Serve by Design

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...

Our beloved granddaughter, Eloise, has a growing collection of various-sized Squishmallows. She has given a name and voice to each one. This is “Eloise being Eloise” who delights to use her creativity and imagination to entertain family, friends and of course, herself. These soft, plush stuffed animals, food items and other cute things in her menagerie surround her at home and some even travel with her to school, church, restaurants and playdates with friends. When Eloise can’t be in certain places at times because of her busy schedule, she requests that her daddy, Matt, take her stuffed friends on road trips to greet family in her place. So, sometimes you will see an extra passenger belted in the rear seat of his car! We enjoy how Matt relishes these opportunities to introduce Eloise’s “squishy friends” to us and as a result, we know by experience how charming and comforting each of them are to embrace! Of course, we are "required" to document these occasions with a pictur...

   A  few months ago and before the really cold temperatures of winter, I had two days of issues with my 2015 Buick Lacrosse. On both occasions, the interior audio quit working. I had no sound from the radio, no safety tones in the cabin, and I couldn’t hear the turn signals working. No clicking, songs, and audible warnings about seat belts or doors ajar. These episodes mysteriously disappeared after turning the ignition off and restarting once again. I knew something was wrong, but I thought I would wait until the symptoms didn’t go away. Having grown up in a mechanic’s home, I learned to value maintaining an automobile. But I also knew that it is nearly impossible to solve a car problem if it does not show the symptoms while in the repair shop! 😕 Photo: shop.advanceautoparts.com Several days later we knew we had a big problem! Monique and I were both surprised and amused as we sat in our seats and tried to start the car for a short trip across town. The first thing tha...