Classic City Rev

I know there have been other weeks in which the cumulative effect of the week's news left me with a feeling of sorrow as great as the sorrow that I am feeling today.  Yet, as I sit here on a Saturday morning reflecting on the week that has been, my heart is as heavy as I can remember it being. This week saw the 100,000th death from COVID-19 in our country.  100,000, that is more than the capacity of Sanford Stadium.  100,000 is the approximate number of United Methodists that gather each week for worship in North Georgia.  In just a few short months, 100,000 of us dead.   Perhaps the rate of death has peaked.  However, the thing about any virus is that it doesn't go away.  It is still lurking in the shadows waiting to rear its ugly head.  We can't drop a bomb on the virus and have it go away.  Maybe a vaccine and treatment will be forthcoming  but until then we are stalked by a silent killer. Yet, our week was just gett...

As a native Georgian, high school football has always been a part of the background music of my life.  I played the game very poorly when I was in high school.  I later coached the game during my time as a teacher.  I've done some volunteer coaching after becoming a pastor and for nine years was the public address announcer for a local high school team. One thing about attending a high school football game is that one declares which team one supports when one enters the stadium.  One either sits on the home side or the visitors side of the stadium. A person generally supports the team that is represented by the side of field on which one is sitting.  Some high school stadiums even arrange the parking lots so the visitors and the home fans can park separately.  So it is that at high school football games one has to pick a side. That works great for high school football.  It doesn't necessarily work for life. However, in the polarized culture in...

I write these words on the day before Mothers Day.  On the one hand Mother's Day is day of joy and celebration.  Yet, if we are totally honest Mothers Day often amplifies the tragic circumstances of family life that haunt many persons.  So while we celebrate and venerate our mothers let us not forget those for whom the day is painful. Those acknowledgements made, I cannot deny the powerful impact mothers have had on my life, beginning with my own.  Life was not always easy for my mother.  She was born in the twenties and raised in the teeth of the Depression.  A world war came and she met her life's love, a strapping young sailor who was home on leave after the end of the war.    They married and a little over a year later, she gave birth to their first child while he was in the South Pacific with the occupation forces cleaning up some of the mess the war had made.   She had begun working for Southern Bell.  Believe it ...

Over the course of human history there have been movements from one type of economic activity to another.  We know humanity in it's earliest forms primarily relied on hunting and gathering as it's main source of existence. Over time humankind learned that it could manipulate the  growing process and agriculture became the primary economic activity.   Eventually manufacturing, arose and while existing along side agriculture for centuries it always came in second as a society's primary source of economic activity.  Yet, with the onset of the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries manufacturing would become the drive of  the economies of many societies, including our own.  Even today we often speak of industrialized nations as opposed to nations whose economies are more agrarian. In the late twentieth century and into the present century the focus of our economy changed yet again.  Now we find ourselves i...

This week Governor Brian Kemp relaxed some of the restrictions on businesses which had been asked to close during the COVID-19 crisis.  I don't know how many folks were sitting at home itching to go bowling during this time, but now they can.  People can also get a haircut at a barber shop, get a massage and get a tattoo if they so chose. The reaction to the Governor's moves has caused quite a stir among many folks.  Most of the reaction that I have seen on my Facebook feeds and Twitter feeds has been negative.   Ironically, the President, while encouraging those who are protesting shutdowns in other states by tweeting out statements such as "Liberate Michigan" and "Liberate Minnesota," has been critical of our governor for allowing people to go bowling.  I offer no commentary on that other than to say I find it a bit paradoxical.  I also offer no commentary on the wisdom of the Governor's decision.  I don't have all the facts and inf...

I hear the word normal used a lot these days.  Not only do I hear it, I say it and think it. "When things get back to normal," is a phrase I use when I think of something I would like to do in the future but can't do right now in this time of shelter-in-place and social distancing.  Other times I wonder aloud in frustration, "Will things ever get back to normal?" In any time of change and distress we often wish for things to return to the way they were. A hundred years ago, a Senator from Ohio by the name of Warren G. Harding ran for President of our country.  The country was emerging from the first World War, a war that was called at the time the "war to end all wars."  After enduring the loss of life during the war and the changes the war brought to our society, including a deadly pandemic, the country was ready for more tranquil days.  So it was that the good Senator ran for President asking for a "return to normalcy."  He won.  T...

We are moving into the season of graduation--except many if not all graduations in our corner of the world have either been canceled or postponed.  There are no doubt thousands of graduating seniors both at the college level and at the high school level lamenting the fact that they will not hear their name called, march across the stage and receive their diploma. There are no doubt many families of these graduates who will regret missing these events as well.  Graduations are important. That said, there is something that we must  hope every graduate hears and understands.during this time of postponed and perhaps canceled ceremonies. Hopefully, each graduate will understand that it is not the ceremony that makes the graduate but rather the education the graduate receives that makes the graduate.    The truth is that even though there may not be a graduation ceremony the education behind the cap and gown remains.  There is nothing that...