Well, it has finally happened. We have a new Dancing with the Stars champion. I was personally pulling for Erin and Maks. I like many other Americans get hooked every season to the show. I eagerly await the announcement of the new cast members and see which dancer they will be paired up with. Then week one comes and we watch all of the celebrities dancing a horrible and awkward tango or waltz. As the weeks on the show progress most of the remaining dancers move from these terribly bad dances to looking almost as good as their professional partners. The transformations are really something amazing to watch.

 I’m off to St. Louis this week to officiate a wedding for a couple of kids who were 7 or 8 years old when I came to be their new pastor over 14 years ago in Webster Groves, Missouri. For the past seven years I have lived halfway across the country while they survived their youth group, high school and college years. Now they are ready to launch into a lifetime together. You never know what might happen when you go to church and actually stick with it. For these two promising young adults, it all goes back to their parents who faithfully led them to a small Baptist church, dug in their heels week after week, and stuck with a particular community of God’s people...

A few weeks ago I took my youth group out for dinner and a movie. We went to see Disney’s “Oceans.” I really didn’t know what to expect from the movie. To be honest, I was expecting a pretty boring nature flick. Other than most of our group getting a little sea sick from watching the sea throw around a fishing boat, it was a great movie.

I almost did not write this blog because… I’ve been too busy. It’s been an incredibly busy time as of late—visiting the sick, going from hospitals to hospice, from funerals to pre-marital counseling, writing sermons, meeting with committees, planning worship, counseling, coaching baseball, shuttling children to multiple baseball and basketball games, school functions, and trying to keep the home fires burning brightly just to name a few. But the truth is… everyone is busy. How many times have you heard a retiree say, “Since I retired I’ve been busier than ever!”?  Mothers are busy, fathers are busy, kids are busy, churches are busy. The world often looks like a giant ant pile that has just been stepped upon by a size 13 shoe...

Last weekend I went on a quick road trip. I had been asked to perform the marriage ceremony of two of my former youth group members. Talk about feeling old! After the wedding finished on Saturday night I made the five hour drive back home. It seemed like every song on the radio was a love song. The next morning I made my way to church and the theme for the service was love. Needless to say, I spent the whole weekend thinking about love.

Guess what the top grossing movie was at the box office last weekend? A Nightmare on Elm Street… the remake, that is, raked in almost $33,000,000. I just don’t get why people spend their hard-earned money during a recession in order to willingly have the living daylights scared out of them. Isn’t the world scary enough, as it is? Why would someone choose to drop $20 at a theatre for one ticket and a greasy tub of popcorn only to have Freddy haunt them in their dreams for weeks to come? It is a troubling world indeed…

Mother’s Day is quickly approaching. The hallmark cards have been out for weeks now and advertisers are working hard to convince you that their product is exactly what your mother needs. I’m not fully convinced yet that my mother really needs a snuggie or any of the other TV products on the market today. When I was a child I would have made my mom something to celebrate her special day. Most likely it would have been a pretty ugly and poorly crafted piece of junk that only a mother could love. I don’t think a gift like that will cut it now that I’m an adult.