Author: kenlassblog.net

We make the right turn off Trussville Clay Road into the Trussville Civic Center parking lot. It is 9:15 on a Friday morning and the lot is packed. Cars are circling the perimeter desperately waiting for a set of taillights to light up, indicating somebody backing out. We finally find a space in the very back.

We get out of the car and fall into a line of folks heading through the front entrance. I see mostly women. Actually, I see nothing but women. As we come through the door we are greeted by a large sign that reads “Trussville Civic Center presents Totally Christmas”. We are also greeted by a large black arrow and a friendly lady instructing us to turn left. That’s where you start. Don’t even think about turning right. You would be walking against the traffic flow and your life may be in danger. It would be a terrible way to go, stampeded and run over by shopping carts, overflowing with Christmas craft items. You might not be noticed until Sunday.

We begin weaving and zig zagging through lines of tables. Some of the vendors are out front, actively engaging and connecting with passers by. You can tell they revel in this, the interaction, the dynamic. Others, not so much. They sit back in their chairs, looking at their phones, wishing they were back home watching reruns of Family Feud. All of them are women. Am I the only man here?

Eventually, I stop thinking about finding male fellowship, and find myself getting interested in the merchandise. There really are some creative minds and talented people in and around our community. One lady turns clam shells into beautifully painted decorations. Another hand paints crosses on to dough bowls. There is a woman selling Grinch cookies for three dollars. She explains her secret recipe to me. I smile and nod, but I am thinking that if she does this with everyone, she is blowing the secret. Kind of like KFC’s eleven herbs and spices. Some things should remain a mystery.

I find a table featuring Swedish dish cloths. The sign says they will absorb fifteen times their weight, as much as sixteen paper towels! Leave it to the Swedes. Here I thought they only specialized in meatballs. There is another dish towel with an inscription that reads “If I ever go missing, I want my picture on wine bottles instead of milk cartons. That way my friends will know how to find me”. Another nice lady inquires as to my interest in something called Kickin’ Jalapeno Jelly. I blush and explain that my sensitive tummy can’t even handle bananas. There is a baby bib with large print screaming “Rub My Belly”. We walk past Magic Reindoor Food, and a specialty hand soap labeled Euphoria. I can experience euphoria just washing my hands? Sign me up.

The Trussville Historical Society is here, selling various books about the history of our fair city. One sweet vendor tells me about her struggle with Parkinson’s disease. She takes broken jewelry and superbly crafts it into spiritual items. She explains that the reclamation of the broken jewelry symbolizes how God can reclaim a broken life.

Everywhere on the journey there are clusters of women gathered in tight circles, laughing and talking. Clearly, this is not just about merchandise. This is a social event. And a good one. Everyone seems to be here. It’s a thing. A ladies’ thing.

Or is it? Suddenly, as we turn to go down the back row, the one closest to the stage, I see them. Men! All kinds of men. Men wearing shirts with team logos on them, sporting ball caps with pictures of construction equipment. I finally found them! My people! As I get closer, I can see their mouths moving. Probably talking about football and hunting and, you know, man stuff.

Wait, they’re not talking….they’re eating! Eventually a few of them saunter off, revealing a view of the table behind them. It’s a large display of bakery and pies, with plates of free samples out front. So this is where the guys hang out. I make a mental note for future craft shows. I recognize and approach a fellow who used to be one of my neighbors. He explains to me that he is only here to be a “pack mule” for his wife. But the wife is nowhere in sight, and hey, even pack mules have to eat.

Everywhere we went there were smiling faces and well wishes. Turns out Christmas spirit does seem to have a way of surviving any mercenary taint here. Trussville’s version of the holiday craft show is certainly not on the scale of something like Christmas Village at the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center, but that’s okay. You also don’t have to pay twenty dollars to park and then pony up an admission fee just to walk in the door. Totally Christmas is free and growing every year, and I walked out of there with a little more spring in my step.

I can only hope my holiday spirit was shared by the drivers of the three cars that were hovering around my parking space, waiting for me to back out.

There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is titled “The Inner Light”. The starship Enterprise encounters a high tech time capsule floating randomly through space. As it approaches the ship, it scans Captain Picard and shoots him with a laser. The strike causes him to have a vision of a distant planet, destroyed thousands of years ago by a collision with a meteor. In the vision, Picard meets the people of the lost world and learns their culture. The inhabitants explain they created the time capsule so that history would record their existence. The moral of the story (and there usually is one), is that no one really ceases to exist until nobody remembers them anymore.

I thought about that episode recently when Sharon hauled out a huge stack of old family photographs. They had been gathering dust somewhere in the deep recesses of the house for years. Sharon figured it was time to determine their permanent fate. Either organize and keep them, give them away, or dispose of them.

Interestingly, the further you dug into the stack, the further back in time you seemed to travel. It began with baby photos of me and my brothers. Then there were photos of my parents at their wedding. Then there were photos of my grandparents getting married. So far, so good.

Then it got weird. We started finding pictures of huge family gatherings, circa 1900. The men were all wearing buttoned up vests with dark coats over them, bow ties, hair parted down the middle, and bushy moustaches. The women wore roomy dark blouses with black turtlenecks attached, belted around the waist, flowing dresses with no trace of skin of any kind showing, hair pulled tightly back. In the front row was a bevy of children, decked out in knickers with large bows protruding from their necklines. Nobody was smiling. Apparently, it was not fashionable to smile on a photo in those days.

The photos were embossed on a black cardboard frame. There were a few rips and chunks missing from the edges. I quickly flipped them around, hoping to find some sort of identification or context on the back.

Nothing. Not a thing. Just a picture of a group of people that were strangers to me. I only have an educated guess as to whom they might be. I suspect they are the extended family of my grandparents when they were children. But I have no way of knowing that with any certainty. Anybody in my family tree who might be able to identify them has passed away, including my mom and dad. They are just images without a story. As such, sadly, they mean nothing to me, nor to anyone I know.

I suppose I could invest the time and effort in one of those apps that help you trace your genealogy, but quite honestly, I lack the motivation to do so. I’m really not all that curious about my ancient heritage. I may even be a little scared of finding out my roots. What if I descended from some sort of evil cult group? Or worse yet, from Chicago Bear fans?

The Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons are a time to reunite with family, to catch up on each other’s lives and, inevitably, to share memories of those who have passed on. We retell our favorite stories about them, stories that will make us laugh, and maybe even cry. In a sweet sort of way, they’re not really gone. They live on in our hearts and minds, just as clearly as if they were standing in front of us. But the passage of time is relentless, and the arrival of each new generation pushes the memories of those gone before a little further into irrelevance, until eventually, they are just……strangers on a photo.

So I stare down at these old pictures spread out on my desk. What to do with them? Throw them away? My grown children are even less interested in these photos than I am. No point in handing them down. Yet I can’t shake this feeling that, in some strange spiritual or metaphysical way, the folks in those images will continue to have some sort of legacy, some sort of life story, some sort of relevance, as long as I, or anyone for that matter, hangs on to these photos. That once they hit the trash, to be ground up and buried into the earth, any trace or acknowledgement of their existence is ground up and buried with them.

Then again, I am also quite sure that if I store them somewhere in the house, they will languish there, forgotten, for years to come, after which we will dig them out one distant day and be faced with the same decision. What to do? What would Captain Picard do?

As I write this, my attention is drawn to a picture that sits atop my desk. It’s a family photo, taken at Easter. It’s Sharon and I, our son and daughter, their spouses and their children. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve written our names on the back, but who knows if my family name will survive long term? I find myself wondering if, a hundred years from now, my great-great-great grandson will be sitting by a desk, looking at that picture, with no clue who we are, and caring even less.

I wonder if he’ll throw it away.

(Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham television news and sports anchor, and a Trussville resident.)

I marvel every day at God’s incredible creation all around me, but when I get to heaven, I have a few questions for the Almighty. One of them will be, what was He thinking when He created bees? Oh, I know they pollinate the flowers and all that nature stuff, but God could have designed any number of bugs that could do that. Why did he have to give that assignment to these ill-tempered, scary buzzers with the miniature swords protruding from their backsides?

The front of our house is lined with azalea bushes. In the spring they bloom into the most beautiful pink blossoms. Sadly, the blooms only last about two or three weeks. However, the leafy bushes grow like wildfire all summer long. By August my azaleas have all grown into each other and formed a tangled mess of foliage. It’s time to drag myself out there to trim them up, rake out the clippings, bag them and take them to the street for pick-up. Usually it’s just a dreary job that takes about three hours of back aching work.

This year was a little different.

I had finished trimming about two thirds of the bushes with my electric trimmer, when I bent down to get the lower branches on one of the plants closest to the house. Suddenly I felt a stinging pain on my leg. It was a hot day and I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I jerked upward and discovered to my horror that I was surrounded by a swarm of bees. Angry bees at that. As I flung my trimmer and bolted out of the hedge, I was stung several times all over my body. They got me just beside the ear, both hands and both arms, on the back and on the leg.

Thankfully, I’m not one of those folks who has a toxic reaction to bee stings, but for about two hours I just hurt all over. It was like my brain couldn’t sort out which pain signal to acknowledge, so it just sort of rotated all the messages. Eventually, the pain subsided. Several of the stings swelled up a bit but at least they didn’t hurt any more. I thought I was past the worst of it. I was wrong.

Once the pain subsides, the itching begins. Relentless itching. I poured on all the creams and ointments, nothing helped. I only survived thanks to the blessings of Advil and Tylenol. I was miserable for about two days but felt better after a steroid shot from my doctor.

The bees had declared war, and I was willing to accept the challenge, so long as somebody else actually did the fighting of course. My daughter recommended a pest control guy whom I called. He came out the same day. His first question was “What kind of bees are they?” I calmly told him I was too busy shrieking bloody murder to stop and get a good description. I just pointed to the shrubs and whimpered “they’re in there somewhere.”

These bug guys tend to be very nice people, but they are either extremely brave, or just a little crazy. Without hesitation, he strutted into the shrubbery and started kicking the individual plants, hoping to roust up the bees and discover their home. Suddenly he darted out of the landscaping faster than a speeding bullet. “Found them!” he proclaimed. Sure enough, they were flowing like a river out of a chipmunk hole at the base of one of the shrubs, the one I was trimming when I got attacked. “Yellowjackets” he explained. “They love to nest in chipmunk holes, and stuff like vibrations really get them mad.”

Oh, you mean like the vibration of an electric trimmer shaking their world? That kind of vibration? Good to know. A little late, but good to know.

He said he was going to poison the hole with some sort of white powder. He told me to stay inside the house during the procedure. No problem. Way ahead of you. Afterward, he showed me the hole, as the bees were busily sampling the powder and, hopefully, taking some for the queen to sample. The bug man said the whole colony should be dead in a few days. Just give it some time.

That was in August. I’m giving it time. Plenty of time. Meanwhile, if you happen to drive by my house, please forgive the look of the front landscaping. The bushes are only about half trimmed. I’m working up the courage to get back out there and finish the job.

Maybe by Christmas.

The other day I received the quarterly report from my health insurance provider. It itemized the various medical visits I had made for the past three months. As I browsed through the items, I began to realize that I am accumulating quite an impressive portfolio of specialists. Of course, I have a general practice physician, which is where it all begins.

But over the years I seem to have branched out, and my medical tree now has a lot of branches. I have a neurologist, a urologist, a podiatrist, a dermatologist, an otolaryngologist, a physical therapist and a periodontist. Wow. Now that I’ve actually typed that list, I’m a bit amazed that I consider myself a generally healthy person.

We definitely live in an age of medical specialty. It wasn’t always so. Among the enduring memories of my childhood are my visits to our family doctor. His name was Dr. Fisher. He was a bit of a portly man with a gray moustache and wire rim glasses across his nose. He had a jolly laugh and always, I mean always, wore a stethoscope around his neck. I wonder if he slept in that thing.

His office smelled like formaldehyde. He had a figurine model of himself at the front of his desk, next to his name plate. Behind him was a bookshelf filled with medical journals that looked as though they were written in previous centuries. He would often refer to one of them when diagnosing my sickness. His examining room was about the size of a large closet, with room for a padded table and little else. There was a jar full of tongue depressors on the counter, but he never seemed to use them. There were large pictures on the walls of various body parts and bones. They were graphic enough to creep me out, and I tried not to look at them.

But what I remember most is that Dr. Fisher did it all. He treated headaches, tremors, broken bones, he stitched up cuts and bruises, cut the warts off your feet, treated the rash on your leg, gave you some balm to relieve the pain in your mouth after biting your tongue. No specialists needed here. If Dr. Fisher couldn’t handle it, it was time to go directly to the hospital.

My most vivid memory is the time I was playing tackle football with some friends in their backyard. As I lunged to tackle somebody, he rolled over my leg and I felt a terrible pain in my right foot. I removed my shoe and sock and was horrified to see my big toe standing straight up at a right angle to the other four. I went screaming home to show my mom, and shortly after, we got in the car for a trip to see the good doctor.

I remember sitting on his examining table, scared out of my wits. Was I in for major surgery? Would I lose the toe? Would I ever walk normally again? Dr. Fisher stared at my freakish looking toe for a moment, scratched his chin, and then without warning, he grabbed hold of it with his fist and yanked it straight down. I felt a pop, and a click. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to feel any pain. “There”, he said. “That oughtta do it”.

I looked down in amazement. All of my toes were once again properly aligned. The big toe was a little sore but it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. The doc would later explain to Mom that it was just a dislocation. I put my shoe on and traipsed out of there as though nothing had happened.

From that point on, I had a new appreciation of Dr. Fisher. I felt as though he was kind of a miracle worker, a super hero. You just don’t find that kind of all purpose, country doctor anymore.

About fifty years later, I had a bad fall off my bicycle. My right shoulder took the brunt of my impact with the road. It hurt badly, and I noticed my shoulder bone was protruding a little higher. This time it was my wife Sharon taking me to the emergency room, where the doctor said my scapula had been slightly displaced. As he worked on it, I was perfectly calm. Not a whimper or a groan. I’d been through this before.

Dr. Fisher would have been proud.

“Lay down flat on your back”, she said. “Put your hands on your chest and lay your head in the stabilizing helmet. Most importantly, try not to move in any way”. Then she folded a covering over my face and locked it down. “Are you ready?” she asked. “Yes ma’am” I replied. “You’ll be in there about fifteen minutes” she said as she slid me into the narrow tube.

I had been having issues with headaches. Kind of a constant pressure on my temples and forehead. The dull ache had been there for about a month and showed no sign of letting up. This was frightening to me because I’m not a headache person. I never got headaches. There’s no natural reason for this, I thought. I’m not under a lot of stress or tension. I haven’t fallen or suffered a concussion. I don’t have eye strain. When I told all this to my neurologist, he immediately scheduled me for an MRI scan of my brain.

So there I lay, motionless, eyes closed, tightly stuffed into a narrow tube, a machine probing my skull, with only my thoughts to keep me company. I said a few prayers. Then, being a natural born pessimist, I chose to prepare myself for the worst possible scenario. What if they find a brain tumor? What then?

If this is the beginning of the end, what am I to make of my life? After pondering the possibility, I decided I’m not afraid to die. I know my eternal future is secure. I thought about how incredibly blessed I have been. Wife, kids, grandkids, career and friends. I’ve truly had it all.

I thought about regrets. People I wish I had treated better. Situations I could have handled with more love and patience. I thought about goals I had not yet accomplished. I thought about my grandkids growing up, wondering if I had established any kind of legacy in their minds, or if they would remember me at all. I thought about those who have crossed over before me, Mom and Dad, Grandma, a grandchild that was lost at birth, so many dear friends. I’m going to see them again! That gave me a warm feeling. I thought about that verse in the Bible where Jesus said “I go to prepare a place for you”.

It was at that point I felt the anxiety drain out of my body. I found myself at peace as the weird electronic noises around me stopped, and I felt myself being slid out of the tube. Whatever you want Lord, I’m ready to face it.

The next day the neurologist called to tell me my MRI was completely normal. No brain tumors. I’m on medication for the headaches, and they seem to be getting better. But I can’t stop thinking about the feeling of security and tranquility I felt coming out of that tube. I scrambled to find that Bible passage. It’s John 14:2-3.

“My Father’s house has many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I have prepared a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so you also can be where I am.”

Turns out I wasn’t alone in that tube after all.

I am at the neighborhood pool with my four year old grandson. I’m standing waist deep in the water, trying to coax him into coming down the pool steps and joining me. He is hesitant. He explains he is afraid of going under the water. I assure him I will be there to catch him.

After much cajoling and encouragement, he slowly builds up the courage to go down two steps, reach out his arms, and leap toward me. I snatch him and pull him close to me, giving him a big hug and praising him for being such a brave boy. He is very pleased with his accomplishment, and immediately wants to do it again. And again. And again.

After several jumps and several catches and several big smiles, I decide it’s time for him to take the next step. I want him to get past his fear of being underwater. If he’s going to learn to swim, he has to get accustomed to holding his breath and controlling his body. This time, as he lunges toward me, I relax my arms just a bit. Just enough so that he lands in the water and sinks below the surface for just a second. Then I quickly yank him up and say “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

His face has a look of stunned surprise, as water runs down from his hair, and out from his eyes and nose. Uh-oh, I think. Is he going to cry and run away, never to trust me again? Thankfully, he recovers from the shock in a few seconds, and the big smile returns as he screams out “That was fun! Do it again!” Whence follows many, many more jumps, submergences, pull-ups and smiles. He’s okay going under, just so long as I’m there to pull him up.

I guess life is kind of like that. We cruise along in our comfort zones, afraid to take that plunge, that leap into a new adventure, a new challenge. What if it doesn’t work out? What if it leaves me twisting in the wind, embarrassed, my self esteem sinking. Sort of like ……… being under water?

We’re not inclined to be brave unless we can be sure of rescue, of someone there to catch us and pull us up out of our adversity. The book of Psalms mentions the word “rescue” 129 times. The whole message is summed up in 34:22. “The Lord will rescue His servants. No one who takes refuge in Him will be condemned.”

Whatever your dilemma might be, just do the right thing. It probably won’t be the easiest option, or the most desirable, or the most self-gratifying. If it was, it wouldn’t be a dilemma. Just know that, if you put your faith in Him, he’ll be there to catch you. He may let you go underwater for a while, just to get you prepared for the next step. You may be shocked and stunned at your unexpected circumstances, but in time you’ll recover and realize you don’t have to be afraid.

In fact, you may even break out a huge smile, and look for opportunities to do the right thing again. And again. And again.

Life is really all about making adjustments, isn’t it? As children, we adjust to the rules our parents lay down for us, and, of course, we rebel against some of them. As students we adjust to the discipline required to obtain an education. As young adults we adjust to the pressures of earning a living, dating, getting married, raising children, buying a house. In middle age we adjust to grown children, empty nests, the return of the grown children, and setting the stage for retirement.

Which brings us to the senior stage, where I happen to reside now. Again, there are adjustments. More free time. Health concerns. Managing money so that you will have enough. Grandchildren. New aches and pains every day. By this time hopefully we are old enough and wise enough to make the necessary changes in our routine and lifestyle to maintain at least a reasonably good quality of life and happiness.

You get used to not being able to do things as nimbly and athletically as you could when you were younger. You get used to having to take a little more time to get up off the floor after sitting down to play with the grands. You get used to taking pills. You get used to waking up earlier in the morning, going to bed earlier at night, eating lunch at 11am and dinner at 5pm…..promptly. Frequent doctor appointments. Getting confused by technology.

But as long as the Good Lord allows me to live, there is one thing I will never get used to. As the years pass on, I keep losing good friends. Sweet people with whom I have so many treasured memories and experiences. Folks who are just part of me. I guess that’s why I take their passing so hard, because a part of me, that relationship that we shared, dies with them.

Yes, I’m getting older. Most of my circle of friends and acquaintances are around my age, and thus it’s inevitable that some will cross the bridge. Of course I understand it, but I haven’t learned to handle it well. Don’t guess I ever will.

The Covid outbreak, when it was at its worst, was especially heartbreaking. It took several of those whom I loved. Other diseases continue to do the same. Just recently, it happened again. Her name was Carol Miller. Cancer got her. She was a subscriber and frequent commenter on this blog. Many of you readers know her, and that’s not a coincidence. Carol was one of those salt of the earth people who drew people to her like bees to honey. I first met Carol and her awesome husband Guy when they joined my Sunday School class many years ago. She was the first to volunteer whenever any act of ministry needed to be organized or done. She and Guy opened up their home for countless get- togethers and bonding activities. She was a leader of Christian mission groups both local and regional. Most of all, she was a loyal friend, to me and to everyone she met.

We just can’t afford to lose the Carol Millers. This troubled world needs them too desperately. I suppose it should be encouraging that she leaves behind an incredible legacy. She has inspired many, both young and old, to follow her leadership and example. She showed us how it’s done. Hers is a life well lived.

I guess I will get used to not hearing from her now and then, not seeing her supportive comments on this blog, on my Facebook wall and elsewhere. But I’ll never forget her. It seems trite and inadequate to restate the old adage, but it remains so true: treasure every moment with those you care about, because our time with them is finite.

I have learned to live with that.

But I’ll never get used to it.

I have never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I am a spontaneous person, and I do a lot of things without thinking them through. Some of them are pretty dumb. But recently I set a new standard. Yes, I did what must surely qualify as the dumbest thing in the history of dumb things.

The story requires a bit of set up. Our house has a finished basement which we often use as a playroom for the grandkids when they come to visit. Over the last couple years, we have accumulated piles of toys, pieces of toys, and partial pieces of the pieces of toys. When the tykes go home, we just shovel everything into a pile against the wall. One day, we decided it would be nice, and certainly neater, to order one of those toy storage organizers, with the twelve cube-shaped baskets that fit snugly into separate compartments.

Sharon picked one she liked off the internet and ordered it. It arrived, unassembled, in a huge box about four days later outside our front door. I opened the door, wrapped my arms around it, and tried to lift it into the house. Whoa! Not a chance. Apparently, there was more lumber and hardware in there than I had anticipated, and it weighted a ton! The best I could do was lean the giant box over and drag it through the doorway. I then dragged it to the kitchen door leading to the basement, pathetically grunting and groaning all the way. Several times during this lengthy process, Sharon pointed out that I shouldn’t do this alone, and offered to help me. But being the masculine, macho husband that I am, I cavalierly refused.

Eventually, I opened the kitchen door, which leads to a fifteen step descension. At the bottom of those steps is the door to the garage, while the door to the playroom is on the right. Both doors were closed. I stopped and pondered for a moment the best way to get the box down the steps. Once again, Sharon offered to help. Once again, I declined. I decided to lean the box down on its side, push it partially over the first step, and slide it down.

That’s when it happened. I did the dumbest thing in the history of dumb things. After leaning the box over the top step, I let go of it so as to move around ahead of it and ease it down one step at a time. You can guess what happened. The instant I let go, that huge, heavy box took off down the steps like a rocket launched out of a silo. It flew down the stairway and smashed into the garage door so hard, the doorknob was dislodged from the door.

Did you ever have one of those moments where you just stand there in suspended animation, wondering if what you just witnessed really happened? Hoping you’re about to wake up from some bizarre dream? That was me staring in disbelief at the top of the steps. Did I really just do that? Could any human being be that stupid? Upon hearing the tremendous crash, Sharon came running, and recognized immediately what happened. If ever there was an I-told-you-so moment, that was it. She must love me. She just smiled gently and said accidents will happen. Maybe the ashen look on my face scared her.

Needless to say, we now need a new garage door. What bothers me the most, is that there were so many more sensible courses of action. Taking the contents out of the box upstairs, or letting Sharon help me slide it down the steps, or just dragging the dang thing around the outside of the house and coming in through the garage! Duh!

I really don’t even know why I’m writing about this. I should be taking this ridiculous incident to the grave. Maybe, in some sick corner of my mind, I’m hoping there are readers out there who will comment about something they’ve done, something they thought was even dumber, just to make me feel better.

I’m waiting…….

So the Lord said to Moses “Take Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit of leadership, and lay your hand on him.” — Numbers 27:18

The Bible makes it clear that men are to be leaders. Leaders in their families, leaders in their communities and leaders in their church.

Leading is usually not a comfortable place to be. It’s much safer to lay back in the crowd, take time to survey the landscape, let someone else set the direction and then judge the reaction to it. If it works, then fall in step. If it gets criticized, distance yourself from it.

This is precisely the way politics works. For example, several of the people running for state and national office in Alabama are trying very hard to become connected with Donald Trump, while doing their best to distance themselves from any hint of being liberal. That’s the safe path to election in this state.

But Christianity is not politics. In fact, it’s the opposite. Politics is the art of being popular, which necessitates drawing attention to oneself. By contrast, Christianity emphasizes humility and service to others. Surrendering self to follow Jesus and his teachings. Politicians lay back, see which way the wind is blowing, and then jump on the bandwagon.

The Bible tells the story of the transition of leadership from Moses to Joshua. Moses had sent out a group of twelve scouts to see if conquering the promised land was doable. Most of them came back wanting to play it safe. The natives were too big, too strong, too numerous, they reported. There’s no way the Jews could defeat them. Only Joshua and Caleb came back with confidence that, with God’s guidance, they could accomplish anything.

That’s leadership. That’s what it looks like. Not playing it safe, not laying back in the crowd to see what works, what’s popular. Trusting God to lead you in directions that you may not be comfortable with, but are destined to travel. As Moses neared the end of his time on earth, God told him to make Joshua the new leader. The Lord knew Joshua would choose the obedient path, a path that could make him very unpopular with the crowd, based on the negative reports of the other scouts. In fact, at one point the Jews wanted to stone him.

Being a leader makes you vulnerable. Leaders get criticized. People expect them to have all the answers. They expect leaders to be fair, though their own perception of fairness is often skewed toward themselves. Leaders get pressure to succeed. In the business world, an unsuccessful leader gets fired. Who needs all of that?

We do. There has never been a more urgent need for men to step up and stand out, both by word and by example. It’s not a subjugation of women. It’s a complement to them. With God, being an unsuccessful leader is impossible. Even if you don’t please people, you are running the race for which you were created. Pleasing people is not the goal.

It is particularly critical for the men of our senior generation, of which I am a part, to set this tone for our younger observers. They need to see men of conviction, unafraid to proclaim the word of Christ, unafraid to be the first in line for ministry and prayer, unafraid to trust in God’s providence with our finances.

We’ve raised our families. We’ve shown them how to work hard and provide. We’ve shown them how to love and forgive. Now let’s show them how to lead.

It’s a man thing.

I was driving through a Trussville neighborhood recently when I saw something that warmed my heart. A group of children were gathered in an empty lot playing baseball. They looked to range between about eight and twelve years old and they were having a blast. There were no uniforms, no coaches, no scoreboards, no beautifully manicured ball diamonds, no bleachers full of emotional parents and grandparents.

You almost never see that anymore, and there are good reasons for it. The trend seems to be toward building huge houses with small yards, so most families don’t have a yard big enough on which to play ball. Some of the newer subdivisions have a common ball diamond in the playground area, but you rarely see anybody using it.

Then too, the time when mom and dad could feel okay with their child running out the door unsupervised to go play in somebody else’s yard is, sadly, long past. In this scary world we live in today, parents want their eyeballs on the kids as much as possible, and I don’t blame them. Then there are video games and the internet. Why play ball outside when you can slay dragons and alien invaders in your bedroom, while munching on trail mix and slurping down a Coke?

It wasn’t always so. I grew up back in prehistoric times, the late 1950’s and early 60’s, far before anybody knew what a computer chip was, much less a QR code. Seeing those kids play ball took me back fondly to those days, when the topic of conversation on the school bus ride home was always, whose yard is the game in today? We would bolt off the bus, rush into the house, knock down a quick snack, then grab our ball glove and favorite bat and head out to the designated backyard to play for a few hours until the sun went down.

We had to improvise. First base was a rock. Second base was a piece of cardboard. Third base was my friend Joey’s T-shirt. He hated that shirt, but his mom made him wear it, so he quickly stripped it off once out of sight. Home plate was a ball glove supplied by somebody from the team at bat. There was an understanding that it was unnecessary to step on it when batting or scoring. We didn’t have to choose up sides. We knew who we wanted to play with.

There was no outfield wall. Nobody put up privacy fences in those days. The lots were huge and wide open, and the boundary was the woods. If you managed to hit the ball into the woods, you just kept running the bases while the outfielders searched frantically for the ball amidst the brush, the leaves, and the scattered patches of poison ivy. There were frequent disputes about the score, but when it became too dark to continue playing, we all just headed home, not really caring who won. Man, I miss those days.

I frequently go jogging through the Trussville sports park on busy Saturdays. Often baseball, football, soccer and lacrosse are all in full swing. Cars are parked everywhere. In fact, creative parking has become an art form on those days. Sometimes I stop for a few minutes to observe a ball game from a distance. I see the kids stepping up to the plate, with a capacity crowd watching and reacting to their every move, while coaches yell instructions. I would have been petrified at that age. Are they enjoying and basking in all the attention? Or just feeling pressure and stress?

I certainly have no problem with organized youth sports. It gives our young people something constructive to do and teaches them many positive traits. And there is always the chance your child may excel and begin the path that leads to a scholarship one day. The Trussville Park & Rec department does a great job at what must be a daunting task, finding fields and time slots for hundreds of games and thousands of kids.

I just find myself comparing the kids under those expensive batting helmets to the ones I saw in that empty lot, and wonder who’s having more fun.