Archive for the ‘Grace’ category
January 3, 2020
WORDS FROM W.W. January 3, 2020
“On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor…Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:22-23,27)
It was a paper cut, but it must have been angry paper…paper with an attitude looking to inflict pain!
The cut only measured a couple of millimeters…I think! I could never understand those ways of measuring things. In laypeople language it measured itsy-bitsy, but it was on the tip of my right thumb. I guess you could say that “it stuck out like sore thumb!”
No big deal. It was only a tiny cut, barely big enough to put under the microscope. I had nine other fingers to take care of details. I never use my thumbs when I type, so there was one thing. I’m a three-fingered typist, two on my left hand and one on the right. Always have been. If I have to think about using more fingers than those three I’ll become frantic, like the person in the movie who has to figure out which wire to cut, perspiration running down his face, along with tears.
So, no big deal on the thumb, right?
Wrong! I started getting dressed to go to church and I couldn’t get the top button on my dress shirt buttoned. I’ve never worn a tie and had my top button unbuttoned, but that night— Christmas Eve, in fact— I had to resort to looking, as my mom would say, “slouchy!”
With great effort I was able to zip myself up, but I almost had to take my pants off first, zip them, and then “vaseline up” my legs and slide in.
It took me great effort to tie my shoes. I thought about wearing my loafers that I hadn’t put on since the 1990’s and have a hiding spot in the deepest part of my closet, but I struggled through the loops and would have won a shoe-tying race against my 3 month old grandson if need be.
And that’s just getting dressed with the mini-cut!
At Christmas Day dinner we had a delicious ham, but “the cut” made cutting my piece of meat painful. Eating a pickle was painless, but how many pickles can I person eat as others are piling their plates with ham, scalloped potatoes, corn casserole, fruit salad, rolls, and veggies? Picking up the whole slice of ham and jamming it in my mouth seemed to be unfitting for the occasion. I did that later!
A couple of days later I had to shovel the driveway. Oh, the pain, the pain!
I reached to turn the lamplight off beside the bed. Jumpin’ Jimmy!
I flipped the top open on my container of Old Spice “Steel Courage” Body Wash and grimaced. Where’s that Dove bar of soap when you need it?
You get the picture! A minute cut on the end of one finger had a ripple effect on the decisions I made, or didn’t make, for a good ten days. It’s still there, but I can at least button my shirt all the way to the top now and I’ve been able to put the Vaseline away without thinking about having to use it.
The pain of the least of these amongst us has a ripple effect on all of us. In the Apostle Paul’s description of the functioning church he never talks about the over-effectiveness of one of its parts. There’s to be no strutting amongst the people of God. Instead, he focuses the health of the church on all of its parts functioning properly…even the tip of the thumb. When one of the parts can’t be counted on it causes the whole body to shift, to rethink how to get something done, and ends up overtaxing the other members. A small cut on my thumb brought that home to me.
The Body of Christ is a unique group. When it began back in the days after Jesus was crucified and rose again it emphasized the importance of everyone. Heck! Jesus emphasized that his whole ministry. Those who were considered “the tips of the thumbs” and “the toenails on the little toes” were given just as much attention and care by Jesus as anyone else. When the church becomes more like the spiritual form of a pyramid scheme the whole body uses its focus.
My right thumb is back to ninety percent now. All is right again in the universe, but I’m putting a sign up in my study “Beware of the Angry Paper!”
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Freedom, Grace, Holy Spirit, Humor, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: 1 Corinthians 12, abrasions, buttoning a shirt, cuts, equality, function, healthy church, ineffectiveness, loss of purpose, slouchy, small things, thumbs, tying your shoes
Comments: Be the first to comment
December 31, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. December 31, 2019
I was never picked first, never. Even in the progression of my siblings I was last. I was always afraid to ask if I was an afterthought, since Mom and Dad had my brother and then my sister. The tables seemed balanced…and then Billy Dean Wolfe came into the world. When you’re third in line you always wonder about things like that. Did my parents slip up one night and I was their surprise…or did they think my brother and sister were so cute why not try for another cutie? Did my mom use her infamous line on Dad, “Kiss me, slobber lips! I can swim!” and things went from there or I was a part of their master plan?
I was last, the last of the Wolfe’s. And guess what? Wolfe comes at the end of the alphabet, unless there’s a Young or a Zipp behind you. Just about every class I was in the teachers would arrange the students alphabetically. In U.S. History class I was even behind another Wolfe, Betsy Wolfe. “B-i” came after “B-e”!
My fourth grade teacher showed some compassion and had me move to the front of the class, not because she thought its was unfair that I always had to sit in the back, but rather because she noticed my squinting to see the chalkboard up front. I needed glasses. Being vision deficient qualified me for advancement from the end to the beginning.
My mom was obsessed with “the last.” The last little bite of food in the casserole dish. I can’t tell you how many times she hovered the broccoli cheese casserole by my shoulder and said, “Bill, you want this last little bite?” Telling her that I didn’t was the wrong answer. It led to a series of questions, like a car dealer trying to sell my dad a Ford (Our family drove Chryslers and Buicks!). My dad’s resistance was solid. Not so much though with my holding off the last bit of broccoli cheese casserole that Mom would inch ever closer to my plate as she tilted it. When she went to her patented “Just enough to dirty the dishwater!” line, I surrendered.
I think about last things a lot these days. I’m getting closer to the end of my journey. Carol thinks I’ll live to be 105 and be featured in the local newspaper as I shovel a spoonful of pureed veggies into my mouth, but I don’t know! This past year more of my friends arrived at the end of their lives. For a few death was the last thing on their minds as they started a new day, but accidents and heart attacks put a dent into the daily agendas.
I think more and more about what are the last words I want to say to people and how I end the journey. What last acts of kindness would I want to make priorities? What are the last things of my life that I need to resolve and be able to let go of? You know, what are the hurts that need healing and the wounds I’ve caused that need forgiveness?
And what if, like the broccoli cheese casserole, I’m life-stuffed and God says to me “Just a little bit left! Can you live a little bit longer for me? I’ve got just enough life here to dirty the dish water!”
If that happens, my mom would have a big smile on her face and, though theologically I don’t believe it, I wouldn’t be able to get out of my mind the idea that Mom put the Almighty up to convincing me to the last little bite of living longer.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Death, Grace, Humor, Jesus, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: broccoli cheese casserole, final days, last acts of kindness, last child, last days, last in line, last thoughts, last words, Old age, pureed food
Comments: Be the first to comment
December 15, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. December 15, 2019
I’m not against the mega-church. It has its mission, purpose, and place. A lot of my friends are involved in mega-churches in various locations around the country. I’m just not a big church kind of guy.
Most Sundays I’m sitting in a rock hard pew instead of watching a band rock out on stage. The church I attend is about a 45 minute drive from the half-million people city where we live, in a small town of 500 people. The church is about as unsophisticated and un-seeker sensitive as you can get…and yet there’s something that touches my spirit when I worship there with about 15 other people.
It’s my small town, small church Bethlehem, off the beaten path and unnoticed, a block from the Methodist church that is equally unnoticed and set back in time.
In our city’s newspaper this morning there was a special section that focused on the demise of the small town. It was like a eulogy for what used to be a main fabric in the Americana tapestry, but is now slipping into being part of a memorable past. There was a yearning in the article for a return to the richness of small town communities and weeping words about its fading away.
The same obituary points could be stated about the small town church. Most of the people who move to Simla, Colorado— the few that would apply to, that is— are either running away from something or arriving to disappear from the hustle and bustle of urban life.
Most of the visitors who come through the doors of our church aren’t quite sure what they are getting themselves into. There’s no church nursery, children’s church, organist, pianist, or welcome center. The congregation is rarely singing the right notes that the “music machine” is playing and last Sunday we didn’t have a single Christmas carol where the number of verses in the hymnal was exactly the number of verses that the machine sounded out.
And yet I’m drawn to its homespun charm and chatter. The coffee is weaker than even Mrs. Folger’s would make it, and someone’s niece that we’ve been praying for this past year is always referred to in the bulletin as so-and-so’s “neice.” It is a church that functions out of an unwritten but defined structure and readily admits that we’re all cracked pots or crackpots.
It has never been lost on me that the birthplace of Jesus was a small town, a village, and that the first visitors were shepherds from the countryside. It took the Magi, representatives of royalty and the upper crust, much longer to show up.
Perhaps my eastern Kentucky rural roots have had too much influence on my perspective, but I hope small towns and small churches can continue to be part of the spiritual journeys of the folk I rub elbows with on Sunday mornings.
We’ll worship together on Christmas Eve, a special service that they asked me if they could have. I told them that they didn’t need my permission to have a Christmas Eve service and they replied, “We know, but we need you to speak.”
Okay!
The last Sunday in December a young lady is getting baptized. It prompted two questions that needed to be answered. Who’s going to move the old wooden doors that the baptistry is being used for their storage space; and two, does the heater still work? Actually, the second question was more like “We sure hope the heater works!” Since my tootsies will be submerged in the water, I’m offering up a prayer for warmth as well.
Could it be that, just like in first century Bethlehem, God might bring new life and new hope to the the proclamation of the gospel through the unlikely rebirth of the small town, small church Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, after all, means “house of bread”, and the church in Simla, along with the weak coffee, has cookies just about every Sunday after worship. It’s usually a sweet ending to a morning of being blessed.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Christmas, Community, Death, Faith, Grace, Humor, Jesus, love, Nation, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: mega church, Mrs. Folger's coffee, small church, small churches, small town church, small town demise, the demise of small towns, the small church
Comments: Be the first to comment
December 14, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. December 14, 2019
Dear Santa,
I’m sending this letter through the air, kinda’ like your sleigh. I don’t know how my letter will get to you, but I also don’t understand how your sleigh can get to New Guinea and Newfoundland in the same day either. Makes me wonder if you have a business arrangement with Amazon Prime.
Anyway, I was never much for sending you letters when I was a little kid. My parents hid the postage stamps and my penmanship really sucked. I knew that the things I had circled in the Penney’s catalog probably wouldn’t end up under our tree. I never ever circled Towncraft underwear and socks and they were ALWAYS under there. Towncraft didn’t seem like it was your brand, but it was the brand of the company my mom worked for. I didn’t know there was any other kind of underwear but Towncraft “tighty whitey’s” until I was like…60!
Back to this Christmas, my list is short and sweet. Well, Enstrom’s Toffee would be the sweet part, that is!
The short part…well, you being up at the North Pole most of the time may not be aware of this, but do you have some kind of toy or device that would make me, and others, better listeners? I mean, there’s all that virtual reality stuff that you’re delivering this days, like those goggles that people put on that somehow take them into a different world like Avatar. (Back in my day we just had the ViewMaster that I used to watch an “episode” of Donald Duck in 3D!)
How much more difficult would it be to have a device or “persuasion”, that would increase our ability to listen to the essence of what someone else is saying without formulating our rebuttal in the midst of their words?
Maybe this would be something that sorta’ looks like one of those new hearing aids that you can hardly see. The advanced model could even give a shock to someone who decides to get into a word battle before the complete thought is given.
I admit my hearing has taken a dip from time to time. Just the other day I thought a young lady at one of my basketball practices said “my bad ass stinks”. I looked at her, somewhat confused, and asked what she had just said. “My passes stink,” she responded. I was relieved to know that was it, but, like I said, I’m misunderstanding and not hearing people as well these days as i did a few years ago.
I know, I know, St. Nick, there’s a lot of talking these days. It’s hard to separate the gibberish and noise from the messages and opinions. It’s like a middle school hallway during a passing period. You just want to run to a quiet room!
But perhaps we can make a short stride in a better direction.
That’s it! You don’t have to worry about any Towncraft products anymore. Since my mom passed away five years ago I don’t feel guilty wearing Fruit of the Loom’s or Hane’s.
The Enstroms’ though…
Categories: children, Christianity, coaching, Community, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Dear Santa, difference of opinion, Enstrom's Toffee, Fruit of the Loom, hearing aids, Hearing device, hearing what is being said, J.C. Penney's, letter to Santa Claus, listening, listening skills, opinions, Penney's catalog, tighty whity's, Towncraft, underwear
Comments: Be the first to comment
November 28, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. November 28, 2019
Today is our son’s 36th birthday. Unreal! Oh, and it also happens to be Thanksgiving Day, a day where we offer thanks, become more cognizant of thanking people, and, for many of us, join hands with others around a dinner table and say grace.
As I do a life analysis the immensity of the blessings in my life are overwhelming. It causes me to live my life out of a heart of gratitude. That is, “thanks-living”!
This morning I’m sitting on my Starbucks stool where I have written almost everyone of 1,100 posts. I’m tipping my baristas who know me by name, who know that I almost always get a tall Pike Place coffee, and know which stool I always sit on unless there’s an intruder. They will thank me for my tip, but they won’t quite understand how they bless me by setting the right mood for me to write in. Unless I’m substitute teaching I’m on this stool to start the day, facing out towards Pike’s Peak. That’s right, looking at Pike’s Peak drinking my Pike Place!
I notice that we live in a world— perhaps culture is a better term— where ungrateful people seem to be as common as the rabbit and squirrel populations in our neighborhood. There may be a connection between the level of ungratefulness and the epidemic of entitlement.
I wish I could do a research project (but since I flunked Sociology 101 my first term of college I would be at a loss as to how to go about it) that could figure out the correlation between entitlement and ungratefulness. That would be interesting! An entitled person might respond that he’s entitled to feel ungrateful.
Back to thanks-living! Each day I’m aware of the grace of God upon me, his compassionate love.
Psalm 9:1 says “I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.” Life is lived out of a heart full of gratitude.
I realize that who I am today and how I live today has been greatly influenced by those in my past…my parents, both gone to glory…my wife, Carol, who calculates the cost of decisions with careful consternation ( A lot of “C” words in that statement!)…kids and grandkids, who bring the blessing of laughter to my life…and friends and mentors who have walked with me for parts of the journey.
I see the handprints of James Payson Martin and Chuck Landon, my first two ministry mentors, upon how I practiced pastoring. I can hear the wisdom of my ministry colleagues, Chuck Moore, Tom Bayes, and Mark Sommers, as they advised and encouraged me through the years. I can count myself blessed to have friends like Dave Volitis, Ron McKinney, Ed and Diana Stucky, and Janet Smith, who bring a richness to my life.
Grumpiness is not an adjective that people would use in describing me. I wasn’t even grumpy when I was drinking the 128 ounces of liquid in preparation for my latest colonoscopy. I’m the reflection of my dad, who approached life with optimism, a smile, and a warm greeting. Perhaps that’s also why I’m a proponent for thanks-living.
And now, like tipping my baristas this morning, I seek to live out my thankfulness. It comes out uncomplicated most of the time, like saying “Good morning!” to each student who walks down the hallway at Timberview Middle School; taking Carol to 7-11 for her morning Diet Coke with crushed ice; and chuckling during the verbal exchanges with four year old granddaughter Corin that may cover the subjects of ballerina outfits, bugs, and building blocks all within a five minute time frame.
I’m completely consumed with thankful-living!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, coaching, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, love, marriage, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: entitlement, giving thanks, gratitude, Pike Place, Psalm 9:1, Starbucks, thankful, thanks, Thanksgiving, tipping, ungrateful
Comments: Be the first to comment
November 24, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. November 24, 2019
I’m into that phase of life that includes the word “spilling”. Spilling the shampoo, spilling the garbage, spilling the beans, spilling the gas as I put it in the lawnmower…you get the idea. I could insert another word in there like drop, fumble, miscalculated my grip, etc.
A couple of days ago I had prepared an awesome breakfast— hash browns cooked nice and crispy, bacon, toast— and I was ready to fry the eggs, sunny side up for Carol and over easy for myself. When I took the egg carton out of the refrigerator top shelf I erroneously grazed the side of the carton with the door and lost my grip. The full dozen validated the law of gravity and made a crash landing on the wooden floor. The styrofoam carton popped open as it hit and all twelve were thrown onto the floor.
I kneeled down, hoping for survivors…well, survivors to cook up, I guess…but every single one of them had been broken. No yolk! (Sorry, bad pun!)
The runny egg whites had splayed across the floor, even splattering back onto the refrigerator door, like they were grasping for life. Carol came to look and she started laughing. I, on the other hand, did not have that initial reaction. After I cursed myself for having bad wide receiver hands, I debated whether breakfast could still be “scraped together.” (Bad pun #2.)
Four eggs, like a used car lot, looked driveable. Sunny side up and over easy were no longer options, but scrambled still worked.
Carol was still laughing, and she soon brought me to the place of humor. “I wish I could have taken a picture before you cleaned them up,” she said with a chuckle. I was glad I had rushed to erase the evidence.
We’ve all spilled the eggs, in one way or another. That is, we’ve all fumbled situations and put on the coat of embarrassment. There are just some life-spills that you need to discard any thoughts of keeping your dignity and allow yourself to laugh.
Like the time when I walked through an airport terminal to meet my friend, Artie Powers, and he let me know that I had left my barn door open. Several women who had passed me had smiled at me. I had been thinking that my manhood must have been looking pretty impressive. When I realized the smiles were because of a lowered zipper I turned red…and then laughed!
Sometimes you just have to laugh at the spilled eggs. What a crack up they are! (Bad pun #3)
So I scrambled up the best-looking four, placed them on our plates alongside the bacon, hash browns, and toast, and we feasted.
My only unanswered question was wondering how those dark specks got into the eggs, because I know I hadn’t peppered mine!
Categories: children, Freedom, Grace, Humor, marriage, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: accidents, dropping things, egg whites, fumbles, ings, laughter, mistakes, scrambled eggs, spilling th, spills, unfortunate events
Comments: Be the first to comment
November 19, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. November 19, 2019
You are never too old to learn!
We’ve heard those words a boatload of times. Recently, I learned the truth of them in a humbling way. My learned lesson was, in the future, to consider the ramifications of my words before sending them into social media cyber-space.
A friend of mine had told of an accomplishment in his life that few people ever even come close to achieving. When he posted it on social media I made a five word comment that was a bad grasp at humor. Instead, he read it as a negative comment, an insult.
Five words.
We have since made amends and I’ve apologized for my insensitivity.
I’m at the age where I don’t screw up that much any more, but, this time, five words cast the shadow of embarrassment over me.
It was a lesson well learned. There’s a lot of talk these days about being careful what you post on social media. The talk, however, is usually being given to middle and high schoolers by adults who look like they would never be that stupid.
And then this 65 year old dinosaur writes five words that, if said in person, may have been viewed as sarcastic humor, but on social media, where there is no hint of voice tone and non-verbals, it felt like a punch.
One of the things I have worked on in recent years has been to think through my blogging thoughts, edit and check for spelling mistakes, and not send out “Words From WW” until I’m satisfied with the flow and conveying of the subject matter.
Sometimes, however, it isn’t the long read that messes our message up; it’s the few words, the slighting in a comment.
It’s interesting that I can comb back over my life and think of a few other screw-ups or, better said, errors in judgment. 35 years ago I sent a birthday card to someone from my congregation who I had not seen in Sunday worship for a few weeks. My birthday greeting included a perceived jab at her lack of presence on Sundays. I still remember the confrontation in my office that next Sunday with her grandfather. I turned eighty shades of red. In a matter of minutes I had gone from preaching the Sunday sermon to being preached to, and there was more fire and brimstone in the grandfather’s words than my sermon.
Going further back, I can recall the church history professor back in my seminary days (1976-1979) confronting me about the material in a paper I had written. He could have been a lot harder on me, because sections of the paper were simply copied from a book…okay, I’ll say the dreaded word! It was plagiarism! I rewrote the paper and learned a valuable lesson.
More recently…well, about ten years ago!…I said a few words to Carol that were insensitive and hurtful. Our two daughters were with us when it happened, and they had never seen us say angry words towards one another. They were almost as shocked as much as I was embarrassed. It was out of character.
I take some solace in that last statement. That screwups are out of character. I am not a potential “Dr. Phil” episode. What I am is someone who has experienced the grace of God on innumerable moments of my life.
That last statement includes five other words— better words, mind you— that are the beginning of a powerful truth: I am saved by grace…
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Grace, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: apologies, embarrassing, embarrassing moments, errors in judgment, grace, learning from our mistakes, lessons learned, mistakes, social media
Comments: Be the first to comment
November 17, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. November 17, 2019
This morning I’m witnessing an incredible view of Pike’s Peak “peeking” through the low hanging clouds around it. It’s almost as if the mountain has battled to be seen, struggled to rise above and take a breath of air.
The interesting thing for me is that, as I viewed this sight, I was pondering a statement made in a sermon recently. The pastor said that we begin to value righteousness and lose sight of the graciousness. Righteousness, or our leaning towards it, has a way of pushing grace under the clouds. It becomes smothering.
One reason for that is that righteousness, the striving to do what’s right, is much easier to define. What is the right thing to do is often much clearer than the gracious act of caring.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather be around people who do the right thing, the wise thing, than people who do the stupid deed. Followers of Jesus, however, have a way of endearing themselves to his righteousness and relegating his graciousness to the footnotes. Sometimes we forget that one of the reasons Zacchaeus was up in a tree, besides his small stature, was because the people were short on grace. They wanted to see Jesus, but not a despised tax collector.
Church folk have a tendency to be like that also. The scenario and names of the characters have been changed, but the plot is the same. Someone shows up in Sunday worship who has had sin in their life (Like…that’s not true for some of the frozen chosen!) and the great separation begins. I’ve seen some people, who have committed life-errors, be treated like a swollen joint by the righteous, iced out.
A friend of mine told me of a church he attended that was very accepting and friendly. After a few Sundays he decided he would let his adult Sunday School class know about some of the struggles of his past. The room temperature suddenly dropped to freezing.
Truthfully, it is difficult to balance righteousness and graciousness. Some folk are so excessively gracious they inadvertently cheapen it. Others are so wary about grace they treat it like the family valuables, locked up in a safety deposit box only to be brought out for a moment and then put away for another six months.
And so we have the story of Zacchaeus, who climbs above the inflexibility of the righteous to be able to experience the grace of Jesus…and then a new way of life!
By the time I finished writing these words Pike’s Peak had climbed completely above the clouds, looking freed and beautiful. I wish it was as easy and natural for grace to do the same.
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Faith, Grace, Jesus, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: Amazing Grace, church folk, frozen chosen, grace, graciousness, Pike's peak, righteous people, righteousness, Zacchaeus
Comments: Be the first to comment
November 9, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. November 9, 2019
I’ve noticed something about middle school students. Most of them have gotten their speed controls confused. They speed when going slow is the wise decision and they go slow when speed is better suited for the moment.
Somewhere along the line wires got crossed. Rewiring doesn’t seem to be an option now. Instead, teachers monitor the hallway speed zones and take note of slow-moving students taking their time to get back to the math or language arts class.
For example, I substitute taught in a seventh grade science class yesterday. They were taking a test. Before handing out the three page exam, I emphasized that they should take their time and recheck their answers when they were done. Some listened, others didn’t. Fifteen minutes into test time several students rushed their papers to me like they were trying to be the first to buzz in on Jeopardy.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed one student who seems to have to go to the restroom every class period. When he goes…to go…his classroom absence more resembles the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. He never seems in a rush to “cross the Jordan” back into the classroom.
At lunchtime several students remind me of Joey Chestnut eating hot dogs at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th. They throw their lunch items into their mouths without a need to taste what they’re eating. Their objective is to be one of the first ones to get to the GaGa ball pit outside. There should be a mandatory serving of peas and carrots for every middle school lunch. It would act as a dietary speed bump.
On the other hand, rarely will there be a student who is quick to pick up a piece of trash under or on their cafeteria table, especially if it wasn’t put there by him/her. The same student who is quick to grab a Cheeto from someone else’s bag treats a chip bag wrapper like the source for the Bubonic Plague.
At 2:45 when the final bell rings to signal the end of the school day the scene is similar to a Walmart 5:00 A.M. Black Friday sale. Kids fire up their turbos and battle the hallways in a human sorta’ Dodge-Em Cars. Teachers stay to the sides for their own safety. To cross the hallway during these few moments is a recipe for becoming roadkill.
On the positive side I’ve seen several students in non-academic settings, such as Target or the supermarket or an Air Force Academy basketball game and they are quick to acknowledge me with a greeting. I was glad to see one of them because I couldn’t remember if he had ever returned from his restroom wilderness journey or not.
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: GaGa Ball, Joey Chestnut, middle school, middle school boys, middle school girls, middle school students, middle school teachers, middle schoolers, school cafeteria, school hallways, school restrooms, Seventh Grade, substitute teacher, substitute teaching, teaching middle school
Comments: Be the first to comment
October 20, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. October 20, 2019
I first met Marie Lyons…kinda’…at a funeral home in Mason, Michigan, the Ball-Dunn Chapel. I was there for the visitation of Harold Bickert. Harold and his wife, Mildred, were elderly members of Lansing First Baptist Church, but years before they had lived in Mason and attended Mason First Baptist Church.
I visited with Mildred and talked to her about the funeral service for Harold that would happen the next day. In an adjoining viewing room laid the body of Robert Lyons, Marie’s brother. Mildred knew I had been talking to the pastoral search committee of the Mason church, Marie’s church. She had me go into the viewing room and sign the guest book. The visitation had already concluded and no one was still present. I felt a little awkward, signing the guest book of a departed man I had never met, but Mildred was insistent. She WANTED me to be the next pastor of her former church, and Marie Lyons was on the search committee.
About two months later I became Marie’s pastor for the next fifteen years. She was a source of strength, gentle determination, wise counsel, a listener, and a respecter of everyone’s opinions no matter how opposite they might be from what she believed. She was African-American, in a town that was almost completely Caucasian. She never married, but took on the responsibility of being the caregiver for her brother, Buddy, who had mental limitations and was also mute. She was a school teacher, loving her elementary students as they learned.
Marie passed away this week at the age of 86. It is one of those deaths that causes you to weep and rejoice at the same time. A faithful follower of Christ, she looked forward to her march into glory. She did not fear death, but rather saw it as the transitional step into the presence and peace of the Lord. And yet, for her friends near and far, there is a rumbling cry in our spirits. She was so valued, and valued others so, that it hurts to know she has moved on to the place she looked forward to. Quite frankly, there just aren’t that many people around these days who have such strong character and are firmly anchored to the Rock that is Christ.
The last time I saw Marie was in 2015. I had traveled back to Mason to meet with my friend and financial advisor, David Leonard. While in Mason I met with our friend, Janet Smith, and Marie at an ice cream shop in Mason and we talked for about an hour. That was four years ago almost to the day. She was getting thinner as she was traveling through her early 80’s, but she still had that same kind voice that made you feel you were important.
There are people who you’re around for a long time and they impact your life; and then there are those folk who you’re privileged to know for a season of life that leave their handprint upon you. Marie’s handprint has stayed with me for these past 20 years since we moved from Mason.
As the Mason community remembers and celebrated her life this coming week, I shed a sweetened tear. A saint has joined up with the saints. Like a Fodor’s travel guide, the words of scripture that Marie had memorized about what Glory is and how it looks are now being seen firsthand by this just-arrived friend of Jesus.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Death, Faith, Grace, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: Christian journey, Christianity, funeral, Glory, grief, grieving, heaven, integrity, remembering, remembrance, valuing others
Comments: Be the first to comment
Words from WW Blog 