My Phone Is Trying To Tell Me Something. Maybe It’s God?

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No, I don’t think my phone is a deity. I mean perhaps God is using my phone to send me a message.

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I have a couple of thousand songs loaded onto my tablet and my telephone. I use them as a juke box while I work on projects. The last month has featured one song over and over in my rotation. I love Motown, I like some modern country, love Gospel, enjoy modern Christian. But this song is from a Scottish Ballad singer: Al Stewart. And every time I turn the tunes on he’s there singing Trains. Please take a minute to watch the video and then rejoin me. (warning! Graphic images of Holocaust brutality.)

It is my personal opinion that evil was pushed back by a great measure with the blood sacrifice of the American Civil War. Revisionists will tell you that it was an economic war. Politicians will tell you it was to preserve the union of states. I think it was a war to cleanse our national soul of the stain of slavery. By shedding that blood we cleansed this nation in many ways and it allowed us to prosper and grow.

World War I opened the door a crack for evil, and the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions widened the opening with their mass slaughter. But for pure evil flying like monkeys from the castle, Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich kicked the doors of Hell wide open. This song, Trains, talks about that evil and how it lingers to this day in our souls.

This week we’ve seen slaughter, genocide, insanity in new waves cross the Middle East. That’s how the press would like you to view it, but it’s just a continuation of what happened seventy years ago in Germany and Poland. Evil is walking this earth. Rwanda, Cambodia, Serbia – the list of murders and crimes against God is truly endless in the past century. We weren’t perfect before that, but it seems to be picking up the pace in the last few decades.

We live in an age when prayer, fasting, and contemplation are needed more and more all the time. We spent this last week mourning Robin Williams. That’s fine, but he was one sad and depressed man. What about the hundreds who will die in Chicago this year from gunfire? The Yazedis who are dying of thirst on a mountain in Iraq. Or of the Christians slaughtered in Nigeria and Egypt. Our priorities are a mess. Not to mention the thousands of children who are abused to the point of death every week on this globe floating through space.

Today I ask you to consider a regimen of prayer, fasting, and contemplation for one week. I know nobody can leap right into it without planning. So let’s do it the week of September 7th. I am going to prepare for it by making a list of things I need help with in my life. The things where I want to seek guidance from God. The things I need to change to make my world right.

I hope you’ll join me. It’s almost a month away. Let’s do it together and listen to that message I keep hearing from God on my telephone. It is a smart phone if I listen to the message.

Win A Few, Lose A Few.

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Today brings an end to an era: the balding tires on the Explorer. About the time you read this there will be four new shoes on the go-kart. (Yeah, I’m hip…)

I put it off as long as I could, but there’s a road trip in my future, and winter isn’t taking this year off last I heard. So it is time to take care of the tires. Another giant expense in a week full of money matters.

But I have to admit it has been a good week. I’ve been blessed with good friends, good food, and a sheepdog who was sudzed and scrubbed before they trimmed her considerable coat. She’s as soft as baby hair and smells like a bag of Fritos. Funny, eh? Dog body odor smells like my favorite snack food. Intelligent design at its finest.

Today I’m giving thanks for all of the prayer you have layered on my requests last week. I need you to pour it on again, but this time for me. I have some tough decisions to make this week and God’s blessing will go a long way to making me comfortable with them. I know in my heart where I need to go, but the path is a bit fuzzy at the moment.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the sun has been amazingly kind to my bald head. I’ve been outside more in the last month than I had been in a long time. Why? I’ve resumed long-distance walking. I’m back up to four mile jaunts around the city. I came to the realization that I was physically able to do it again after spending ten hours on my feet at the church fun fest. Sore? Yeah. But I wasn’t dying.

Every time I head out on the path to some distant point it gets a little bit easier. I feel better, actually seeing some definition in the calf muscle, and less pain the next day. Wind is still marginal, but that will come with time. It’s wonderful to be doing my favorite thing once again. After two knee surgeries I’d just about given up on the sport, but the fun fest convinced me that I could do it if I wanted.

Once again, God used the church to guide me on the right path. Don’t dismiss the impact of that place in your life. Even silly stuff like fun fests plays a role. There are lots of things God wants to show you if you’ll just open your eyes.

Well, time for me to shut mine for a while. I hope your Thursday is beautiful. Please remember to pray for all those on the list, me, and … one more thing: wrack your brain for a friend in trouble. Depressed, sad, isolated, ill. Take time out of your day to reach out to them and love them. Bring them a brownie from the gas station, a cold Pepsi from your fridge, or just mow the lawn for them. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but when it comes from your heart it will bless theirs. It might be what keeps them coming back for the new dawn. Not trying to be heavy, but to remind you that you have an influential role in your friends lives.

Be blessed.

Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Never.

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Within fifteen minutes of Robin Williams death being announced, a friend of mine said that he’d be committing suicide as well, it was just a matter of time. I knew that, he says it from time to time on his Facebook page.

What do you do when you can see that train coming down the track? How can I impact that decision and put it off until he dies of old age?

I’m praying. I’ve prayed for my friend David for over a week now (and I hope you will all continue to pray for him as well) but now I’m adding Demo to the list. I’m not outing him with that nickname – lots of veterans with a nickname spelled that way, but I am sending him a message: Don’t do it.

Yup, he reads the blog. We’re Facebook friends. He’s a man I greatly admire for his many skills and brilliance. He has a life that he views as disjointed, painful, lonely and unappreciated. Parts of that description are true and accurate. Parts of it are just plain wrong.

Demo is an author whom I respect. Love every thing he’s written, including some amazing flash fiction on Facebook. I can write pretty well, but not in that league by a long shot. He’s not allowed to kill himself for a lot of reasons, but I’ll just list the personal one: He owes me another novel. I’m not satiated by what he’s done.

There is so much brilliance and beauty in what he does with the written word that it lights dark corners for everyone else. He only sees the dark corners where the light doesn’t penetrate. As the industry has changed, more dark corners emerged, eventually smothering him and his flame. What a shame.

But with independent publishing he could come back to his legion of fans. I’d go kickstarter on a book of his. I’d coauthor it just for the joy of writing with him. I’d also travel to be by his side and talk when he needs it. He has my number, he needs to call me to talk he can call. 24×7, Demo.

I will pray. I will write notes to him. I will engage in chat sessions with him. I will beg God to touch his heart.

We all have a Demo in our lives. We try to ignore it but we really can’t do that if we’re Christians. I will do my best to reach out to him and touch his heart. I hope you will do the same for the lonely and sad, the addicted, the mentally ill that you know.

They all have another novel in them. Let’s read it together.

Sponsorship Late Friday

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It just doesn’t have the ring of Sponsorship Sunday, but I wanted to get this post out and let it be seen over the weekend.

Last year I made a missionary trip to Haiti that changed my life. I couldn’t go this year so we sponsored all the meals I’ve been talking about on the blog these past few months. But my heart was longing to go back to Haiti.

Wednesday someone asked me why Haiti? No words really convey the depth of my love for the people I met there, especially the good people of Healing Haiti. The video below really tells me that my heart was right – Jeff Gacek and the mission there are the best. Please take a few minutes to watch this video and prayerfully consider supporting the bakery initiative they talk about in the video. Please let them know where you saw this if you choose to support them, it lets me know these sponsorship messages are still having an impact.

Be blessed and have a wonderful weekend. (The link for the bakery is not yet up on their site, once it is I will add it to the blog.)

One final thing: if you’d be so kind as to click through the video to youtube.com it will help track the number of people who have watched the video. Many thanks.

Friday, Uplifting Friday.

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A week ago I asked for you to pray for some friends of mine. Top of the list was David. Boy, are you guys good.

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Over the course of the last week David got worse. Every day. Until he didn’t. They were at the “What kind of service should we have Saturday?” stage of things. Yes, that bad. And then the prayer network got storming. Gigabit storming.

Today he’s still in an induced coma. But he’s breathing. He’s making progress, he’s healing. I would appreciate it if you all would keep up the prayers for a while, I’d like to meet him in person one of these days. We’re Facebook friends.

Funny that being friends through social media is any less valuable than knowing what they smell like allows. That’s about the only thing I can see that’s different. Yet it seems that people look down on that relationship. I’m thrilled with it in this case. I’ve seen people I’ve never met join together in prayer on that Facebook string. Praising God, pleading with God, talking to God.

There’s a place in our social media lives for evangelism. If we do it right, others will open up a bit to God. It has to be by example, not demand.

I’m going to fall asleep tonight knowing that miracles happen in our era. They’re not just biblical events. They happen in hospitals in Atlanta in 2014. Prayer played a major role in it from what I can see.

Keep praying – it’s working.