Steve and I sat in the Bar B-Que Restaurant for three hours.\u00a0 Everyone else had come and gone, but we were enjoying one of God\u2019s greatest gifts \u2013 the gift of memory.\u00a0 We were reminiscing. Five decades previous, I had gone to The University of Texas as the Director of Baptist Student Ministry. \u00a0I had spent the previous nine years serving in the same capacity on two other campuses \u2013 campuses where the students were eager to be led and seldom questioned anything I ever said.\u00a0 But U.T. was different.\u00a0 Students were different. \u00a0Everything taught was challenged, questioned, often dis-allowed.\u00a0 I had very few friends during my first year there.\u00a0 It even seemed that I was a poor fit for the job I had been given.\u00a0 Steve was the student President of our organization, but more than that he was my friend. I\u2019m not sure he believed in everything I said, but he followed, and he led.\u00a0 And now, fifty years later \u2013 after \u201cmany dangers, toils and snares\u201d in each of our lives, we sat at the Bar B Que table for three hours. We talked about old times, old friends, old church memberships, old struggles, and of course, baseball. When we finally left, he said he enjoyed \u201cevery minute\u201d of our time together.\u00a0 I enjoyed the fact that he enjoyed every minute. Michael W. Smith sang, \u201cFriends are friends forever if the Lord’s the Lord of them.\u201d \u00a0Give thanks today for memories and for friends with whom you can share it. \u201cThe\u00a0memory\u00a0of the righteous\u00a0is\u00a0blessed\u201d (Proverbs 10:7).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Steve and I sat in the Bar B-Que Restaurant for three hours.\u00a0 Everyone else had come and gone, but we were enjoying one of God\u2019s greatest gifts \u2013 the gift of memory.\u00a0 We were reminiscing. Five decades previous, I had gone to The University of Texas as the Director of Baptist Student Ministry. \u00a0I had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3615,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3614\/revisions\/3615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}