Family
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Transitions
Cousins’ Camp 2017 has come and gone for another year. We have worshiped together, played games, done crafts, done sidewalk chalk, jumped at Vertical Jump Park, had our picture taken wearing our Cousin’s Camp T-shirts, eaten food (and lots of it), won prizes, put new flowers on the graves of their great-grandparents, fussed a little, cried a little, laughed a lot, had our talent show, sung together, prayed together, and had devotionals presented by Grampy and the three boys. This was our fifth year for this gathering and it seemed like everyone had a good time. Three years ago we began assigning a theme for each year. The first theme was “Discovery” and…
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Free Resources for Pew Packers (or Family Devotionals)
Nearly every Sunday evening, I get the privilege of sitting down front with some of our elementary and preschool children at 9th Avenue and leading Pew Packers. While you just never know what might happen during those 10 minutes, it is a joy to watch these students sing and learn Bible facts. Pew Packers is considered by some to be outdated, but that is only if we treat it as such! Instead, I see it as 10 invaluable minutes each week with these precious children. As such, we are always looking for ways to improve Pew Packers and to make it a helpful time for our students. Today, I am…
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Hurting People are No Different than Fallen Trees
Boom! Whoosh! Clap! Crunch! Crash! These sounds were heard Saturday evening in Cookeville, Tennessee, where I live. Thousands of trees came down all over the county. Many of those trees landed on the tops of houses. I woke up Sunday morning got out early and surveyed the damage. Many roads were still impassable. It looked like bombs had gone off and there was debris everywhere. If you looked right or left you could see the devastation. Power lines and trees were the biggest casualties. It will take our city a while to recover. It was a “hundred-year-old tree pulled up by the roots once in a lifetime” kind of storm.…
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A Small Drawer, but With Huge Implications
Not too long ago, I was asked to speak at the memorial service for a fine Christian lady. During the service, something caught my attention. At one point during the service, I was seated in a location where I had a very clear view of a very small drawer. Because of the location of the chair in which I was seated, I was able to, in effect, look over the shoulder of the body of the lady and see the edge of the bottom half of the lid of the casket. As I did that, I saw something I’ve seen a few times before. For some reason, though, this time it caught my…
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Sun and More and Stars Galore!
One of my favorite Bible songs to sing with my children when they were younger was the Days of Creation song. Many of you may recognize today’s title from the verse about Day 4: “Day 4, day, 4: Sun and moon and stars galore!” At my school, we are gearing up for a very special day involving those elements of God’s universe. Quoting from the website GreatAmericanEclipse.com: On August 21, 2017, millions of people across the United States will see nature’s most wondrous spectacle — a total eclipse of the Sun. It is a scene of unimaginable beauty; the Moon completely blocks the Sun, daytime becomes a deep twilight, and…
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Integrity
A wealthy man had a friend who was a good contractor but had been down on his luck. Wanting to do him a favor, the rich man hired his friend with the following stipulations: “Here is $200,000.00. Build me a new home. If you do a good job, I will pay you very well.” Excited, the contractor went to work. A $200,000.00 fund was a bountiful resource. But the more he thought about it, the more he wanted a part of the money for himself. He began to cut corners – cheap lumber, shoddy plumbing, watered-down cement, and so on. He tried to hide the poorly constructed house with a…
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Describing Your Children
Your children are ___________. How would you fill in that blank? Better yet; how would you like for others to fill in that blank? Those of us who are parents (or grandparents) have probably had the experience of somebody filling in that blank for us. It may have been in the course of a conversation. It may have been in some sort of formal setting. It could be almost anywhere. It could be almost any time. Somebody will walk up to us, drop us a note, send a text, call us on the phone, or in some way communicate to us what his or her opinion is of our children. We may have tears…
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A Quote for Your Mother’s Day
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Memories of Mom
(photo of Ruth Turner, daughter Donna faughn, Granddaughter Amber tatum, and great-granddaughter lyssabeth tatum, taken about 2008) “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck” (Proverbs 1:8-9). So said the wise man Solomon. Many of us were raised in homes where our fathers and mothers loved and cared for us. They provided for our needs and taught us much about how to live in this world. Some were blessed to have both parents as faithful Christians, and some of us were not. This was the case in my home. My father was not a faithful Christian while…
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How Drinking Skim Milk Can Help Your Marriage
I grew up drinking 2% milk. Sometimes it was just good old vitamin D milk. We might on occasion drink 1% milk. But skim milk? No thanks. Isn’t that just water with some kind of milk powder in it? Is there such a thing as white food coloring in water? – because that’s what skim milk tasted like to me. I didn’t like it at all and I decided that if I was ever going to drink milk it wasn’t going to be skim. But then I got married and guess what? I found out right away that my wife grew up drinking skim milk. To her, 2% milk was…
