Graduation was going pretty much as I expected it to go that spring evening years ago as I sat in a metal folding chair on the back row - that is where you sit in alphabetical order when your name is Williams. There were a few surprises. Some friends got some awards and scholarships. The local Rotary Club even had one for me (they had to give it to someone).
But then there was a strong unexpected gust of wind that swept across the football field where I was seated. I caught my graduation hat - mortal board, whatever you want to call it - just as it was about to blow completely off my head. I adjusted it as quickly as I could because it was just about my turn to go up and get my high school diploma. Though I got it back in place on my head something felt strange. Where was my tassel? I could not feel it anywhere. Looking back behind me, it had blown several yards down the field. Did I have time to go get it before they called my name? No. Would they give me my diploma anyway? I don't know. I never read that part of the Dress Code. I was in a tassel tussle diploma dilemma.
I got my diploma, shook a couple of administrators hands and got back to my seat. Whew! Thankfully you do not have to have a tassel to graduate from my high school. Then it was time to switch the tassel to the other side. When your last name is Williams and you graduate from Yoakum High School, there are not many people after you in line, so this happened quickly. As everyone else switched their tassel, I just sat there and observed everyone's tassel turning techniques. Afterward, they still let me keep my diploma. There was nothing in the academic handbook about it. It turned out that it was a bigger dilemma to me than it really was.
The bad thing looking back on it is that my tassel had more yards on that field than I did in my football career. I am still a little envious of that.
Things happen that you are not expecting. And when a curve ball gets thrown at you in one of those anxious transitional times in life (graduating from High School) a little thing can feel really big. No one is really ready for the next big step in life or the next big transition - graduation, marriage, becoming a parent - all those things come and we find curves thrown at us.
Fortunately we have a God who is there in those transitional times and he knows all about those unexpected dilemmas and the awkward, inward tussles that cause us to panic. Jesus said that he is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And since he is all that, he can help us finish things well and he can help us begin new things well. Even things we have never done before.
So if you are a graduate, congratulations. If you are the parent of graduate, congratulations to you too. Does that piece of academic parchment prepare you for everything in life? Not hardly. But God is there to help you in the unexpected. That is where he grows something that has no end to its learning. No diploma is given because class never ends. It is called faith. May you always grow strong in it.
for the journey...
Tim
Friday, May 29, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
How a Stray Bull Taught me about Memorial Day
I remember feeling a sense of excitement as my father and I saddled up our horses. I was finally old enough to go on one of these special "working cattle" moments. Our new, young bull had decided to go check out greener pastures. He had broken through the fence and gotten on to my uncle's land that bordered ours. Retrieving a stray bull could be a dangerous enterprise. Most of the time if a bull has broken through a fence, he don't want to go home. Growing up on a dairy farm and ranch operation afforded me some unique opportunities, this was to be an unexpected one.
As we rode onto my uncle's ranch, we came through some thick brush and into a clearing. The ground in that clearing had an odd bowl shaped depression in it and in the middle of that depression was a granite tombstone type marker. As we got closer, I could see it had some military markings on it and there was a short list of names. I had never seen such a marker and inquired about it. My dad told me the story, one he had never shared with me.
During World War II, just a few days before my father shipped off to serve in the Navy, a German submarine had been supposedly sighted in the Gulf of Mexico. A bomber had been dispatched out of a base in San Antonio to go check it out. It was after dark that night that the plane had mechanical problems and crashed into the ground there on my uncle's land on its way to the Gulf. The plane caught fire as it crashed, the bombs exploded and all the men on board died.
My father told me that he was visiting his sister and brother in law that night, they heard the plane go down and explode. They rushed to the scene and started to call out to see if there were any survivors. They heard others shouting from the other side of the crash site and were in hopes that maybe someone had bailed out and survived. But after some time of investigation and wandering around in the dark, they found that it was another group of people who saw the explosion and drove to the site.
It did not seem easy for my father to tell this story, that was part of the reason I had never heard it before. He was days away from leaving for the war and here a group of men had just died in a that war, almost literally in his back yard. He probably never told me all that he saw that night. It was a sobering event; the war, in a sense, had come home to him.
It was a story and a sight, that I have never forgotten. It would be some time later that it would dawn on me - a group of men died for our country just a few miles from where I grew up, not in some distant land but right here. There is a sense that it came home to me that these men died for me, they died for us. They would never get the story or the honor of those who died in the act of combat overseas. Yet they had still laid down their lives. Their families suffered the same sense of loss, cried the same type of tears and endured the same years of living with out a loved one.
My father went off to that war and came home. I was born as a result. Those men never came home and never had children. They still gave their lives along with the 1.3 million men and women who have given their lives defending our country since the Revolutionary war. We have cause to be grateful. This weekend, I pray that no one dies on a military operation and I also pray that we would become more grateful because of those who have. Let's let their sacrifice come home to us.
for the journey...
Tim
As we rode onto my uncle's ranch, we came through some thick brush and into a clearing. The ground in that clearing had an odd bowl shaped depression in it and in the middle of that depression was a granite tombstone type marker. As we got closer, I could see it had some military markings on it and there was a short list of names. I had never seen such a marker and inquired about it. My dad told me the story, one he had never shared with me.
During World War II, just a few days before my father shipped off to serve in the Navy, a German submarine had been supposedly sighted in the Gulf of Mexico. A bomber had been dispatched out of a base in San Antonio to go check it out. It was after dark that night that the plane had mechanical problems and crashed into the ground there on my uncle's land on its way to the Gulf. The plane caught fire as it crashed, the bombs exploded and all the men on board died.
My father told me that he was visiting his sister and brother in law that night, they heard the plane go down and explode. They rushed to the scene and started to call out to see if there were any survivors. They heard others shouting from the other side of the crash site and were in hopes that maybe someone had bailed out and survived. But after some time of investigation and wandering around in the dark, they found that it was another group of people who saw the explosion and drove to the site.
It did not seem easy for my father to tell this story, that was part of the reason I had never heard it before. He was days away from leaving for the war and here a group of men had just died in a that war, almost literally in his back yard. He probably never told me all that he saw that night. It was a sobering event; the war, in a sense, had come home to him.
It was a story and a sight, that I have never forgotten. It would be some time later that it would dawn on me - a group of men died for our country just a few miles from where I grew up, not in some distant land but right here. There is a sense that it came home to me that these men died for me, they died for us. They would never get the story or the honor of those who died in the act of combat overseas. Yet they had still laid down their lives. Their families suffered the same sense of loss, cried the same type of tears and endured the same years of living with out a loved one.
My father went off to that war and came home. I was born as a result. Those men never came home and never had children. They still gave their lives along with the 1.3 million men and women who have given their lives defending our country since the Revolutionary war. We have cause to be grateful. This weekend, I pray that no one dies on a military operation and I also pray that we would become more grateful because of those who have. Let's let their sacrifice come home to us.
for the journey...
Tim
Friday, May 15, 2015
How Picking Dewberries is Like Reading the Bible
Judith and I love to pick dewberries. She is great at making pies and jelly. I am pretty good at eating them. It was 2012 that we were last able to pick some dewberries. The years of drought have taken their toll, but this year there was more rain which means more berries, even if there are fewer vines.
While picking some recently, I thought about how picking dewberries is similar to reading the Bible and finding spiritual truth. Three principles came to mind (sorry, can't help it I am a preacher) about picking dewberries and reading the Bible.
The Application Principle:
When dewberries are at their ripest, their sweetest, they very easily fall off the vine. If you touch them without really grasping them, they fall and are usually lost. I can read the sweetest words in the Word, I can hear the best sermons or lessons but if I do not apply these wonderful words to real actions, then they are usually lost. I must learn to grasp, to put into application what I hear. James calls us to be doers and not hearers only (James 1:22).
The Appearance Principle:
While picking dewberries, if you see one ripe one and don't go to investigate because you only see one, you will miss a lot of good berries. You need to go search for more, even if only one is visible. Where I find a ripe berry and I keep looking, usually more will appear. In reading the Bible, I may see a single truth that may seem small or insignificant. But if I do not go deeper on that "small" truth, I will miss a lot of other truths. Where there is one, there is always more. If I begin to apply God's word in a single area, if I begin to meditate on what one small truth really means, more truth will appear.
The Accumulation Principle:
Dewberries are wild vines. They are scattered and at times sparse, but if I keep picking and going from vine to vine I can accumulate enough to make something out them. It takes two cups of dewberries to make a pie. That is not all that much but you will never get two cups from a single vine. In reading the Bible, I may not seem to get very much out of it on any one particular day, but if I keep at it every day the truths accumulate. Soon, I can look back and see that my life is changing. I probably cannot tell that from one day to the next, but it will accumulate in me over time.
I don't know if you will ever pick dewberries, but I hope you will read the Bible. Dewberries are in season for a very short time, God's word never goes out of season. It is especially ripe when it is open.
for the journey...
Tim
While picking some recently, I thought about how picking dewberries is similar to reading the Bible and finding spiritual truth. Three principles came to mind (sorry, can't help it I am a preacher) about picking dewberries and reading the Bible.
The Application Principle:
When dewberries are at their ripest, their sweetest, they very easily fall off the vine. If you touch them without really grasping them, they fall and are usually lost. I can read the sweetest words in the Word, I can hear the best sermons or lessons but if I do not apply these wonderful words to real actions, then they are usually lost. I must learn to grasp, to put into application what I hear. James calls us to be doers and not hearers only (James 1:22).
The Appearance Principle:
While picking dewberries, if you see one ripe one and don't go to investigate because you only see one, you will miss a lot of good berries. You need to go search for more, even if only one is visible. Where I find a ripe berry and I keep looking, usually more will appear. In reading the Bible, I may see a single truth that may seem small or insignificant. But if I do not go deeper on that "small" truth, I will miss a lot of other truths. Where there is one, there is always more. If I begin to apply God's word in a single area, if I begin to meditate on what one small truth really means, more truth will appear.
The Accumulation Principle:
Dewberries are wild vines. They are scattered and at times sparse, but if I keep picking and going from vine to vine I can accumulate enough to make something out them. It takes two cups of dewberries to make a pie. That is not all that much but you will never get two cups from a single vine. In reading the Bible, I may not seem to get very much out of it on any one particular day, but if I keep at it every day the truths accumulate. Soon, I can look back and see that my life is changing. I probably cannot tell that from one day to the next, but it will accumulate in me over time.
I don't know if you will ever pick dewberries, but I hope you will read the Bible. Dewberries are in season for a very short time, God's word never goes out of season. It is especially ripe when it is open.
for the journey...
Tim
Friday, May 8, 2015
Alpha and Omega Moments
I have a particularly lasting remembrance of my mother - among many memories of things she did, sacrifices she made, tasks she took on - but this remembrance of her is just after her death. I had made it to my parent's home as soon as I could after the call came that she had passed away. We knew this was coming, she had battled cancer for several years and there was nothing more that could be done. I made it home before the folks from the funeral home came to pick up her body. I cried with my sister and my father as we waited. Caring people from the hospice showed up and began to talk with my father. I walked back to what had been my old room and came back out into the den where her hospital type bed was placed by hospice. From that hallway vantage point, I saw a odd but comforting sight.
From the hall, I could see my mother, finally at rest, no longer in pain, her life here was done. But I could also look on down the hall to the room that had been my sister's and see there on the bed, my three month old great-niece sleeping peacefully. My sister was keeping her granddaughter that day and thankfully she was sleeping through all of this.
I stood there and looked at the two of them, both sleeping peacefully, one for a few moments, the other for good. It brought a sense of peace for me to see the two at the same time. They both were tired and sleep had overcome them. They both would wake up refreshed and renewed though in very different places. To see the end of life on this earth so near to the beginning of life on this earth helped me realize anew that these things come to us all - birth and death; weariness and sleep. They are a part of life and if we open to it, places where we can sense something of the hand of God.
There in that moment, I sensed God helping me believe, "It is going to be ok." Perhaps there is not a more needed message for us to hear in a time of loss than that. How often does that message come from our mothers? I had heard it from mine. Here, it was coming from my heavenly Father.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13). He enables us to get through the Omega times by reminding us of the Alpha times and that those times are not that far away from each other. In any of those times, He is not far from us. God brings nothing to a close (even in death) with out bringing something to life.
As we celebrate this Mother's Day, I pray, whether your mother is near or far, present in this life or present in the next, you will sense His presence reminding you He is near and letting you know, "It is going to be ok."
for the journey...
Tim
From the hall, I could see my mother, finally at rest, no longer in pain, her life here was done. But I could also look on down the hall to the room that had been my sister's and see there on the bed, my three month old great-niece sleeping peacefully. My sister was keeping her granddaughter that day and thankfully she was sleeping through all of this.
I stood there and looked at the two of them, both sleeping peacefully, one for a few moments, the other for good. It brought a sense of peace for me to see the two at the same time. They both were tired and sleep had overcome them. They both would wake up refreshed and renewed though in very different places. To see the end of life on this earth so near to the beginning of life on this earth helped me realize anew that these things come to us all - birth and death; weariness and sleep. They are a part of life and if we open to it, places where we can sense something of the hand of God.
There in that moment, I sensed God helping me believe, "It is going to be ok." Perhaps there is not a more needed message for us to hear in a time of loss than that. How often does that message come from our mothers? I had heard it from mine. Here, it was coming from my heavenly Father.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13). He enables us to get through the Omega times by reminding us of the Alpha times and that those times are not that far away from each other. In any of those times, He is not far from us. God brings nothing to a close (even in death) with out bringing something to life.
As we celebrate this Mother's Day, I pray, whether your mother is near or far, present in this life or present in the next, you will sense His presence reminding you He is near and letting you know, "It is going to be ok."
for the journey...
Tim
Friday, May 1, 2015
Malchus' Ear
His name was Malchus. He was the servant of the High Priest and in that position, he was privy to some pretty powerful events. He heard the discussions of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Israel. He saw the inner workings of the office of the High Priest - he likely was a part of the discussions of how to get rid of Jesus. He probably was a part of paying Judas off with silver to betray Jesus. We know he was there in the Garden of Gethsemane when they arrested Jesus. That is where he went from the background to center stage. Peter cut off his ear (John 18:10).
I don't think Peter was aiming for his ear. I think he was either aiming to give Malchus a splitting headache or take is head off all together. Peter was a fisherman, not a swordsman. He missed, badly. Jesus rebuked him and basically told him to 'put that thing away before you hurt someone.' Then Jesus healed Malchus. I wonder what Malchus thought in that moment?
Here, all these men with all this aggression, had come to arrest Jesus. There was chaos and shouting. Suddenly there is a flash of a blade and searing, unbelievable pain and blood flowing down all over Malchus. Then there is Jesus, looking him in the face, touching his ear and the pain is gone and his ear is whole. In all this storm, Malchus gets pulled into the eye of the storm where Jesus is and where there is peace. I wonder what happened then for Malchus?
A couple of things speak to me about this story. First, Peter was trying to defend his Lord. But he was doing it from his own strength and by his own way. It failed miserably. Are there times we need to take a stand as followers of Jesus? Are their times we need to rise up against those in authority when they are doing wrong? Yes, there are those times and the possibility of more of those times seems to be increasing in our day. But we must do things Jesus' way. He never advocated violence or striking out in anger. He would take his stand before the Sanhedrin that day and he gives us an example of how to take a stand in our day.
I think there may be a message in Malchus' ear for us. When we stand for the cause of Christ but we do it in the anger of our own strength, we cut off the way people could hear - if they are willing. There are a lot of "Malchuses" out there wounded by angry Christians and they have a real hard time hearing us. What is the right way? Peter, even Peter, gives a good example later. He too is brought before the Sanhedrin, the very men who sentenced Jesus to die. But this time he is not angry nor does he bring a sword. He stands boldly in the power of Jesus and proclaims the truth of Jesus and then there is this powerful statement from Luke, "When they (the Sanhedrin) saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus" Acts 4:12. He stood Jesus' way and they were astonished.
Was Malchus there that day? We don't see his name but there is a good probability he was. He saw Peter in a whole new light if he was. That brings me to the second, final thought. Only in the Gospel of John, written years after to the other gospels, do we see the name of Malchus. Some have speculated that John knew Malchus' name because Malchus had become a part of the church by John's day. No one knows that for sure, but what a testimony Malchus would have had.
Do you have a Malchus in your life? Is he hurting now? Is he still healing? Is he now hearing? Let's not miss the message of Malchus' ear.
for the journey...
Tim
I don't think Peter was aiming for his ear. I think he was either aiming to give Malchus a splitting headache or take is head off all together. Peter was a fisherman, not a swordsman. He missed, badly. Jesus rebuked him and basically told him to 'put that thing away before you hurt someone.' Then Jesus healed Malchus. I wonder what Malchus thought in that moment?
Here, all these men with all this aggression, had come to arrest Jesus. There was chaos and shouting. Suddenly there is a flash of a blade and searing, unbelievable pain and blood flowing down all over Malchus. Then there is Jesus, looking him in the face, touching his ear and the pain is gone and his ear is whole. In all this storm, Malchus gets pulled into the eye of the storm where Jesus is and where there is peace. I wonder what happened then for Malchus?
A couple of things speak to me about this story. First, Peter was trying to defend his Lord. But he was doing it from his own strength and by his own way. It failed miserably. Are there times we need to take a stand as followers of Jesus? Are their times we need to rise up against those in authority when they are doing wrong? Yes, there are those times and the possibility of more of those times seems to be increasing in our day. But we must do things Jesus' way. He never advocated violence or striking out in anger. He would take his stand before the Sanhedrin that day and he gives us an example of how to take a stand in our day.
I think there may be a message in Malchus' ear for us. When we stand for the cause of Christ but we do it in the anger of our own strength, we cut off the way people could hear - if they are willing. There are a lot of "Malchuses" out there wounded by angry Christians and they have a real hard time hearing us. What is the right way? Peter, even Peter, gives a good example later. He too is brought before the Sanhedrin, the very men who sentenced Jesus to die. But this time he is not angry nor does he bring a sword. He stands boldly in the power of Jesus and proclaims the truth of Jesus and then there is this powerful statement from Luke, "When they (the Sanhedrin) saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus" Acts 4:12. He stood Jesus' way and they were astonished.
Was Malchus there that day? We don't see his name but there is a good probability he was. He saw Peter in a whole new light if he was. That brings me to the second, final thought. Only in the Gospel of John, written years after to the other gospels, do we see the name of Malchus. Some have speculated that John knew Malchus' name because Malchus had become a part of the church by John's day. No one knows that for sure, but what a testimony Malchus would have had.
Do you have a Malchus in your life? Is he hurting now? Is he still healing? Is he now hearing? Let's not miss the message of Malchus' ear.
for the journey...
Tim
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