Serve by Design

I haven’t heard the local meteorologist say much about the drought monitor lately. Last season, our area was locked into some serious drought conditions, but 2026 is quite different for us. The intersection of highs and lows, along with the jet stream, is pushing an abundance of thunderstorms and higher rain totals our way! We are on the plus side (five inches so far in June!) for rain totals here in central Illinois. A Rainy Day Retreat!  We have a neighborhood pond about a half-block away from our house. Over the years, I have seen a few mallard ducks crossing our property with a half dozen ducklings imprinting behind the mother hen. It is nature, at its best, to see the next generation in motion! The frequency of these visits seems to have increased with each flood watch report this spring! It has me thinking that even the ducks are seeking higher ground! There is a good bit of relational advice in the saying, “Take the high ground!” I’ve heard something similar, “If someone g...

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...

As we were pulling out of the garage this week, I looked straight out to the street area and saw a captivating sight. One, from our family of gray squirrels, was perched and relaxing upon the fire hydrant that sits between our property and that of a neighbor’s who just happens to be a firefighter! I loved the humor in this and wanted to send him the picture that I took with a caption regarding the legality of what I was seeing. Is this legal? Illinois law is specific about fire plugs and parking. You cannot block a hydrant or park a vehicle any closer than fifteen feet in any direction. This is for obvious safety reasons. Firefighters must have access to these “Johnny Pumps” during emergencies. (If you doubt the use of this Yankee synonym for hydrant, just look it up!). I wanted to ask my firefighter neighbor about the squirrel, “Is this legal?” I’m always curious about why the neighborhood squirrels like to get up a little higher while they’re nibbling on the acorns from my oak tree...

Our Internet and cable service was interrupted three and a half hours recently from about 6:20 to 9:40 p.m. By my recollection, this degree of service interruption has never happened in the thirty years we have been with this small rural service provider! I called the company’s customer service line the next morning to inquire as to the reason for this failure of service. The lady politely said that it was due to someone outside of the company accidentally cutting a major fiber optic cable. She told me that it took the cable company all those hours to restore the service.  I explained that while we were retired and this was a minor inconvenience to us, I wondered how those with school aged children dealt with their assignments! I would learn later that our granddaughter did have an assignment due that evening and had to go to her other grandparents in Springfield to get it completed and sent to her teacher on time!  It amused me to hear what the customer service lady did. She ...