Keep Your Hands Out of Your Pockets!

When I was in college preparing to be a teacher, we were required to visit schools and observe real-life classroom instruction. I remember visiting a shop class in a school just south of Auburn. The instructor was an older gentlemen not far from retirement with a lot of hard-earned wisdom. I never forgot his instruction to his students, “When we go into the shop, I better not see any of you with your hands in your pockets. You never go on a worksite with your hands in your pockets. Be ready to work and be ready to protect yourself. You hear me! Keep your eyes open and keep your hands out of your pockets! I better not catch any of you with your hands in your pockets!”

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Song of My Soul

Song of My Soul

How could I say that I have accepted Jesus, chose Yahweh to be my God, and Holy Spirit to fill me? As if I was shopping for a god and thought they were a great bargain.

No—the realization that He chose me. He came to me in my brokenness, revealing His completeness and perfection. At the time, I could not have articulated these words, but in retrospect I can see Him coming to me, instead of me going to Him.

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Yesterday’s Door is Shut!

Regret is a bad dream on a never-ending replay loop. I think most of us have some of those past events or choices of which we regret. “I wish I hadn’t done that!” or “I wish I would have made a better choice there!”

I know this is a rhetorical question, but I must ask it anyway, “Can we go back and change it?” Of course, the answer is an emphatic, “NO!” There is nothing we can do to change the decision or the action of the past. That door is shut and cannot be opened.

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Something To Live For

If you look around to the craziness around you, you could easy get depressed and say, “What’s the use?” People in every era and in most lives lived could say at one point, “What’s the use?”

Throughout every point of history there have been people who have given up even though they had it relatively easier than most people around them. The difference was their lack of hope and purpose.

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Tag Along With Me to Jail

I have been involved in local jail ministry for the most part of thirty years. It is not glorious work. It is not scary as some might think. I have never felt threatened and most of the guys are usually respectable and appreciative.

The jail we visit is set up like a dormitory with bunks on two sides and tables in the middle. Lately, our jail ministry team has been alternating weeks and I have been going alone twice per month.

There is nothing fancy of what we do. No fanfare, no bells and whistles. Just an old buzzard of a preacher telling the story of Jesus to a bunch of jail birds.

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How to Make Sense of Nonsense?

The short answer to my title question is, “You can’t!” We all have spent time racking our brains about something so absurd and coming to no conclusion to our question of “Why?”

A stranger with whom you have no quarrel keys your car with a long scratch. You watch the news where a young child was playing in their room when a stray bullet sends the child to Heaven and the perpetrator to jail and perhaps to Hell. The horrors of war fill our screens and you and I collectively scream, “WHY??”

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Angel Feathers

On my first trip to Haiti, a family loaned me their video camera. At that time, they were extremely expensive, but they insisted I take it. Unknown to me, the camera had a loose screw on the eye piece. In the middle of about a hundred school kids or more, it fell to the ground. This little fellow about seven years old tugged on my pant leg and held it up to me. God gave me an angel feather.

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Ingredients for the Joy Cake

Well, it’s the week after Christmas and days before the calendar flips to a new year. We are into winter regardless of the temperature and for many folks it is a dreary time of year. Presents have been opened, decorations will soon be stowed away, the daylight is short, and a new year looms just days away. The hype that made many happy a few days ago has wilted in the wind.

Being happy does not necessarily make us joyful. Happiness depends on a happening and when the happening ceases many get the mulligrubs. Joy is a peaceful and deep contentment that does not sway like the happiness barometer. Joy and her twin sister Peace swing from the same tree.

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Above Ground and Limber (Be Thankful)

Some years back, I called to check on a longtime friend; he answered the phone and I asked him how he was doing. His answer, “Well brother, I’m above ground and limber!” [Thanks Bro. William Borden for that one-liner; I have often used it since that day.] After the two years we all have been through, if you are reading this—you got through it. Yep, you are “above ground and limber!” Be Thankful!

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