How many times have you thought, “I wish things were different?” I confess to having that thought a few times. On one occasion, I was so disturbed about circumstances; I went to three trusted friends for advice. One of them encouraged me to stop focusing on the circumstances and start focusing on my response to…
Last spring I received a phone call from a friend from teen-age years asking me to pray for him because the doctors had given him only a few weeks to live. I was out of the country when I received the call, but assured him that as soon as I returned home, I would be…
On a recent Sunday, my new pastor rolled out a new vision statement with some rather drastic changes in our church’s methodology. Seated in the back, I could see the looks, observe the whispers, and watch the body language of the mostly senior adults in my section. We seniors kind of like to keep things…
Last week I shared about the broken second vertebra of my neck during the teenage years and the many answered prayers of Pastors wives during the course of my nine month healing. Since the bones were not healing at the four month mark, surgery was scheduled in which my neck bones were to be wired…
When I was a teenager, my father was Pastor of a church in Houston, Texas and my mother was President of a city-wide Pastor Wives organization. On a cold-December night I lay in an Emergency Room with a broken second vertebra of the neck, hearing doctors saying it was a miracle I was alive, and…
A friend, who is my age, said to me recently, “Please stop writing about aging, you’re making me feel old.” So this is about youth. My grandson Price is twelve years old. He loves baseball, hunting, and fishing. His room is a collection of “game balls.” He has already killed two deer – one with…
Three funerals in ten days! I guess one should expect that in the later years of life. At least I have been in the pulpit and pew, and not in the casket. Or as one friend exclaimed, “We’re still on the green side of the grass!” The three deceased were very different in personalities and…
The more social media responses I read of people responding to prayer requests, the more I realize how much we have failed in teaching people about prayer. When Bible Schools and Seminaries opt not to teach prayer in their curriculum, assuming that students already know how to pray and how to lead others to pray,…
My grandfather was a “Yellow Dog Democrat” – a political term applied to voters in the Southern United States who voted solely for candidates who represented the then conservative Democratic Party. They would allegedly vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for a Republican. He was also a faithful member of the Central…
I’ve given up golf, yard work, and attendance at most daytime sports events. I don’t swim, sunbathe, tan, or ski. So why did I have my 9th MOHS surgery for skin cancer this past week? I commented to a friend that beauty was only skin deep, and he reminded me that ugly cuts all the…