Classic City Rev

          I’ve been dealing with the death of my peers a good bit in the last few weeks.   I’ve lost three colleagues in ministry, a friend from the neighborhood of my youth and a classmate of mine from the University of Georgia.   Each of these persons I would say died young.   Of course the older I get the older young seems to be.   None of them died from accidents but rather from natural causes.               I t has left me wondering if this how the remaining years of my life will be.   Will life become like a bucket with a slow leak with my friends and loved one’s simply leaving drip by drip?               Then, to be perfectly honest, the fact that my peers are passing from the bonds of earth has caused me to contemplate my own mortality.   Further, after having a heart procedure a couple of years ago and my wife having a heart attack earlier in the year we have been making some of our marital decisions based on what we need to do “should something happen” to one of us.  

I went back to my hometown of Macon today to offer words of hope and comfort at the funeral service of a friend.  I grew up in the same neighborhood as Beverly and we attended the same church in our formative years. The last few years had not been kind to her.  She had lost both of legs due to medical issues but that did not stop her from being an inspiration to many.  At her service today I remarked that "She did not let her condition define who she was." This leads me to ask a question of all of us and that is "What defines you?"  For some it is a profession or occupation.  For some is a family name.  For some it is the size of a bank account.  For some it is some accomplishment.  For a few identity it might be found in one's physical appearance.  There are some that might be defined by a medical condition. At his baptism the voice of God told Jesus that he was God's "Beloved Son."  For the Christian it is our baptism that defines us. 

Human beings first walked on the moon fifty years ago.   It’s surprising what I remember about that event.   I even grasped the importance of the event or at least I grasped as much as a seven year old kid could grasp the importance of anything.   (I will pause for a moment and allow you to do the math to figure out my age.) I remember very distinctly the weekend of the moon landing because my Dad took my sister and me to watch the Braves. I remember that we stayed in an Atlanta hotel rather than driving back to Macon after each game.   I remember my mom hung back at the hotel on Friday night and didn’t go to the game but went to the Saturday night game.   I even remember the Braves swept a double header from the San Diego Padres on Friday night and beat the Padres in a single game on Saturday.   On Sunday, we actually skipped church, something we never did, and drove home to watch the moon landing on television. So it was on that Sunday evening we settled dow

If one saw my Facebook status Sunday evening or  happened to be present in worship at Tuckston United Methodist Church on Sunday morning then one is well aware of what happened.  For those who are not aware of what took place, I share my Facebook report with you: " It finally happened today in my thirty-second year of pastoral ministry. After many close calls and near misses, I spilled the communion cup and I don't mean a small spill; I mean Exxon Valdez--B.P. oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico spill. It was one of those things I knew would happen some day---today some day came." Yes, I spilled the communion chalice on Sunday.  It was a mess.  Grape juice oozed and flowed everywhere.  What amazed me was the reaction of many of the Tuckston parishioners after the service.  Quite a number of them commented on the fact that it was a very meaningful communion service. I thought at first they were simply being kind to their bumbling pastor.  I thought what they really meant

There are lessons that we learn in life that upon learning them cause us to wish that we had learned them earlier.    There are times that we can look back at our lives and trace the development of our learning and see the milestones in the learning process but there are times that we don’t realize the learning that is taking place while we are in the midst of it. This is not to say that even after our “aha moments” or our paradigm shifts that we quit learning.   However, as we learn and as we grow we can certainly see that we view things through a different prism. The great lesson that has been made manifest in my life, which took me over fifty years to learn, is the matter of personal autonomy.   To say it in a more simple way it has taken me over fifty years to learn that I am in charge of me. To learn this lesson I had to come to terms with the fact that while I am in charge of me; truly the only thing life that I can control is me.   I cannot control all of my cir