Serve by Design

A popular idiom in our day is for an individual to be so focused on his or her sport, creative endeavor, or work engagement, that it is observed by others that they are “in the zone!” In these early days of the baseball season, my favorite team has some exciting young players named Church, Wetherholt, Winn, and Jordan who are achieving this seemingly effortless state of hitting and fielding at such a competitive level that these guys are certainly performing “in the zone!” Focused! In the Zone! Image: stock.adobe.com Athletes aren’t the only ones who “get in the zone” of accomplishment. Our church has recently been celebrating a dozen or so young people who have just completed sixteen weeks of instruction in their confirmation class. The Sunday Bible study class, Monique and I attend, got to partner in their efforts the other evening by serving their pre-instruction pizza and salad meal. These students were in their next to last session and the topic of the evening was spiritual gift...

I stood in the driveway of Dad’s auto repair shop the day he confronted a gentleman representing the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Dad informed the man he was not interested in any such membership even though the fellow said it would only cost around $5.00 for three years. Dad ended the conversation that day by saying, “I’ll give you the five dollars if you’ll get off my driveway. I’ve got work to do!” Floating in the Dead Sea! Image credit: pixabay.com That terse response may have been what further emboldened Dad’s lifetime attitude about aging, “I ain’t old!” And he meant it! He was still showing up at the shop on this ninety-fourth birthday when I pulled up to get him to head out to our favorite restaurant for a barbecue baby back rib dinner! Over the years, we had used his birthday and mine as an annual occasion for such a celebration! I just celebrated my seventy-fifth birthday over a recent weekend that included some of my other favorites that I don’t get too ...

The NASA team, along with many of us watching the event from home, welcomed all four Artemis II astronauts home this past Friday at 7:07 CST after completing what seemed to us to be a flawless reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. The heat shield of the Orion capsule protected its precious cargo through 5,000 degrees of intensely dangerous heat at speeds of 25,000 miles per hour. Many of us whispered our prayers for the crew’s safety. Image: petapixel.com Described frequently as a “dynamic and dangerous mission,” this incredible journey to the moon did not disappoint! I was one among many other space travel enthusiasts who were wowed by the pictures the crew took, and enjoyed their cabin antics over the ten-day mission. This epic and dynamic flight, out and around the moon, required the execution of so many crucial steps and changes. Experts kept reminding us in this historic mission that “a lot of things had to go right” for this to be as successful as it appeared to be. And who could de...

I have been a space enthusiast for as long as I can remember. When I consider the actual numbers, I have been watching launches since May 1961, when Alan Shepard and the Mercury capsule lifted off powered by a Saturn V rocket for that first American suborbital mission from the Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida. I was barely ten years old, but I was thrilled to join millions of others, from my generation, in following the space program through radio and television coverage. When I moved to Sharpstown, Texas, in southwest Houston to pastor in 1984, I lived in the same suburban community where the seven original Mercury astronauts were given starter homes back in their day. Our kids went to Ed White Elementary, the neighborhood school, that honored the memory of Edward Higgins White, born in San Antonio, who lost his life along with two fellow astronauts, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee. The terrible accident happened in 1967 when a fire broke out in the cabin during a pre-launch te...