As I passed the lake near my house last week and saw a large number of ducks, it reminded me of two things. First, another well-used piece of advice from my High School Baseball Coach – “Ducks on the pond.” In baseball terminology, that means there are runners on base and the batter has the…
“This will only last for twenty-five minutes” said the technician last Friday, as if that would comfort me. I was about to endure my first nuclear stress test, and I had not slept much the night before. In addition, I had not been allowed to eat for twelve hours. Part of me was proud that I had made…
Some call them “Life Verses” while others give then different names – these Scripture verses that one discovers in the tough times of life; that become more than just daily Bible verses. I was fifteen years old, laying in a Houston Hospital bed with a broken second vertebrae of my neck and a broken future,…
I am compiling a book on Advice with a different bit of advice each day. I have learned that much advice takes many words, but some of the best advice takes only four words: • Think before you speak. • No pain, no gain. • Go with the flow. • Be still and know (Psalm…
This week Americans will celebrate our independence on July 4. While we are independent from tyranny, we must remain dependent on the Trinity – God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For my non-American readers, while we have no desire to wrap the Gospel in red, white, and blue, we do invite you to celebrate…
I was born at King’s Daughters Hospital in Temple, Texas. My Mother was a Registered Nurse there. It was a Tuesday. Several weeks later, she and I were in church together in a small Baptist Church in rural Bell, County, Texas. My father was the pastor. I cut my teeth on a green-back Broadman Hymnal,…
I last week’s Manna, I mentioned attending my first annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention at age nine with my Pastor/Father. Let me elaborate briefly on why my father was a highly successful pastor. Nacogdoches, Texas is not small compared to nearby Woden or Alto, nor is it big when compared to Dallas or…
I attended my first annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention when I was nine years old. Our family drove from Paris, Texas, where my Dad was Associate Pastor at First Baptist Church, to Chicago, Illinois. We stayed in a hotel that was taller than anything I had ever seen. We met in a convention center…
During my college years my future could have made a drastic turn. A friend and I noticed that there would be minor league baseball tryouts in Arizona, and we decided to drive there in his car and participate. We had no hope of ever playing in the major leagues, but we thought just one summer…
The” Pomp and Circumstance” sounded the same but everything else was different. It was a Kindergarten Graduation, and we were there to celebrate one of the graduates – our great-grandson, Crawford Graham Kennedy. The highlight of the service was when each graduate walked across the stage to receive their diploma as their teacher introduced them…