If all goes well, Becky and I will be in Memphis visiting family about the time you read this. We should escape our upper Midwest smoke for some deep south heat and humidity – headed towards 100 degrees and 82 percent humidity in Memphis on Monday. Still, it will be warm enough in Indiana while we’re gone, with no or little rain in the forecast. Fortunately, we have a programmable sprinkler system to help keep the lawn half-way healthy. Every other morning the sprinkler heads will pop up and spray their life-giving water on the thirsty grass. 30 minutes for each section. Besides that, not only will the lawn receive its measured dose of water while we’re gone, if it does rain, the system knows not to add more moisture to the wet ground. The WR2 Wireless Sensor is an electronic rain gauge, and once a half an inch of rain falls, the irrigation system is turned off for 24 hours.  No wasted water. No sprinklers spraying while rain is falling. The idea is to keep the lawn green, to conserve water, and to save money on the water bill. It’s a nice system.

The Psalms begin with a description of the righteous person. Like our lawn that needs water in order to remain healthy in the hot summer, the righteous person needs God’s word to remain healthy in the droughts and storms of life. The righteous person is one who “delights in the law of the Lord” and meditates on it day and night. The law of the Lord, the torah, the written word of God given as a gift to the faithful. (Psalm 1:2)

The psalmist paints a picture of the righteous person as being “like a tree planted by streams of water.” (Psalm 1:3)

But unlike my lawn irrigation system with its WR2 Wireless Sensor, the righteous person needs no high-tech rain gauge to determine if there’s been enough word for the week. God’s law is not an irrigation system with pop-up sprinkler heads that spray water on a dry life for 30 minutes at a time. The Psalmist envisions a flowing stream and a tree with roots digging deep into the rich moist soil of the streambank. The tree prospers and so does the righteous person.

Our programmable irrigation system should help keep the lawn green through the next couple of months or warm and dry weather. Then we’ll have it winterized and shut down until next year. No shutting down our delight in the law of the Lord. The righteous person meditates on God’s word year-round, night and day. The flowing stream does not run dry and the righteous prosper in all they do.

It was a bad customer service experience, and I was the victim. But I don’t want to talk about my victimhood. I’ll get over it. The short version of the story is that we had made a service appointment several weeks ago with a promise that we would receive text-message reminders as the service date neared. Well, the service date came and went with no reminders and no service. In fact, the reason for what we discovered was a cancellation was quite understandable, and, after all, it was a scheduled service call, not an emergency. The frustrating lapse in customer service came after the cancellation. The first time I called about the cancellation, I was told that it couldn’t be helped, but that I might be put on a waiting list for future service, but that they had no idea whether the new service call might be in a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. Stuff happens. Yes, I was frustrated, and I am afraid my frustration showed – not in expletives or accusations but in tone.

I waited a week to make my next call, and as my frustration subsided, I vowed to myself not to add to the tension and anger that fills too much of our social interaction in our age of victimhood.

Back to customer service below. Continue reading →

The heatwave that hit much of the country the first week of July did not spare northeast Indiana. It was hot.

One of those hot days a friend asked me if I still went out to run in the warm mornings. Yes, I did (virtue signaled, please acknowledge – if virtue is its own reward, virtue seen is a close second). I am usually out at daybreak, and so avoided the worst of the high temperatures, but with a 75-degree morning the coolest part of the day, the 86-degree “real feel” put me well into the warm-running category. The 80% humidity didn’t help.

There’s a lot not to like about running in the heat, but there was something invigorating about it, too. Despite the sweat, it felt great. Was it a runner’s high from the heat causing more endorphins to be released? Were my muscles and joints more limber than on cold mornings? Or was it just the reward of my virtue? I asked Google why I was feeling so good, and I was told that one of the advantages of warm-weather running is, “increased maximum cardiac output (measured in liters/minute of blood flow) and increased blood plasma volume, both contributing to an increase in VO2max. (VO2max is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption, often referred to as the size of one’s ‘engine’.)”

Nothing makes you feel good like an increased VO2max.

This week’s morning temperatures, even “real feel,” have been back into the lower 60s. No virtue in such running and I think my VO2max may have decreased a bit. Still, there’s a lot to like about running in the cool(er) of the morn. Looks like we’ll be back to hot by the middle of next week, however. Get ready to rise, VO2max! Continue reading →

I am preaching at our church in Ossian on Sunday and very much looking forward to it. The text I was assigned (I really do like being assigned a text as opposed to being left to my own devices to choose one) is 1 Peter 2:9-17. My sermon will be the middle sermon of a three-part series on “Seeking God’s Best for the Places we Call Home.”  This past Sunday our pastor preached on “God’s Best for our Community.” Next week a visiting missionary will talk about “God’s Best for the World.” My topic is “God’s Best for our Nation.” Yes, it fits well with July 5 and the semiquincentennial (I may even say that word in the sermon – our pastor said it Sunday) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Oh, there will be a tiny bit of red, white, and blue in the sermon, but the point that comes from the 1 Peter text is that we Christians, while citizens of various earthly nations, are called to be a different kind of nation, “God’s holy nation,” Peter says. Unlike Rome’s goal to spread Caesar’s rule, our nation’s purpose is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) Continue reading →

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all that you have done;
I ponder the work of your hands. Psalm 143:5

I was in Denver last week for the General Assembly of our denomination. While it was, I think, a good meeting in terms of content and outcomes, my greatest joy, as always, was the time spent with friends. I especially enjoyed a lunchtime conversation with someone I have known for a lifetime, dinner with friends from not so long ago, and what has become an annual face to face with a former colleague now a continent away. Perhaps my greatest joy came from the group of fellow pastors staying at the same hotel and with whom I shared more than one dinner or evening of good conversation. And they’re all young – young, as in young enough to be my sons (SPECIAL BONUS: Our son Christopher, the Air Force chaplain, was among them!).

Our last evening we were sitting around a patio table on a warm Colorado evening. Food, drink, and conversation were good. As it often happens when friends are together, we began to share stories of times past, the good old days. I decided it was best for me to just sit and listen.

“Remember when your parents had to print a map from MapQuest before a trip?” one of the thirty-somethings said, sweet nostalgia in his voice. Stories of MapQuest dead ends and Garmin failures followed. Continue reading →