Serve by Design

It was only two days away from Halloween and the local grocery store already had a display featuring a row of one of the Christmas time favorites – “Premium Fruit Cake!” Yes, this one was extra special and premium! Why is it that bakers feel like they must add additional adjectives to describe their holiday cakes? Your Old Favorite! Not Mine!! Let’s be more realistic and say, “Here it is again… your old favorite, making its annual trek around the world to your table!” There are a good many of us who believe that there is only one fruitcake that’s being passed around and re-gifted during Christmas season to unsuspecting fruit cake-loving folks! I have a brother-in-law who will, like me, eat almost anything. He says, “I can even eat hominy, but I don’t prefer it!” That’s the way I am about fruitcake. I can eat it, but why?! I’d rather eat a pecan pie or some good creamy fudge or homemade pecan brittle during the holidays! I recently attended a Bible retreat with some pastor friends...

Once again, nature surprised and delighted me this week! My grandson and I have begun the process of fall clean-up. This will continue for the next two months as the trees complete their cycle of leafing out. While Danny was mulching the early leaves with the rider, I undertook the task of pulling up the fading spring plants from the front planters and the bedding areas in the backyard. Last of the Season! That’s when I noticed a surprise underneath leaves and a cluster of old, dry flowering plants. There it was! A little, humble, and beautiful volunteer purple petunia peeking out of the corner bed. It was like it was begging me to see it and rescue its tender little flower standing tall above a spindly stem. I proceeded to gently dig around the root and pull it to safety! Holding this fragile work of nature gingerly in one hand, I managed to keep it intact as I brought it inside to arrange it into a small vase. With a welcomed drink of water, this perfectly displayed flower of sprin...

Recently, I have read three religious articles using the same phrase, “The Posture of Life.” This immediately caught my attention because I am not accustomed to using the word, “posture” in this way! My physical posture has never been good. Over the years, my mother often said to me, “Mike, pull your shoulders back and stand up straight!” I hear something similar at the doctor’s office these days in those pre-visit weight and height checks! I try, but my back just doesn’t align with the wall the nurse expects me to stand up against as straight as I can! 😊 Getty image: 33 vertebrae A chiropractor defined the value of good posture this way, “Posture is about the arrangement of your spine, shoulders, and hips and how they interact to distribute the body’s weight efficiently… in a way that supports optimal balance and efficiency. Posture isn’t just about sitting up straight; it’s a fundamental key to overall health.” I see several “key words” in this discussion: arrangement (like spinal v...

These days, I am mourning the loss of another good friend, Pastor Joel Newton, who passed this week. The older I get, this is happening more frequently! Joel and I have known each other for more than thirty years. We met at a Bible conference that our church hosted just a few months after I returned to Illinois in the early nineties. I was immediately blessed by his quiet, approachable, and Southern gentleman temperament. He was raised in Alabama and loved to support his favorite team! “Roll Tide!” Joel and Cheryl's Retirement Celebration Joel would later be called to pastor one of our strongest churches in Peoria. He and I continued to make time for frequent lunch meetings at our half-way point in Lincoln. I considered our friendship to be a peer mentoring relationship although I think he regarded his older pastor-brother in Christ as “seasoned” enough to offer occasional mentoring suggestions. We formalized this relationship during the season when Joel undertook graduate studies ...

Our area has been in a persistent drought for most of the summer and now it is early fall. There are contractors digging up and down our street upgrading the natural gas line infrastructure. They must haul in large containers of water to enable their workers to dig and bore holes. Recently I engaged one of the project team members about how they thought everything was going. He said, “It’s so dry! We are used to finding some moisture at six feet. But it’s like rock and it slows us down!” This very dry season in our weather has many of us identifying with the Texas local who claimed that the four seasons ought to be renamed: drought, flood, blizzard, and twister! 😊 Lake Sallateeska I participated this week with a group of twenty-five pastors and church leaders for fellowship and spiritual refreshment. We met for two days of serious study and considerable “carrying on” at a Southern Illinois encampment that has a comfortable, but humble, motel unit and conference area. This year’s s...

After getting home from another graveside service yesterday, one of our grown children exclaimed, “Dad you seem to have had a lot of funerals lately!” And it is true that I have had a funeral and committal service three out of the last four weeks. Sadly, this has happened many times over the past fifty years in my pastoral ministry! This is just another season in our church life! Image: adobestock.com As we continued to discuss the frequency of these recent deaths in our church, even the funeral director remarked, “As care pastor, I’m sure you keep quite busy officiating funerals in such a large congregation!” And I agreed, while noting that our two full-time pastors are also ministering to several families dealing with loss and grief. Not all of these have been with older adults either. Our community has also dealt with the loss of some precious children. But it was one of our middle-aged sons who thoughtfully remarked with this probing question from his experience in large city chu...