Behave yourself

What’s better than getting up at 4 am on Black Friday to fight the crowds and strategically rifle through a well-thought out plan of attack documented only by a string of newspaper ads marked in Sharpie and ordered by store opening times?

Almost anything.

Anything is better than that.

Still, that was today for my bride and I as the kiddos slept in at Grandmas. We spent a small fortune (as opposed to the large fortune it could have been) and got about 90% of what we hunted.

We dominated Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target Mart and Home Depot Mart and even squeezed in a romantic breakfast for two at IHOP Mart.

While we were wolfing down some pancakes (actually, I was wolfing… Kathy never wolfs… she delicately cuts, slowly eats and cutely chews… she never wolfs) we were discussing how crazy some people were. Continue reading “Behave yourself”

Thanks for nothin’ ?

As a pastor of a decade and a half now, I have sat through some pretty rough family counseling sessions.

You’d be amazed at the harsh things people can say to each other… or, maybe you wouldn’t be. I guess that’s even sadder.

Some of the barbs that get thrown include:

  • If you cared about me at all…
  • I don’t think I can love you anymore…
  • You’re an idiot…
  • I just wish I was as important to you as your sister is…
  • It’s me or the XBOX (seriously, I’ve heard this one)…
  • I can’t stand to be around you anymore…

Ouch! After a few of those, it’s a little awkward trying to schedule the next meeting. I never know if they are planning on being together in a week, or if I’ll have to visit one of them in the county clink where they now reside for stabbing their mate. Continue reading “Thanks for nothin’ ?”

Symptoms aren’t the disease

We often get caught up in the trap of the immediate, but when it comes to our spiritual condition we need to look further than the surface.

In this video we can explore the possibility that we are spending too much time of the symptoms and not enough on the disease.

Matthew 15:19

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

 

Continue reading “Symptoms aren’t the disease”

Wrong Getting Wronger

It was Memorial Weekend a few years ago, and due to my lack of planning we couldn’t go camping. As this news would be seriously disappointing to my boys, we determined to continue the camping excursion, even though every campsite in a tri-state area was booked.

We simply moved our adventure to KOA Addisland. Yep, we’ve all done it; camping in the backyard, that is. This would be my boy’s first experience.

Hot dogs and smores over an open fire, a six-man tent pitched in record time (3.5 hours… I didn’t say which record),  and a complete lack of bathrooms. Oh, we had them, but we made the boys go outside to increase the authenticity.

Never should have started that… they’d rather ‘water the lawn’ than all the other civilized options to this day.

Continue reading “Wrong Getting Wronger”