided a week-plus into January between a hybrid of two polls and a stack of computers. Four other BCS games bearing the same bowl names and locations, but lacking the same luster. (With all due respect to Cincinnati and West Virginia, really?)
Just for nostalgia’s sake, I thought I’d take this year’s year-end AP rankings and results, and see what they might produce in a 70s bowl scenario. Take a look and tell me, do you really think we’ve made things better? [click to continue…]
Pardon the cat blog entry, but I turned 50 today. The way I measure it, that’s halfway to Heaven. So my kids insisted we all converge on the DFW Metroplex for the weekend to celebrate.
I don’t think I could have possibly conjured up a better celebration and memory maker – provided by my family, my awesome team at TPCC back home, and some help from people with names like Harrell, Crabtree, and Edwards.
It all started with the confidence that I could leave home and work for the weekend, knowing that the church was in very capable hands. I am so grateful for the staff and leadership at Turning Point. So when Chad, our youth pastor, calls me on Friday to ask it if was OK to title his message on forgiveness, “The F-Word,” I didn’t think twice about it.
We went to Cassie’s house in Euless and had the official family celebration Friday night. (If you know Carrie, you’ll have to ask her what kind of birthday cake they served up. I couldn’t mention it unless you paid me lots of money.) It was there that they presented me the surprise they’d been teasing and hinting about for weeks – two tickets to the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. As big a NASCAR nut as I am, I’d never been to a race in person. Needless to say, I was very excited.
Saturday we drove to Canton, Texas – home of the (literally) world’s largest flea market. I’ve never seen anything like it. There had to be more than 150,000 people there, and this is a monthly occurrence. One entire section – about the size of most flea markets – is devoted almost exclusively to pets and livestock. Hundreds of puppies, along with miniature goats, long-haired rabbits, half-sized calves, llamas, donkeys, exotic birds, and even baby pigs. We came home with Gracie – a seven-week-old Maltese.
Saturday night I shouted myself hoarse watching Texas Tech shock Texas. From the Longhorns first play from scrimmage (a safety) to Tech’s last (an incredible touchdown), I was blown away.
Who would have ever thought that, nine games into the season, the top 5 BCS teams would look like this?
Alabama is #1 for the first time in the regular season since 1980 (Roll Tide!). And my wife’s alma mater is close behind. Incredible.
The race was a true spectacle. TV does a good job of presenting it, but there is no way to compare the 3D effect of actually being there, along with 171,000 other people. And it was pretty cool that we pick up a couple of Carl Edwards #99 caps, and he proceeds to win the race. The view was incredible, the weather perfect. And for all uncultured folks that think NASCAR fans are a bunch of beer-throwing rednecks, let me just say these were some of the friendliest, most gracious and sportsmanlike fans possible. Even, the Earnhardt fans.
Of course, through it all, the most fun part was sharing it with family. It was the first time to see all seven of them together in a long time, and we totally enjoyed that. We also hadn’t seen Laura Kate in a good while, so we were glad to have some time with her.
My eardrums have returned to normal, and my voice is nearly back. The kids have all gone back to home and work. Carrie, Cassie and Joel did such a wonderful job of helping me celebrate. Robin and I are back home – ready to start the third quarter.
You were born naked, longing to be warmed and dressed.
You were born penniless, and learned fairly quickly that this was not good.
Even of you’re a twin or other multiple, you were born completely alone, but wired to be relational.
You were born on purpose. And your purpose may still lie in front of you. (What DO you want to be when you grow up?)
To get from here to there, you will most likely pass through a series of completely lame, boring, and maddeningly time-consuming stages. Yes, you’ll experience a few leaps. For the rest, you’d better get used to celebrating some baby steps.
God called it the Day of Small Things.
The Day of Small Things is the crawl that comes before the walk. The work that comes before the reward. The doing-something-anything that comes before doing something awesome. It’s boot camp and kindergarten, school and internships, and progress-before-perfection. [click to continue…]
Hey, wanna have some fun – part mindless, part meaningful? Check out wordle. A wordle is a decorative word tag that is built on whatever text you may supply. It randomly creates a tag cloud, but allows you the opportunity to change into a wonderful variety of fonts and color schemes, including a pallette that allows you to design your own color scheme. I just made this one from the Sermon on the Mount (NIV, if you MUST know). Click on the image for a much better look.
Since I had the text from their wedding ceremonies, I made a unique Wordle for all three of my kids, and some of the others brides and grooms I’ve done weddings for. Printed on a good printer, it makes a nice (cheap) and completely unique gift. (Here’s the one from Carrie and Kyle’s ceremony:)
In order to save it, I use ScreenHunter, a great free tool for taking a picture of whatever’s on your screen.
The deep, spiritual side of me likes the way the words can be uniquely rearranged based on the number of uses in the text. Gives me something to meditate on. The ADD side of me gives me something to do when I should be taking out the trash, grading papers, or something more, uh, useful. Enjoy!
Scattershooting, and wondering whatever happened to Blackie Sherrod…
Rip van Computer I feel like Rip van Computer. Last weekend I finished the book I’ve been writing with Kaye, the latest Regent class, and Carrie and Kyle’s move. I found my email inbox with a record 761 messages in them (sorry if yours was one of them – I promise I wasn’t trying to diss you.) My Google Reader had nearly 900 entries. But this goes much deeper and further. For seven months I’ve been in “hunker down” mode, time- and responsibility-wise. The clouds have parted, and the time-sun is starting to shine. But I feel like I’ve been asleep at the keyboard.
Catch-up Stains Right after that, prophetically, I read this story from John Fischer, reportedly from the writings of Rabbi Kushner, about a group of tourists who went on a safari in Africa and hired several native porters to carry their supplies for them. After three days, the porters announced they would have to stop and rest for a day. When the tourists asked why, the porters said they weren’t tired, “…but we have walked too far too fast and now we must wait for our souls to catch up to us.” John talked about the need to let our souls catch up, and I can relate. It’s time for some soul work.
Resumes and Cover Letters My son sent me his resume with a cover letter this morning for me to review. It reminded me of the massive staff search process we have just been through. I absolutely know how the American Idol judges feel when they do their nationwide search. Sometime soon I’ll share with you some of the good, the bad, and the you-gotta-be-kidding-me stuff we received (with names changed to protect the laughing).
Handling Fees? Jackie Huba just shared an experience in which she was purchasing a $50 gift certificate from her favorite day spa. (I can relate – I just did that for my wife). As the clerk filled out the certificate, she said the total would be $51.50. “Handling fee,” she said. When asked what kind of handling was involved, she said (with a straight face, I suppose), “Writing out the certificate,” she said. “It’s labor-intensive.”
I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry, get mad, or get inspired. We all know about the airlines introducing fees for different things we all sort of took for granted. Before long, I suppose, we’ll see all kind of new fees for “labor-intensive” or “optional” services: [click to continue…]
Okay, so the guys at SynerJACK are talking about stress this week, and I just vomited out of my journal from a couple of years ago. (It’s ugly… you probably don’t want to read it.)
But I found a real stress reliever video. Supposedly it’s from an old Girl Scout song, but it made its way into a Discovery Channel commercial. If you need a happy reminder that God and life and the world are good, watch this.
If you want to irritate somebody by putting a happy little song in their head that’s hard to get rid of, forward this to somebody else.
“While the philosophers and pseudo-poets rub their chins and question whether truth exists (what a BORE) leaders, in the words of Napoleon and others, define reality.” source: Seven Ways to Tell Who the Leader Is
December 23
Aunt Ruth was neither my aunt, nor was she named “Ruth.” Through a set of circumstances I don’t have time to relate, “Aunt Ruth” was what I wound up calling her. 
Tense Truth: Jesus, the Light of the World, will sometimes allow us to experience seasons of darkness in order to teach us to trust Him, not guarantees. But He warns us not to turn back to that other kind of darkness – a world of evil or self-initiated “light” in order to find quick-fix relief.
