By noon on September 11, 2001, we were just beginning to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. We could not be certain if it was still happening or not. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, Flight 93 in a field outside Shanksville, for those of us in Beaver, Pennsylvania, less than two hours away.

Jeff, the pastor at First Presbyterian Church, two blocks from our own Park Presbyterian Church, and I talked to each other, as good friends often do, and I can’t remember who said it first, but we knew, without much conversation, that the people of our churches and our little town needed to be together; to pray together and worship together, to come into the presence of God together. We would gather that night, that night of September 11, at Park Presbyterian because our sanctuary was the largest among all the churches. Continue reading →

Church dinners. They are the insider’s best dream and the outsider’s ultimate nightmare. Whose idea were they, anyway?

Church dinners, potlucks, covered-dish suppers: the insider knows the difference and what to expect. The insider knows about scoping out the all the dishes before beginning to load up on the ones at the front end of serving tables. They know the dangers of soggy paper plates and what happens to a jell-o salad when it gets too close to a hot three-bean casserole.

Insiders know that timing is everything. You don’t want to arrive too early for fear of being the first one at a table and having to watch others who arrive later look your way and then sit somewhere else.  You don’t want to arrive too late, because not only is the food hopelessly picked over, the only seats left are next to people with whom you’d really rather not have to make small talk. Continue reading →

About that eighty-one cent check.

Each month we pay our mortgage company the agreed-upon interest and principal on our home loan plus some extra they put into an escrow account to pay our property taxes when they come due. Many if not most of us do the same.

Once a year the mortgage company recalculates the amount to be withheld for the escrow account to be sure there is not too little and not too much in the reserve when it comes time to pay the taxes. In our case the readjustment is typically small, sometimes a little up and sometimes a little down.

It turns out that there is a law, probably a good law, which forbids the mortgage company, in our case one of those too-big-to-fail banks, from withholding too much money; over withholding to their advantage and our disadvantage. From what I can tell, the law allows only small margin of error for the banks when they calculate the monthly escrow amount. They really should not have more of our money than they reasonably need. That’s why we received the check for **ZERO AND 81/100 DOLLARS**. Continue reading →

The appointment was for 11:15. I expected to be in and out in maybe fifteen minutes. All the doctor was going to do was confirm the lab results and say, “See you in a year.” In fact, that is exactly what happened, except for the fifteen minutes part. Oh, I may have been with the him for 90 seconds, but I was in the waiting room for nearly 90 minutes. Sure, pass on your “I can top that” story.

The staff was understanding and when I finally saw him and before he said anything else, the doctor apologized. The fact of the matter is that he was not off saving a life or counseling a distraught patient who had just received very bad news. The fact of the matter is that he is a really good doctor. He takes time with his patients and listens to their concerns and answers their question and likes to talk. At 11:15 he was at least an hour behind schedule. For sure, I will go back a year from now because I like a doctor who takes time with his patients and answers their questions. Even if I have to wait for over an hour to hear that everything is fine and see you next year, I’ll go back.

But I hate the wait. Continue reading →

It’s going to be a miserably hot Saturday, but a group of a dozen or so LPC folks are going to brave the heat to join others from the Hunting Park neighborhood in north Philadelphia and those from other supporting churches in the first of two consecutive Saturday cleaning days at Hunting Park Christian Academy. We’ll paint and scrub and mop and sweep and do our best to help put the old building that houses HPCA in good shape for the opening of school on September 1.

LPC people know the HPCA story. For seventeen years, HPCA’s mission has been to “provide a quality, affordable, Christian education that celebrates a diverse community and leads children to know and serve the Lord.” About 200 students, pre-K through eighth grade, attend the school, which is housed in that old church building (where an active church worships on Sunday). Continue reading →