One Pastor's Perspective

No matter who you are, no matter how you live, no matter what the circumstance of your life might be, you will face heartache. That is one of the certain facts of life. How will you face it?? What will you do when disappointment and just plain hurt shoot your heart into the net like a hockey puck that is on fire?

You have two choices . . . You can face these circumstances WITH or WITHOUT God. You can try to move on your own power, within your own plan, and see what happens. Or you can trust in the Lord with all your heart. The choice really is up to you.

Now, I will warn you, trust can be tough . . . But He will never let you down!!!

Life in the fast lane: Yesterday afternoon, I made a mad dash to Fort Dorchester High School. Our WF Lady Knights beat the #1 team in our bracket to advance in the lower state playoffs. We hit the ball . . . They did not. Softball can be a simple game, and if you do not hit the ball (and if you take your opponent forgranted) you can easily lose. We drove back in that awesome thunderstorm that covered half of South Carolina last night. WOW, what a light show!! Hard trip, but well worth it.

Do our actions have consequences?? You know what I will answer to that. The Virginia Tech tragedy is a grim reminder, and there are so many what-ifs about the perpetrator. One that I think we need to address is WHAT IF HIS PEERS, in middle school and high school as well as college, had reached out to him??? Tough one to answer . . . Now we see a wave of “copy-cat threats.” Might those have been if the media had not pumped the manifesto?? We will never know.

We are having what I like to call “alarm woes” at the church right now. In three days, our alarm has alerted 3 false fire alarms. Fludds is coming out to resolve it today, but WOW . . . Those fire department guys are really starting to get mad. I finally had to head up there last night, even though there were 15 people up there trying to get it right. I was not a happy camper. On the way, I got in touch with the Fludds person on call, and he assured me he handled the situation and I needed to go home. It did not take much encouragement to get me to turn the car around. And I am really getting tired of calls from our alarm monitoring service.

There is a bright side . . . At least, this time, it was 10 pm when I was headed up there as opposed to the midnight run the previous night.

Good question . . . I had a killer blog on Monday about something I read on Foxnews about marriage that made me MAD. (I cannot remember what it was now, but the blog was awesome). Just before I finished it, I got an infamous MicroSoft blue screen, telling me something very bad happened in memory and I needed to contact my system administrator.

Since I AM my system administrator, and I laugh in the face of danger, I turned it off and turned it back on. This time a message I definitely recognized . . . Boot failure on fixed disk. In English, my hard drive would not boot the computer. I rebooted, and the same thing. The same thing. The same thing.

I turned it off for five minutes, whined about it a little, and turned it back on. IT BOOTED! I ran a chkdsk and scanned for viruses. All clean. That is generally your hard drive’s way of telling you he or she is about to depart for HD heaven. So, I started reading about hard drive cloning.

On Tuesday, I bought a new hard drive and devices to help me connect these notebook hard drives to a computer. We were going in to the forbidden area of cloning. At first, to test our madness, I cloned a piece of paper. But, alas, it was some of my tax stuff, so really nothing I wanted a clone of. Then I tried to clone a sheep . . .The British did it, and I figure if they can do it I can. But I had a hard time finding a sheep in Florence, so I had to settle for a dust bunny.

When I was confident, and ready to play Bill Gates (cuz I would never play God), I hooked up both drives on my desktop and started the free utility PC Magazine told me to use. It worked awesomely with only one glitch: Because it was the “FREE” version, it was slower than molasses. I could swear I hear Carly Simon singing Anticipation as I watched THAT ketchup bottle.

The madness took over four hours yesterday. By the time it was finished, I was in launch sequence to finish my day and get to the WF ballpark by 5. Of course, when I got there, I found out the website was wrong and the double header was going to start at 5:30. When all that was over, we cut down the outfield signs, stored them for another year, and I went to Maple Park to watch Drew finish his game.

All said and done, we got home around 10pm and I still hadn’t eaten supper. I had a small supper, in bed by 11:30, asleep by 11:40, and answering the phone at midnight because the fire alarm was going off at the church (Young Hall). But that episode needs a blog of its own.

I was back home by 12:25, and did not get back to sleep until sometime after 1:30. SO, I am writing right now on about 5 hours sleep. That could be dangerous.

And by the way: DO NOT put any Belgian chocolates near my notebook. If you ask Keith Pettigrew, he will tell you that Belgian chocolate is like “catnip for clones.” I don’t need my notebook biting anyone.

God really blessed us today. The privilege of baptizing 10 people today is something a lot of pastors would give their left arm for . . . I cannot remember the exact percentage, but there is a frightening percentage of Southern Baptist churches that baptize ZERO each year. This is our third baptism of the church year, and I have no idea how many we have baptized, but what a great day it was!!

And now, our responsibility continues. As a church family, and as friends, we now are reminded of the increased responsibility we have for these. To set the right examples. To bring them along in the right way. We celebrate days like this, but the truth is, we have reason to celebrate every day. Think about it. . .

Tagline from one of my favorite tv shows and movies, the X files. I am watching some of the movie this morning. It is interesting to see the parallels between the plot of the X files and life itself.

The Truth is out there, but it is not obvious … This old world makes truth relative to who you are and what you are. I have watched this Don Imus thing unfold, and have grown quite tired of it. What he said was wrong and offensive, and there is no question of that. But if truth is truth, NO ONE should say things like that in a public or private venue. No rappers, no comedians, no radio hosts, no politicians, no pimps, NOBODY. Don Imus just happens to be the wrong color and of the wrong occupation. I agree that he shouldn’t have said it, BUT WHY NOT GO AFTER EVERYONE ELSE who makes the same level of racial slur?

The Don Imus case makes it clear that in THIS world, truth is relative . . . There is a double-standard, and it is racially defined. God says TRUTH IS TRUTH. God’s truths are absolute, and I know He would say NO ONE should say things like that, no matter what their occupation or race might be.

The Truth really is out there, and one day every knee will bow to Him and every tongue confess that He is Lord.

The following link tells the story of Vernon Worley. He is a good friend, and was one of my closest while in seminary. Read it and see how God uses even computers to make a difference!!!

http://www.bpnews.net:80/bpnews.asp?ID=25310

PS – The fact that you cannot see Vern’s face in the picture is CLASSIC VERNON WORLEY!!!!

Yes, I visited a sort of Mecca on Monday. I had an appointment to get some recall work done on Greta the Jetta. Diana, Drew and I decided to make a beach day of it, first going to East Coast VW and then wherever our hearts desired. The best laid plans . . .

The recall work, along with a couple of VW specific things I needed done, took almost two hours. They DID wash the car, which I appreciated. I like those folks . . . they treat us well (which is why we go to the beach instead of the VW dealership in Sumter).

We then opted to go to the Coastal Grand Mall. Going in to the mall, I heard something beneath the car. Nothing the VW folks did, but I had to take a look, and low and behold, the plastic cover over the oil pan was HANGING DOWN. So there I was, in the middle of the mall parking lot, jacking the car up to try to get to the panel to take it off. I could NOT jack it up high enough to get back there. I hated to have to go back to the dealership, since I had already spent a considerable amount of money and time there earlier in the day, but I had to . . No choice.

They put it on the rack and pulled the cover off. I don’t know if it had been hit or just broke due to age, but it was hanging by a thread. The mechanic said I could opt to NOT replace it, but since it is a protector for the aluminum oil pan, and Krissy is 16 years old, I think I will put it back on . . . And, it is not cheap.

Long story short, if you bought stock on VW this week, I ALONE made it go up a considerable amount. You are welcome!

Remember that song from nursery school??? Remember how I always remind us that we are being watched, and people know who we are?? I got a taste of that medicine this afternoon, walking in to the YMCA.

My usual routine is taking Drew to school and then going to the Y before going in to the office. I was unable to do that today, and went just a little while ago. Walking in, I saw a guy who is usually there EVERY MORNING like me. I do not know his name, but recognized him. As we walked in the door, I said “Wait a minute, you are a morning guy. What are you doing here?? Did you day get as messed up as mine today?”

He said, “Yep, it sure did.” Then he said something that made me smile and think. He said, “I guess as a pastor, your days get messed up a lot.” “Yep!” I responded.

Of course, I wanted to know all about him then. Has he visited our church?? Is HE a pastor, too? A million other questions come to mind, but the one thing for sure is: He knew who I am. And he might just know who YOU are, too.

Oh, be careful little hands . . .

THAT is exactly what Tyler Self would say if only he could get on The Price is Right. I would almost buy Tyler a ticket, because I know he would win if he could get on the show. The law of averages states that as much as he watches Bob Barker and company, he would HAVE TO WIN.

We spent this Easter with family. No, not our families in the upstate, but our family here in Florence. We had lunch today with the Selfs, the McAlpins, and Anita. We don’t get to spend enough down time with each other, and boy it was fun. The food was great, but the fun was spending time with Justin, Ed, Drew, and Tyler. It helps you realize what family is all about. I love my folks and wish I could have seen them today, but I was with family. And that is a good thing, too!

Back to the Price is Right . . . Ed and I are going to the Purpose Driven Worship Conference at Saddleback. If anyone out there is willing to foot a ticket for Tyler, I will make him share half of his winnings!!!