Mental Musings

In my 30 years of ministry I have often heard "What's wrong with those teens?" come from the mouths of mostly the senior adults in the church. People often ask the same question about teens in the public schools or those around their neighborhood. Well, this past week I spent quite a bit of time with teens. My own two teens who are homeschooled and attend church well above the average, some teens from Vermont who attend public schools and do not attend church, and teens from our church which attend various places for education, including public schools, homeschooling and private schools. So I will attempt to answer the question: What's wrong with those teens? Let me start with the Vermont gang first. We spent a week in Daytona Beach. We stayed in a relatively small condominium time-share resort with about 25-30 condos. One extended family with about 30 people total drive down from Vermont every year to spend a week in the Florida sunshine. With the exception of...

We had an awesome time on our vacation, but there is still nothing better than returning home. The feeling of sleeping in your own bed is perhaps one of the best parts of returning home, but at the top of the list must also include looking forward to seeing our happy cats (who are loving us to death today), getting to see friends and neighbors, and relaxing in my own comfortable seat and showering in my own shower after mowing knee high grass. OK, the last one included one thing that isn't exactly something I looked forward to. Daytona Beach sunrise I thought I would share some highlights of our trip: Spending three days at Disney (four if you count Downtown Disney for one evening) as we celebrated our 20th Anniversary was incredible. There is a reason they call it the Happiest Place on Earth, but I doubt it is because of the many crying children in the afternoon and evenings after a day of overstimulation. Waking up on the beach in sunny Florida for 6 days in a row, loung...

My wife and I will be celebrating 20 years of marriage come August 8, 2012. But since we were already planning to visit my parents in Florida in April, we decided to celebrate a little early...and our boys just had to come along for the ride. We spent 3 days in Orlando at the happiest place on earth and are now enjoying a week in Daytona Beach. So in keeping with the celebration, I thought I would share our story. Wendy and I met at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where we both were students working on our master's in music. I first saw Wendy when she walked in to a practice room where I was to tutor her in conducting. After a few weeks I remember thinking, "I would like to ask her out, but it would be extremely embarrassing and difficult to tutor her each week if she said no." Eight months after we met, I finally asked her out. Eight months later, I proposed to her on the beach. Eight months later we got married on August 8, 1992 (8-8). As seminary st...

April is National Poetry Month. It is a shame that the educational assignments for poetry have often left more students hating poetry than loving it. But whether or not they realize it, poetry is around them everyday and influences their lives. Think of the many uses of poetry in popular culture: song lyrics, chants at protests, cheers at sporting events, movies (such as Lord of the Rings), literature, motivational posters, etc. But I believe that each of us has poetry inside just bursting to get out. I believe the same thing about music and drawing and every other type of art. God created us to be creative beings. So why was poetry in the public school setting so difficult for most people? Because they were more concerned with us learning the rules of specific poetry than letting people be creative. I was never one for staying inside the lines and I do not advocate that in the educational setting. People need to have the freedom to express themselves through artistic endeavors. ...

I spent a lot of time outside this past weekend, so when I woke on Tuesday with a sore throat and earache, I just ignored it since I have allergies to most of the pollens that are currently out. I went to work and started getting that chest-tightening that happens occasionally when you have asthma, as I do. I used my rescue inhaler and continued to focus on my work. The sensation did not go away, so after a couple hours I used my rescue inhaler again. When I left for lunch my chest was hurting enough that it concerned me, so I went to the doctor's. My asthma was bad enough that the doctor ordered a breathing treatment (nebulizer with albuterol) and a megadose of prednisone (steroids). The chest pains ended and I was once again able to breathe. The good news is that my blood-oxygen levels were normal, meaning that my brain was getting enough oxygen, even if my blood pressure had been quite elevated by my struggles to breathe. Breathing is a wonderful thing that we often ...

Tomorrow is a very important day for Christians. If you do not attend church, you probably are wondering why Christians would call it Good Friday. In truth, many Christians do not even understand that. So I thought I would share what is so good about this Friday. From the beginning of time, God made a decree that nothing imperfect could enter into Heaven (the place where God dwells). Non-Christians might think this is rather bigoted of God, but, after all, He is God and He created everything, so He has the right to decide who and what gets to live in His Heaven. God then created Adam and Eve and gave them free will to choose how they would live. They chose to disobey the one and only rule that God put into place for them. God said the penalty for their disobedience, their sin, was death. Sin is actually an archery term which means you failed to hit the bullseye or the failure to be perfect. God is the only one who has the right and the authority to sit in judgement over us...

I wrote this a couple weeks ago for use in today's Palm Sunday service: A crowd had gathered, much like today “Look! He is coming,” we heard them say Such excitement had filled the air Something great was happening there We had heard the rumors of a Messiah you see Who had come to set our people free Could this be the man we had waited for? To kick out Rome and settle the score? We grabbed our cloaks and ran for the gate Passing by the ones we hate Those Roman soldiers standing there Soon they would be within our snare Palms where placed on the dusty ground Voices called out all around As we saw Him heading our way The drummers then began to play Like fire, excitement swept through the crowd The people were singing, their voices were loud “Hosanna, hosanna, he is our king.” These are the words you could hear them sing. “Stop them,” the priests begged, “if you can” “If they do not praise the Son of Man” He said as he looked out over the crowd “Then the...