Dear locks of mine,

I am so very grateful that you’ve chosen to remain faithful all these long years.

Though many of my friends’ manes have betrayed them, abandoning their crowns like rats from a sinking ship, you’ve stayed with me.

And there are so few albinos among you.

In spite of my metabolism grinding to a shuddering halt, my joints creaking and popping with gravel between the bones, my eyes no longer enjoying words near them but preferring text at arms length and my memory switching off and on in random fashion… yes, despite all of these decrepitudes, you still treat me as if I were a young man.

I am so very appreciative, it seems almost churlish to ask you this one favor.  But…

Would you please, if you could, stop sending missionaries to my back, nostrils, eyebrows and ear canals.

I really have no need for strands resembling the leg of a large spider to protrude from said body parts.

Though, after the way I treated you in the eighties, I suppose I should simply be grateful I have you at all.

Forgive the self indulgence of this post.  I’m feeling a little nostalgic and maybe a wee bit presumptuous.  Just a few observations – some general and some personally specific.

Ice Cream is my all time favorite indulgence and Peppermint has taken over for Mint Chocolate Chip, Rocky Road and Tin Roof Sundae as my number one choice of frozen and delicious sugar packed way of making myself fatter.

I missed photography for about 20 years.  I grew up with a dark room in my house and a professional photographer as a Mom, but quit for a long time.  I’m glad I’m doing it again.

Having fun in life is my choice and mine alone.  Failing to take responsibility for that gives power over my life to other people and I likely will not have much fun with them in charge.

Also, God is not against an enjoyable life.  I have no idea where this thought came from, but it needs to go back.

Golf is a game that reveals someone’s character.  If you really want to know someone, play 18 holes with them.  If you want to know them better than their spouse does, do it regularly.

Leadership primarily means that you have to do the confrontation stuff nobody wants to do.  If you do it well, people will think you are a great leader.  If you do it poorly, you won’t be a leader for very long.

They said that when I turned 40, my body would start to fall apart.  I didn’t know that someone had a switch that they flipped two years ago today.

It’s never wrong to be gracious.

My wife is possibly the funniest person I know.

Mistakes made are lessons learned.  No sense beating yourself up over something stupid you did or said when you were young and foolish, even if it was yesterday.

Love can never be earned.  Approval is not love.  Those who withhold approval reveal that they don’t love themselves and that they may be incapable of real love.

East Coast Bar-B-Que is this shredded pork roast (that has been BAKED) with vinegar based sauce and is not good.  Also, they put slaw AND chili on their hamburgers, along with the other stuff like lettuce, pickles, etc.  That just ain’t right.

That God loves me says something amazing about God.  I’m grateful.

So the sermon yesterday was the last in a series, “When God shows up…” that studied the interactions and reactions of several Old Testament epiphanies (physical manifestations of God, for Vicki and Tiffany).  This has led us up to Advent when we will study the ultimate revelation of God in His ultimate physical manifestation:  the incarnation of the Son, Jesus.

The text was Exodus 33 and the outline went like this:

1.  The people were “stiffnecked” or rebellious and needed to be obedient. (vv 1-6)

2.  Moses valued God’s presence more than being in the land of milk and honey. (vv 12-17, esp 15-16) For us as Christians, God’s presence does not leave us, but we have a way of segmenting our lives so that we only pay attention to God’s presence at certain times of our choosing.

3.  Obedience and the pursuit of God’s presence will open you to experience God in ways you never before would have considered. (vv. 18-23)

At the end of the sermon, I stated that we had been through a desert kind of year this year.  We seemed to be doing so well and the church was growing, but we had staff turnover and that was confusing and frustrating and nothing seemed to be happening about that.  The church hadn’t really had the sense of excitement that we had the last couple of years before.

Now, however, God is beginning to move among us and open us up to things that we never before have seen.  The Search Committee is finishing up their service in pursuit of a Worship and Young Adult Pastor.  He should be coming in view of a call very soon.  They are traveling to meet with him after Thanksgiving.

But even that is not the biggest news…

A year and a half ago, I asked for us to pray that we would be a place that God would do things that only God could get the glory for doing.

Seven months ago I challenged our church to work and pray toward paying off our debt, about $90,000 at the time, by the end of this year.  We worked faithfully and reduced the debt by about a 1/3 in that time to get our church to a place just under $62,000 by Sunday.  Though we worked hard and were faithful, we just couldn’t reach that goal.  Or really get close to it.  Enough to show faithfulness, not enough to claim that we could do it in our power.

When I challenged the church to pay off the debt, a man in our congregation began to ask God for the ability to pay off the mortgage, unbeknownst to me.

On Friday morning I received a phone call asking me for a meeting with this man and his wife.

On Sunday morning I held up a check for $62,000 given with the only stipulation being that he and his family not be made known – that God would get the glory.

I know it has been a desert kind of year for us, but, as with Moses, it is better to be in the desert with God’s presence than in the land of milk and honey without Him.

I know that God has bigger things in store for us than we have ever imagined.  We must simply be obedient and continue to focus on dwelling in His presence.

One of the benefits of not looking like (read: dressing like, talking like) the stereotypical Southern Baptist Pastor is that sales people who drop in the church walk right by me.

Like two this morning.  :)

Bell Shoals Baptist Church – Pastor’s Page

On the Bell Shoals website today is the notice that Forrest Pollock and his 13 year old son have passed from this world. They were on a trip in the family owned aircraft, piloted by the pastor.

This event has shaken me more than I could have realized. It is tragic, to be sure, but Forrest is etched in my memory as dynamic and alive, swaying the crowd in Greensboro. Many of us … many who frequently received and still receive credit for the election of Frank Page … immediately attributed the election to the nomination speech of Forrest Pollock. I did and still do.

I say that not to tap into the political realm of the SBC, but to capture the magnitude of a young, vibrant man who stood to the microphone and held the SBC in his sway, if but for a moment, at a crucial point in our history.

On my heart more than that moment is the loss of his 13 year old son. Having a 13 year old son myself, I am caught by the overwhelming drive to keep him from harm and I sensed that particular loss of the Pollock family, immediately in my mind.

My heart and prayers are with the Pollocks and with Bell Shoals. I encourage you to pray for them as well.

10 things we don’t mention in worship songs, but that I’m happy God saved me from. « 22 Words

Abraham Piper has a great list of 10 things he is grateful God saved him from, but that we don’t sing about in worship songs. I wonder why…

So, here is my list:

1. The wrong girl.
2. The wrong church.
3. Being an Architect.
4. Prison.
5. Drowning.
6. Being stuck in the 80′s.
7. Drugs.
8. An early death.
9. Bachelorhood.
10. Childlessness.

Yours?