Last week I officiated the wedding ceremony for two friends that I have known since I was nine years old. They have known each other since they were four years of age. We spent part of our “growing-up” years in the same church – same children’s ministry, same youth ministry, same missions organizations, same baptistery,…
One of the most popular features in “Reader’s Digest” magazine is entitled, “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.” One such “character” for me was Dr. William F. “Bill” Edmonson. He was a college President. I was his Interim Pastor. At the conclusion of the annual mission’s emphasis sermon, I made an appeal for those…
I took my pastor to lunch recently, celebrating Pastor Appreciation Month. In the course of the conversation, I asked him how he felt the specific call of God to be a pastor, since he had previously been a Student Minister and a Church Starter. His answer was similar to mine – an early call to…
The license plate border on my vehicle says, “Backing the Blue.” Yet another police officer has been arrested and accused of murder, this time in my own city, and on the heels of a widely publicized trial of a police officer in the adjacent city, now serving ten years for murder. In both cases the…
According to the Book of Genesis, it once rained for “forty days, and forty nights” (Genesis 7:4). According to the DFW Airport weather bureau, last Thursday was the forty-first day in north Texas without even a trace of rain. But nothing stays the same forever. Just like it eventually stopped raining in Genesis, it started…
Sometimes I am easily amused, like sitting in a coffee shop, reading T-shirts, while waiting on an appointment with a friend. On a recent day the back of a nearby t-shirt read, “Together is better,” which was a good thought. Then I noticed a scripture reference underneath, Ecclesiastes 4:9, which reads, “Two are better than…
A couple of Sundays ago, my pastor preached on Psalm 73, reminding me that I had also preached on that Psalm – several times in fact. It is the age-old conflict of the prosperity of the wicked vs. the suffering of the righteous, and the Psalmist began by asking tough questions. Make no mistake, the…
It had been awhile since I had counted, but the recent purchase of more books from a used book dealer, sent me back to the shelves to count how many books I possess on the subject of prayer. The new count is 481. A bit excessive for the normal minister/seminary professor, but not for one…
In the early morning press conference of September 16, 1999, Wedgwood Baptist Church pastor Dr. Al Meredith would speak on behalf of the broken, yet hopeful members of Wedgwood Baptist Church, where on the preceding evening, a lone gunman, using 200 rounds of ammunition and a home-made pipe bomb, had killed seven and wounded seven,…
Last week’s hurricanes (there were several on the map at the same time) took me back to my first one. We had only been living in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for a few weeks when Hurricane Beulah hit. Having been a category 5 hurricane, it hit land as a category 3 with peak…