Okay, so I’m standing at the cash register at a grocery store the other day and saw these. Had to buy a pack (35 cents) as my craving took over. They look and taste the same. Had no idea they were still making these. Unless…they’ve been sitting on a shelf somewhere since I was a kid. Would explain the taste.
So, last year my wife and my mother-in-law gave me a bunch of these glow stone thingies to line the slate path in my garden. There were at least a hundred of them and they looked very cool at night. But after a while, there were less and less of them. I thought maybe they were evaporating. I realized one of the local animals must have been stealing them so I collected them up (what was left) and Bonnie used them in the bottom of a glass vase with a flower arrangement. So, now they are turning up all over the place. I think the squirrels buried them as food for the winter and when they tried to eat them, spit them out. Gonna use the rest inside. After I wash off the squirrel spit.
I like tomatoes. This year, however, I put in only one plant. I placed it in one of the older gardens next to the fence thinking it would be unobtrusive and the flowers and shrubs would out-shine it. It wouldn’t really be noticed in such majestic company. Several days (weeks) of rain later, the plant stood over six feet tall! I had to add another thick bamboo pole to support it and I may soon have to add a third. So much for unobtrusive! At last count, it had 14 tomatoes growing on it and I was doing the happy dance. Let me tell you, doing the happy dance in Crocs on mulch is not easy. I love fresh tomatoes! Continue reading
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Abraham Lincoln
A few years ago, I visited the Norman Rockwell museum in Massachusetts with my family while on vacation. It was amazing to see many paintings and illustrations on display that I’d seen in the Saturday Evening Post and other publications throughout my life.
My favorite Rockwell painting is Norman Rockwell’s own self-portrait. It’s anything but serious. When we visited his studio, I was happy to see the same helmet hanging on the top of his easel that appears in his portrait. Rockwell bought the helmet in 1923 from an antiques dealer in Paris France. The dealer said it was a military relic. As it turns out, it was a modern French fireman’s helmet. He kept it close by to remind himself of his own foolishness.
Many other famous artists, including the likes of Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Dali painted self-portraits. If you were to do your own self-portrait, how would you do it? How do you see yourself? Serious? Comical? Winner? Loser? Hero? Clown?
So, during the Sunday School hour, the kids made a headband with floppy ears that stuck up. As a prank, the ushers came down the aisle to collect the offering, all wearing a set of these bunny ears. I laughed and, to show I was not phased, used it as a transition into my sermon time. After they departed, and before the sermon, I’m thinking bunny ears, Easter. I waxed eloquent about adapting popular culture to teach spiritual truths, IE the Easter Egg and Rabbit, symbols of new life etc. Later, I found out that the ears were donkey ears. Donkey. Jesus riding. Palm Sunday. Palm smacks forehead.
As I arrived this morning, one of our volunteers told me we had five new families today for our food pantry at the church. A trip downstairs revealed that chairs lining the hallway were full and children were quietly playing on the floor as their families waited their turn for food. We’ve been getting busier lately. From July of 2016 to December, we distributed over 6,000 pounds of food—that’s three tons in six months! In an average month, we are helping to feed about 100 people out of this little church. How happy we are to be able to provide this service. How sad that the service is needed.
How’s your heart? Mine’s just had a tune-up. New parts, my plugs unplugged, at least a five-point job. But the heart I’m really asking about is the one that feels and experiences emotion and enables relationship with others. The heart that expresses empathy, sympathy, compassion, and, most importantly, love.
The New Testament word for heart is kardia, from which we get cardiac and cardiology, words with which I am sadly too familiar. According to the Bible Study Tools’ Bible Dictionary, between the New Testament word, kardia and the Old Testament word, lebab, “heart” occurs more than 1,000 times in the Bible. That makes it the most human-related word in scripture. Continue reading
In the early stages of my journey to pastoral ministry, I was an intern in a mid-sized country church in Ontario, Canada. I don’t remember how old it was exactly, but the church was at least 100 years old and had witnessed many of the cultural changes that came to our denomination over time. One of those changes was the introduction of musical instruments.
I first heard the story of the “organ battle” from Chris, an elderly member of the congregation who told the story with a heavy helping of gentleness and grace. It wasn’t until 1955 that the General Conference of the Brethren in Christ authorized the use of instruments in the church for those that desired them. When interest in having an organ installed at the Rosebank congregation developed, the church essentially divided into two factions, those who were for it and those who were against it.
I’d been pushed, prodded, and poked plenty over the past few days but being body-shaved by a nurse at 6:30 in the morning was a whole new level of dignity loss. I’m a very hairy man. My hairy chest is one of the things my wife says she finds especially attractive about me. How she narrows it down from so many choices I don’t know but that particular attraction is now gone. So is the hair on my belly, legs, and… other areas. I didn’t really look at the whole effect in a mirror until I was three days post-surgery and on my first full day at home. I looked like a tide-beached whale, only not as attractive as that.
I was at a gathering of writers on Thursday evening, where a young woman read O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”. Do you know the story?
When the woman got to the part of the story where the young husband and wife reveal that they had sold their most prized possessions, the bride her beautiful long hair and the groom his beautiful pocket watch, the young woman began to cry as she read. In fact, she started to cry before she got there, merely anticipating what was to come.