Mental Musings

I have a confession to make to you. I played a lot of sports growing up. I played basketball, baseball, soccer, football, and I was even on a bowling league. I enjoyed sports. I loved to run and hit and swing and kick and, well, anything that involved moving. You may find this hard to believe, but I was actually good at every sport I played…except basketball. I enjoyed sports, but jocks…they got on my nerves. They still do. When I meet someone that has that typical jock mentality, I instantly want to find somewhere else to be. There is something about even the way they talk that just irritates me. By high school I realized that I fit in more with the band geeks, academic nerds, and Jesus freaks. I could relate to them more. I understood them. They talked my language. I was part of them. They were my peeps. I had a few friends that played sports and didn’t fall into the same mold, but for the most part I had developed an attitude that jocks were dumb, loud, obnoxious, and an...

A man and his wife were getting some professional help. The counselor asked his wife, “What do you think went wrong with your marriage?” She said, “He never says, ‘I love you’ anymore.” The counselor looked at her husband and said, “Well?” The man responded, “I told her at the wedding that I loved her. If anything changes, I’ll let her know.” Last week we learned what love is. We talked about authentic love, how the Bible says that God is love, and we learned that fake love is destructive. This week we focus on how we love. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Love is a topic that people have written about for thousands of years and yet we still have trouble understanding exactly what it is and how we are to show it. Some people believe that love is giving or getting things. I overheard a group of women talking about a possible marriage proposal. One of the women said that her mom told her never to accept a proposal...

Watch this message on Facebook Live One of the memories that I have as a child was watching television. Every day we could turn on our TV set, wait a few minutes for it to warm up, turn the dial to the correct channel for PBS, adjust the rabbit ears on the top of the unit, and as easy as that we could be transported to this magical neighborhood where Mr. Rogers’ lived. A neighborhood where everyone was kind to each other. An idyllic place where this soft-spoken, kindly man in his 50s/60s was able to mesmerize us by talking about the most ordinary things, such as how mail is delivered, how to tie tennis shoes, etc. And it seemed that every famous person that I knew lived in the same neighborhood as Mr. Rogers. At least he called them all his neighbor as they came on the screen to talk to us. And if this remarkably beautiful neighborhood was not enough, Mr. Rogers would also take us to visit the Neighborhood of Make Believe where we could visit with King Friday, Queen Sara, Pri...