Archive for the ‘Humor’ category
July 2, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. July 2, 2014
I’m a pastor.
I’m suppose to be humble.
Last week a young guy from my church who makes me laugh in a good way asked me the question, “Do you ever come home on Sunday afternoon after church and pump your fists as you shout ‘I crushed that sermon today?’ Do you ever say ‘I was awesome?’”
Yes, that happens all the time! And then my wife says, “And honey! That second point was off the charts!”
And then I dance around our kitchen like an NFL wide receiver who has just scored a touchdown…taking a Sharpie out of my suit coat pocket and signing the bulletin with it!
And then my wife falls down in front of me in recognition of my pastoral celebrity status, and tells me how blessed she is to be married to such an awesome sermonizer!
I relive the message highlights the rest of that day, and several times during the day I remind the rest of the family that “I was money” that morning!
I call my dad and tell him how Jesus was giving me high-fives that afternoon in the nap dream I had.
I put my “Orange Crush” jersey on with the number “1” on the back with a finger pointing heavenward, and my “playing name above it “Rev. Crush!”
“I crushed it, God!”
Oh, going back to the question my young friend asked me at the beginning: Do I ever come home from church and exclaim “I crushed the sermon today?”
The answer is “no”…and thus none of the other things I wrote above occurred as well!
I just come home and start getting ready for the next Sunday. After all, I’m a pastor. I’m suppose to be humble.
And I’ll admit there’s been a few Sundays where I’m come home and said “I crashed the sermon today!”
Categories: children, Christianity, Humor, Jesus, Story, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: crushed it, Humble, humbleness, message, nailing it, pastor, preacher, Preaching, sermon, Sharpie
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June 30, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 30, 2014
There are some things that stay with you even though they don’t make sense. Kind of like that old TV that is sitting in the family room. It’s been a part of the family. You don’t just take a part of the family to the dump!
My “blankie” falls even more securely into this category. My blankie is my blanket. It’s been my blanket since…about August of 1979. I say “about” because I married my wife on July 28, 1979. She brought the blanket into the marriage relationship. It was hers. You know that saying, “What’s hers is his!” I actually don’t know if that is a saying or not, but it should be.
Soon after July 28 “the blankie” transferred partial ownership to me. That means, it crept to my side of the bed at night.
There’s gold, and then there are those few things that are more valuable than gold. My “blankie” is threaded gold.
When we go on driving vacations I take it with me. I don’t take it places if I’s flying. I don’t trust the airlines that much.
I took it on a mission trip to British Columbia…three days drive away! I took it to Park City, Utah last summer.
I took it to camp where I was being the camp pastor. I needed some form of comfort in the midst of a multitude of middle school students, many whom were discovering that there was an opposite sex that could offer them a different kind of comfort.
I took it to Arizona and South Dakota. For thirty-five years it has just felt…right!
Now it is beginning to look pitiful, like the family dog that just lays around and whimpers. My blanket has a few holes in it, frayed ends, faded patterns, and stuffing that is settling in the same spot, like a middle-aged man whose body has decided to most gather around the waist and stomach.
The other thing that makes this unique…and weird, is that my grandmother made incredible quilts. Sixty years after the fact they are in almost-mint condition. They are warm and comfortable, memories for me of my Mamaw Helton who had “settler skills.” That means that she could have survived on the frontier is she wanted. Quilt-making was just one of her gifts. She could kill a chicken, clean it, and fry it up for dinner almost as fast as my Papaw could drive to the grocery and buy a chicken from the butcher. She kept the eastern Kentucky farm going that she and my Papaw owned.
I slept with those quilts as I was growing up. Somewhere along the line after July 28, 1979 I switched over to the “blankie.”
My wife sometimes thinks I love my blanket more than her. That’s not true! Although my blankie doesn’t kick me at night when I snore. She reminds me that the blanket was hers first, but I remind her that possession is nine-tenths of the law.
When I die I hope my blankie is still around. If so I want to it to be buried with me. I don’t want to have to worry about wearing a suit as I’m all laid out in the casket. When do I ever wear a suit while I’m laying down in this lifetime? My mom would never permit such a thing. I can hear her say, “It’s going to get all wrinkled!”
So just cover me with my blankie. Throw a tee shirt on me just in case chest hair is upsetting to some, but drape my tired perishing physique in my tired perishing blanket and let me rest in comfortable.
I know I’ll be walking the streets of gold in heaven, but if I get to nap in paradise I hope I can have my threadbare gold wrapped around me. It only makes sense. It fits…comfortably!…in my picture of perfection!
Categories: children, Death, Humor, love, marriage, Story
Tags: blanket, comfort, gold, paradise, quilt, quilt-making, sleep, treasured possessions
Comments: 2 Comments
June 26, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 26, 2014
My home study is populated with pictures. Pictures tell of what was, and provide sweet remembrances of times gone by.
Sitting on my desk in front of me is a framed picture of my granddaughter when she was two, dressed in the same red dress with white lace that her mom wore when she was also two. Reagan is staring at my when a smile on her face. If her picture came alive right now she could get whatever she wanted from her granddad!
Above her on the wall is a picture of the Mason High School Girl’s Junior Varsity basketball team that I helped coach in 1997. I’m wearing a sweet looking pair of khaki shorts and eye glasses that cover about two-thirds of my face. Eleven girls separate me from Coach Don Fackler, who is on the other side of the picture. Don taught me so much about coaching, and I miss him terribly. I find his voice coming out of my mouth so often in practice and at games. The girls in the picture have gone on to be moms, coach other teams, and develop callings and careers that we would never have imagined.
When I turn around the wall behind me is covered with team pictures of other teams I’ve coached through the years. Each picture is now still life, but my mind is flooded with memories when I gaze at each one of them. I remember the goofballs, the boys who would make me laugh hysterically, and the head cases that kept me awake at night.
Good teams! Bad teams! Teams that worked hard, and teams that didn’t know how to work.
At the top of the rows of pictures is my youngest daughter’s college cheer squad from University of Sioux Falls. She cheered for the Cougars all four years she was there and only experienced one defeat in football, that being one year in the NAIA championship game. The other three years they won the NAIA. She looks so fit and pretty in the squad picture. I’m a little reluctant to remind myself that she is my baby.
There are no wedding pictures in my study. For some reason those are confined to the guest bedroom, like a different exhibit in the museum.
Pictures tell a thousand stories and cause my soul to chuckle in delight.
Categories: children, Community, Humor, marriage, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: big glasses, cheer squad, coach, Coach Fackler, coaching, Mason High School, memories, remembering, team pictures, University of Sioux Falls
Comments: 1 Comment
June 25, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 24, 2014
Even though I’m sixty I’ve been reading the book Divergent. It’s more of a novel for young adults and teens I think, because there are less words of each page to give the reader the illusion that he is reading a lot.
One of the sections of the book deals with each person’s “fear landscape.” A fear landscape includes all of the fears that the participant faces in his life…from bed bugs to being kidnapped.
I won’t go into the book any more than that, but it did make me think about what my fears are, and what my fears aren’t. I’ve come up with a short list.
I am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of dying in a way that people laugh. Like the guy who fell into a large vat of wine and drowned! Some might enjoy dying in such a way, but I don’t really care for wine. It would be second on my list to having a truckload of manure mistakenly dumped on you and then suffocating! Death for me will be a welcoming into heaven. The way I die causes me to worry!
I’m also afraid of spiders and snakes. Don’t ask me why…I just am! I am thankful that God has not tested my faith by telling me to handle rattlesnakes. I might be tempted to renounce my faith, or at the least have a fake fainting spell. I know that the Apostle Paul had a viper wrapped around his arm one time on the island of Malta, but I’m not the Apostle Paul. I’m the Fraidy-Cat Bill!
I’m no longer afraid of school principals. That means that at one time I was. My grade school principal’s name was Shirley Morton. He’s the only man I ever knew named Shirley, but he was to be feared. I experienced his paddle one time, and my butt sizzled for a week. Whenever I saw the movie Airplane, and heard that one verbal explain where Leslie Nielson says, “And don’t call me Shirley!” the memory of Shirley Morton’s strong forehand with his paddle would come back to me. Perhaps my fears subsided when I got elected to the school board and found out the principals put their pants on just like I do (the men that is).
I’m also afraid of Indian food. I had a roommate my first year in seminary from India, and Bontha lit me up with his Chicken and Curry dish. I would start perspiring just thinking about it. We have a few Indian restaurants in our city, but the scars from Bontha’s cooking are still pretty vivid.
One last fear! I’m also afraid of Oakland Raider fans!
But I think that’s normal!
Categories: Death, Freedom, Humor, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: afraid, Divergent, dying, fear landscape, fears, not afraid, Oakland Raiders, principal, Raiders fans, rattlesnakes, school principal, snakes, spiders
Comments: 1 Comment
June 21, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 20, 2014
Depending on who you talked to God was in it or grieved by it!
The Independent Church Softball League was canceled after the sixth week of the season. Some said it was long overdue; others said it was a sign of secular humanism’s takeover of the world. Y2K was linked to it by some since most churches are about twenty years behind the times anyway.
It started with the Freewill Baptist Church Flames, who protested the fact that the Brethren Church Brethren were permitting a woman to play on their team. The Flames did not believe freedom extended to the opposite gender when it came to church softball. It did seem kind of odd that the Brethren would be the only team to have a female put a glove on.
The disagreements between league congregations didn’t end there. Torrential rains canceled all games during the second and third weeks of the season. It was either forget about them or plan for a few to be made on Wednesday night. The Apostolic Holiness Church could not allow that to happen. Many in their church believed that Jesus was going to come back soon…and it would probably be during their Wednesday night prayer meeting. Not many from their softball team attended the prayer meeting, but if Jesus did return on a Wednesday night, and they happened to be playing softball they were certain there would be eternal consequences. The Nazarenes weren’t too high on the idea either, but their make-up game was to be against Mercy Bible Church who hadn’t won a game since Jesus was here the first time. The Nazarenes couldn’t let a sure win slip through their fingers, all because of it being a Wednesday night.
And then there were the Independent Irregular Baptist Church, who no one much cared for. They voted not to let a new church join the league because several of the players had hair that came almost to their shoulders. They forfeited their game against the long hairs rather than be tainted by the association. Brother Rice of the Irregulars stated that long hair was the working of the devil, getting men to take on feminine characteristics. To quote him: “You let one little thing pass, and pretty soon a tidal wave of paganism starts arriving every Sunday to the church.” The manager of Mercy said he thought Brother Rice was splitting hairs.
The final straw of dissension amongst the league’s members was when a visiting evangelist for the church of the Flames was asked by his hosting church to give the prayer before their game with the Second Street Wesleyan Church team, and he preceded to pray that the Wesleyans would turn away from their wicked ways and be saved.
After long loud debate and accusations the league disbanded. Some of the best players from amongst the teams got together and made a new team that was sponsored by Rosie’s Bar and Grill and played in the City Tavern League. Most of them rediscovered that playing the game is fun!
Categories: children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Pastor, Prayer, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized
Tags: Brethren, church, church softball, independent church, Nazarenes, secular humanism, softball
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June 18, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 18, 2014
In my youthful years I lost a lot of young ladies. They would disappear as a result of my cluelessness, being clumsy, and uncertain as to what it meant to court a young lady. One of my friends, who was a bit of a Casanova, gave me some “lines” to use that he was sure would work.
One night I pulled one of them out of the hat. I looked at the attractive eighteen year old brown-haired blonde and asked her, “If I told you that you have a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
She gave me a confused look that quickly cooled the temperature. If you’re going to use a line on someone make sure they are perceptive enough to understand it.
And then my friend, Jeff Slaga, invited me to a gathering of Young Life kids from Hinsdale Central. He added, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
The night of the gathering we gathered in the living room of Bud Bylsma’s house to meet and greet the number of high school students who showed up. As we stood around in conversational groups I noticed a young woman with long brown hair arriving, and being instantly greeted by Jeff. She looked very young, and yet I could tell she was not just another one of the high school girls.
To this day I swear that she was scanning the room trying to figure out which one I was. I know…I’m certain…that she had been briefed on the prospective male who would be there that evening.
With all my “lost romances” that night was the beginning of a found relationship as I met Carol Louise Faletti for the first time. She was funny and welcoming. We chatted for most of the evening after that, lost in the new finding.
The funny thing is that we dated for a couple of weeks, decided to date other people, became good friends, and then about a year and a half later found each other again in a new way. The second time around in our dating relationship resulted in an engagement two months after we started dating again, and marriage four months later.
Now our thirty-fifth anniversary is coming up in another month. Three children, two grandkids, and two son-in-laws have come along.
Now two sixty year olds continue to find each other each day, as we walk in the evening together and discover who each of us is, the ideas we think up, the moments of laughter.
Sometimes it is necessary that we lose some people, some young ladies who don’t pick up on our pick-up lines, in order to find the one to walk the journey with.
Categories: children, Humor, love, marriage, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Casanova, Courtship, dating, Hinsdale Central, pick-up lines, romance, Young Life
Comments: 4 Comments
June 17, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. JUNE 17, 2014
My physician applied the freezing treatments. My head experienced brain freeze that only usually when I took a humongous bite of ice cream.
I had lived my life in easy denial…hatless…a sun-basker! I would lay by the pool, lather up with sun tan lotion, get brown. Summers were meant for baking!
My older brother was starting to lose his hair on top and I felt sorry for him. He was getting a crown on top that seemed to get bigger every time I saw him. Like one of our grandfather’s cultivated fields for a corn crop, his scalp was looking more plowed and less populated.
When I looked in the mirror I saw a forest staring at me just above my forehead. I had been blessed with the hair my brother was now missing, like a double blessing compared to his hair poverty.
My brother was following the barren pathway that my dad had traveled before him. What he was lacking up top he made up for with humility, grace, and wisdom.
And then one day my wife started talking about the fact that I was getting a little bald spot on top! I didn’t believe her because I couldn’t see it. Each morning after showering I’d have to comb my mop-on-top like always. I was about to learn that bald spots don’t descend on you, they slowly creep in.
Life went on! People started talking about something called sun screen and “covering up.” I didn’t take notice. Spending time in the sun was as normal for me as brushing my teeth. It was part of my lifestyle.
I had coached a basketball game and a mom of one of the players had taken some pictures during the game. One of the pictures was taken from the bleachers behind out team bench.
The “crown” could not be ignored! It stood out like young newly-weds on a bus with senior citizens. I was speechless. I started wearing hats outside, more to hide my spot than to protect my head.
When I went for my annual physical I told my doctor that I had a couple of places on my head that seemed to be more sensitive to touch. He examined my noggin, warned me to protect myself whenever I’m in the sun for more than a few minutes, and then he did the freezing on several pre-cancerous spots.
Since then my dad has had three different rounds of radiation treatments for cancerous spots and growths on his head and one of his ears.
I’m more wise now. Less wisdom is a recipe for destruction. Meanwhile my bald spot is growing into becoming a bald plot. It’s a sign of maturity, of advancing on down the road of life. I still can’t see it when I look in the mirror, but my family reminds me that it’s there! The good news is that most of my friends carry the same age signature. It’s like a symbol for our brotherhood!
Categories: Grace, Humor, Story, Uncategorized
Tags: Aging, aging signs, Bald, baldness, crown, hair loss, losing hair, sun screen, sun tan, sun tan lotion
Comments: 4 Comments
June 16, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 16, 2014
There are some families who are well acquainted with dirt. It is welcomed into the house like the family dog, reclining wherever it pleases and shaking itself into a cloud of castoffs.
My family was different. Dirt, mud, and the other suspects were expected to stand at attention at the door and not advance from there. Our house was clean. The bald head of Mr. Clean was featured prominently in the closet, ready for action.
I wasn’t that into it! You might say that it was mandated to me to be clean. A bath at night, brushing my teeth, even cleaning my plate…those were like Biblical commandments. My underwear and socks always needed to be clean, also, because the threat of being in an accident and being found with dirty underwear was always a dreaded possibility. So every morning I had to make sure I put on a clean pair of Towncraft tighty-whities! My mom worked at Penney’s, so Towncraft was the only option for our family in those days.
My dad was clean…in a different way! Yes, his clothes were always neatly folded, but his cleanliness could be seen in tasks. When he sliced a tomato or an onion it was almost always a clean cut…a perfect slice ready to grace the top of one of his hamburgers. When he cleaned the grill it shone! The inside of the family car was always pristine. The lawnmower was seldom dusted with grass clippings, because Dad would keep it clean.
Mom was like an army sergeant inspecting the barracks. She would come in the living room right when the latest episode of Combat was at its tense climax and tell me that my room looked like a tornado had hit it. I was beg for a few minutes of “clean leave”, but would always be denied. Down the hallway I would run only to discover that the extent of the bedroom tornado damage was a bedspread slightly uneven in its slope down the side, and a closet door halfway open. To Mom “clean” was a state of utopia that could not be allowed even the hint of chaos.
My hair was clean…not from shampoo but rather from the barber. I was buzzed clean until I was in high school. Sometimes a few hairs in front were given amnesty, but the rest of my head resembled Mr. Clean.
When I look back on those days I realize that our family didn’t have much, but our house was always so spic and span we just thought our lack of clutter was because we were neat freaks.
Cleanliness was next to godliness, and our house was so clean we could touch godliness with a white glove!
Categories: children, Death, Faith, Humor, Jesus, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: clean, cleanliness, cleanliness is next to godliness, Combat, dirt, dirty underwear, godliness, Mr. Clean, order, shaved head, tight whities, Towncraft, underwear
Comments: 3 Comments
June 15, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 14, 2014
Most Saturday mornings I leave the house about 7:00 to lead a men’s Bible study group at church. Today was no different except…when I opened the garage door I discovered that I had been pranked.
It was a harmless prank, a trail of styrofoam cups leading up the driveway from the street and continuing all the way to the front door. Hansel and Gretel should have used styrofoam cups instead of bread crumbs. No chance of them being eaten.
On the first step by the front door the styrofoam cups ended right beside an empty donut box and milk carton.
I’m not sure what it all meant but it was creative. I never would have thought of pranking someone’s house with those three ingredients. In my day toilet paper was as creative and risky as we got.
My wife heard the “styrofoamers” about midnight and looked outside the window. They were hustling away and she was more tickled than upset. In fact, she left the cups and stuff for me to see the next morning. We’re pretty sure it was girls from my high school basketball team. The voices were suspiciously soprano-ed. I just wonder what happened to the donuts. You would think that they would have left one in the box, but no!
Over the years we’ve been pranked several times. One year some of our youth group “forked” our front yard. Plastic forks…about two hundred of them! Another year some of our youth “candy-caned” our yard. I was still finding candy canes four months later. A long, long time ago some of our youth group TP’ed our house and got caught in the act. They went ahead and came inside and we served them Pepsi’s. They left the unused rolls of TP for us to use.
About four years ago our youth group “sticky-noted” my office. They put sticky notes all over the place. I’m still finding them. I’ll get a book off one of my shelves, turn to page 121 and there will be a sticky note saying “Looking for something?”
I don’t mind the pranking, especially if we can use the pranking materials afterwards. Carol was cutting out the bottoms of the styrofoam cups to use for a Children’s Church craft tomorrow morning. We’re resourceful people!
What the pranksters don’t realize is that we have a secret resource. Our next door neighbor has surveillance cameras, one of which shows our front yard. I’ll be viewing film footage tomorrow…perhaps with a donut and glass of milk.
Say cheese!
Categories: Bible, children, Community, Humor, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: donuts, practical jokes, pranks, pranksters, styrofoam cups, TP, TPing, youth group
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June 13, 2014
WORDS FROM W.W. June 13, 2014
I don’t know which aunt brought it, but it was always there, sitting on the counter in the kitchen just waiting to be sliced into.
I don’t know who came up with the idea of fruitcake, but it was partially good. I didn’t much care for the candied cherries and pineapple pieces that invaded its goodness. The pecans and top side crusts were my favorite parts, but I had to take the good with the bad.
One time I pilfered the exposed inners of the circle of all the pecans I could see. My sin was discovered and atoned for by having to sit in a chair for almost a lifetime before I was paroled.
Fruitcake was always a part of our Christmas. I believed it was one of the Magi gifts brought to the Baby Jesus. I didn’t know what myrrh and frankincense were, so I figure one of them was a foreign name for fruitcake presented on a platter. That’s the only reason I could come up with that it only appeared at Christmas in our house.
It was also the only time during the year that I was allowed to have cake for breakfast, not much of a treat since the pieces of pineapple made my face twitch. A glass of milk and a piece of fruitcake got the day started.
When we weren’t able to go back to my family’s roots in eastern Kentucky at Christmas my mom would whip up a fruitcake at home. I knew when it was coming. The kitchen counter would be layered with the ingredients, all ready to fulfill their purpose. It also was the indication that Christmas wasn’t going to be held in a different state. We wouldn’t be traveling up river past Pomeroy and Gallipolis heading for the crossover into West Virginia and then Kentucky. An absence of pecan bags at home was a sure sign we were going to do some piling in the car.
Fruitcake was a symbol of the mixed blessings of Christmas. It was a gift, good and bad, like opening a box filled with Matchbox cars, and then the next opened gift containg socks and underwear. I never understood why underwear had to be wrapped up…kind of like why fruitcake had to have those pineapple pieces.
I would have been fine with a “fruit-less cake!”
Categories: children, Christmas, Community, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized
Tags: candied fruit, Eastern Kentucky, family, fruitcake, Gallipolis, Magi, pecans, Pomeroy
Comments: 3 Comments
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