Sunny

 

Sunny

This is about one of my favorite songs. It's from March 24, 2018!
This has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm writing about tonight but yesterday, I got home from school and as I changed out of my dress stuff, I made an amazing discovery- I was wearing two belts! I change after first period from coaching gear to my professional wardrobe and as we had just completed a great practice, I must have been distracted. I'm not even sure how you can fit two belts through the loops in Jos A Bank pants! Another chapter in my life of fashion foibles!

I don't know much about television advertising but I am pretty sure of one thing- the people in charge know what works. During this current NCAA tournament, I've seen several ads for a company I've never heard of, Indeed. It is some sort of business for job seekers. What I recall about their spots has nothing to do with their product. No, what struck me was the use of a song I hadn't heard in awhile, Sunny, by Bobby Hebb. It's one of my favorite songs of all time although I'm no musical expert. However, it was ranked # 25 on the BMI list of "The Top 100 Songs of the Century," probably an excellent indicator of its staying ability in the modern culture. I'll say this- I paid some attention to the Indeed commercial simply because of the song. That's an effective ad, especially when I'm not in the market for another job!

Here's a few things I learned about Bobby Hebb  due to the Indeed commercial. His parents were both blind musicians and he was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He was one of the first African American artists to perform on stage at the Grand Old Opry. Hebb penned his classic within several days of the death of his older brother who was murdered the day after JFK's assassination on 11-22-63. He toured with the Beatles in 1966, when his hit was higher on the charts than any of the Fab Four's. Bobby Hebb did a lot of noteworthy things in his life but primarily is remembered for the classic hit he authored and sang to perfection. That's a pretty good thing to hang your hat on. The Indeed people think so!

Last night, I re-ran a blog about Tammy Wynette's mournful country ballad, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, a song about something good that turned bad. By contrast, Bobby Hebb's masterpiece is about hope and joy coming from despair:

Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain.
Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain.
The dark days are gone, and the bright days are here,
My Sunny one shines so sincere.
Sunny one so true, I love you.

Sunny, thank you for the sunshine bouquet.
Sunny, thank you for the love you brought my way.
You gave to me your all and all.
Now I feel ten feet tall.
Sunny one so true, I love you.

Sunny, thank you for the truth you let me see.
Sunny, thank you for the facts from A to C.
My life was torn like a wind-blown sand,
And the rock was formed when you held my hand.
Sunny one so true, I love you.

Sunny, thank you for the smile upon your face.
Sunny, thank you for the gleam that shows its grace.
You're my spark of nature's fire,
You're my sweet complete desire.
Sunny one so true, I love you.

Sunny, to me, brings out one of the wonders of this life God gave us; it can turn around. The tough part is it can go from good to bad but the hope comes in the possibility it will be heartache to elation. That's one reason I think the Beatitudes of Jesus resonate. Mourn now, celebrate later. Hunger now, feast later. I believe Sunny is uplifting for that very reason- if we hold on, we can come out in a better place. It's cloudy today but the skies will be clear tomorrow. And we know the Father promised the rainbow after the rain. We have so much to look forward to, even in our down times. I thank the Lord Bobby Hebb reminded us of that.

Applicable quote of the day:
Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.
Stevie Wonder

To Hear Bobby Hebb's Sunny, click or copy/past the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubvYQxTXO3U

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Spelling Bee

 

Spelling Bee

For many years, we had the Love Board up in my room -  a good number of the kids proclaimed their everlasting devotion to their significant other. We all wish it was that easy. Below is a story of a student and her parents, from March 27, 2007.


It was one of those notes/prayer requests on quizzes that wound my heart. This week, a girl in one of my classes summed up her life with these words:
"Coach, please pray for my family because my parents may be splitting up."
I don't know the mom or the dad but I know their daughter. She's a great kid who just wants her folks to stick it out, to give it one more try. She's not taking sides unless you take the view that it's selfish for a child to want to keep a family unit intact. She isn't blind; she can read the handwriting on the wall and probably wishes she was illiterate when it comes to the dissolution of a marriage. In Tammy Wynette's country classic, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, parents spell out words so their four year old son is protected from the impending breakup; words like S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E and every child's favorite word, C-U-S-T-O-D-Y. The young lady in my Bible class knows how to spell. She is most likely to learn the meaning of a new vocabulary word; H-E-A-R-T-B-R-E-A-K. Please keep her in your prayers. Her name is ...............

Applicable verse of the day:
"I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel.
Malachi 2:16

Applicable quote of the day:
"A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you."
Margaret Atwood

To listen to Tammy Wynette sing D-I-V-O-R-C-E, copy and paste this link!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRis1kfzD-I

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Doane Mind If We Do

 

Doane Mind If We Do

Many of my best memories involve Coach Neal, my teammates,  and YHS basketball. This is about one of my favorite memories. It's from January 27, 2014.

Every morning when I get up, I have the first of several cups of coffee and check the Internet before my daily devotional and Bible reading. After Facebook and school e-mail, I click on the link for the York News-Times website, my home town newspaper in Nebraska. I won't lie- the first two things I check are the obituaries and the sports section. This past Saturday morning, I saw my alma mater, the York High Dukes, put a whipping on the Fairbury Jeffs. (If you're wondering, Jeffs is short for Jeffersons, as in the name of the county.) Fortunes have changed. When I was a senior in high school, we were good but Fairbury was better. They were the # 1 ranked team in the state in Class B and would win the state championship, led by Bob Siegel, the best player in Nebraska. We played them in York that year and got off to a 15-2 lead before reality set in and we lost by nine points. We ended up ranked sixth in the polls ourselves but I was sure we would win the title that Fairbury would earn. It was a crushing blow. 

Still, we had an amazing season with a core of eight seniors; we had played together since 8th grade and got better every year. I was never as excited about anything in my life as basketball that year. We dealt with injury problems but so does every other team. Our biggest problem, though, was our district. There were eight teams and only one would advance to the state tournament in Lincoln. The aforementioned Fairbury was in it as well as # 2 ranked Crete and # 4 rated Seward. In any other district, we might have been the favorite. As fate would have it, our first game was with arch rival Seward, a team we had never beaten in anything. Every small town has a nemesis, a community you despise for no apparent reason and Seward was ours. I had become acquainted with their players at the University of Nebraska camp the previous summer and discovered, shockingly, they were pretty much the same as my teammates and myself, and I even developed some friendships. Seward had beaten us in overtime in our regular season contest but I was sure it would be different in the district tournament, played at the huge (to us) Fuhrer Fieldhouse at Doane College in Crete. But as sometimes happens when kids play, the game took a very strange twist.

Every team has two sets of uniforms, home and away. Our student manager mistakenly brought the wrong uniforms, bringing the blue set instead of the home whites we were supposed to wear. Dale Neal, our coach, asked the Doane coaching staff if we could borrow their jerseys to go with our blue shorts. They kindly agreed so we took the floor wearing Doane's white tops. There were two issues. One, they were too big and two, they said DOANE in orange and black lettering. Still, the game went on and for us, it was almost transformative. We played the best two quarters of the season and jumped off to a nice lead. Our own white uniforms had arrived by half time but Coach Neal, perhaps letting superstition guide his coaching, refused to let us change. We went on to post a nine point win and the sweetest victory I ever was part of as a player came wearing an over-sized college jersey. Two nights later, decked out in our normal Buff and Blue (how the school handbook defined our colors) gear, we lost to Crete High and the high school careers of eight York Dukes ended. It was a sudden and heartbreaking finish for me.

Looking back, I'm glad the uniform switch turned out like it did. The incident was repeated in the Omaha newspaper and that's a big deal to small town kids. Anybody can win but in some other team's gear? That's not an everyday occurrence. Beating our biggest rival, that made it memorable. You know, I always try to make some spiritual applications to these stories but there is really not one tonight. It seems funny now- I wish I remember how we reacted when we found out about the uniforms or how Coach Neal reacted. I just remember the unbelievable elation after the final buzzer that any of us feel very few times in our lives. For our bonus today on our memory verse, I had my students tell me someone who needs prayers and why they are in need of God's intervention. Their responses reinforced my sense that we are surrounded by real heartache in the world and not the type which comes from losing a basketball game. The Lord allows us to enjoy and remember good things, I think, to remind us of His love and what a blessing that is on days when we mourn. Go Dukes- ONWARD TO VICTORY!

Applicable quote of the day:

“We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game.”
Pat Conroy

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Ethnicity Of Sarah

 

The Ethnicity Of Sarah

Sarah Suerte was a young lady in my class a number of years ago and an incredibly awesome one! Sarah taught me, quite accidentally, the value of accepting each group as if they were your own. The following is from August 20, 2006. (Sarah is now grown up and happily married!)

I wore a yellow tie to worship services this morning. It was designed by Ralph Lauren and features a design of little red motor scooters. Like most of my one hundred thirty neckties, this one was a gift from a student. The young lady who gave it to me was named Sarah. She was with us at Westbury Christian School through her eighth grade year before her family moved to another part of Houston. Sarah was a terrific student and had a servant heart. I heard from her last year at her new school as she headed up a fund raiser in the battle against disease. She also was a hopeless romantic. There was a boy she liked at the Catholic school across the parking lot from us and when the last bell rang, Sarah would gaze out my window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her boyfriend as he departed for the day. Young love....you just can't beat it!Sometimes, my students say things that are very profound, often simply as observations on life. My most enduring memory of Sarah came from a conversation we had one day after class. Like many of our WCS students, Sarah was born in the United States but her parents were immigrants from The Philippines. Sarah was relating her experiences in going out to eat in Houston when she stated the following:
"When I go to a Chinese restaurant, the people speak to me in Chinese because they think I'm Chinese. But, when I go into a Mexican market or restaurant, the people speak Spanish to me because they think I'm Hispanic."
That is an amazing statement. I am no sociologist (although my teacher certification says I'm qualified to teach in the area) but I'd like to interject my own profound statement here: People from China don't look like people from Mexico and people from Mexico don't look like people from China. And yet, in spite of this, both ethnic groups readily accepted Sarah as one of their own, even though she is not from either heritage. There must be a lesson in there for us somewhere. Christianity from the outset struggled with the making of distinctions among believers. Often it was conflict between Jew and Gentile. In the book of James, the poor were being considered second class citizens in the assemblies. The passage of two thousand years has not erased all the barriers that hinder us. What a shame we can't view each other as Sarah was regarded wherever she went. How much more effective would we be in spreading the GOOD NEWS of Jesus Christ if we simply accepted others as Sarah was accepted, as simply one of us.


Applicable quote of the day:
"After Zorro, people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I'm Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity."
Catherine Zeta-Jones/ actress


God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Alternative

 

The Alternative

Sometimes it's easy for me to write and sometimes, it's not. I have a number of partially written devotionals in my files but I can't quite make them come together. The following is along that line and centers on a story that did not turn out the way I expected. It is from February 5, 2007.

I started this entry some time ago. It was supposed to be about a Christmas present but it just wouldn't flow. It sounded good in my mind but looked weak on the computer screen. There was allegedly some spiritual point to be made but I couldn't make it. I was sure it was what the Lord wanted me to write about today but now I'm not so sure. I was positive I could make you smile and nod your head in agreement, and maybe even evoke a giggle. Since I can't force myself to grin, I bet you wouldn't either. Most of my devotionals center on something that happened in my world during my waking hours but it was a routine day at Westbury Christian School. All of my five classes had the same memory verse assignment to write out for a grade. It was Luke 12:15, the entry to the Parable of the Rich Fool:
"Then he (Jesus) said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.' "
We always discuss the scriptures as we review before transcribing them to paper. We talked about the death of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul who passed away several weeks ago and, at last report, has yet to be interred. I asked my students how much money they thought James Brown had made and they replied millions. Then, I wondered if any of them would change places with him now. Not surprisingly, there were no takers. When I inquired, the predictable answer was consistently, "He's dead." Maybe that's my thought for the day. We are susceptible to having average days, blown plans, interrupted projects, ineffective lessons, frustrations, and disconnected devotional story lines. But the reason is.....WE'RE ALIVE! We have today and maybe tomorrow and perhaps another after that one. Jesus told us the abundance of wealth can't define us. The cash and the accompanying fame lose their appeal when that line goes flat on the heart monitor. The dead are stuck: the living can change. It's not over yet. I feel good.

Applicable quote of the day:
"I tell my wife; You got plenty of time left. Don't live so fast. Slow down and live, and don't try to catch up."
James Brown


God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Power Of Ten

 

Power Of Ten

I've found out when I'm in Vietnam that wedding dates are set by a complicated (to me) interaction of numbers! This is from October 10, 2010 and it's about marriage! 

I learned several things before worship services this morning. Watching one of those Sunday morning news shows, I discovered that October now has the second most number of American weddings, following June. That was surprising to me. But, the more intriguing fact I gleaned is that there will be an abnormal number of weddings today, three times the normal quantity. The reason was obvious when explained. It's the date: 10-10-10. Many couples have chosen October 10, 2010 simply because they think it's lucky. There was a similar uptick in weddings on July 7, 2007, or 7-7-7. We as a culture are superstitious with numbers- there is no thirteenth floor in my dentist's building- although it seems to me from my two trips to China they are more so, avoiding the number 4 because it sounds like the word for death. I do think getting married on 10-10-10 would help some husbands remember their anniversary but I hope these couples are basing their marital futures on more than a lucky lottery combination. Our minister, David Yasko, this morning used some statistics in his lesson. One of the most compelling was, and I hope I'm quoting this accurately, is that there are more divorces in the US than in the rest of the world combined. As do all teachers, I deal with the collateral damage of divorce in the classroom: the children. I wish the percentage of successful marriages performed today would be the same as the mathematically cubed date or 10 x 10 x 10 or 10 to the third power or 1000%. I'm not holding my breath but I bet Adam did when he saw Eve, the woman God made from him and for him.Wedding planning was so much simpler then; no bridesmaid dresses (or bridesmaids!), no in-laws, no caterers or photographers or florists, and no expensive reception! Oh yeah, one other thing; no calendar to pick a lucky date. I think the Lord took care of that detail.

Applicable of the day:
"The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It's a choice you make / not just on your wedding day, but over and over again / and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife."
Barbara De Angelis

*The picture of the bride and groom is from the website at http://www.latourelle.com/ *

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Boy In The Box And The Bigger Picture

 

The Boy In The Box And The Bigger Picture

A little bit of Hawley history tonight! This is from March 15, 2018.

I'm on Spring Break and looking for something to write about tonight. With a little extra time on my hands, I went scrolling through some old pictures and came upon this one. My guess is that my Grandpa Hawley took it because he took most of the old photos we have. Also, Dad is in the shot as is Mom, who I never saw hold a camera in her life. That's me in the apple box. Dave is in the right hand corner with eyes glued to the camera. (You may have to click on the picture to enlarge it and see Dave!) It's a church get together in Brooklyn, I know that much. I'm not sure the location but no furniture looks familiar so I don't think it was at the Hawley house. The only thing I'm relatively sure of is that I am four or less as that is when our family packed up and moved to the Great Plains, to the small town of York, Nebraska.

Well, truthfully, there are several other things I'm sure of as I look back at this snippet of time. One is that I know no one in the picture that I'm not related to. Dad was the preacher so I assume all the others were members of our congregation. There's more kids than grownups in the room which I believe is the harbinger of a strong future. I know the brothers and sisters dressed up more than we do these days. The adults are standing or sitting in chairs while the children are on the floor.... or in an apple box in one case!  No video games or phones are distracting anyone in the group. There's also only one song book in use so my assumption is that an old standard is being sung, something along the line of Hark, The Voice Of Jesus Calling or Lead Me To Some Soul Today. I grew up singing, just not singing very well.

But there are a few more telltale signs of personality I see in this long ago portrait. One is that Dad, who was BIG into being on time, is checking his watch while singing praises! Another is that Mom is wearing flowers while worshiping- we weren't rich but she did the best she could fashion-wise as a preacher's wife. Mom also was so happy when singing hymns, even when the Alzheimer's took the rest of her mind and you can see that glow on her face. Dave is looking directly into the lens of the camera and smiling. No surprise there as he is an extrovert without any traces of shyness. That leaves me, the king of the apple crate. I've never enjoyed having my picture taken and it showed up even at this tender age. I'm not looking away but I'm not thrilled, either. I've had very few posed pictures of myself that I've liked in my life although there are some spontaneous ones I'm content with. (It also looks like my eyes are brown but I assure you they are blue!) Why the seating accommodation? Who knows why that box would be in the living room in the first place but my thought is that I just beat the other kids to the spot.  Something about boys and boxes!

If I would poll my reading audience tonight, I think a number of you, maybe most, would consider this entry boring, trivial minutia which is a redundancy if there ever was one. My point would be that too often we don't get past the surface of things. I find my students, the ones who have learned the Scriptures before, have never really dug into the stories which make up the Gospels. There is so much more that render the parables understandable, the characters sympathetic in some cases and jerks in others, and lets the miracles come alive in more than just the physical resurrection of Lazarus. I'm constantly amazed when I teach by what I haven't seen before, a detail or observation which clarifies situations and missions. I could see stuff in that picture that you wouldn't the way the apostles would have insights which we haven't fathomed. But it doesn't happen by osmosis. We have to search and ponder and search again. Our view changes and deepens when we move past the apple box perspective of a four year old child. At least, we should hope it does.

Applicable quote of the day:
“A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into.” 
 Ansel Adams

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1