Ecclesiastes 12:10

  Genghis Khan was a brilliant military leader who united the Mongol tribes and created a fearsome army with himself at its head. He ruled an empire that stretched across Asia, from the wintry woods of Ukraine to the Eastern shores of Korea. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire.     In 1207, his men swept across the Gobi Desert to attack China, but they were halted at the walled city of Voloha. Here the hard-riding Mongols discovered that their cavalry tactics were virtually useless in attacking a heavily fortified city. There seemed to be no way to defeat the city from the outside.   Khan offered to end the siege in exchange for an unusual tribute: one thousand cats and ten thousand sparrows.   The request was unusual but rather a cheap price for security and seemingly benign, so they decided to comply.  It turned out to be a terrible choice.   Shortly after they delivered th...

  Bobby Jones was one of the most important men in the history of golf.  His skill, his accomplishments, his course design, his attitude, and sportsmanship are legendary. In its eulogy for Bobby Jones, the New York Times wrote, “ He is the idol for those who love the game for what there is in it, not for what they can get out of it.   I wonder if the same can be said for us in relation to the church.  Do we love what there is in it or what we can get out of it?   Sometimes, it easy to see that attitude. Those that only show up for potlucks or have their hand out at every service.  The church is only a place to provide for my physical needs.   Other times it is more subtle.  Those that come for the ‘entertainment’ factor. Give my kids something to do. Provide emotional support. Make me feel good.   Do we love Christ’s Church or what we get out of it?   Don’t get me wrong there are great benefits for being part ...

   Ok, I’ll admit even I am enamored by irritainment.  What is irritainment you ask?  It is the television that insults your intelligence, makes little to no sense, and has no redeeming factors, yet you still watch it to see how bad it is.  It is the person who boils your blood with the things they post online, yet you read every one of them.  It is the celebrity you despise but know every fact about.  Irritainment is the entertainment and media spectacles that are both annoying and compulsively watchable.   And the saddest part is I know I’m not the only one!  There just too much of this today for all of us not to be a little bit taken by it.  But why?  We don’t like to be annoyed, so why then do we choose to do it?   I think it goes back to the logical fallacy stuck in all our brains that if we just find something we are superior to then that somehow elevates us. We watch because we can look down on it from our per...

   I’ll be the first to tell you I am not the biggest fan of social media in general and Facebook more specifically. I've never taken it too seriously [i] but I can grudgingly admit I see some of its appeal. Facebook is a neat way to connect to old friends and find out about the goings on in people’s lives. Still I wonder if some folks do anything else with their day! Their lives seem to be consumed by it. It may be a tad self-indulgent and a time waste but  is it really doing any harm?    A recent report shows that Facebook is at the root of a major problem in our country: divorce. A third of all divorce filings in 2011 contained the word "Facebook," according to Divorce Online. And more than 80 percent of U.S. divorce attorneys say social networking in divorce proceedings is on the rise. Three years ago, 20 percent of divorce filings contained the word "Facebook”, by 2011, it had risen to 33 percent, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Law...

      Over the years I have noticed a strange paradox with preachers.  You can often tell if a man was not prepared for a lesson when they go too long.  You would think unprepared speaker would run short but in practice it doesn't work that way.  I've heard speakers that “run out of soap” mid lesson but then ramble and repeat to fill the time.  Maybe the lesson just seems longer since his thoughts lose cohesion and he begins to veer off course.  Preachers (this one included) often make the mistake of thinking that if they are speaking, it automatically must be worth listening to.  But when a preacher hasn't put in proper study and considers his words carefully, it ends up just being babble.      It seems to me lots of preaching in our religious world today is just that, a bunch of babble.  There are a lot of popular sayings and stories but not a lot of Bible and personal ...

   You may have heard the story of the three teens that shot a random person because they were “bored”. Apparently, three boys ages 15, 16 and 17 told officers they were bored and that they followed a random person out for a jog and killed him for " the fun of it ”.  As shocking as this story was, it came doubly so for me because the location was my hometown Duncan, Oklahoma.  It has always been a typical safe small town.  You would never think anything like this could happen there.  To see the streets you grew up driving down, now featured on the national news as a crime scene is startling.   As I have read the stories, I still can’t get over the motive for the crime; they were bored .  I grew up in Duncan and while it isn’t the center of entertainment, I always had something to do.  I can’t imagine anyone ever being so bored that murder would be the solution.  I have noticed lately however, how many people are constantly declar...

Crazy Hypothetical* If you had to give up one form of entertainment (TV, Music, Movies, Books, Sports Etc.) completely or you would die, which one would you choose? You can’t cross platform, like watch TV on your computer, or wait till a book comes out as a movie. Whatever you choose it must be completely cut off, can’t hear music in an elevator, can read an instruction manual, or talk about the big game. What would be your choice? What would be your last choice? What choice would be the hardest to avoid? What choice would change your life the most? What choice would isolate you the most? What does this say about entertainment in our lives? * Crazy Hypothetical is a mental game that gives you a conditional choice that gets you thinking about a subject. I used these for several years as discussion starters in Bible class. The best ones can’t be answered “correctly”.  This one is a great way to focus on how much popular media is in our lives and how the negative aspects o...