Knock Some Sense Into Me

 There are few things in this life I enjoy more than Saturdays in the Fall. In my forty-four years, so many of those days have been spent on the farm, helping daddy with some project in the morning and then eating good food and watching football with my family in the afternoon. Days like this are the perfect blend of work and play and truth be told, this pretty much describes my perfect day. Yesterday was lining up to be one of those ideal days. Jade and mama were in town running errands, college football was on tv in the afternoon, and daddy and I were two hours deep into clearing brush off the creek bank, removing a felled tree from the fence row and restringing the barbed wire fence it damaged. The air was cooling and the wind was picking up ahead of a storm blowing in, when it hit me…..literally. The “it” that hit me was a thirty pound, steel, fence post driver. One minute I’m basking in the joy of a day spent working with my daddy and the next I’m down for the count in a pool of blood like I’d just called Mike Tyson a sissy. I didn’t black out, but I did wake up.

Preachers aren’t supposed to talk about things like this — at least that’s what someone once told my wife — but the last six months have taken a toll on me emotionally and my faith had taken as bad a beating as my swiftly swelling scalp. This year I’ve preached to empty pews and computer screens as much as I have people. I’m at a new church but I haven’t been able to spend time with most of them because of quarantines and social distancing. A month back it was COVID-19 that knocked us off our feet for a good two weeks, requiring us to isolate from literally everyone. It was during that stretch of sickness that I did something I had not done in my adult life, missing three straight Sundays of being with the church and preaching. In the twenty-three years I’ve been preaching, I could count on one hand — with enough fingers left over to roll a bowling ball — how many Sunday mornings I have spent somewhere other than a church gathering, and suddenly I was missing three in a row. I miss worship, I miss my church family, I miss Bible classes, I miss fellowship meals, I miss standing around talking for an hour after services have ended and I don’t know how to do ministry in a quarantine.

My dear friend Captain Wes once took me twenty-three miles offshore into the Gulf of Mexico to go deep-sea fishing and I experienced a similar existential crisis. Sitting on the bow of his ship, I began looking around me in every direction and all I could see was the sea. Without the benefit of the land to orient me I had no idea which direction would lead me back to shore and which direction would lead me into seemingly endless water. Humans don’t do well without certain types of landmarks to keep us pointed in the right direction. For a Christian, worship, Bible study, fellowship melas, and fellow believers don’t define our faith, but they are normally present landmarks that keep us oriented in the right direction. Without them, I felt like a rudderless ship, drifting aimlessly with the wind and the currents.

Oddly enough, the blow to my head actually knocked some sense into me. My wife, my parents, and my son all rallied around me, to help me get up, get cleaned up, and get the cut sealed up. I said I could count on one hand the times I’d missed Sunday morning services, but I couldn’t count on both hands the number of people I love who love me. Sitting in the center of all these people, who stopped everything to take care of me, cleared the fog I was in. I haven’t lost anything. Sunday morning still rolls around once a week, and with it comes time with my church family, and let’s be honest, some of us look better with a mask covering most of our faces. I miss fellowship meals but my suit coat that won’t button is proof positive I have not missed a meal these last six months. I can’t say this was a perfect day but it was a perfect reminder of what I have and what I have not lost. In two weeks time this wound will have healed, but I am hoping it will leave a scar. Just a little reminder that I feel when I rub my head or see when I comb my ever thinning hair…a landmark that points me back home.

Saint Paul

Sitting high atop a shelf in my office, overlooking my desk like a guardian angel, is a picture of Chef Paul Prudhomme given to me by my good friend Wayne Thompson. Today would have been Paul Prudhomme’s 80th birthday. You may not know who Paul Prudhomme is but your kitchen has likely been influenced by him. Although he’s been dead for nearly five years, New Orleans chefs still refer to him lovingly as “Saint Paul” because of the lasting imprint he left on the world of cooking. Chef Paul was a culinary and creative tour de force, reshaping the culinary landscape the way a flash flood cuts through the terrain. One of the main reasons that Cajun and Creole food is a global, and no longer just regional, delight is due to Chef Paul, who was both a creator and ambassador for Louisiana style cooking. If your local restaurant has a Cajun or blackened anything dish on the menu it is largely because of Chef Paul. Lest you think it is an exaggeration to suggest you can change and influence the world for the better from a kitchen, think back to how much of your life and character was molded and influenced in your mother or grandmothers kitchen. 

Paul Prudhomme was the first American chef de cuisine at Commander’s Palace, a restaurant that was inducted into the Culinary Institute of America’s Hall of Fame, and defines New Orleans cuisine as the restaurant against which all others are compared. When Chef Paul took over their kitchen (the year I was born) it was a typical French restaurant but when Paul added the Cajun recipes and techniques from his childhood home in Opelousas, Louisiana, a culinary movement was born. In 1979 he left (appointing Emeril Lagasse to take over as Executive Chef) to open his own restaurant in the French Quarter, K-Paul’s. K-Paul’s helped change the landscape of dining out by providing five star, white tablecloth quality dining experiences in a casual and relaxed setting. He made gourmet quality fine dining accessible to families and regular folks. If you have ever been with me in New Orleans there is a high probability that I took you to this place, and if you have ever asked me where to eat while you are in NOLA I definitely sent you there. For me, it was the best place to eat in the French Quarter and a “never miss” restaurant. No one I ever took or sent there came away disappointed. 

Saint Paul is the man who made “blackened” food famous, starting with his la plat principal, blackened redfish. When he introduced this menu item it became so popular that commercial fishing of the species had to be halted temporarily and ultimately restricted to prevent its extinction. If you look in your spice rack right now you will likely find a bottle of  Chef Paul Prudhomme Magic Seasoning Blends, and if you don’t I highly recommend you remedy that soon. Check your rack of cookbooks and you will likely find, Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, named a Culinary Classic Award winning book in 1989, and if you don’t you need to fix that too. He also did five years of television, recording over one hundred and twenty-five episodes of cooking shows, helping further establish his celebrity status. His star power came mostly from his larger than life persona and his fearlessness in doing things with boldness and flair, like standing outside his restaurant with a jazz band welcoming people back to the French Quarter after Katrina. He practically invented the notion of the “pop-up restaurant” in an era long before social media hashtags and viral sensations, relying solely on word of mouth advertising to create lines that stretched four city blocks with two hour waits.

Prudhomme is French for a wise, honest, sensible man, a fitting moniker that he embodied. Saint Paul wasn’t just a trail blazing chef and ambassador for Louisiana cooking, he was a man with a heart bigger than his three hundred pound frame. Frequently dressed completely in all white chef attire from head to toe, including scarf, newsboy hat, and walking cane, he looked to me like a sort of Cajun pope of New Orleans. The curve of his smile spanned from ear to ear and was as big, bold, and enchanting as the Crescent City itself. After Hurricane Katrina, while his restaurant was shut down, he rallied his staff to cook for free at the relief center for the military and relief workers, preparing over 6,000 meals in a ten day stretch. A year later Bon Apetit magazine presented him with their Humanitarian Award for his efforts.

Sadly, though poetically, on what would have been his birthday, K-Paul’s announced they are closing permanently, a victim of the economic collapse and restrictions brought on by COVID-19. This jewel of the Vieux Carre, which glimmered though sitting in the evening shadow of the Louisiana Supreme Court building, will now fall dark for good. The loss of a business is never as tragic as the loss of a human life, but it is still a great loss, to those who worked there presently and through the years, to those who dined there regularly, to those of us who loved it and will never get to eat there again. Restaurants are an important part of our culture and communities, and in New Orleans they are akin to churches. People of all backgrounds and stations in life gather around a table and smile as they smell food cooking, and then talk and laugh as they enjoy delicious food together. Lest you think this is an exaggeration, never forget that the Lord made a meal the centerpiece of His church and the eternal kingdom is described as a great feast.

K-Paul’s closure is another stinging reminder that “all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass, the grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away,” so enjoy every day and treasure the little things that garnish life because one day they will likely be inaccessible to you, forever catalogued in the warehouse of your memories. 

I’m including a link to an article chronicling the life of Paul Prudhomme published in the New Orleans Times Picayune in 2005. The article details the impact he had on the culinary world.

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_c8980548-bb97-5757-a962-3f97130d8beb.html

Casting Stones or Stepping Stones?

Jade will be quick to tell you that she didn’t marry a preacher. When she married me, two weeks after turning 19, I wasn’t much of anything except a mess. I think what she means is, “I didn’t sign up for this.” And she didn’t. She didn’t sign up for it when she met me, she got drafted into after we were married. On second thought, having spent time yesterday thinking about the strength and beauty of the Southern women in my life, and having spent over a month with her 24/7, I realize she wasn’t drafted into it, she was born for it.

Jade has been a "preacher's wife" for 23 years now, which means that she’s literally been a preacher’s wife longer than she wasn’t. Recently I was reminded of a phone call I overheard where she was talking with a sister in Christ who's family had suffered a sudden death and was in the midst of trying to deal with a dozen different things. I listened as she asked the lady to let her cook their meals, clean their house, let them use our house to host a family gathering, and organize a family gathering for them that was already scheduled before the death. She just wanted to help and was willing to do anything her friend needed, and she meant it. That was during a four year span when she wasn’t “the preacher’s wife” because I was working with Latin American Missions at the time. In other words, she didn’t “have” to do it, no one was expecting it of her, or judging her if she didn’t. She just did it because that is who she is, not who she was expected to be. And I know she meant it because, I remembered all of the times over the last 23 years that she has done those very things for countless people. She’s done them for anyone in need equally. It could be a "prominent" member of the congregation, a visitor, a member that is hit or miss with attendance or one that has some serious problems and struggles they are dealing with. She’s never discriminated when it came to showing love. Would you believe some have actually found fault with that? The criticism was that she spent a lot of time with people who weren't "good church goin' folks." It's funny now, looking back on that type of comment, because one of the complaints that Pharisee's issued about Jesus was that He was a "friend of publicans and sinners" (Matthew 11:19). Maybe what we thought was a complaint was actually a compliment.

Jade genuinely cares about people in a way that humbles, inspires, and amazes me. She is always thinking about how to brighten someone else's day and inspire them in their lives, and she does a hundred little things to accomplish that. Even when she is laid up in the bed in so much pain she gets physically sick and cries, she’s still on Facebook trying to cheer someone up or make them feel loved, or using Paypal, Esty or Pinterest to send someone a "happy" (her term for a little surprise gift). I remember on one occasion she sent some cute little customized cookies to a preacher and his wife who lived 500 miles away. Keep in mind, she doesn't actually know these people really. She'd met them once and communicated with them on social media a few times about campers, but she wanted to brighten their day.

I can't even begin to tell you how many young (and some older) women she has cried with and counseled at all hours of the night. Women who have been raped, abused by their husbands, were pregnant by their boyfriend, had substance abuse problems, were devastated by their husbands affair, felt they would be single and alone forever, or just didn't fit in at church. I’ve read the messages where a woman said, "YOU my sweet friend are one of the main reasons I am where I am today. When we needed the change, you took me in and helped me. I will never ever forget that and could never repay you any amount of money. I talked about you in class the other night because of what you did. It all started with you telling me to help you with VBS. I had to step out of my comfort zone and loved it once I got over the shock. And that started it all and it continued with ya'll studying with us. It seriously helped us at a time when we needed it the most. Love you so much!” The woman who sent that.....she's a preacher's wife now.

If you ever look down and see a stone in your hand that you are ready to cast, ask yourself, "How many 'weak' Christians have I elevated to greater commitment to God by my judgmental approach?" Will you use the stone in your hand as a weapon, a stumbling block, or a stepping stone toward building a relationship that elevates people when they are down? When everyone wanted to kill the woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus took the focus off of her and onto Himself (John 8:1-11). Why do you think He stooped down and wrote in the dirt, instead of responding to them? It redirected everyone's attention from her, to Him, which is what He did for all of us on the cross. He took the focus of judgment for our sins off of us and put them on Himself. Jesus simply told her that He wasn't there to condemn her and then He told her to sin no more. And you know what? I bet she didn’t. Not that she never committed another sin in her life, but that she committed her life to not continue sinning.

There were people who literally watched Jesus, staring at Him, scrutinizing His every word and deed, looking for something to find fault with Him (Mark 3:2; Luke 6:7; Luke 20:20). Examine your own motives and actions and ask yourself if they reflect those who would even try to find fault in the Lord Himself? He loved and served them too, along with the good church goin' folks, the backsliders, the Christmas and Easter only Christians, even the outright heathens, and yes, even the ones who find a needle of a flaw in a haystack of good and use it to gouge Him in the eye.

Criticism is easy and it grows like a weed, but compassion is needed, and it has to be cultivated. Why not spend your time in this slow down sowing the seeds of compassion and cultivating a heart that truly cares for all? The world desperately needs more people like Jesus and Jade. People who help inspire others by showing the love of God to those who have been deemed unlovable by the unloving. "Life's too short to worry, life's too long to wait. Life's too short not to love everybody, life's too long to hate.”

Content

Be content with what you have but not with who you are. Most of us have that backwards.

Some people struggle with contentment, not because they are incapable of it, but because they have no need for it, like the way you have no need for a cane or a walker in your youth. When you are in the Springtime of your life, everything is bright and new and beautiful and growing. To borrow a line from the 80’s one hit wonder by Timbuk 3, “things are going great, and they’re only getting better…my future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.” There’s nothing wrong with living life like this, but rarely does it last.

Eventually Summer comes, and with it the blazing heat waves of trials and the long droughts of lack. For the first time in life you begin to know pain and disappointment and frustration. No one knows for certain when Summer will come, and for different people it may arrive at different times. Some are born into it, never knowing the gentle beauty of Spring.

If you survive the Summer, you are met with the arrival of Autumn. In some ways, Fall is a welcome relief from the heat and dryness of Summer, but with its cool crispness comes the reality of decay. What we witness in nature — the beauty of leaves changing colors — we begin to see in the people populating our lives. Dark hair develops streaks of gray that begin to climb, creep, and spread like kudzu. We may not notice these changes in others because we are fixated on these changes in our own mirrors. In time, the chill of an early Fall will give way to Winter. George Strait once sang,

“Oh how quick they slip away, here today and gone tomorrow. Love and seasons never stay, bitter winds are sure to follow. Now there's no doubt, it's gonna be cold out tonight.”

Winter has a beauty all its own — dark and silent nights, snow white landscapes — but it also has a cold, bitter, loneliness. Before snow falls, or after it melts, Winter reveals a barren loneliness that leaves the soul sad and somber. Winter nights are long, and in this stage of life, often lonely. Loved ones have gone, children are grown, youth and strength and time have withered and scattered like leaves in the wind. Nothing is left but the dark of night of the soul. In the 16th century, Spanish mystic poet St. John of the Cross, wrote of this end of the winter of life:

On a dark night,

Kindled in love with yearnings–oh, happy chance!–

I went forth without being observed,

My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,

By the secret ladder, disguised–oh, happy chance!–

In darkness and in concealment,

My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,

In secret, when none saw me,

Nor I beheld aught,

Without light or guide, save that which burned in my

heart.

This light guided me

More surely than the light of noonday

To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–

A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,

Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,

Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,

Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,

Kept wholly for himself alone,

There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,

And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret

As I parted his locks;

With his gentle hand he wounded my neck

And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;

My face I reclined on the Beloved.

All ceased and I abandoned myself,

Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

The greatest teachers of contentment are time, suffering, loss, and lack. If you have suffered, especially if you have suffered for a long time in some way that you lacked the power to relieve, when that suffering subsides you are left with contentment. You may not be living in ecstasy, but at least you aren’t suffering anymore, and that is good enough. If you have lost something that you truly valued, something that can never be replaced, but are left with other things you dearly love, they become priceless to you. When you lack something you desperately need, but find how much you have already, you cling to it with a satisfied tenacity. With the passing of time, you come to realize the value of what you hold in your hand, forgetting what has been left behind, and forsaking what you longed for in the future. In its place is a new found focus on the things that do not change with the seasons of life. Things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

Be content with what you have but not with who you are. Most of us have that backwards. Awaiting the reader at the end of Philippians are the keys to contentment: letting go of what is lost, looking forward to what is to come, and learning to live with gratitude and grace in the now.

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).

"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13).

Be content with what you have, but not with who you are.

Southern Knights

Quick, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind when I say the word “knight”? Lancelot? His son Sir Galahad, or one of the others Knights of the Round Table? Maybe William Wallace if you have seen Braveheart.

Chances are you only picture a man when you think of the knights of old. Maybe that was true in Camelot, but not here in the South. Our knights tend to be female. Grandmothers, aunts, mothers, these are our nobles, our trustworthy and brave warriors who are willing to fight for us or feed us with equal fervency.

In my heritage, it is women who are the keepers of wisdom and virtue, and secret recipes that are only passed down to those whom they deem worthy. They don’t gather around a round table, but picnic tables, kitchen counters, coffee tables, gazebos, patio furniture, and swimming pools. They convene informal conclaves to discuss hairstyles, cleaning products, high school crushes and bible verses. They dispense wisdom about relationships, dealing with PTA divas, removing pesky stains and good-for-nothing men. I use the moniker of knights -- which I will explain shortly-- but you are likely more familiar with Robert Harling's depiction of them as Steel Magnolias in his homage to the strong Southern women who shaped him.

The passing of John Prine last week led me into a deep dive of his musical catalog, where I found myself soggy-eyed as I listened to him sing the line, “when I get to heaven…I wanna see all my mama's sisters, 'cause that's where all the love starts, I miss 'em all like crazy, bless their little hearts.” I'm grateful that all my mama's sisters are doing well, but I also know that time waits for no man, or woman. I grew up playing with G.I. Joes in kitchen floors near groups of women like this. Their wit and wisdom wove itself into my DNA without me even realizing it was happening. To this very day, their words will make an unexpected appearance on the tip of my tongue in a moment when they are needed the most. They could mix a bowl of potato salad, while simultaneously carrying on a conversation and fixing one of my broken toys, moving with an effortless grace more elegant than any knight dodging a joust. I can’t help but smile and think of them every time I hear the quote, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.”

I not only grew up around women like this, I continue to be surrounded with a great many of them in my life, like an order of knights sworn to protect the virtues of all that is sacred in our culture. When you get a group of Southern women together in the same room, phrases like, “What can I do?” and “Do you need me to stir the beans?” fill the air with a melody like so many hymns. These are women who don’t just wear their heritage like a badge of honor, but embody it as if it were an ancient religion — washing dishes as an oblation and packing up leftovers like they were sacraments. Even the dishes themselves take on an air of holy relics as they speak of their “granny’s cast iron skillet” or “mamma’s butter dish.” This isn’t just cookware, they are sacred instruments used to summon ancient spirits of love and wisdom and strength — memories of strong women who could run a household, nurse children, ring a chicken’s neck, strip tobacco, and influence the decision making of the men in their lives at a time when society denied them any semblance of a voice.

Is this not what the knights did? Knights were the defenders and protectors of the kingdom, carrying out the will of their king, and these Southern knights do the same today for the people in their lives. Like their ancient predecessors, these women are well armored because they have to be. Their skin is thick but their hearts are as soft as a nannie’s lap. When they stand up for what or who they believe in they often get stung with words labeling them “bossy” or “assertive” or worse. Their crusades are seldom bloody, but they are nonetheless just as brutal. Today they fight for their sisters to be heard when they come forward with stories of abuse at the hands of men. Some of them have to fight to be taken seriously, or for their marriages, their children, to make ends meet, and for anything else they love.

This is nothing new. Throughout most of history, women have had to put on their armor each morning, slay dragons all day, and whip up a delicious dragon dinner recipe in the process. If you can’t find one in your recipe books just know it likely involves being deep fried and smothered in sawmill gravy. Most of the ministry of Jesus was funded by women. When the apostles abandoned the Lord, it was the women who remained near the cross. On the morning Jesus rose from the grave, it was the women who arrived at the tomb to prepare His body for burial and then told the apostles "He is risen." The apostles were in hiding, and to add insult to injury, they didn't believe the women when they told them the good news.

Although the time of the knights has largely come and gone, even today, when a man is honored by the English crown we say he is “knighted.” When we think of those knights today we still tend to picture men and soldiers, but the word actually comes from an Old English word for “servant.” I can think of no better description for the women who have populated my life, and can imagine no greater reward and honor for them than to be “knighted” by their King. “Jesus called them to him and said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’....where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor them” (Mark 10:42-45; John 12:26).

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

“Sometimes you just need a good cry.” Most all of the women in my life have said this to me at one time or another. Mothers, aunts, girlfriends, cousins, grandmothers, friends, my wife, Oprah, Joanna Gaines. All of them. They all have tried to impart the wisdom that a “good cry” can really do wonders for your psyche. Truth be told my psyche has been the problem. Or maybe it’s my ego. Either way, I was raised in the storied male tradition of “boys don’t cry” so I would never give it a chance. My theme song could have been, “Raindrops keep falling on my head, but that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red, crying’s not for me.”

Speaking of raindrops. Growing up in the South you learn there are all different kinds of rain storms. There are the angry, violent, deadly ones that spawn tornados, but those are usually from somewhere else, out west mostly. Then there are the soakers. Soakers have very little thunder, and what they have is gentle and quiet and often quite soothing. Soakers will rain steady, but not too hard, for hours. This is the best kind for sleeping and if you are lucky they come on a Saturday morning or a Sunday afternoon, and go on into the night, periodically breaking long enough for you to run to the grocery store or grill some hamburgers for supper. These rains are welcomed by all — except maybe Little Leaguers wanting to “get their game in” — because they replenish the water table, refill the ponds, water the gardens, and get the creeks flowing steadily again.

The crazy uncle to the soaker is the gully washer. Whereas the soaker comes on slow and easy and leaves quietly, like a polite houseguest, the gully washer shows up unexpectedly, is loud, and leaves abruptly with nothing but a mess in its wake. A gully washer will give you a lot of water in just a few minutes and then return the sun just as quickly, producing an environment best compared to a sauna. On a positive note, the culverts and drainage ditches (gully’s) have been cleaned out, although most of their flotsam and jetsam is now strewn about your front yard or neighborhood streets.

Summer storms are flashy and loud and fun to watch. They are great to sit out in and feel the spray of rain and the cool of the wind. They are like teenage boys or Spring time turkeys, which really are just different breeds of the same species — at least judging by their behavior around females. These storms strut across the county like they are showing off for Mother Nature, not realizing she has seen it all and just rolls her eyes, and keeps busy doing what she does and lets him have his fun.

My daddy always hated the dreaded “misting rain” — just enough precipitation to need to use your windshield wipers, although you can’t ever seem to get them set to the right speed, but not enough for them to do anything more than smear up the windshield so that you can’t see. Getting caught out in a misting rain just gets you aggravated, like trying to get ready in a bathroom where someone is showering. The humidity makes the air just moist enough to mess up the hair on your head and stick to the hair on your arms.

One good thing that all storms have in common is the intoxicating aroma of rain coming on, something they share with a good cry. Before the first tear falls, you can sense its arrival, feeling it in your bones the way old timers talk about how they know from their knees before they know from the weatherman that it’s going to rain. When the levee finally breaks and the streams run down your face and drip off the tip of your nose, you catch a brief hint of salt and water, not unlike standing on the shore. There’s a lot of similarities in a tear drop and a rain drop.

My heart has experienced a little of all of these storms, the literal and the emotional. The ones where I shout and shake my fists at the heavens, demanding answers that I already know like a thunderstorm raging. The ones where I quickly cry myself out and collapse in a heap and mess on the floor like a gully washer. The ones where the tears flow so freely you wonder if you will dehydrate before you stop. I’ve even weathered the ones where the tears linger on the rim of my eyes as I ache for them to fall, but they just won’t come, leaving me with an unfulfilled frustration that turns sadness to anger, like a misting rain.

“Crying’s not for me.” It may not be for me, but it was for Jesus. The Lord stilled the storms that terrified His disciples, but not the ones that stirred His soul. There were tears He shed that you could see coming a mile away, like at the tomb of Lazarus. The sniffles and groans of the family of Lazarus thundered through the town of Bethany, and within a matter of minutes the raindrops began to fall. First from the family — “Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping” (John 11:33) — and then from Jesus Himself. "He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled…Jesus wept” (John 11:33-35). There were also storms in His life that were violent and dangerous, like the one that came out of nowhere in the garden of Gethsemane. “He began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him…And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Mark 14:33-35; Luke 22:44). Sometimes the storm clouds gathered on sunny days. On the way into Jerusalem, what we call His triumphal entry, a parade of people place palm fronds in His path and they declare Him their king. Right in the midst of all the joy, Jesus weeps over the fate of the city (Luke 19:41).

“Crying’s not for me.” That was then, this is now. Sometimes I wonder why I do it to myself. Perhaps it’s a form of emotional sadism. It could be a song, a story, a movie or a memory that makes the conditions favorable for precipitation, but I can always feel it coming, building in my chest the way you can feel a summer storm building in the afternoon. At first it's just blistering heat and then the air gets heavy as it begins to soak up all the atmospheric moisture. The wind begins to stir the hot, syrup thick air and you catch the first whiff of rain just before the drops begin to fall. Within minutes the wind howls, the thunder shakes the walls and the rain gushes from the sky like a waterfall. Once those storms rain themselves out the air is left sweet and soft and cool and everything has been refreshed and cleansed. The pollen and dust has been washed away and the storm drains flushed out. It's amazing how a good cry can do the same for your soul. Grief is natural, biblical, and helpful. We even have an entire book of the Bible dedicated to it -- Lamentations. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear thunder.

That Dog Won't Hunt

I was a real jerk to Levi the other day. Wait, let me back up a minute and give you a little backstory on Levi first.

Levi was born June 6, 2016 in West Tennessee. He came from a noble and celebrated family, being the grandson of a grand champion. I don’t know exactly what he was the grand champion of, seeing as I’m not really knowledgeable about the world he came from, but he was the grandson ofLabrador nobility. Like many children, (sons of preachers, lawyers, doctors, musicians, and the like) others had decided what he was going to be “when he grew up” before he was even born. He was destined to be another in a long line of champion retrievers, being bred and trained to retrieve ducks that were felled by hunters. Levi, however, had other plans, and it seems the Lord agreed with him. Nine months into his training he simply stopped retrieving, leaving his trainer to literally declare “that dog won’t hunt.” Trainers have little use for retrievers that don’t retrieve, and as one door closed another door was opened.

I met Jeff in Costa Rica about seven years ago on my very last trip to Central America, during my last official week as a member of Latin American Missions. Like me, Jeff is a Tennessean who had no intention of being a preacher, and yet, found his way into a pulpit. Jeff has a unique ministry where he uses the Black Labs he trains to give live demonstrations of spiritual principles. Over the next few years we would cross paths several more times at various church and youth events. During those years Jeff became familiar with the history of my oldest son, and all he had been through as the result of a traumatic brain injury he received during a car wreck.

Somehow or another Jeff learned we were looking into getting a service dog for our son, but the biggest obstacle was the big price tag. He offered to be the go between for us and a breeder/trainer he worked with, who told us he would give us this Labrador non-retriever if we would just come get him. At the time our son was in a dual diagnosis facility, but the day he was released we began making our way from Florida to just north of Memphis to meet Levi. It was immediately apparent he was an amazing dog, and just because he wouldn’t retrieve didn’t mean he wasn’t intelligent and very well trained. A few days later he came home with us. Soon after our son left our home and moved to Jacksonville, then Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, but Levi remained with us. Little did I know it at the time, but just like that, his therapy dog would actually become my therapy dog.

In the three years since Levi became a member of our household he has taken over the place. Most of the first nine months of his life were spent outside in a kennel with nearly a dozen other dogs. His bed was a fifty-five gallon drum turned on its side with the lid removed. For the first couple of months at our house his bed was a folded up blanket in a large metal crate in our bedroom, but just like George Jefferson, he’s moved on up. Now he sleeps wherever he wants, which is usually his doggy bed if we are home, or the couch if we aren’t. At night he sleeps in our bedroom in a huge, plush leather chair, watching over us as we sleep.

His current kingdom is the land between Walnut Creek and Houston Town roads, every inch of which he patrols multiple times a day. He rules his domain with an iron fist, refusing to allow a bird or squirrel invader to have a moment of peace as they forage for food in his territory. Other than these momentary patrols, he is usually found in my office or the living room, stretched out and never more than three feet away from me. There are many places where he sleeps, but his home is in our hearts.

I don’t know what Levi thinks, but sometimes I can tell what he’s thinking. Mornings begin with Levi waking me up, sometimes nose to nose, sometimes licking my face, sometimes biting my hand, but usually just pacing the floor in my bedroom, his claws making a clickety-clack sound on the hardwood floor that mimics a train rolling down the tracks, both in rhythm and volume, not to mention urgency. Once I’m awake Levi goes outside to use the bathroom, all while I’m filling his food and water bowl -- just who is the pet and who is the owner? He comes back in to eat and then back out for another round of yard fertilizing, but this time when he returns to me he isn’t empty handed; he’s carrying a ball, or a rope, or his stuffed pig, or whatever toys he’s chosen for the day. Levi loves to play tug-o-war with you, but his favorite game is, I kid you not....retrieving. Levi isn't the first to fail at something only to later get it right. I seem to remember Peter completely bombing completely as a witness for Jesus on the night the Lord needed him the most, but he turned it around and did ok, and so can you. Maybe you decided to use this slow down and shut down time to really get into your Bible or commit to more prayer or spend time writing letters or making phone calls, but a month later and you've mostly just watched tv. Perhaps you've had some lingering sin that you have really struggled with getting under control. Sins of the tongue and sour attitudes seems to cling to us like a stick-tight or a cocklebur, but with a little time, attention, and patience, we can get rid of them. One of my favorite parables is a pretty short and sweet one that illustrates this point. "A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went" (Matthew 21:28-29). Back to Levi and his return to being a retriever.

I throw the ball as far and fast as I can and he runs full speed to catch it, grab it, and with equal zeal, return it to me to repeat again. Grooms don’t look at their brides...soldiers don’t look at home...children don’t look at Christmas trees surrounded by gifts with the unfeigned love and devotion that Levi has in his eyes when I draw back my arm to throw that ball. His toy tantrum is so bad we literally have to spell the word B-A-L-L if he is around, because, when he hears that word he gets in a tizzy and searches the property looking for where he last left it (this is also true of the word B-A-N-A-N-A). Upon finding the ball he will put it in my lap, drop it at my feet, roll it toward me with his nose, and some times he will even shift his eyes from yours to the ball and back repeatedly, even licking it to make sure you know what he is suggesting. Subtlety is not his strength, but I’ll tell you what is.

I was ugly to Levi because I hadn’t played ball with him the day before. We usually play before I go to work in the morning and when I get home in the afternoon. The reason I didn’t play wasn’t because it was raining or I didn’t have time, but just because I was in a bad mood and didn’t feel like it. Making matters worse, the next day we were gone most of the day so there really wasn’t an opportunity to play, and I could tell he was kind of depressed about it and I felt bad, I really did. Because we were busy, something that was beyond my control, and because I was in a bad mood, something I could control, he was denied of the one thing in life he loves most for two days. Despite me blowing him off, and him being depressed those two days, the next morning, he greeted me with the same joyous enthusiasm as every other day. I had really let him down and disappointed him, but to Levi all of that was ancient history.

The way he begins each morning is a constant reminder to me, “this is a new day.” He can’t speak but his body is quoting Psalm 118:24, “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Levi is the embodiment of “Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery, today is a gift, that’s why we call it the present.” I know it’s a cliche, but I like cliche’s, and I like Levi’s outlook on life: one day at a time. Endure the hard days and enjoy the happy days, and start over every morning. Surely we can do the same.

Maybe the reason dogs don’t live as long as us is because we don’t deserve them and the unlimited, unselfish love they live to give us. Or maybe they just come into our lives long enough to heal us and help us and then leave us to go and do likewise. Even if you’d never picked up a Bible, five minutes with a dog should be enough to prove to you there must be a God. If God can create something that loves us so much, I can't imagine how much the Creator must love us. Actually I can, "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6-8).

God bless him, Levi can’t get a drink without making a big enough mess with the water that you could float a battleship in what splashes out of his bowl. He loves bananas and Chik-fil-A grilled nuggets and waffle fries made from the end pieces of the potatoes. I don’t like those, but he does, which just proves we belong together. He has an alter ego named Frisky Dingo who runs full speed through the house, jumps and spins, and barks really loud at nothing and everything incessantly. Levi loves everyone he meets and assumes that each new day is going to be a good day. He’s more than man’s best friend, he’s my best teacher and best influence. He is a daily reminder of God's faithfulness. His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). Now, if you will excuse me, someone just placed a filthy, ragged, rope toy in my lap.

Farm Fresh

I’ve always heard if you don’t use it you lose it and that would be an appropriate description of the biological propensity for farming I inherited from my ancestors. Although she mostly grows her vegetables in pots today, my mama can produce as fine of a garden as you will ever see. My Grandaddy Sam, her daddy, plowed behind a mule to grow what was needed to provide for his family, and he successfully did for decades. The only thing I can grow consistently is my waistline, which I’ve successfully done for decades. That being said, I have undertaken an ambitious goal. I’m going to make my own tomato sauce from tomatoes that I grow myself. True blue, farm to table, all natural, organic — and any other fancy label that makes the price go up that you want to attach to it — tomato sauce.

Maybe I need to back up a little further. I have always wanted to grow a garden. I can’t really say why, but I have. Maybe it’s a touch of nostalgia. Although we never had one when I was growing up, I did spend time for several Summers on Gunter Ridge helping harvest from the “garden” belonging to my great Uncle Thomas — is it still a garden if it is over an acre? Wouldn’t that be a small farm? I won’t pretend those were fond memories as they mostly involved being hot, dirty, itchy, and bored. My Big Mama used to put out a garden behind her house and I did love to sit on her front porch and break and shell beans while she told stories of her childhood. Once, when my boys were little, we put out one at my parents house on Chicken Creek because we felt like the boys “needed to learn.” I do remember fondly the spread of food we had one Saturday when everything was coming in and mama and Jade spent all day in the kitchen cooking it all. That was also the year mama and Jade and our good friend Lisa made homemade Mexican tomato sauce — you probably just call it salsa. Perhaps it's because I am a proud purveyor of all things Southern, and I guess I just feel I can’t really claim the label of authentic native son until I have earned my gardening merit badge.

Maybe I’ve gone back too far, let me start two years ago. With our boys grown up and moved away, Jade and I had a little more time to ourselves and decided we were going to plant a small garden in raised planters. During my time in Florida I had developed quite the green thumb, having successfully grown thorns, thistles, weeds, and sand spurs all around the house in both Summer and Winter. Seriously, those things are indestructible — weed eaters, weed killers, digging up root balls, nothing could stop those things. There were plenty of times I thought to myself, “Thanks a lot Adam!” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Seeing as how I obviously have a natural gift for growing, we decided to try something we could actually eat. I built us some boxes, Jade repurposed a rubber maid tub for a compost bin and…..that’s about as far as we got. There was a surgery and then her mother’s cancer returned, and as they say, life got in the way. We did get as far as putting top soil in the compost box and throwing all our organic scraps into it, but otherwise it sat untouched on a gardening table in the back yard for the next year. But then life happened. I don’t mean life got in the way. I mean life happened. Life sprang forth unplanned, untouched, and unexpected, but not unwanted.

One morning I noticed a little shoot of something green growing from one of those holes. Curious, I began to watch it each day as it grew bigger and bigger until one day I was able to discern its identity because of the appearance of an undeniable little yellow bloom. It was a tomato plant. Apparently we had tossed some left over Roma tomatoes into the compost box and a little seed, despite no attention from any human, and against all odds, did what God created it to do and began to grow. For a moment I thought about doing all sorts of things like watering it and adding fertilizer and pesticides, but ultimately I decided the Lord had given and if He saw fit He would take away. This little tomato plant had done just fine without my help and so I decided to stay out of the way, well, almost. I did at least turn the box where the rain water could fall on it. God planted, God watered, and God gave the increase. The next few months were filled with an almost embarrassing amount of joy as I cheered on this little plant that could, watching it grow and grow, climbing up plant stands and across a little fence. The day I saw my first tomato it was all I could do not to run around the neighborhood sharing the good news like a man who just found out he was going to be daddy. The day i picked my first ripe, red, juicy tomato I was nearly as overwhelmed as the day I had my first child. Like Jonah from the Bible, I did nothing to make it grow, or help it along, and I was saddened when it was time for it to go. I know it’s silly, and there are far more important things to worry about, but for months I counted it as one of my blessings, or as I’ve come to think of it, as one of God’s little graces that He places in our path each day to sustain us on our journey.

Ok, back to the future. I had a bit of deja vu when we first got settled here in the Pleasant Valley. As I walked around the property I came across two pear trees — partridge not included — and a plum tree. The pear trees are covered in little green fruits, just beginning to form, and the once purple flowered plum is now loaded with little fuzzy plums. I know less about fruit trees than I do tomato plants, but walking out and checking on those forming fruits has become a daily ritual.

Somewhere between an unplanned tomato plant and pleasantly surprising pears, we decided to put out a true blue, bonafide, real garden. With a little help from one of our benevolent bishops, we now have a nice plot of freshly turned Alabama earth eagerly awaiting seeds. I have no doubt that we will have good time planting squash, okra, peppers, beans, corn, potatoes, tomato plants, and cucumbers — did I mention I’m going to make my own pickles too? I just started eating pickles about three months ago and man those things are good. I also have no doubt that there will be times I grumble and gripe about how hot it is, or how my okra’s not making, and that the only thing I seem to be growing is weeds, but that is all part of the process, and that is all part of life.

The most commonly used metaphors for life used in Scripture revolve around agriculture. Think about it for a second: the Bible starts and ends in a garden, we’ve got parables about seeds, planting, and harvesting, cursed fig trees, God regularly refers to Himself as a husbandman — which is just King James English for farmer — and He considers His people His vineyard. There are a plethora of passages to choose from to illustrate this, but I want to share with you my three favorites.

When the exiled Israelites were finally allowed to come back home, Isaiah promised that they would be able to “take root downward and bear fruit upward” (Isaiah 37:31). I find a calming kinship with that passage, though it wasn’t really addressed to me or my situation. Home is a complicated concept for me. Wherever we have lived we have worked hard to make it home, but at the same time, my true home will always be the Tennessee Valley, “no matter where I lay my head” — to borrow a line from the Sand Mountain boys. As such, I spent the better part of a decade in a self imposed exile from my home, with faith that in His own good time, the Husbandman would plant me here again, and He did. Now I’m focusing on growing roots and bearing fruits.

What are those fruits? That’s where my second favorite planting passage comes from. Paul explains that those who walk in the Spirit produce the sweetest fruits. “Now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Am I bearing those fruits? This is where my final favorite planting passage becomes important. The Husbandman works in us to cultivate fruit, but sometimes there are pests, diseases, and dead limbs that have to be addressed first. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:1-2). An unhealthy plant/tree/vine won’t produce good fruit, so He gets down in the dirt with us to root out the weeds, kill the pests and heal the diseases of the heart. That was the whole point of the “incarnation” (God in flesh). God descend from His lofty and holy existence and humbled Himself to take on flesh, so that He could get His hands dirty through sweat and hunger and thirst and fear and loneliness and exhaustion and pain and suffering and death. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

He went to the earth and became like us so that we could ascend to the heavens and be made like Him. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…so it is with the resurrection of the dead…The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:36-38, 42, 47-49). Like all of mankind, He was planted in the earth, dead and buried, and yet, like a seed that dies only to burst forth with new fruit bearing life, He was resurrected so that we could be too.

Right now this quarantine has left us feeling like we are planted in a pot instead of a garden, but that’s ok. Maybe our faith or our hearts aren’t healthy and they need a little extra time and attention in the Husbandman’s green house. Perhaps we need to be separated for a season so that the diseases and pests that plague our faith, souls, and churches can be eradicated, leaving us healthier and better able to bear much fruit. In His own time the Husbandman will transplant us back into His vineyard together. Until then, do what God created you to do and grow where you are planted.

Hide and Seek

One of the first, and most fun, games we learn as children is Hide and Seek. It's such a simple game that even a one year old can “play.” Can you remember the joy on the face of your little one when you first hid your face behind your hands, only to “pop out” from behind them and shout “Here I am!”? Can you still remember the squeals and cackles from your toddlers as they stood behind a sheer curtain “hiding” from you while you “seek” them? As we grow older the game grows a little more complex and intense as we learn the real fun comes from being good at hiding and diligent in seeking. The better you can hide the more fun the game becomes for everyone involved. The stakes are higher, the seeking more complicated, and therefore the payoff is greater.

But somewhere along the way we outgrow Hide and Seek. It’s not because it isn’t still fun (if you can ever convince a group of grown ups to play you will see what I mean), it’s more because we get distracted. There are too many things right in front of our faces that need to be taken care of and dealt with for us to busy ourselves with “seeking” just for the fun of it. In fact, somewhere along the line we stop enjoying the seeking. We not only stop enjoying the seeking, we start to hate it. Don’t you hate it when you can’t find your car keys? Do you enjoy seeking the missing remote to the tv? Is anything more frustrating than searching for a parking spot at Wal Mart? Heaven forbid we don’t know the location of our phones at all times. When did seeking stop being fun?

Maybe it was about the time when no one wanted to play Hide and Seek with us anymore. You probably can’t remember the day, but there came a day when the game that you played a thousand times, you played for the last time. No one wanted to play Hide and Seek anymore. It had been replaced with Angry Birds or angry bosses or texting boys and Tweeting political stances. Your siblings weren’t interested and your parents were too busy and you gradually learned to stop seeking because no one was hiding. But deep in your heart is buried the memories of the joy of seeking..

There's still great joy in seeking, because with it comes the reward of finding. We hate looking for our car keys or cell phones or tv remotes, but think about how excited you get when you find them. You may hate circling the mall parking lot five times trying to find a place to park in the crowded holiday masses, but you shout for joy when you stumble upon the “first parking place." Does it get any better than that? Actually it can.

What if we learned to love the seeking as well as the finding? What if we viewed them as two sides of the same valuable coin. Do you have that moment of euphoria when you wake up and see the phone charging on your nightstand? Of course not. It's right where you know it is and expect it to be. However, when you misplace it and then discover it you are ecstatic. You don’t have the joy that comes with finding apart from the seeking.

For nearly 20 years I have carried with me a list of several vinyl records that I want. Whenever I come across a record shop or even a Goodwill or yard sale with a bin of vinyl records, you will find me diving head first into the collection and meticulously combing through every single one looking for one of the records that's on my list. Here's the interesting part: I have every one of them on Spotify and most of them I own in digital formats. At this very moment I could go on Amazon or other online stores and buy each record on my list, but I refuse to do so. Why? Because I love seeking them out. In the 20 years I have been doing this I have come across exactly two that were on my list and I was ecstatic when I did. It was like Christmas morning and my honeymoon and the first day of college football season and an all you can eat buffet all rolled into one. All because of a forty year old $2.00 record in a yard sale box. I don’t suppose that I’ll ever find all of the records on my list, but that’s not the goal anyway. The fun is in the seeking and that amplifies the joy of the finding.

Seeking and finding is at the heart of the three parables in Luke 15. In the parable of the lost sons the older brother stands outside the celebration wanting to know why he’s never had a party thrown for him and his friends, to which the father explains, you are always here and everything I have you already own, but your brother was lost and now he is found, so we celebrate. The same with the previous story of the shepherd looking for his lost sheep and the woman seeking a hidden coin. All three stories end with a celebration because of the seeking and finding. These stories also remind us that what God gets, He loves to give. He is a God Who enjoys seeking us because He loves the joy of finding us ("The son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost", Luke 19:10), so He shares that with us, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." Learn to love the seeking and you will be overjoyed with the finding.

Here is the good news: if no one else wants to play Hide and Seek with you, God does. The Bible continually shows us that God wants us to seek Him. “Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face continually” (1 Chronicles 16:11). “Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the LORD your God” (1 Chronicles 22:19). “If you seek Him, He will let you find Him” (1 Chronicles 28:9). “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God” (Psalm 14:2). “He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

You may be asking, “Why doesn’t God just show Himself? Why doesn’t He reveal His will for me plainly? Why is it so hard to see Him when times are hard?” I think the answer lies in Hide and Seek. When we learn to love the seeking it produces overwhelming faith, love and joy when we find Him. The reason a child enjoys the seeking is because they know that mom or dad hasn’t gone away completely, they are just hiding, but they are near. They are near and they are aware and they want to be found because you can squeal and laugh and hug together when you find them.

When you are in your darkest moments, don’t mournfully cry, “God where are you?” Get up and seek Him. Search for Him, hunt Him, look for Him everywhere in your life. He is there, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). He has not gone away completely and He is not far away, “they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27). He is there, He is near, and when you seek Him you will find Him. “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (Proverbs 8:17). And when you find Him you will rejoice together and be overwhelmed by His presence. Until then distract yourself from your trials with the excitement of seeking. Don’t focus on the darkness, focus on seeking His light. But don’t just limit seeking God to hard times, seek Him everyday.

When I wake up in the mornings I open my eyes and talk to God. I thank Him for the years when He was seeking me and I celebrate the fact that He found me. Then I get myself excited for the day by saying to God, “I know you are out there and I am going to find you. I’m going to listen for you in every conversation. I’m going to look for you in every coincidence. I’m going to seek you in every person. I’m going to hunt for you under every experience. If I'm having trouble finding You I will go to your Word because I know you are there. I am going to seek you and I am so excited to see where all I am going to find you next.” I know this may sound childish to some, but I disagree. There is a difference between being childish and child like. Being child like is the point. “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Ready or not, here I come.

What I Love About Sunday

If I didn’t know better I’d swear I went to bed in my life and woke up this Sunday living in a country music song — which I suppose is entirely possible around here, seeing as how country music songwriter Mark Narmore is among the 972 fine residents of Killen, Alabama. Those who are reading this and not from Killen may not know the name Mark Narmore, but I bet you know the names Reba McIntire, Josh Tuner, Alabama, John Michael Montgomery, Terri Clark, and Craig Morgan. They all know Mark Narmore because they’ve recorded his songs. You’ve likely heard his song, “That’s What I Love About Sunday” since it was the most played song on country radio in 2005, staying at number one for over a month, and being named the #8 song in country music in the first decade of the 2000’s. What did Mark write that he loved about Sunday’s? “Every verse of Amazing Grace…stroll to the end of the drive…grab a cup of coffee…cat-nappin’ on a porch swing, you curled up next to me…take a walk down a back road…steal a kiss as the sun fades…new believers getting baptized…havin’ a hallelujah good time, a smile on everybody’s face, that’s what I love about Sunday.” Amen, Mark.

I say I’m living in a country song because I’ve lost track of all the Southern country cliches I’ve checked off in the last month: eating pinto beans and cornbread with fried taters for dinner at momma’s, check; sitting on the front porch listening to the frogs sing while my dog sleeps at my feet, check; walking to church on Sunday, check; drinking coffee on a slow and sleepy rainy Saturday morning with the woman I’ve loved since she was a girl, check; opening all the windows so the Spring air can blow through the house, check; playing in the creek, check; watching my youngest get married at a barn, check.

If I didn’t ever get on social media I wouldn’t even know that the world had stopped turning….wait, wasn’t THAT a country song too? In all seriousness, I know that for many people times are hard. People they love are sick or have died. Work is slow and money is tight. I’m not for one minute dismissing their pain or struggles, and in time those troubles may knock on my front door. Believe me, in the past trouble didn’t just knock at our door, it made itself at home and moved in for awhile. But for right now, His blessings are a thousand fold, so forgive me if I want an encore this evening.

I could make a list as long as my arm of the things I absolutely love about this little white house this Sunday, but if I had to pick just one it would probably be the front porch facing West. There’s just something about a sunset that humbles and stills the heart. Despite all the amazing things we humans can do, we can’t do that. We could write a million songs about their beauty, but we couldn’t make even one sunset ourselves. A sunset has a unique ability to make you feel small and loved at the same time. I’ve watched more sunsets in the last three weeks than I have in the last three years, and that is how I spent the last hour of this Sunday.

When I was twenty, if you’d have tried to make me sit still, in silence, on the front porch with nothing but a Sun Drop and a plate of chocolate oatmeal cookies, for an entire hour, I would have thought I was being partially punished. I had too many things to do to just sit and “do nothing.” It doesn’t look like that at forty-four. I honestly can’t say when I’ve spent a better hour of my life than the way I just spent the last one. What would have been boring at best, and punishment at worst, at one point in my life, now looks like a blessing, and that is precisely how I spent it, blessing God. It wasn’t my most eloquent prayer, and it certainly wasn’t as poetic as the lyrics to a number one hit song about Sunday, but I doubt I’ve ever prayed one more sincere. I just said thank you. Over and over again, thank you, until I felt like I’d said it enough to make my point clear.

One of my oldest and dearest friends is a guy named Jode who lives on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. Shortly after he moved to Tennessee we were riding through the backroads and hills of Giles County and he asked me, “What mountains are these?” Louisiana is as flat as a month old Coke so those hills probably did look like mountains to Jode. Life can be like that sometimes. What you perceive is one thing is really something else. What twenty year old Brandon would have considered boring, forty-four year old Brandon counted as a blessing. I could have viewed this sunset as another day of my life that is gone, never to return, but instead I saw it as a spectacular finale to a Sunday well spent. Maybe I can encourage you to learn to look at your present situation from a different perspective and see if it starts to look a little different. Where the world sees panic, the believer can find peace. What the government declares a “shelter at home”, the disciple can consider a long overdue sabbath. While some live in fear, God’s children walk by faith. When you can’t find what you’re looking for on the shelves, remember He will provide all you need.

While it is true that we have no control over things like the length of the quarantine, the development of a vaccine or treatment, or the impact this will have on the economy, it is also true that we have complete control over what we will do with all of this. Will you make a mountain out of what is likely, in the grand scheme of history, and over the course of your life, just a molehill? If you do, that’s fine, no judgment, but I do have one suggestion.

As I just mentioned, some hills do look like mountains to some folks, and if this situation is more mountain than molehill for you, just make sure you approach it with the boldness and faith of an eighty-five year old Caleb in the conquest of Canaan. He said to Joshua, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said” (Joshua 14:6-12). Forty years earlier, everyone else, except for Joshua and Caleb, saw this land flowing with milk and honey as a curse, not a blessing. Where they saw a mountain too high, Caleb saw a mansion just over the hilltop, and after forty-five years of waiting he couldn’t wait any longer. To borrow from and disagree with another country song, Caleb did not think, “I ain’t as good as I once was.” Caleb knew he was stronger than he’d ever been, not physically, but spiritually. Our bodies may be aging and weakening, but our faith and relationship with God is growing stronger by the day. What Caleb called “hill-country” was a mountain full of giants living in walled cities, but eighty-five years of walking with the Lord had taught him that he could overcome anything through faith. And so can you.

As I sit here with the windows open, listening to the frogs singing, I realize there is one thing I don’t like about the house presently: it hasn’t been filled with all of you yet. I’m sitting in silence and gratitude, but I’m also longing for the day when the yard is full of squealing kids, the house is full of the smell of food, and the carport is full of people. I can’t wait until we can let every toad in Frog Pond sit on the front porch of their Lilly pads and listen to our church singing songs of praise as the sun sets. Every verse of Amazing Grace. What a day that will be.

Growing Where You're Planted

For the last few weeks I’ve spent far more time with animals than I have with people. You can probably tell that based on the posts about woodpeckers, cattle egrets, cows, and dogs, and frogs. I think I’m in good company watching the animals and learning from them. Jesus used birds as sermon material, and the wise man Solomon instructed us to consider the ways of ants, badgers, locusts, lizards, lions, goats, and roosters. The latest lessons I’ve learned have been delivered via the tree rat, better known as a squirrel.

Most mornings I tend to focus on the plethora of birds swooping from tree to tree in their search for breakfast, but always busy in the background are the squirrels who aren't so much searching for food, as trying to remember where they put it. I say “trying to remember where they put it” because research shows that squirrels fail to recover as much as 74% of the acorns they bury for food. It ruins my day if I so much as drop a single French fry in the floorboard, but it’s ok if they don’t find all of the acorns they bury because those unclaimed acorns simply become oak tress which will produce food for future generations of squirrels.

An ancient Greek proverb says, “society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. When a man plants a tree he always expects to gain something from the tree in the form of fruits and shade. But when an old man plants a tree he knows well that he will not live see the plant grow up to bear fruits, or enjoy its shade, still he does it so that his future generation will be benefited by it. This unselfish behavior is a sign of the greatness of a society." Even as I read these words I can hear the lyrics from the song echoing in my mind, "Leave behind, yes leave behind, what will I leave behind, after I leave for worlds unknown, what will I leave behind?"

Tonight I was having a conversation with one of my oldest friends and we were commenting on how Jesus had a tendency to see the kingdom of God everywhere He looked. The Lord looked at a field ready to be harvested and saw souls who were receptive to the gospel (John 4:35). He watched as a sower spread seed in a field and thought of the things that would prevent or promote the planting of the word of God in the heart (Luke 8:5-15).

This morning, looking out my window, I saw some things that reminded me of the kingdom of God, and like the kingdom of God, they spoke of realities that seemed to contradict logic. The squirrels scurried from spot to spot in the front yard, digging holes as they went, in an effort to unearth their long lost lunch. If they fail, the acorn remains buried in the dirt, gradually cracks open and sprouts a taproot which buries itself deeper into the earth, while a seedling will painstakingly push through the soil and spend its life reaching for the sky. Something buried, lost, dying, forgotten, but also taking the first step toward a life that will far outlast the squirrel who buried it, and tower over the humans who are oblivious to it. But you don’t get the oak without burying the acorn.

Life in the kingdom is a lot like that. Things don’t always makes sense to us in the kingdom of God. Jesus explained that those who seek to save their lives will lose them (Matthew 16:25) and that it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). He said rejoice when you are persecuted (Matthew 5:10-11) and the last shall be first (Matthew 20:16). When we find ourselves buried under the weight of our burdens, He invites us to come to Him and take on His yoke in order to find rest (Matthew 11:28-30). Our greatest growth is typically the byproduct of disappointment, pain, and loss. Paul knew this and it gave him the strength to let go of what was lost and push forward through what was ahead.

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:12-16).

If you find yourself buried under stress, worry, and fear, or feel like you’ve been forgotten and left alone, plant your roots deep and look up. “Take root downward and bear fruit upward” (Isaiah 37:31). A mighty oak is just an acorn that held on, and a mighty Christian is just one who remains steadfast, unmovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58). You aren't being buried, you're being planted. Grow.

Migration

Whenever I tell people I’ve recently moved to the area from Florida I already know what their response will be. “You moved away from Florida? Why would you do that?” I’m pretty sure most people are picturing all of Florida as Key West or the Emerald Coast at least. They imagine lazy days spent napping in a hammock under a palm tree while enjoying the tropical breeze. I have to explain that I lived in North Central Florida, which is really just South Georgia, and that “real Florida” doesn’t begin until you get South of Gainesville, but that’s a story for another day. What they don’t envision is the high cost of living, “trying to reason with hurricane season,” mosquitoes that draw more blood than the Red Cross, and humidity so high you can swim on dry land.

As a native of the Tennessee Valley, my Summer vacations, and those of most of my friends, were spent along the Florida Gulf Coast, between Panama City Beach to the East and Pensacola to the West. On occasion we’d venture to L.A. (lower Alabama) and check out Gulf Shores, but most of my childhood trips were spent in the Florida panhandle. As an adult I have stood with my toes in the sand of beaches up and down the Atlantic Coast — from Nashua, New Hampshire to North Miami — and the Gulf of Mexico from South Florida to actual Mexico. I’ve walked the coastline of islands in the Caribbean Sea and I’ve stood on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, the Great Lakes, Costa Rica, Panama’s San Blas Islands, the Mosquito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua — which, despite the name, is a lovely place, named for the Miskito Indians, not the insects. Having seen all of these places, I can tell you without hesitation, the Emerald Coast — affectionately known as “The Redneck Riviera” — is as beautiful as any beach on earth. And as a former resident of the Sunshine State I can assure you, just because you live in Florida, that doesn’t mean that your life is a nonstop vacation.

During our time in Florida we came to realize that while folks in the Tennessee Valley loved to vacation on the Florida beaches, residents of the Sunshine State often journeyed to the mountains of East Tennessee for their vacations. A lot of people around here question why we would move FROM Florida TO North Alabama, but our Florida friends who have visited this area understood completely. Yes this is home, but it also just so happens to be a beautiful place with beautiful people. 

This morning I had a pleasant surprise as several of those old friends from Florida unexpectedly stopped by for a visit. Don’t worry, they weren’t violating the “shelter in place orders” or ignoring social distancing. Those things don’t apply to these friends because they are immune to COVID-19. The old friends I’m referring to are actually a flock of birds known as cattle egrets.

Sitting at my desk, preparing the devotional for the day, I heard Levi growling and looked up to see the yard filled with a flock of cattle egrets. I was thrilled to see these old friends show up in an unexpected place, although Levi wasn’t as welcoming -- we are working on our manners and jealousy presently. While living in Florida these little birds provided a small taste of home for me, not because they are native to this region, but because I usually only saw them in pastures surrounding cattle. Over the last five years my favorite part of the forty minute drive from Lake City to Gainesville was the thousands of acres of pasture land filled with Black Angus beef, mmmmm…..,oops, wait, I meant to say cattle, Black Angus Cattle. Is it already lunchtime? 

One of the things I missed the most about home was sitting on the deck with my daddy watching the cows graze and the drive down to Gainesville gave me a little window back into those moments. It was in these vast vistas that I became familiar with the cattle egrets, so named because of their tendency to flock around — and sometimes on the backs of — cows. They love to feast on the parasitic insects attached to the cattle, making a sort of bovine buffet of bugs, creating a symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial to both species.

I can relate to these birds. I too love to be around cows, and I too am constantly on the look out for my next meal, and it is often my love of cows that takes care of that need too. But I feel a kinship with my feathered friends that goes beyond the belly. They showed up here in North Alabama this morning, but they “ain’t from around here.” They are just visiting, vacationing from Florida if you will. Their home is the warmer, more tropical climates further South, but when it gets warm enough they like to venture North for a little while. These little birds have an internal voice that tells them when it’s time for them to move. They just know when its time to head north and they know when its time to go home. For over twenty-five years I’ve been learning to listen to and trust this voice in my own heart.

I want to encourage you to learn to trust that voice as well…..with one very, very, vital condition: this voice must be speaking the words and wisdom of God. The prophet Jeremiah, and the wise king Solomon both cautioned us not to trust our own instincts alone. “O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 16:25). This is why, “The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand. I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:23-25). David once said, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). You have to do this because, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). This inner voice, or conscience, cannot be trusted on its own. We must make sure it is molded, shaped, and informed by the will and wisdom of God from His word. 

There is a pretty simple test of whether or not this voice is our own selfish desires, or God’s will: is the voice in your head conflicting with or conforming to the Word of God? If the voice you hear is telling you to go ahead and do something that the Bible speaks against….that is your own selfish desires and not from God. If that voice is directing you to obey the Scriptures then you are on solid footing, but know this, sometimes it will tell you things you may not want to hear or do — like hold your tongue, give, be patient, repent, or forgive.

Sometimes our lives are so busy, and so hectic, that we don’t have time to listen to this voice, or we can’t hear it over all of the other background noise. Mercifully, many of those “other things” have been removed for now, leaving us with the stillness and quietness to hear it. “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” (1 Kings 19:11-13). Those words were written during a time when Elijah hiding out alone in a cave, fearing for his life. We tend to think when God speaks it is always with a loud and booming voice, with smoke and fire and lighting and earthquakes — and sometimes He does — but most often He comes to us in the stillness and quietness of simple things. Things like the bread and wine of communion, where He says to us, “I gave my life for thee and you are welcome at my table.” Things like a prayer spoken in silence, where He says, “I’m listening child.” Things like a cup of cold water, where He tells us, “I will take care of you.” And sometimes, on mornings like today, it is through little white birds with caramel colored mohawks and beards.

This voice told me it was time to go home. I had migrated south — to borrow a phrase from Steinbeck, or better yet, Shakespeare — for “the winter of our discontent.” I say that, not because our time in Florida was defined by discontent, but because that was the state of my soul when I went there. The reasons for this discontent are long and myriad, and in time I will tell you all about that too, but suffice it to say, the warm and welcoming climate of my Floridian family of faith was exactly what I needed to weather the winter storm inside me. In time the seasons of my heart changed and I returned to my nest.

That voice has remained pretty loud and steady and consistent over the last few weeks. It’s pretty much been on a loop saying, “Let the peace of God rule in your heart…and be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). If you have ears, then listen (Matthew 11:15).