Tag: kid

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For the Record, Don’t Bring a Knife to School

Halloween is coming up, and it takes me back to some old memories.

When I was in…probably 3rd or 4th grade, our whole class was encouraged to dress up for Halloween. I think all the classes were going to be part of a costume parade or something. This particular year I was going to dress up as a pirate. It was cool, I think I had an eye patch, a fake scar or something, and even a clip-on earring that would help complete the look.

I also had an idea for a more controversial item to complement the costume. My aunt knew of my love of the outdoors, and in her travels she found something she thought I’d like. She gave me a novelty knife. The handle was actually made out of a deer hoof, so it was pretty unique. The blade itself was very dull, but the point was very sharp. Maybe it was something a pirate would carry, I dunno, but it looked kinda cool, and I figured I’d bring it to school. (I very conveniently left Mom or Dad out of the decision. I was pretty sure they’d say no, but I think I convinced myself that the reason they’d tell me no was because they didn’t want me to lose the knife.)

On the bus ride to school, everybody was excitedly talking about their costumes or the parties their class would be having. We were all going around, talking about what we’d dress up as, and I started talking about my costume. When I talked about the knife I’d brought with me, a kid that was a year older than me had his eyes go wide. “Hey, you could get in big trouble for that!”

I was a little taken aback. I wouldn’t say I was an angel in elementary school, but I was a pretty good kid. It struck me as ridiculous that I could get in big trouble for carrying a dull novelty knife. My thought was “c’mon…it’s me! I’m not gonna do anything bad with it, it’s just to make the costume look cooler.” At the time I had no concept of zero-tolerance policies or making an example out of somebody. I tried dismissing his input as just plain dumb, but his words stuck with me.

The parade and party were in the afternoon. The whole morning I sat at my desk, wrestling with my own thoughts about whether or not I should include the knife as part of the costume. The entire time, in a class of probably 20+ kids, the knife was sitting in my desk hidden behind some books. I started to worry about what would happen if the teacher found out about it. Was the kid on the bus right? Was it something I could get in trouble for? I ended up getting pretty uncomfortable with the whole situation.

I ended up skipping the knife as part of the pirate look that day. We did our little elementary parade, and the whole time I felt like my costume was incomplete. As far as I knew, nobody else had a clue that anything was missing from my ensemble. At the end of the school day, I brought the knife home with me and never brought it back to school. Mom and Dad are only finding out about it now, the same way you are. J

Just so we’re clear, bringing a knife to school was a bonehead thing to do. I knew better than to consult my parents, but it never entered my mind that they’d have legitimate reasons why they’d say no. For some reason I figured everybody at school, including any teachers that saw it, would say “hey, that’s cool!”

Sometimes all you need is to bounce an idea off someone else. I wasn’t too proud or arrogant to ask…it simply didn’t occur to me that there were other perspectives. I figured my view was sufficient. If you’re facing a decision where you’re a little out of your depth, consider bouncing it off someone else, even if you think you’ve got a pretty good lock on things. I didn’t ever hang out with that kid on the bus, we just happened to live on the same route. Even so, he gave me enough solid advice that he helped change my mind. Maybe someone else can do the same for you.

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How’d They Come up With “Yabba Dabba Doo?”

I’ve always been interested in the idea that a multitude of individuals can perform their own distinct (and widely varying) jobs to the best of their ability, but someone over them (a manager, a coach, a superior officer, etc.) oversees and puts together those collective efforts to make something really big happen.

Some people take a different view. They think of themselves as running in the rat race. They don’t want to feel like they’re a cog in the wheel. If you derive your life’s purpose from an unfulfilling job, yeah, you’re going to feel like “just another brick in the wall,” as the old song goes.

But what if you derive meaning from God’s purpose for your life? If you do that, it’s a whole new ballgame. It’s often difficult to see in the moment, but as you look backward, you can see that things fell into place and coalesced in a way that helped you get to where God wanted you to be. Sometimes those things are the actions that other people are taking and other times it’s the way events seem to unfold. When it’s all said and done, a lot of things came together in a way that enabled your goal, your purpose, to go farther than it otherwise would have. It’s like you were part of a puzzle, and your piece and all the other pieces had to fall into place for the picture to be completed.

I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit here. When I was a kid I had lots of different books that I got from yard sales, thrift stores, hand-me-downs, etc. One of the books I had was a Flintstones book. I dug around online a little just now, and it was called “The Great Balloon Race.” I don’t remember much of the story, but as you turned the pages, in one of the upper corners of the page there was a picture of Fred juggling three balls. Each time you turned the page, something about that picture was slightly different, but it didn’t really become evident what was going on until you treated the whole thing like a flipbook. Starting at the beginning of the book, Fred walked onto the page and faced the reader. He tossed a ball into the air, then another, and then another. If I remember correctly, each of the balls made a few uneventful loops as Fred started to put on a show, but then he fumbled one of them. You could see his facial expression change as he realized his mistake. When he focused his attention on that particular ball, it made it difficult to keep track of those still remaining in the air. A second ball danced past his fingertips and fell toward the floor. You saw his eyes start to shift toward the last remaining ball in the air, but by now his rhythm was thrown way off, and he had to swipe at it to even get close. That action just ended up batting it off into the distance and out of reach. Left with nothing, he then looked at the reader, shrugged, and walked back off the page by the end of the book.

Our Christian lives are like flipbooks, but the metaphor goes a layer deeper. Just like before, each individual page of the flipbook is a puzzle, and you’re one piece among many. When you’re doing the will of God, your actions are fitting together with the actions of other believers. This flipbook was already in progress before you were born; one day you walked onto the scene, and there were other pieces that connected with you to form a single, larger picture. The pieces connecting with you may have been Sunday School teachers, a grandparent or parent, a friend, a pastor, or maybe someone you heard on the radio or TV. That particular picture may have also included a family or job situation, a specific time or place, or a set of circumstances that led to your acceptance of Christ. Those other pieces, who were themselves affected by other Christians earlier in the book, had an effect on you that grew you in your Christian walk.

Whether your Christian walk lasts for decades or for only a few minutes at the end of your life, you at one point walk onto the scene, and you’ll someday exit the scene. Each page that happens in between is its own puzzle that consists of numerous other “cogs in the wheel” that are doing what God has charged them to do. None of the individual cogs has insight into what the whole picture is shaping up to be or what kind of story the flipbook will tell, but they know that there’s a grand artist that’s in charge and is steering the path of where the story’s going. After all, when God called individual followers into their individual callings, He had their subsequent interactions already arranged in His mind. You do your part, other people do their parts, and God brings it all together.

Someday you’ll exit the flipbook altogether and it will continue without you. Your calling is meant to bring glory to the Lord, and many times that involves inspiring or somehow helping another “puzzle piece” to live out their Christian walk. Be watchful for opportunities to be a piece of another puzzle that’s a page in one of Christ’s flipbooks. One day you’ll be able to reconnect with all the other people that were involved in the same pictures you were, and you’ll be able to watch how the flipbook turned out.

Lord God, You are intimately involved not only with my life, but with the lives of everyone else on this planet. You’re in the process of telling a grand story, and right now, in this moment, we’re a part of the story for a limited time. Thank you for giving us opportunities to be part of the story; please help us to have the boldness and strength to accept Your invitations when they come. I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Oh, it’s the End of the World…Again

Growing up, my parents both worked at a Christian conference center. Churches that were mostly from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania would hold retreats at this place, getting away from the routine and having a chance to study whatever the teacher/speaker/pastor decided to focus on. Getting away from familiar surroundings is often a good way to break away from the ordinary distractions of life and be able to dive deeper into the Bible.

In many cases, it would be the same church groups that came to the conference center at roughly the same time each year. Over time, the group leaders would develop a relationship with some of the people working at the conference center. One of the tricky parts would be when, every now and then, you have a group leader whose theology and teachings start to wander away from what the Bible says. It usually doesn’t happen all at once, more often it’s a bit slower, so it gets difficult for a conference center to say “you know what? That’s not what we’re about. I’m sorry, but we’re not going to approve your request for a reservation this year.”

When I was, oh, probably 13 or 14, a situation like this was brewing. One of these groups had been coming to the place for years, but this year was different. The group leader, a pretty smart guy in many respects, decided that by using “clues” sprinkled throughout the Bible, it was possible to determine a mathematical formula to calculate the date when Jesus would return, and it turns out that date was very near. He had even released a book about it and had a sizable following that eagerly ate up what he was saying.

I’m a little fuzzy on the details…the group had reserved the conference center for, if not the predicted date, very shortly before it, so all those people were pretty pumped as they started showing up. Like, there was a lot of buzz in the air. Between my parents and most of the rest of the adults on staff, though, the thing that the conversation kept coming back to was the Bible verse that says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” – Matthew 24:36

As you might imagine, a lot of people wanted to hear more about the impending second coming, and many of them flooded into this little conference center. I don’t know what it was like for the grown-ups, but I remember that for me as a kid, there was this, like, sort of excitement that was easy to get swept up in. The thing that probably comes closest now is if you buy a lottery ticket when there’s a record-breaking Powerball. “Yeah, yeah, I know it won’t happen…buuuuuuut…imagine if it did!” I remember there were some pretty distinctive-looking clouds that day, too, adding to the general goose-bump factor.

There were a lot more people showing up than the place normally held, so it was an “all hands on deck” situation. There were more cars than the place had room for in the regular parking lot, so I got recruited to help direct parking in the grass field. I remember while I was doing this, one of the guys that parked his car and was on his way to the auditorium stopped to speak with me. “So what do you think? Do you think he’s right in his prediction?”

Despite the excitement in the air, being the tactless young man that I was, I spoke my mind. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the Bible verse that says ‘no one knows the day or the hour.’”

The dude had some kind of answer for that. I think he pointed to the presence of what he called “clues” in scripture, but he seemed to feel like this collection of hidden items somehow enabled students of the Bible to gloss over that very straightforward verse.

At any rate, the predicted date came and went, and the second coming has yet to occur. I should’ve bet the dude whatever money I could’ve scraped together that it wouldn’t happen. (If he won, I wouldn’t have had the chance to pay up.)

Today, I certainly do NOT consider myself a Bible scholar. Back then, I knew even less. Yet it was still enough to recognize false teaching.

If you’re the type of person that considers yourself a Christian, but spends little time reading and trying to understand the Bible, you’re setting yourself up to be led astray by false teaching. Spoiler alert: You don’t get wings and become an angel after you die. Read the Bible. If you’ve tried reading a Bible that has nothing but straight scripture, and it’s tough to make any sense out of it, try using a study bible. Study bibles have lots of notations, maps, and diagrams that help explain the context of what’s happening, or information about what the original Hebrew or Greek text said that gets lost in the translation into English. It will help things make more sense to you in a way that can help you apply it to your life without having to guess about what it actually means.

Watch. Be ready. Jesus is coming back someday, but none of us knows when it will happen. In the meantime, as you go about the business of life, ask yourself “is this somewhere I’d be okay being when Christ returns and He asks me what I was doing there?”

Lord, please help us all to be ready for the day You either return or call us home. There are a lot of false things out there. Between the Bible and the Holy Spirit, please help us to know what’s true and what’s false, so we can not only avoid being led astray, but also help keep others from being led astray. I ask in Your name, Amen.

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Some People Burn Rubber; This Family Flung it

When I was in my early teens I had a buddy named Cameron. If Cameron had a super power, it was anything that had to do with rubber bands. That dude had rubber bands stashed all over the house, and he was a crack shot with them.

The house where he lived had a skylight in the kitchen, and every once in awhile a fly would buzz around in there, looking for a way out. It seemed like he could always take those guys out on the first try. He also used rubber bands to make slingshots out of branches he found that were the right size/shape. If we had Instagram back then, we’d have been on it doing rubber band madness.

I’m not sure how it started, but at one point Cameron and I ignited some kind of playful feud with his dad. I was at their house like, all the time, so he was probably looking for a way to encourage me to spend less time there. I wasn’t quite “Steve Urkel” bad, but Cameron’s dad often referred to me as “the infestation.” He wasn’t too shabby with rubber bands, either, and on more than one occasion I had to dive for cover to try to escape the onslaught of flying rubber.

Again, the details are fuzzy, but one evening we anticipated that his dad was on the prowl and looking to light us up somehow. I’m pretty sure the “Home Alone” movies were fresh in our minds, and our heads were filled with ideas whose effectiveness was portrayed maybe a little too generously in the movies.

The way his house was set up, Cameron and his sister had the only rooms on the second floor, and the only other thing up there was a bathroom. He had sort of a cool setup in his room; the ceilings slanted down to the walls, so the room got shorter as you went away from the middle, but on the other side of the walls there was some storage space where the ceiling got uncomfortably short. It was a pain to get in there if you were the size of an adult, but it was great for us as kids. Our plan was to set up a bunch of alarms and traps out in Cameron’s room, and then let them stand guard while we set up a fort in one of the storage spaces so we could defend ourselves.

I don’t remember everything we set up, but I remember I brought some stuff from my house to help us out. I brought a tape player with a cassette tape cued up to a loud spot in a Michael W. Smith song, and I made a trigger out of a motorized Construx creation. I also know I brought a small chain and a bunch of metal jax. Cameron probably set up some kind of auto-rubber band crossbows aimed at the door. We strung a bunch of rubber bands together (I don’t think I can properly explain just how many rubber bands were in this house; it’s like Cameron asked for bags of rubber bands for his birthday and Christmas, and he got them) but we’d take these strings of rubber bands and pull them tight all across the room, fastening them to different things and making a sort of web. From one of them I hung the little chain, and I put the pile of metal jacks right under it, so if something disturbed the rubber band string that held the chain, it would fall onto the jacks and make a distinctive noise. The chain was barely hanging on to the string, so a false alarm wasn’t out of the question.

That wasn’t the big alarm, though. The big one was the tape player I mentioned. It was connected to a tripline that an intruder would set off, and everyone in the house would the loud guitar from the start of “Goin’ Through the Motions” if tripped. I don’t know what else we set up, but I’m sure there were other traps. Once we finished that, we shut off the lights and went to work in the storage space, rearranging boxes, garbage bags full of stuff, and strategically storing rubber band ammunition in various locations. If Cameron’s dad was coming for us, he’d either have to turn on the lights (giving himself away) or risk running through our field of booby traps.

Well, we were focused on the best way to set up a defense, and busied ourselves with strategy, plans, and fall-back areas. We had it all planned out. “The decoy dives over here while the other guy pops up and nails him from over here! When he pivots to focus on that guy, the decoy army crawls through this makeshift tunnel and hits him from the other side of the pillar! He won’t see it coming! ”

While we were making our grand strategy, we both thought we heard something out in Cameron’s room that sounded a lot like a little chain falling onto metal jacks. We both froze, wondering: 1. if we had actually heard something, 2. if it was a false alarm, and 3. now what?

Before we could do anything, Cameron’s dad burst into the storage space, filling the air with a hail of rubber projectiles. Surprised shrieks filled the room as we dove for cover but still got hit multiple times. There were so many rubber bands in the air at the same time, it’s like the guy had four arms with eight fingers and three thumbs on each hand, and they were all working on delivering stinging hits to the two of us. Well, we couldn’t mount any kind of coherent defense, and it was a massacre. Cameron’s dad shellacked us pretty good, and there was no denying who won that particular engagement.

You may have had a similar experience (in the metaphorical sense, at least). You recognize that you’re exposed to temptation from certain sins, and you’ve taken the precautions that you believe will be effective in keeping you safe. As it turns out, though, either your precautions didn’t work or something else went wrong, and you ended up not being as safe as you thought. Maybe you put your trust somewhere you shouldn’t have. Maybe you blocked a specific website but you found a different one you shouldn’t be visiting, or you stopped talking about people behind their backs, but now you disguise the gossip as a prayer request.

These things happen. You have to constantly check your defenses, taking frequent looks at your life to evaluate where you’re vulnerable. Things change rapidly; don’t rely on old measures that no longer reflect the modern vulnerabilities in your life. Know yourself and know what you have a hard time overcoming, and place countermeasures in your life that enable you to stand up to them. (In some cases, that requires a literal fleeing from the situation.)

Rubber bands can sting, but there are things that sting much worse. Set up the protections you know will help you be more effective in standing up to temptation.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. –Ephesians 6:12-13

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God Hasn’t Changed One Bit

About a year ago we had a brief reunion to celebrate some milestone birthdays in our family. It was a special time where we got together with loved ones, some of which I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. I also returned to my uncle’s house for the first time in 25 years. It was a wonderful time of celebration and it was so good to catch up with everyone.

In the course of traveling to the get-together, we spent a couple nights at my parents’ house. This is the house where I grew up, and now I’m bringing my kids there for visits.

Although my whole family’s been to my parents’ house plenty of times, on this particular occasion I took the opportunity to take a walk by myself around the neighborhood and see what things looked like.

There were parts of the neighborhood I haven’t seen for probably 15 years or more, but it had been 30 or so since I really knew it well. So many memories came back as I walked around (some of which I’ve written about before). I used to cut through that backyard all the time on my bike until the owner yelled at me for leaving bike tracks in his lawn. I got stuck in the mud when that house was new. I wonder whatever happened to the people that used to live here? I helped build that house right there. Oh wow, those people were awesome, I wonder how they’re doing?! Don’t go trick-or-treating there, that lady hands out little boxes of raisins. Here’s the hill that a friend and I went flying down on a piece of plywood nailed to a skateboard. A bunch of us did backyard wrestling all the time right over there on that grass.

It was crazy to see how much things changed, but at the same time how much they stayed the same. Like going back to visit your elementary school as an adult, the place just kinda seemed smaller than I remembered. Trees that were small when I was young had now reached full size, while others had been removed. That house looks like it’s in shambles, but that one looks great. Between when I lived there as a kid and when I went for a walk around the place, some houses in the neighborhood had been sold and resold an unknown number of times, but other houses still had the same owners. At the homes where my friends had lived (and where I had spent lots of time), I wondered what the insides of the houses looked like now. Was that crack in the drywall still there?

It was a bittersweet trip down memory lane. As a kid I recognized everyone’s car, but now if someone drove past and waved, I probably wouldn’t have a clue who it was. The weird part was that the driver could be someone that was a child the last time they passed me in a car.

Whether it’s houses, cars, or people, none of it lasts forever. Time relentlessly marches past, and the older we get, we become increasingly aware of how quickly it passes. I’m incredibly grateful that even though I’m becoming more and more aware of just how fleeting this life is, God hasn’t changed one bit in the entire time I’ve been walking this planet. Cultural shifts about what is and what isn’t acceptable continue to change, and so does conventional wisdom. Through it all though, the God watching over me today is the same one that set the planets in motion, who brought the Israelites out of slavery, and who blinded Saul on the road to Damascus. Only His covenants have changed, and they’ve only gotten better with time.

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
    but you are the same, and your years have no end. -Psalm 102:25-27

Praise be to the everlasting One, and all glory to the One who invites us to spend eternity with Him (in bodies that don’t degrade)!

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Do You Know How To Spot the Fake?

When I was a kid there were a group of us in the neighborhood that were fans of WWF wrestling (now WWE wrestling).

It was great, man. Every Saturday morning we’d watch as a cast of colorful characters, with clear good guys and bad guys, all had a chance to beat each other up. There was “the Macho Man” Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, and tons of other wrestlers.

We’d watch as the good guys took on the bad guys, and made the bad guys pay for whatever line they happened to cross that week. With jaws on the floor, we felt the shock and betrayal as a good guy went bad, or cheer when a bad guy turned good. We’d even try doing the moves on each other in somebody’s backyard while adding goofy commentary in the style of what we heard on TV. Thankfully the wrestlers back then weren’t as high-flying as today, otherwise we probably all would’ve gotten hurt a lot more.

As I got older, more people around me started talking about how fake it was. “Fake?” I thought. Hmmm. I didn’t buy it right away, but I started seeing things a bit differently as I watched. While there was still plenty of potential for all the characters to get hurt (and they often did), I started noticing how they acted in ways that didn’t seem like consistent behavior. “How come that guy can usually get hit with a chair and it doesn’t stop him, but he picks right now to take forever getting up after getting kicked in the stomach?” Or maybe “it sure is convenient how that referee got knocked out, then woke up right after the bad guy cheated.”

While I prefer the term “scripted,” the bottom line is that yeah, this isn’t totally real. Wrestlers are performers and athletes, certainly, but it’s somehow not quite the same when everyone in the ring knows what will happen before the match even starts. In that sense, it’s fake. In order for me to accept that, though, I had to compare what I was seeing and hearing to what I already knew.

Did you know that even now people are active targets of spiritual deception…by supernatural enemies? It’s true. Normally we think of flesh and blood enemies, but consider this scenario. If a fallen angel took the form of a “righteous” person, and tried to impart some special “wisdom” to an average Jane/Joe and gave some sort of accompanying supernatural sign, I might not be able to blame Jane/Joe for putting some stock in what they just witnessed. Here’s the kicker though: we’ve been warned that this will happen.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul discusses not only false apostles, but fallen angels posing as messengers from God:

            13 For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15 It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

This is a real thing, and many people have been led away from the simple truth of the gospel because of it.

Study your Bible, both Old Testament and New. Think on it, and don’t ever let it be far from your thoughts. The more you know about it, the easier it will be for you to spot a counterfeit when it crosses your path. When someone “masquerades as a servant of righteousness,” question what you’re seeing and hearing. It may take a bit to accept that you may have been duped, but the important thing is not to delay once you’ve discovered the deception. Sound the alarm for students of that school of thought. You’re not responsible for what those people think, but maybe you can help them understand they have a choice to make; don’t be afraid to point out the inconsistencies with scriptures to them. Hopefully they’ll thank you for it later.

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You’re the Key

Those are all keys behind him

When I was really young, my dad was a maintenance guy at a Christian conference center in eastern Pennsylvania, and our family lived on the campus. Groups of people from churches in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania would come and attend retreats at this place. Once the groups departed, somebody had to walk around to all the rooms that had just been vacated, and make sure all the lights were turned off and the heat/air conditioning weren’t blasting in a vacant room. Sometimes that duty fell to my dad, and every once in awhile he’d take me along.

As a part of the maintenance staff, Dad had a key ring that was chock full of keys that opened just about anything and everything on the whole complex. It could be a master key for all the guest rooms in a given building, the key to the room in the gymnasium where they kept all the spare basketballs, the padlock to the room in the basement of the snack shack where they kept a bunch of electronics and motors, or a little key to adjust the thermostat in the meeting rooms. If you needed to open a lock anywhere on the campus, there’s a good chance my dad’s key ring had a solution.

As a kid, it was impossible to keep track of the differences between all the keys. A few of them stood out from the others; maybe some were shinier, bigger, or the head had a distinct shape or color. To me, though, most of them were indistinguishable from one another. If someone plunked me down in front of a random locked door somewhere on the campus with that key ring, it would’ve taken a good deal of time by trial and error for me to open it. Dad knew what each one did, though.

Now imagine that every Christian is a key on God’s giant key ring. There’s a door, or maybe a group of doors, that you have the ability to unlock (or lock). It’s your purpose; it’s what you were made for. You can be jealous of what other keys were built for, but it sure isn’t going to help you fulfill your role any better. You might even try to function in a lock you weren’t designed to operate, but it’s not what you were made for. Some people are dissatisfied or in denial about the lock in which they fit, and they want to choose their own lock.

Sorry Pardner, it doesn’t work that way.

There’s a lock out there for which you are the key, and you might encounter your lock during this unique time in history. The Man holding the key ring wants to use you according to His schedule, but if you’re unwilling or are too focused on a lock for which you’re not the key, you’re missing your calling. My request to you would be: work the lock you’re built for.

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Too Much of a Good Thing?

One of the first “grown up” movies I saw as a kid was “Back to the Future.” It was a movie about a high-schooler that used a crazy scientist’s time machine to travel back in time 30 years to when his parents were in high school themselves. It was my introduction to the time travel aspect of science fiction, and I thought it was pretty cool.

Two sequels followed. A couple of my friends and I all loved the trilogy, and the three of us were constantly quoting different parts of the movies to each other. We even had a “Back to the Future” night for my buddy’s birthday sleepover, where we watched all three movies in one night. A couple of years later I was a roommate with that same buddy at a summer camp where we worked. One night after lights out I recited the script of the entire first movie from memory to him.

This is an extreme (or maybe misguided) example of what an engaged mind can do when it obsesses over something. The three of us were around each other and tossed quotes back and forth so often that they became second nature to us. The things we spent time thinking about became the things most important in our relationship to one another.

In the book of Philippians, Paul tells readers to dwell on the things that are worthy of being, well, dwelled on:

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. –Philippians 4:8 (New Living Translation)

I don’t think “Back to the Future” quotes qualify, but I can see why Paul makes the point. The things you frequently think about are the things your mind is moving toward.

Now that Christmas and New Years have passed and we’re closer to getting back into the normal routine, I challenge you to “think on” the things mentioned in Philippians 4:8. As far as quiet time with God, prayer, doing Bible readings, or some other type of devotionals, if you’re not someone who regularly practices them, consider building those items into your 2020 routine. If you do them sporadically, but not on a regular basis, consider doing them more routinely.

Try doing them for 30 days in a row. The reason you’ll often hear people talking about doing something for 30 days is because that’s roughly how long it takes to develop a new habit. In other words, if you were going to make this a part of your routine for the rest of your life, the first 30 days would be the most difficult to accomplish; after that it would be habitual and would require less conscious effort to complete.

God can use you for great things. Take the first step toward embracing that calling by spending time dwelling on the things Christ taught and did. Hopefully by this time next year, you’ll be closer to/more in tune with God than you are right now.

Happy New Year!

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Christmas…Surprise?

Man, when I was a kid, the final few days before Christmas were an exciting time. We didn’t do Santa, so we had the presents sitting out under the tree for days, or even weeks, ahead of time. As Christmas got closer, the pile under the tree got bigger.

Normally I was pretty good. Sure, I’d pick up the presents and give ‘em a shake every now and then, but usually didn’t do anything too crazy. There was one year, though, where my parents headed out for the evening, leaving my sister and I home alone with all those presents under the tree.

I don’t remember what I was looking for, I think I was just excited about the opportunity to try out an idea I’d had earlier. Soon after the coast was clear, I brought out the scissors and the tape. Using one of the scissor’s blades, I carefully sliced the tape on one of the presents with my name on it. I was able to open up the wrapping paper enough to see what was hidden inside, then fold everything back up the way it was and put a new piece of tape right over the one I’d cut. Only a very careful inspection would reveal what had happened.

I went through most of my gifts this way. I learned what was waiting for me, then restored all the wrapping jobs. My sister, meanwhile, only wanted to know about one of hers. For the life of me, I can’t remember any of the things I snuck a peek at, but I remember that my little sister, with the “keys to the kingdom” that her devious older brother offered her, was perfectly content to know for sure that she was going to be receiving the animated version of “Beauty and the Beast” and didn’t care to find out about any more until it was actually the appropriate time to open them.

This time of year, with many new memories of time spent with loved ones, is generally thought of as one of the happiest seasons. But then it’s all over. The gifts are exchanged, everyone travels back home, and the decorations are all put away. There’s really nothing wrong with celebrating with the special people in your life, but it’s very important to realize that everything here in this life is temporary. Lower your expectations for how happy this world will make you.

Even something that’s bright, shiny, new, and sparkly on Christmas morning soon fades in either its actual luster or the level of interest you have in it. That’s why it’s so important for people seeking true happiness to place their hope and joy in Jesus Christ, someone whose luster will never fade.

This is my last post of the year. I hope you all enjoy special time celebrating Christ’s birth with loved ones this week. Rest up and enjoy some downtime!

Thanks for reading; I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

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Luck O’ The Ducks

When I was a kid I used to love watching cartoons. I don’t know what happened since then, but I guess somewhere along the line they decided they were going to stop making good cartoons.

One of my favorite cartoons to watch was “Duck Tales.” It featured Scrooge McDuck (of “Christmas Carol” fame), the three young duckling triplets Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and the lovable (but terrible) pilot, Launchpad McQuack.

Scrooge McDuck was a greedy guy, there’s no doubt about it. Part of the draw for a younger me was that he was always mounting expeditions to go in search of lost treasures. Off to faraway jungles, canyons, deserts, mountains, the ocean floor…no matter the danger, Scrooge McDuck’s greed drove him to adventure.

One such adventure involved catching a leprechaun. The main characters caught a leprechaun and demanded that he show them to the massive underground treasure caverns (because a pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow just ain’t enough sometimes). The leprechaun showed them to the hidden entrance, which was under a young tree. I don’t remember why they couldn’t go exploring down the tunnel right then and there, but for some reason they had to temporarily abandon their quest. Knowing that it would be extremely difficult to identify this one tree in the middle of the forest, McDuck took out a handkerchief and tied it to one of the branches of the tree. After binding the leprechaun by making him promise not to mess with the hanky or the tree, the adventurers departed.

I think it was the next day when the treasure hunters returned. The hanky and the tree were indeed untouched, but now the forest was littered with hundreds of white hankies. The leprechaun had kept his promise, but still managed to obscure the value of the makeshift marker.

Let’s switch gears for a minute. Take the perspective of Satan and the other fallen angels. You’ve had definite limits imposed on you, but you’re free to meddle with humanity in other ways. How can you divert people from the true way to God and eternal life, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ? You can’t touch that one true hanky, but you can sure hang up a lot of other ones that look enough like the original to make the real one hard to spot.

Aside from Christianity, there are a handful of major world religions on the scene, but there are an untold number of minor ones, splinter groups, minor sects, and other less popular religions. All of them are fake hankies.

In addition to using other religions, the adversary attempts to muddy the waters for actual Bible-based events. The focus of Christmas and Easter used to be Jesus’ birth and Jesus’ triumph over sin, respectively. Now it’s Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Being a Santa fan doesn’t make you a bad person, but consider this: this Christmas, are you and yours giving at least as much emphasis on the story of Jesus’ birth as you are to Santa?

There’s a lot of distraction out there, but remember the true reason for the season and the fact that the adversary has to ask permission to launch certain attacks on Christ-followers.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat…” Luke 22:31

8Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one on earth like him, a man who is blameless and upright, who fears God and shuns evil.”

9Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10Have You not placed a hedge on every side around him and his household and all that he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11But stretch out Your hand and strike all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”

12“Very well,” said the LORD to Satan. “Everything he has is in your hands, but you must not lay a hand on the man himself.”

Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. Job 1:8-12