Ecclesiastes 12:10

  Y ou might have heard about the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Its premise is that prolific actor Kevin Bacon can be connected in shared acting gigs to almost any in Hollywood in less than seven turns.  For example, Keanu Reeves was in "Speed" with Sandra Bullock. Bullock was in "Practical Magic" with Nicole Kidman. Kidman was in "Eyes Wide Shut" with Tom Cruise. Cruise was in "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon. It's a fun game for movie nerds to flex their knowledge muscles.   However, you may have fewer degrees than Kevin Bacon.   Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Flower found that for most people they are interconnected to over a thousand people by at least three degrees of relationship.   A personal impact and influence to over a thousand people. So, your actions have a ripple effect. The things you do don’t just affect your son but your son’s best friend mother.   Consider then your potential impact for the cause of Chri...

  Some people speak because they have something to say. Others speak because they have to say something.   We live in a world that has to comment. When we see folks do or say what we think they ought not, we feel the need to rebuke, redress, and return volley.   We see how that is working out for us.     It was tough for Ezekiel as well. He lived in a day when it seemed everyone had lost their mind. As a man of God, he wanted to set them straight but God did something to him. He shut his mouth for him: "Moreover, I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be mute and cannot be a man who rebukes them, for they are a rebellious house. "But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you will say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD.' He who hears, let him hear; and he who refuses, let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house . Ezekiel 3:26-27     God knew Ezekiel would want to throw in his two cents but...

  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...

  In 1939, a film called “Code of the Secret Service” hit the theaters. It was one of a series of movies about a tough-guy Secret Service agent named Brass Bancroft.  It wasn’t much of a hit. Even its star considered it one of the worst films he ever made. But for a ten-year-old boy from Miami Florida named Jerry Parr it was inspirational. After making his father take him several times to see the flick, he made up his mind that one day he was going to become a Secret Service agent. And that is exactly what he did.   Forty-two years later, Jerry Parr found himself living out his childhood dream as part of the security forces guarding the President of the United States. It was a seemly ordinary March day until a gunman named John Hinckley appeared and began firing.  Parr dove to protect the President and pushed him into the waiting car that immediately sped off. When Parr noticed the President coughing up blood, a result of a pierced lung from a ricocheting ...

  Researchers asked students to volunteer for an experiment in which they completed a word-based task.  A simple enough job that consisted of constructing grammatically correct sentences from lists of words.   However, unbeknownst to the students, the experiment didn’t care much about their syntax or creativity and it hadn’t ended when they left the room.  As the student exited down the corridor, the time it took them to walk down to the exit was measured surreptitiously.   Students whose lists had contained words associated with old age (like retired or wrinkled) walked more slowly, by 13 percent than those whose word lists were neutral. The words they had been exposed to measurably changed the speed at which they walked. He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will suffer harm. Proverbs 13:20  I think most of us at times have said it or at least thought it; “I can watch this movie and block out the n...

  Let me suggest a new lyric for an old favorite song: Oh be careful little finger what you click Oh be careful little finger what you type For the Father up above Is looking down in love Oh be careful little one what you post   We wouldn’t lie to our friends but we might post a story that’s not quite true.  We don’t gossip but we share the “news” stories that reek of it.  We would never insult or demean a person to their face but we ‘troll’ and ‘flame’ online.  We would never boast or be vain but we will Instagram our face and possessions.   The Internet often fools us into thinking the screen is a mask, which obscures what we are doing. That mask is an illusion, rather than conceal it reveals. As Oscar Wilde said “ Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth .”   We need to be very careful how we participate in this growing cyber world. Many well-meaning peo...

    Everybody has one. That person you call a friend that you wish you didn’t.  The one in your group that will ruin everyone else good time when they are not happy. The person at you side in all the pictures of your life you regret.  The lighting rod of most the drama in your life.  The friend that drags you along with every bad decision they make, every bridge they burn and every problem they cause.  You know the friend that you “hate”.  If they are so bad, then why are we still friends with them?     Maybe you just have too much history. Maybe it feels impossible to sever your ties to them. Maybe we feel responsible for them and leaving them behind would give us too much guilt.  Whatever the reason, we keep them in our company no matter what the damage is.  It doesn't just work that way with friends either. Sometimes it is habits. Sometimes is a place. It’s that thing in your life you know ...

Monday Morning Scattershooting while wondering why people think I'm being condescending. It’s just that I'm too busy thinking about far more important things they wouldn't understand.     I have to admit I am getting a little tired of Facebook.  To be honest I never much cared for it. [1]   Now however the noise is getting a little overwhelming.  Too many opinions, too much information, too much bickering, too much meddling, too many busybodies.  For some reason, people can’t handle making comments.  I now avoid the comment section on any website. Not that there are not good point in some discussions, but to get to them you have to wade thru so much junk.  I still can’t believe how people don’t think about what they are saying in public forums.  Maybe it is the false mask we think we have online.  We will say things to a screen that we would never say to person.  As Oscar Wilde put it, “ Man is least himself when h...

Crazy hypothetical: Words That Could Change The World* You have a machine that can send a twitter length message (140 Characters) to any person at any time in history. The person receiving the message will not believe it is from the future (even if you try telling them) and will be delivered in a way that will seem ordinary to them. The message will be treated like any other message the person might receive, so the more famous or influential person that receives it the more likely that might ignore it. (So if you send a message to Abraham Lincoln telling him not to go to Ford’s theater, it will be put in with all the hundreds of other messages he received in a day and he might not see it till it is to late.) The machine will only work once. Who do you send a message to and why? What effect do you think it will have? *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...

Crazy hypothetical: Fame is Fleeting * You have a choice between forms of fame. #1. You can be famous for a specific role (like a spokesperson for a national company; i.e. Flo from Progressive, or the Maytag Man) Everyone will know you (recognize) but not know who you are (name, anything else about you) This role will make you a good amount of money and comfortable lifestyle but not super rich. This will be all you will ever do but people will remember you after your gone #2. You will be infamous, everyone will know you but for something negative. (Think Steve Bartman or reality show “villain”) You will have a mark in history that no one will ever forget and everyone will know all about you. This role won’t make you much money and be the sum of your career. #3. You will be “That guy” the person that has lots of roles in lots of movie and shows but is never the lead actor (sometimes referred to character actors). People might recognize you but not know your name. ...

       A few weeks ago the nation was in an uprising over a severe national problem, the replacement refs in the NFL.  After several weeks of bad calls culminating in game deciding “missed” call, fans were fit to be tied. As I listened to the throng of opinions, one that I heard disturbed me the most.  The commentator said that while everyone was upset with the league, the buzz it had created was good.  As he quipped, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”.       That is not the only time I have heard this strategy promoted. We have seen in lots of forms of entertainment. Starlets leek their immoral trysts to jump-start careers, Bad boy rockers supplement their image with bad behavior. Political commentators say outrageous things.  All trying to gain publicity by any means necessary.       It might even work, in the short term. What they do not realize however is that the ...

              Salt isn’t what it used to be.  Today it is the enemy of the healthy eater and the heart doctor. They all will tell you the dangers about having too much salt in your diet.  In the ancient world however salt was a most valuable commodity.  In the book of Ezra those that worked for the king were described literally as “eating the salt of the palace” (4:12) and salt was used as a form of payment (7:22). Many think our modern word salary came from a Latin phrase describing the practice of giving Roman soldiers payment in the form of salt.  Salt was not only used as a flavoring but it was essential, in the days before refrigeration, as a preservative. In fact, there was a Roman saying, "There is nothing more useful than sun and salt”.             Jesus refers the nature of salt in his day in Matthew 5:13 when he says " You are the salt of the ...

   I love parody songs. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it is basically when someone rewrites the lyrics of a popular song to some thing really silly. They are just harmless fun to get a laugh. The only problem is once I hear the parody song; the original is ruined for me. As I was driving home a few days ago the old George Jones song “She thinks I still care” was on the radio, but no matter how hard I tried I could not get the chorus of the parody song “She think I steal cars” out of my head. I had probably only heard that parody once but it was still stuck in my head. Just a sample of the parody  had warped the original for me.    This is an example of how sometimes even a little bit of wrong can spoil a good thing. So many times we think that we can overcome the little bit of bad that is in so much of the little thing of this world. We justify by saying “A little bit of bad language in the movies OK, I just ignore it” or “I won’t participate i...

     One of my favorite things in youth ministry is picking up and taking kids home. I enjoy it because it gives me a chance to visit with the young people. I have noticed however that many times they are more an influence on me than I am to them. For example, once of the kids happen to mention something about a hot ham and cheese sandwich. All during the devotion, I began to think how good a hot ham and cheese sandwich sounded. When I came home you can guess what I fixed myself for dinner. When Linda asked me what I was having I told her. She said “Why did you fix that?” I responded, “I don’t know, it just sounded good.” Not until later did I remember the earlier conversation. It goes to show how we can be subtlety influenced by those we are with.      The Bible speaks of at least two ways that those around us can influence us, one positive and one negative. First Corinthians 15:33 says, "Do not be deceived: Bad company corrupts good morals ....