One Minute of Your Time Please

In ten to fifteen years self-driving cars are expected to become common on our streets and highways. Imagine that. Being able to just tell your vehicle where you want to go, and then completely surrendering control over your travel to a machine, trusting it will get you there safely and on time. Chances are we won’t understand the technology nor the workmanship required to build such a car. But that won’t matter to us. We’ll put complete faith in it anyway.

God would like to be your driver. Unlike your car, you don’t have to tell Him where you need to go. He already knows. In fact, he’s already trying to take you there right now.

One Minute of Your Time Please

It takes an hour to go to your favorite restaurant and enjoy a good meal. It takes three and a half hours to watch a football game. It takes eight hours to drive from Birmingham to Disney World. It takes two to six weeks to receive your income tax refund.

It takes thirty seconds to pull out your phone and text someone that you’re thinking about them.

One Minute of Your Time Please

The Bible is like butter for your soul. Have you noticed everything gets better when you add butter? Butter in your scrambled eggs, butter in your oatmeal, butter in your cake mix, in your cookies, on your toast, around your muffin, across your corn-on-the-cob. Butter adds substance, wholesomeness and a pleasant taste to your food.

Reading the Bible every day can be the butter for your soul. Spread it on thick.

One Minute of Your Time Please

You’re sitting peacefully in a car. The car is travelling down the freeway at a speed of 70 miles per hour. Are you in motion, or are you at rest?

There is no absolute answer to this question. The answer is relative to the position of the observer. To the driver of the car sitting next to you, you are at rest. To a pedestrian on the side of the road you are in motion.

Many of our observations about life are relative. God’s word is not. It is absolute. Always right. Never changing.

One Minute of Your Time Please

You can hate cancer. Hate racism. Hate ignorance. Hate poverty. Hate cruelty. Hate injustice. Hate earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, and wild fires. Hate random violence. Hate loneliness and depression.

But don’t hate people. People are the tools God has to work with to overcome and survive all of the above.

One Minute of Your Time Please

Waking up this morning is the most wonderful blessing of your day. 150,000 people passed away yesterday. 150,000 more will do so today. You are not one of them. You get this day to live, to enjoy, to laugh, to inspire, to dream, to encourage, to share.

And to love. Love somebody today. God allowed you to open your eyes and get out of bed. There must be a reason for it.

One Minute of Your Time Please

God is like gravity. If you take a pencil, hold it in the air, and then release it, which direction will it travel? Of course, you know it will drop straight down to the floor. But how do you know that? You know it because you know about gravity.

You’ve never seen it. You can’t accurately describe it. You probably don’t really understand it. But without a doubt you trust it is there. Because it’s always there. It never goes away.

God is like gravity.

A Reason to Come Together

Did you happen to notice the TV ratings for the recently concluded Summer Olympics in Paris?   They were through the roof.  NBC reported the two weeks of games averaged more than thirty million viewers every day.  That was an 82 percent increase over the 2021 summer games in Tokyo.   I don’t do much streaming of TV programs, but apparently tons of others do, because the network says the games attracted 23.5 billion minutes of streaming time on its Peacock service and other platforms. 

Unless you are totally uninterested in sports of any kind, it was hard not to be drawn in to the drama of these games.  There was star power everywhere you looked.  Mega-names such as Lebron James, Steph Curry, Simone Biles, and Sophia Smith were magnetic in their appeal.  There were stirring finishes, tears of joy, desperate heartbreak, emotional parents, and irresistible melodrama, all spiced with audience shots of famous celebrities like Tom Cruise, Charlize Theron, Martha Stewart, Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order SVU) and Seth Rogan. 

Yep, all the elements for a compelling display of entertainment were there.  Yet, I don’t believe that’s the whole story behind the massive ratings.  There’s a far deeper reason.   It was a rare opportunity for Americans to be united in their passion.   And we reveled in it.  

You don’t need me to tell you we are living in an era of intense division in our country.  Political differences have become weaponized to foster fear and hate.  Outlets such as Fox News and CNN reel in viewers by playing to these emotions, fanning them into wildfires of intensity, sometimes resulting in extreme, even tragic overreaction.  We have witnessed a storming of the United States Capitol building, an assassination attempt, and all manner of deception, misdirection and manipulation on both sides of the aisle. 

And we are tired of it.  It’s exhausting.  We are sick of being made to feel scared.  Fearful of walking out our front doors.  Terrified that moral values are disappearing.  Worn out from being made to feel that some of our fellow Americans have to be enemies because of how they feel about issues.  Weary from worrying the deterioration of our nation is washing over us like a tidal wave, and there’s nothing we can do about it.   

In the midst of all this psychological fatigue arrives the Olympics.  Suddenly, it’s no longer Republicans against Democrats, conservatives against liberals, race against race, young against old.  It’s our country, our whole country, defending its place as the greatest and most accomplished nation on this earth, against the rest of the world seeking to take that distinction away from us.   

The United States basketball teams, men and women, used to win gold medals barely having to break a sweat.  But foreign teams have gotten better.   Much better.  Good enough to threaten us.  So we watched, all of us, with joyful pride as both teams fought off mighty challenges to remain the elite.  We still got it, baby. 

We watched entranced as distance swimmer Katie Ledecky become the most decorated woman of all time in her sport.  We saw Simone Biles reclaim her mastery of gymnastics.  We got shivers when a nerdy and somewhat frail looking young man with a pony tail came out of nowhere with a finishing kick to defeat two overwhelming favorites in the 1,500 meter run.  As Cole Hocker’s crying parents draped him in an American flag, it was hard for any of us to hold back the tears of joy.  We didn’t care if he was a conservative or a liberal, gay or straight, pro-life or pro-choice.  We were just happy for him.  All of us were. 

We had to wait breathlessly as sprinter Noah Lyles leaned into a photo finish in the men’s 100 meters with a Jamaican competitor, then rejoice seconds later as he is declared the winner.  A few days later, the same Lyles finishes a disappointing third in the 200 meters, but we watched in alarm as he lay on the track afterward, struggling mightily to breathe.  In obvious distress, he is taken off the track in a wheelchair.  We later learn he competed despite being diagnosed with Covid.  It didn’t matter how he felt about border crossings or runaway inflation.  We just wanted him to be okay.  All of us did. 

In those dramatic moments, we were all together.  It made no difference if you lived in Trussville, Pinson, New York City, Los Angeles, or Possum Trot.  For at least that fortnight, we could take a break from fighting the cultural battles.  We rediscovered we are all still Americans, and at least when it comes to sports, we are still the best in the world when we compete as one.  It made us feel good.  Dare I say it may even have given us some hope.   

It will serve us well to remember those feelings over the course of the next two and a half months, because those months are going to be brutal.  We are electing a president and a large portion of Congress, and the campaigns are going to be ruthless.  Both sides will try to secure your vote by scaring you and making you feel insecure and uncomfortable.   No doubt we will again be in need of some sort of break from the political pounding. 

Thank goodness for football season. 

Here Today, Gone…..

It was a typical sweltering July day in Alabama. The clock had barely surpassed nine am and already you could feel the humidity pushing down on your skin like a hot blanket fresh out of the dryer. It’s the kind of weather that drives you indoors for exercise. Too hot for walking or jogging or pretty much anything.

I had driven to the gym, gotten out of the car and begun to walk through the parking lot. Let’s get this workout out of the way, I thought. This kind of weather seems to make exercise an unpleasant chore, even indoors. As I approached the double doors at the entrance to the facility, I heard a voice calling “Ken! Hey Ken!” I turned back toward the parking lot and saw a tall man with graying hair and Manchu moustache flowing into a full graying beard. He approached me and thrust his hand out in greeting, flashing a broad smile. “Do you remember me?” he inquired.

As with so many other encounters of this kind, I knew the face was familiar. I knew him from somewhere. But my mind raced for context, and came up blank. It must have shown on my face. “It’s Mike,” he revealed, clearly sensing my struggle. “Remember? We used to be in Sunday School together.” Yes, that was all it took. It came to me now. When we moved to this town back in 1989 we joined the local Baptist church and quickly got involved in Sunday School. We visited a rather large class and felt a bit estranged because we didn’t know anybody. Mike and his sweet wife were among those who befriended us and made us feel welcome.

Every time you move to a new city you start a new life in a way. And that life is not usually a positive one unless you get connected with the community, which almost always starts with making new friends. Mike was one of the first. We had a lot of great times with that group.

But a productive church membership is usually dynamic and fluid. Eventually I left that group to teach my own class. There followed a thirty-five year path spanning several different church ministries and groups, meeting new people, taking on new challenges, reworking Sunday morning schedules and tasks. Along the way I saw Mike and his wife less and less as they followed their own trail in our large congregation. Our church is of a size that couples can be mutual members forever and yet never see each other. We can debate whether that’s good or bad, but let’s leave that for another day.

At some point, I didn’t see Mike at all anymore, nor almost anybody else from that original Bible study group. Many years had passed. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years? I have no idea. Suffice it to say it was long enough that I could no longer place the name with the face until he helped me. Yet here we were, in the parking lot of the local civic center, trying desperately to catch up.

The timing was not great for either of us. He had spotted me as he was getting into his car, and clearly had somewhere he needed to go. I was kind of anxious to get on with my workout. But we tried to make the most of the moment we had. He told me his wife was doing great, filled me in on the career success of his son, and updated me on a couple of old acquaintances. I gave him a quick summary of my family and what I was doing to stay out of trouble in retirement. After this brief exchange, we shook hands again and wished each other well as he got into his car and I turned into the gym.

This chance meeting happened just short of two weeks ago. Yesterday I opened up a church prayer list email. I gasped as I read that Mike had taken what was described as “a freak fall” at work and was on life support at the downtown hospital. The email asked for prayer for Mike and his wife. It ended with this ominous sentence: “Mike will be taken off life support on Thursday”.

I was stunned. It was like a psychological punch in the gut. How could I have known that my brief conversation with him a few days ago would be the last time we would meet on this earth? If I had known, how might it have changed my priorities? It’s a hard way to be reminded of the fragility of our existence, of how grateful we need to be for each morning we open our eyes to greet a new day.

My friend’s name is not really Mike. I wanted to protect the privacy of his family. But God knows about him, and now you do too. Hopefully we can all learn something instructive from this story.

Mike would have liked that.

Teacher Appreciation Day

I admit it.  When it comes to my age, I am in complete denial.  My birth certificate states that I was born in 1951.  That would make me 73.  That has to be a mistake.  There’s no way I can be that old. 

In my head I see myself as a much younger man.  After all, I listen to music by folks like Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran and Adele.  I dress up by wearing a sport coat over a tee-shirt.  I use acronyms in my text messages.  I know what a meme is.  I actually understand all the rules of soccer.  I hang out with minimalists.  I’m considering buying a pair of jeans that have rips in the knees.  I can name at least three of the Backstreet Boys.  Yep, I picture myself as a pretty hip guy. 

Yet, every once in a while, I see something that shocks me out of my delusion, and forces me to acknowledge how much time has passed.  The latest reality check came the other day as I was scrolling through my local newspaper Facebook page.  I came to the article about the teachers who were honored upon their retirement from our school system.  There were nineteen employees in all.  I began scanning through the names, some of which I knew, and some not.  Eventually I came upon a name that stunned me.  Just stunned me. 

The name was Gina Gamble.  Wow.  No way, I thought.  Is that possible?  My mind immediately flashed back to a hot and humid August morning in 1990.  My son Brett was so excited to start the first grade.  He is our oldest child and we were equally excited for him.  It was Meet The Teacher Day.  We brought him to the elementary School.  There was only one then.   Hard to believe, considering there are now three, with plans to build a fourth.   

The old grade school was at the top of a hill.  I think the city fire department uses the building now.  We anxiously found Brett’s classroom and walked inside.  We were greeted by this pretty, youthful, blonde-haired lady with a warm smile.  She introduced herself as Gina Whitson.  Miss Whitson seemed excited, but a little nervous and apprehensive.   Upon talking to her, we learned why.  Turns out this was Gina’s first year as a teacher.  This was to be her first class.   She was going to be in charge of twenty rambunctious six-year-olds, and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. 

She needn’t have worried.  Brett and all of his classmates had a terrific year in the first grade.  Gina did a great job, and our son loved having her as his first “big school” teacher.   

How can it be that was 34 years ago?  Brett (who is now 40) would go on to work his way through twelve years in the school system, while Gina would go on to become one of its best teachers.   Along the way she got married, raised three beautiful daughters, and put in 34 hard years at three different schools..   

Now she is retiring.  Where did the time go?  She says she still loves to teach, but she just recently was blessed with the birth of her first grandchild, and she wants to spend more time with family.  I saw her picture in the internet article, standing with the other retirees, holding the certificates they received from the Board of Education.  She looked exactly the same as she did the day we met her in that classroom.   

Gina, if you read this, I just want to express our appreciation for everything that you, and all the other retirees, have done for the kids of our town.  Teachers are one of our most precious resources, and we are blessed to have some of the best.  It’s one of the main reasons why everybody wants to move here.  It’s one of the main reasons we have to keep building more schools.   

I hope you have a wonderful retirement.  Oh, and one more thing.  I hope you will forgive me if I just can’t get used to calling you Gamble.  To me, you will always be Miss Whitson.  I guess remembering you that way helps me to keep feeling young. 

These days, I need all the help I can get.