When I was learning to play tennis as a young teenager, I used what most of us did back then, an aluminum racket. These were quite a bit heavier than the various ones you can get rather inexpensively today, like the graphite rackets I bought for our girls. I play with a much better material these days when I do get out to the courts, one I couldn’t have been trusted with in my early days.
When I was a kid my older brothers unrelentingly teased me. Today I don’t remember what they teased me about. I was a pretty normal kid. Maybe a little wimpy, but I couldn’t say I made a natural target for teasing, except that I was the youngest. I would retaliate by tattling about anything and everything. When I would complain about my brothers’ teasing, my mother’s reply was always the same, “Just ignore them.”
When our girls were much younger, we were grateful to be far from our hometown, if anything to be away from some of the negative influences at home, the ones I grew up with. My dad liked to tease, though he did so not maliciously. It was just his way.
In her book on writing, Anne Lamott recommends for all rookie writers to begin with childhood, specifically what school lunch was like. Write everything you can remember, she says, about school lunch. What you ate, what others ate, what you and they traded for. Everything. I suppose, as she recommends, I could begin here, and… Continue reading Serving Suggested: Thoughts on Dessert Cereal
During all of Jesus’ homilies on money and greed and God’s provision, two of his disciples received his words radically differently. One was a former tax collector, Matthew, who had enlisted with the Roman occupiers essentially to extort money from his fellow Jews. But he left his lucrative career to follow a homeless teacher. The other disciple was Judas Iscariot, whose occupation we know nothing about.
At my church, a Brethren denomination that has German Baptist roots, we hold an annual council meeting every October. These are mostly business meetings for the election of committee chairs and such, as well as for the approval of the next year’s budget. Each of us pastors is expected to give a brief summary of our particular ministry. I’ll never forget the meeting in 2010.
I’m excited to begin teaching a new financial class this week. As you’re probably aware, I’ve been for quite a while a strong proponent of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. For some reason, however, interest in the class at my church has been minimal. We offered it two years ago and had a great response, but not much since. This lack of response led me to reevaluate FPU, and I discovered that I no longer wanted to facilitate it.
