Serve by Design

Since my teenage years, I have loved to get up early to see the morning sunrise! It started with those 3:30 am wake up calls by my squirrel hunting neighbor, Jim. He was around my dad’s age and served as a mentoring influence to teach me everything about hunting and gun safety. Jim would lightly tap on my window on Saturday mornings to rouse me. I was a light sleeper and would usually be anticipating the prompt. I would quickly get dressed, grab my rifle, and report to the truck. A Sherman Sunrise! We would go to a nearby 24-hour day restaurant for a bowl of cereal and then get into the timber in time to be set and in place when the squirrels began their early cutting of hickory and walnuts. It was always a treat for me to look out on the horizon and see the daylight peeping through the treelined woods. As the moments of sunrise progressed, the light would form into beautiful and brighter layers of purples, blues, oranges, and yellows until the rays were so brilliant I could not look d...

One of my first articles on this blog site has proven to be one of the most popular. To date, there have been nearly 3,000 pageviews of “Uncle Billy Moments!” It features the absent-minded uncle of George Bailey in the beloved seasonal film favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life . I think the reason we are drawn to Uncle Billy is because he represents the failings of so many of us! We see ourselves in him! When iPhone Meets Car Tires! It's Not Pretty! Well, I had another “Uncle Billy Moment” this past week. I don’t know what it says about me (or maybe, I do!), but it seems I am having these moments more frequently lately. I used to pride myself in being able to multi-task, but the ability to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously is getting harder to achieve with age! Last week was an unusually busy time with a doctor appointment, some Serve by Design consulting, church calls, and visits, preparing for a Sunday small group teaching assignment on top of the regular commitments of blog wri...

Recently, during our Sunday morning Bible study group, we were dealing with a challenging paragraph from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. The text included a short passage of three verses on Jesus’ statements of woe (Luke 6:24-26). The teaching was characteristically paradoxical in nature. The kind of challenge that often has the best of Bible students shaking their heads. One of our class members confessed aloud to everyone gathered around the table, “Hey! I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need some help with this one!” Image credit: istock.com Monique and I love to watch episodes of The Chosen on television. We like the vividly fresh way that the producers and actors depict the life of Jesus. Sometimes these creative writers take liberties with the literal accounts of Scripture (like a paraphrase would do!), but we have found that the end-product usually captures the essence of what the Bible is teaching. One memorable, thought-provoking, and entertaining scene (obviously extra-...

Recently, I visited one of our members in the hospital. She had just received a sobering diagnosis. I had no sooner entered the room than she shared what the doctor had told her. I had not met her before, but I think she had recognized me as the care pastor from the church before I had the chance to introduce myself. Image Credit: istock.com Although I have been in previous situations like this many times during the years of my pastoral ministry, it is still difficult to hear such a serious diagnosis. It gave me pause as I observed the pleasant expression on her face. I was gathering my thoughts just as one of the patient’s family came into the room from out of town. I reintroduced myself as he put some personal items down on a nearby couch. Then, as he made his way over to the loved one’s bedside, he spontaneously asked this question, “Are we going to pray?” I was caught off guard by his prompting, but immediately responded as I put my hat, gloves, and phone down on a chair, “Sure!...

I was perturbed, and felt inconvenienced, until I discovered what was going on! This snow and extremely cold spell have had my nerves more than a little on edge. So, when I looked up to see 18-wheeler trucks and other vehicular traffic lined up farther than my eye could see, I complained aloud to myself, “Here they go again! These guys looking for a shortcut are further tearing up our badly maintained Sherman boulevard! What’s going on?!” Image credit: gettyimages.com Eventually, I would be able to make my right turn and join the flow traveling through a couple of traffic lights and across the Sangamon River up to Peoria Road. On the way, I saw a small but insightful sign above the I-55 directional sign. It simply read, “Incident Bypass.” I knew immediately, this was not about shortcuts, but rather IDOT was managing something up on the interstate highway that required a diverting of traffic through our quiet little village. Recently, I have had one thing after another of personal and...

My family and I have been eating black-eyed peas with ham and corn bread on New Years Day since January 1, 1978. We had moved to Granbury, Texas, four months before and quickly began learning the culinary ways of Southerners. On that first New Years Day in the Lone Star State, some close friends invited us to dinner and introduced us to the tradition of eating black-eyed peas. We soon learned the reason behind this perceived good luck and prosperity! Photo: Compliments of our Texas son, Marc! This tradition is thought to have had its roots in the post-Civil War era when African American slaves celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation with hopes for freedom and a new beginning. While many northerners would consider black-eyed peas to be nothing more than animal feed, Southerners knew that these peas with ham hock had kept them from starvation during Sherman’s march. I cannot imagine the great suffering and loss behind the tradition that emerged from those awful days in our country’s his...