Church Blog (Page 98)

Walmart is bringing the hammer down on late truckers. They have told their suppliers to deliver on-time and in-full (OTIF) 98% of the time or else be fined. Suppliers have become used to a 70% (OTIF) standard. Lateness is a scourge of our time. We expect others to be on time for us but being 15 minutes late is something we expect others to allow without fuss. Jesus’ parable of the 10 bridesmaids in Matthew 25 is a cautionary tale…

There is a silly song by Irving Berlin that tells the story of a small business owner on his deathbed. The first verse has the doctor speaking of the imminent doom of the old man. So, since time is so short, the son is called and instructed by his father to fulfil his dying wish; so he can die with a smile on his face. He tells his son that he must go out and collect all the outstanding debts…

I have a friend from south of Auckland who I invited to stay at our home a few years ago. He meekly asked about his dog, that was traveling with his family. I replied, “Love me, love my dog,” and I believe, with those few borrowed words, I had just added a second life-time to our friendship. Such is the nature of people and their pets. Pets are God’s ultimate unconditional love benefactors. Naturally the Bible says, “The righteous care…

Though I had long since left home, I always felt that my mother had this default setting where she treated me like a nice nine-year-old son. Of course, I didn’t mind, mothers are like that. I celebrated when marriage seemed to add a few years of maturity in her estimation, but it wasn’t until I became a parent that I graduated to adulthood in her eyes. Donna’s arrival in 1995 ushered in change for everyone around me. From that first…

Peter Craig used to say, “There’s nothing like having a good wife.” Then, after a strategic pause he’d add, “There’s nothing like having a bad one, too.” I am blessed and happy to say that I enjoy the former and, praise God, that I have never experienced the latter. When I went down on one knee and proposed, I received the answer that every love-struck man desires. And later at our wedding in 1994, with those two immortal words, my…

I remember watching Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series. If my memory serves me correctly, he used to break into a speech, where he would preach about man’s inhumanity to…(I guess)…Aliens. Anyway, where would TV Space shows be if they couldn’t capture the imagination with thoughts of interacting with life beyond our plant? But imagine is all that we can do. So far, manned space travel has hardly left our front yard. I’m excited to see…

Someone commented the other day that they had observed that various cultures seem very comfortable when wearing face masks at all times. I simply reminded them that it probably has to do with the pollution they endure in their home countries. If it is true that 92% of the world’s population breathes dirty air, you have to wonder if you are among the 8% who have the good fortune to be able to breathe easy. Much time and effort has…

Remember that ‘shoe lady’ from the Philippines? Yes, it was Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines who burst onto our 1986 TV screens and into our conversations about her rather excessive shoe collection. It was then that she and her family fled the country and sought political asylum in Hawaii. Left behind in their Malacañang Palace were 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, and 3000 pairs of shoes. But this was all just a drop in…

Bad habits will wreck your life. A grumpy disposition is a series of poorly controlled emotions parading as righteous indignation. Debt is an embarrassing lack of fiscal foresight and lateness a clear sign of poor priority procedures. If you are offended already, I don’t blame you. Those of you who have had a two year old or 2 in your life, know that feelings, money and time are usually subordinate to forces beyond your control. For those of you who…

I believe it was President Trump who dubbed Kim Jong-un ‘Rocket Man.’ The North Korean President was determined to show off his country’s space-age missile technology, despite its inability to impress. North Korea’s isolation from its southern sister state hasn’t exactly impressed anyone either. Since 1953 the two countries have been in a Mexican Standoff. Though South Korea has developed into a world leader in technology and finance, North Korea ever teeters on the edge of starvation. One of the…