Serve by Design

In a recent article, I mentioned buying a bread cutting guide for my daughter. It was inexpensive, but much appreciated. She immediately texted back her gratitude with this exclamation, “Best gift ever!” That may seem to be a little over the top until you try your hand in processing several loaves of crusty sourdough bread with just a cutting board and bread knife! If you desire uniformity and you want the slices to be even, you need a guide to accomplish the task! A guide for perfect bread slicing! I confess to being a perfectionist and so does my bread-making daughter. She cares enough about what her loaves look like to put a heart at the top of the loaf as a sign of pride and affection. Since her married name, Hartman, has the sound of “heart” in it, this final decorative touch becomes the perfect seal of approval! As human beings, we can speak of perfection only in relative terms. Only God is perfect in every way! That’s why He gives us His Word, the Bible, to be our guidebook. W...

We recently had a special ministry event at the church. Members prepared and delivered a quick lunch to some of our community’s first responders. After I had gone throughout the building scoping out the preparations and chatting up some of the servers, I headed home. As I reached the entrance and exit drive just off the parking lot, I saw an unusual sight. The job's not done yet! 😒 Image: png.com I thought at first that one of our pastors was trying to move a very large rock that was in the median all by himself. I stopped, rolled down my window, held up my phone and said, “Now that’s a pic for my next blog!” I had misunderstood the situation! The pastor laughed and explained that he was pulling weeds, while stationed at the church entrance to direct visitors toward the event serving area. I set my four-way flashers and got out of the car to chat with him for a little while about those pesky weeds. We commiserated together about the copious amounts and different kinds of weeds t...

It was almost bedtime when our son, Marc, casually appeared at our doorway that Wednesday evening, August 8, 2018 at nine o'clock. We were on summer vacation and visiting with his family in Georgetown, Texas. He said, "Dad, I want you and mom to come outside for a minute." I was more than a little curious. Soon it became apparent that Monique and I were joining others on planet earth who were stargazing and viewing the heavens at a  truly timely occasion when a unique phenomenon was occurring in the Milky Way. On this special night, we were able to clearly view four of the six planets that were visible to the naked eye for those observing in the southern states. It was, in many ways, a miracle of the perfect convergence of planetary alignment and clear night skies that synced with our earnest attention and the use of an app on Marc's smart phone that served as our "telescope." Venus was so clear it was almost blinding in its radiance. Mars was sharp...