The Evidence

 

The Evidence

Who is watching us? WE NEVER KNOW! This is from September 26, 2013.
As you might remember, I get up very early to exercise. This time of year, I wade gingerly into our apartment pool about 5:30 AM or so and swim for 21+ minutes. When it gets too cold, and it's increasingly brisk lately, I'll go back to Chancellor's, my fitness club close to WCS, and swim there before school. My schedule will become more complicated November 1 when a local high school squad will use Chancellor's for their 6 AM practices so I'll have to swim in the afternoon after lifting weights. I wear pool shoes because I run in the water along with swimming and the pool has a concrete bottom which is rough on even the tough skin on our soles. Let me tell you, the early morning dark dip is a terrific way to gun your body's engine, especially when it's cold. Four years ago, I made it to the weekend before Thanksgiving before the frigid water became more than I could take. I think I've got at least 3-4 weeks in me this autumn!

My apartment complex has about 500 units but I'm ashamed to say I only know six residents by name, not including people I work with. I do know quite a few folks by face but I'm at school all day and travel during our vacation times and apartments have a transient nature. That's why I was taken aback yesterday at the outdoor community mail box center. An elderly man I did not recognize was standing there when I unlocked my mailbox and he said something that caught me off guard.
"I see you went swimming this morning."
I really didn't know what to say so I said something along the lines that I had not seen him. His reply?
"I saw your footprints in the hallway."
I don't know what time he got up but I was out of the pool by roughly 6 AM. As I followed him out of the mail area, I saw he went into a doorway that indeed is on my path to and from the pool. I never knew anyone noticed.

Our lives are under constant scrutiny without our being aware. I hate to make another Person Of Interest reference but it's almost like that with human surveillance instead of electronic monitoring. The gentleman knows me and I have no clue who he is. People notice what we wear which often in my case is clothes bearing the logo and title of my place of employment where we profess to be believers even in our name. I've had others mention the cross around my neck which I often forget I'm wearing. And as I've written lately, people will comment about my shoes, particularly the orange Adidas pair! But we don't have to be physically present to be noticed. What we do and the report of how we conduct ourselves is carried through the voices and opinions of those with whom we may not share any apparent connections. One of the last acts of kindnesses Jesus performed on the far side of His crucifixion was humbly washing the feet of those in His circle, even the betrayer. We don't make a big deal over the beauty of feet but they are indispensable to the ability of living what most consider a normal life. And every step we take leaves an imprint, even if it dries up quickly. The footprints of those who change our lives forever, though, will never evaporate. The funny thing is that we might be those footprints to others and in out naivete, never be conscious of our influence. Watch where you step.

Applicable quote of the day:
"If you really want to get your feet wet, you have to first have the courage to step in the water."
Eugene Nathaniel Butler 

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Precious Memories

 

Precious Memories

Dad died in April of 2008. The following was written shortly after his passing. It is from October 5, 2008.

I have found myself missing Dad quite a bit lately. It hit me that it is only ten days from the sixth month anniversary of his death. I find myself playing a song by Jerry Jeff Walker (Desperadoes Waiting For A Train) on you-tube because it talks about the passing of an old man. ("The day before he died, I went to see him. I was grown and he was almost gone.") This morning as I led our Chinese congregation in communion, I mentioned my sadness, mixed in with the happiness of the memories of Dad, comparing those feelings to Jesus' directive that the purpose of the Lord's Supper was to remember him. During the sermon, Linda handed me a note. Linda and her husband, Buddy, are wonderful Christians who also work in our Chinese ministry. Several years ago, their daughter was murdered, a pain for parents I doubt most can ever fathom. Here is the note Linda wrote to me, shared with her blessing:

"Steve, you mentioned memories of your father and the sadness. The following is just one of the many memories that I have and I become sad over the loss of her beautiful soul and presence. When Natalie was a teenager, I went to visit her at her job. She was very busy polishing the brass rails at the pizza shop. She was so proud of the fact that the rails shined so beautifully. Natalies's little hands and fingernails were dirty and rough looking. So, now when I see brass rails, I think of Natalie and how hard she worked and the pride that she took in perfection."

I thanked Linda for the right word at the right time. My pain is that of a son who lost an elderly father. Hers is the pain of a mother who lost her child decades too early. Imagine what our Father in heaven felt as His son went to the cross for us. I know He felt Linda and Buddy's grief and carried them through the worst time in their lives. He hasn't forgotten how it feels.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.”
Bob Dylan

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Concrete And Clay

 

Concrete And Clay

I made eleven mission trips to Honduras, from 1998 through 2008, and found how little I knew of the rest of the world. This entry, from July 27, 2006, is about one of my favorite journeys to Honduras.

(That's me in the blue scrub top, lower right corner!)
They never made it big but they had my favorite name ever for a rock group: The Unit Four Plus Two. A pop combo from England, they started as Unit Four but required a different moniker with the addition of more musicians. Like many groups from that era, they achieved success with only one record. Theirs was the smash hit Concrete And Clay, one song I'd love to sing along with on the Houston oldies' station, but they never play it. Since you are unlikely to hear it if you live in the nation's fourth largest city, I can at least provide a few lines from the chorus of this British invasion classic:
The sidewalks in the street,
The concrete and the clay beneath my feet begins to crumble:
But love will never die
And we'll see the mountains tumble, before we say goodbye.I guess you'll just have to imagine the tune yourself (or watch the youtube video!) but it had sort of a bossa nova beat. The lyrics might be a little corny but love was portrayed as a permanent commitment. Concrete represents stability, something solid to stand on. In an unstable world, stability is a precious commodity.

During the past several years, I have become thoroughly acquainted with concrete. On a mission trip to Haiti, I discovered that for much of the world, concrete does not magically stream out of the back of a cement truck and land wherever it is directed. I found that in poor countries, it is mixed on the ground and carried in buckets or wheelbarrows to its desired destination. I also have come to the belief that every adult male in Haiti and Honduras has expertise in making concrete the old fashioned way. Since we do alot of construction work to aid local Christians on our Honduras missions AND since the Lord blessed me with no other discernible construction skills, I spend most of my time preparing concrete for floors, walls, and bridges. Here is the Honduran recipe we followed this summer:
A. Take 2 wheelbarrows of sand, heaped up and sifted.
B. Add one eighty pound bag of Portland cement, dry.
C. Mix with shovels; remix.
D. Hollow out the center of the pile like mashed potatoes.
E. Add water and mix with shovels for several minutes.
F. Add water, sand, or powdered cement to achieve desired texture.
G. Shovel into wheelbarrows or five gallon buckets.
H. Repeat process continuously for hours.
I. When in doubt, mimic the Hondurans.
I love making concrete. At the end of the day, I am filthy, covered with a combination of the various ingredients which comprise my favorite building material. Over the past nine years, I have spent roughly one hundred days in Honduras. Last Tuesday was one of my two or three favorite of the hundred. A group of our Shine Mission team, mostly young and heavily female and with the valuable assistance of several local men, put down a concrete floor in a church building in one day. I have never witnessed such teamwork from such a diverse collection of Christians. Isolated in the wooded hills above San Marcos de Colon, this house of worship occupies the most beautiful location I know of any structure set aside for the praising of God... and now it has a solid floor to rest on. The work was difficult, the rain was soaking, the forty-five minute ride back on a flat bed truck was numbingly cold....and the memories will last a lifetime. And Lord willing, so will the concrete.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Concrete is, essentially, the color of bad weather."
William Hamilton

The music video of Concrete And Clay by The Unit Four Plus Two is very primitive by modern standards!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zstZkoGyZS4

Shoutout to our El Rodeo Concrete Crew, July 18, 2006:
Tim McDonald (our fearless leader for the day),Callie, Katie, Casey, Allie, Molly, April, Larry, Casey, Ben, and Macy.
"But as for you, be strong and do not give up for your work will be rewarded."
II Chronicles 15:7

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Coverup

 

My apartment complex office does a once a year walk through of each of the 500 or so living quarters. I put a lot of time cleaning up when they do- I don't want to be embarrassed at what they see! This is from June 14, 2007.


I have clean carpets. Every six months, my apartment complex arranges for the free cleaning, one of the perks of living here. They shampooed the rugs this past Monday and as always, the result was terrific. My only responsibility is to get everything off the floor so the men can do their job. In the middle of the living room was an old, red heavy couch the guy next door gave me a number of years ago when he decided to get rid of it. On Tuesday, I concluded it had to go. Ben Johnson, one of our coaches, is moving out of his apartment. He had on old recliner and knew of another chair I could have to take up the space in front of the television set. When Ben made his furniture delivery, we pulled the couch away from the wall it had rested against for five years. I was embarrassed. The area surrounding where the couch had been was spotless but the rectangular sofa space was disgraceful. It was covered with dust-balls, food particles, and I'm not sure what the rest of that stuff was. After Ben left, my first order of business was to restore order to the part of the carpet that would now be partially exposed. It wasn't difficult. A good vacuuming and washing of the baseboard left it equal to the rest of the rug. Actually, it's probably even a little better without any wear-and-tear for the past half-decade and not quite as faded.

I'll be honest. I don't vacuum under the couch or the bed unless I absolutely have to. Who's going to see it, anyway? (I had a debate with my students this year as to whether I should iron the back of a dress shirt if I'm going to be wearing a jacket and no one will be wiser. The girls replied in the affirmative while most of the boys said it was a waste of time.) In Matthew 23, while confronting the religious leaders, Jesus uses several illustrations of looking good on the outside while being rotten on the inside. In verse 25, he refers to cups/dishes which were scrubbed on the exterior but whose interiors were caked with greed and self-indulgence. Two verses later, he compares the spiritual elite to tombs, whitewashed and ornate to the observer but containing bodies and bones, unclean to the Israelites, inside the walls. The thrust of the Savior in the section was hypocrisy, a character trait which has not become extinct in the succeeding two millennia. I can make myself presentable to the world while sporting a very different interior. It isn't hard- well, that hard- to make Apt. 3329 semi-presentable with a reasonable amount of time to work with. I would be well-advised to move the furniture occasionally when I do. My spiritual life could use some rearranging and vacuuming as well. It's probably best if I don't wait five years to do so. The memory of what resided under that old, red couch is a pretty good incentive!

Applicable quote of the day:
"All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them."
Erma Bombeck

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Witnessing In The Walmart Parking Lot

 

This entry from September 17, 2018 is about two of my favorite students who happen to be brothers!

I saw the Pollard brothers last Friday in the Walmart parking lot. I run into Justin every year or so but I don't think I had seen Paul Peter in five years at least. They are two of my favorite students at WCS or anywhere else. Justin comes up each year in my example of the feeding of the 5,000- he was a terrific lineman for our football squads and could put down some groceries at IHOP when I dined with the family at that fine establishment! I had a nickname for Paul Peter when he was my student. Another young man in class had the initials PP so he was P Squared. It seemed natural at the time to make Paul Peter Pollard The Cube! They were just wonderful kids back in the day- now, they are wonderful adults. They aren't the only ones in the family. They have two younger sisters who are just sweethearts! Their dad, Paul, is also important in my scheme of things. He not only designed the website for the book I wrote, he maintains it to this day. And significantly, he was the one who convinced me to get on Facebook in the spring of 2011. Not coincidentally, that social media conversation occurred in the same Walmart parking lot where I ran into his sons!

As I caught up with the brothers, Paul Peter said something that meant the world to me. He talked about being blessed by my being his instructor and he included this:
"I'll always remember what you told us in class. 'The Bible does not cover up the flaws of its characters.' "
When a student recalls something word for word, it makes teachers swell up a bit with pride. And he was right. That is one of the initial notes I give every year. Paul Peter had an advantage- he heard it in both eighth grade and tenth grade so I was able to reinforce it. Considering it was eight years ago (I think!), my words were able to make a lasting impression. Of course, the words were someone else's originally. I simply borrowed and passed them along.

I did something really stupid today. I made coffee....... while neglecting to put the pot in its place under the dripper. When I returned to the kitchen, coffee was everywhere over the counter and almost all of the water was out of the reservoir. In other words, it was a mess and it took some time to clean up. You know, if anyone ever wrote a biography of me, that's the kind of negative stuff I would hope would make the final cut; absent minded, lack of technological skills, messy, etc. What I wouldn't want in there was the the unkind things I have said and done and the impure thoughts and actions I've spawned. I would not want the opinions of those I've hurt or betrayed. And yet, that's the kind of stuff the Bible includes, warts and all. Each new fall term, I still use the same acronym as I did when I taught Paul Peter and Justin about the frailty of Bible characters: MAD, as in Moses-Aaron-David. We also should toss Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (and his sons) into the mix. And so as not to appear sexist, we should not forget the poor behavior at times of Sarah, Rachel, Leah, Rebekah. I find it comforting that all those mentioned above play a prominent role in the story of redemption, in spite of their weaknesses and struggles. Inspired scripture lets us see these ancients as they really were, without the airbrushing modern biographers tend to paint their subjects with. I've always believed but if had not been brought up in faith, it would make these heroes actually human and not the mythological creatures of some religions. And it gives me hope that I can be used in spite of my deficiencies. Even me and even you. And Paul Peter reminded me.

Applicable quote of the day:
The misfortune is that many people, men and women, think that the perfect face has no flaws, no pores in the skin; and that gives unrealistic levels of esteem. Somebody feels they're not right because they haven't got that type of refinement. 
Douglas Kirkland


God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Better Than You Found It

I love this example of something I teach my players. It is from September 30, 2018.
If you read this often, you probably know that I grew up in Nebraska and like everyone else, was a huge fan of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. If you follow college sports, you know that after this weekends' game, the Huskers own an eight game losing streak, longest in school history. I was reading an article on the Omaha World Herald website about how a coach, in this case Scott Frost, goes about changing a losing culture. Frost, a quarterback who led NU to the national title as a player, is in his first year at the helm. The writer referenced how last season, under the departed staff, the team left trash all over the chartered plane on an away game. He contrasted that with ARMY'S heartbreaking loss last week in Norman to the Oklahoma Sooners, a game in which I was unabashedly cheering for the underdog CADETS. In spite of a crushing defeat in overtime, the West Pointers left their visiting locker room spotless as shown in the picture above. My guess is that many or most squads would leave the dressing quarters trashy without a second thought. Not ARMY. They are tremendously disciplined both on the field and off and it shows. Here's another tidbit from the previously mentioned article. After the Cornhuskers throttling last weekend at the hands of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the charter flight was clean when Nebraska deplaned. That's a step of progress.

I worked fifteen years for legendary basketball coach Don Meyer at his summer camps at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. One point he hammered on was to always leave the locker room better than you found it when you play on the road. We used that on my high school teams when I was a varsity coach. You can't control talent but there are things you can control and the way you carry yourself in someone elses home/gym is one of them. (In middle school, we come dressed to play so it's not an issue any more- but we do clean up our bench!) It's that way in life as well. I wrote a blog a number of years ago which used the illustration of someone coming into the room with dog doo-doo on their shoes and everything is downhill, even when they leave. I contrasted that with our Febreze Day when I spray the kids shoes or backpacks with the best fragrance ever so wherever they go for the rest of the school day, the place is better than it was before their entrance. So which are we? Do we make places better or worse? Do we clean up our messes with apologies or leave it to someone else to do the dirty work? Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount that our salt and light make the world a better place. Salt gives taste and preserves while light shows the way to go. Neither salt nor light are unattainable talents. Neither is picking up trash off a locker room floor. GO ARMY.

Applicable quote of the day:
Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak, and esteem to all. 
George Washington

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Whistle Blower

We study the Parable of the Rich Fool in my classes. The story begins with a young man interrupting Jesus as He taught and demanded the Master intervene in a family matter concerning a will. Jesus asked who made him an arbiter, which I explained is like a referee. I believe every fan-player-coach should be required to don the striped shirt to know how it feels. What follows, from March 21, 2007, is about one such episode in my basketball practices.

Tomorrow will be a first in our basketball practice period. Our weekly game day will match the 6-7th graders versus the 8th graders in a full court regulation contest. That's not the big thing, though. Tomorrow is the solo refereeing debut of Christian Chevis, my student assistant. Christian played for me in middle school but went the cheerleading route in high school years. I've been prepping her by letting her help me officiate our four on four on four drills. The last several days, I told the girls at the start of our session that we would run if Christian didn't blow the whistle very loudly. I had her blow a blast or two; she did OK. Three of my last four student aides have been young men; Ugo, Sean, and Brandon. They were excellent high school players and this season graced the hardwoods collegiately for Cornell, Tulsa, and the University of Texas-Dallas. More importantly, they were terrific in teaching my girls the skills of basketball. BUT, they were not great officials. They were reluctant to blow the whistle with authority, if at all. Ugo, in particular, used his whistle sparingly, reasoning the girls needed to get tougher. The Lady Wildcats, as much as they loved my assistants, wanted me to officiate. They will be understanding of Christian, knowing its her initial foray into refdom. There will be no complaining. I'm no prophet but I foresee considerable running for several days if there would happen to be! The NBA suspends players on their sixteenth technical of the season. We start at one.

Do you know what makes a good referee? Knowledge of the rules is very important as is keeping an even temper. I think the number one rule, and you might think this is too simple, is blowing the whistle. Blow it quickly and blow it loudly, but blow it. Players at all levels respect an official who is in charge and the best way to display it is decisiveness. Decisiveness stems from confidence. Referees and umpires are indispensable in any sort of organized sport but it's getting harder and harder to find people who want to be involved. Officials in any sport, at the most basic level, simply settle constant disputes that can arise about boundaries, fouling, equipment, territoriality, etc. It's the same in life. A man came to Jesus asking him to be the referee between he and his brother over an estate. Jesus pointedly declined, not apparently because he objected to being an unbiased arbiter but because the issue was greed. In the wilderness, Moses selected men to handle disagreements bound to arise within such a large group. In 1st Corinthians 6, Paul chews out the church for suing each other, stating that even brothers of little account could adequately serve as judges in their inter-brethren squabbles. Some of my students erroneously believe it is wrong to ever judge but that isn't what the scriptures teach. Careless judging and harsh judging are condemned. We will get back what we give. Will Christian be an effective referee tomorrow? It's a growth process but she'll do great. In fact, it was her choice to wear the striped shirt. She only has to remember three little words: Blow the whistle!


Applicable quote of the day:
"The trouble with referees is that they just don't care which side wins."
Tom Canterbury

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1