Today’s Peanuts comic strip in the Dallas Morning News featured Linus, Charley Brown and Snoopy all laying down and propped up against a big tree. Linus, the philosopher, offers this question. “If you work real hard and you get everything you’ve always wanted, it it worth it?” Charley Brown looks thoughtful but Snoopy the pragmatist has an immediate reaction. “Not if your dog doesn’t like you.” Hard to argue with that. If your dog doesn’t like you there is a pretty good chance you are a miserable human being. Since I am widely known as a deep thinker I meditated on today’s Peanuts strip. Snoopy is certainly spot on in his analysis. But I would suggest the question impacts other relationships as well. If your pursuit of possessions causes you to not have time to love your wife well then it is not worth it. If you cannot spend quality time with friends and family it is not worth it.If you cannot find
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Today is a revisit of a “Christmas Classic” from Christmas past. How does a blog become a classic? 1) It is your blog, your site, you pay the server charge and you can call it whatever you want2) You have no time to write today Enjoy! And Merry Christmas! One of my contributions with this modest little blog is to continually ask the tough questions. While listening to  “Away in a Manger” on the all Christmas radio station my inquiring mind kicked in. You likely know verse three of the song. The cattle are lowingThe poor Baby wakesBut little Lord JesusNo crying He makes As I listened an important series of difficult and probing inquiries popped into my head. What noise, exactly, were the cattle making when they started lowing? Was this normal cow talk? Did lowing just sound more intelligent than mooing for the lyric writer or is lowing a more godly cow sound? And then the most important question came to mind. What is wrong with me? I can’t answer the last
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One of the bummers about getting older is that you seem to go to a lot of funerals. It is always a sad time but I have to tell you that some funerals are a lot better than others. Of course for a Christian it is always a comfort to know that the departed had put their trust in Jesus as their Savior. But even that factor does not always make a funeral seem uplifting even in the sadness of loss. I was thinking about that yesterday as I drove home from still yet another memorial service. This service left me with a smile and feeling inspired even though I knew that many would miss this man tremendously. This particular service was for a man I did not know personally. I am a friend of one of his sons and family. So I went and listened to what others had to say about a man I did not know myself. I knew
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(This is a no time to write day. So I am recycling a gently read post from Christmas past. Hope you enjoy.) When I was a kid the holidays politely waited their turn in line. Thanksgiving would take the baton from Halloween and then pass it along to Christmas.  Now the Holidays clamor for attention like a spoiled child at the mall. I have been receiving Christmas catalogs for weeks and the stores were filled with Christmas displays by Halloween. By the way, you will note that I am a proud user of the term Christmas for the December 25th event that is known on the federal calendar as Christmas Day.  That was a bonus mini-rant. No charge. Last year I wrote about what I wanted for Christmas. I started with a list of things I really, really wanted. Everything at the Bose store The coolest new phone  Several pounds of books Dozens of DVD’s Then I listed everything I really, really needed. Uhhhhh…. Uhhhhh…. Uhhhhh….
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I rarely suggest that anything I write is a must read. There is a simple reason for that. Most of what I write is not. Today is the exception not because of my writing skill but because of the subject of this article. I have been deeply touched, moved and a little shamed by the story of an amazing little boy from Lynnwood, Washington. KOMO News in Seattle reported the original story on November 7th. When Brenden Foster was first diagnosed with leukemia, he and his mom began a new tradition. Every night they list three positive things that happened during the day, and they have to share a laugh. A chuckle will do, Brenden said, but a fake laugh will never do. In the last days of his life, it was a homeless camp, namely Nickelsville, that captured the boy’s heart. “I was coming back from one of my clinic appointments and I saw this big thing of homeless people, and then I
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Truth can be so annoying. If annoying truth was a Jeopardy category it might look like this… “I’ll take Annoying Truths for $100, Alex.”This famous preacher said,  “Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.”“Who is Billy Graham? I’ll take Annoying Truths for $200, Alex.”This missionary to India said, “You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving.” “Who was Amy Carmichael, Alex. I am getting very uncomfortable with this topic so let’s take “Sins that make you worse than me for $100.” Money is an uncomfortable topic for followers of Jesus. One anonymous writer noted that a lot of people are willing to give God the credit, but not too many are willing to give Him the cash. Twenty-nine years ago a man in Kansas City made a choice to give away the cash. It was a choice that changed his life and the lives of thousands more. For the next 27 years until his
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There were a couple of odd twists in the daily walk with dog friend Hannah. The first odd occurrence was the absence of squirrels in the park. That is the second straight day that Hannah has not enjoyed a good rodent chase. Perhaps the ESWS (Early Squirrel Warning System) is now operational. The other odd occurrence was that the same song came up twice on the random shuffle feature of my iPod. The song does occur twice on my iPod but there are 917 songs and the shuffle selected both occurrences of that song in one thirty minute period. Does God’s sovereignty extend to the shuffle feature on MP3 devices? Fortunately the song was one of my favorites tunes and it was from one of my favorite composer/singers. Rich Mullins released the song in 1993. Well, sometimes my lifeJust don’t make sense at allWhen the mountains look so bigAnd my faith just seems so small Right now I am in a pretty good place in my life and
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