Years ago, while visiting my in-laws in Tennessee, I visited a large work-out gym. My sister-in-law had membership privileges.

What struck me about the place was its signage: No Grunts! and Lunk Alarm! (a “lunk” was defined as “one who grunts, drops weights, and judges”). Most conspicuous of all, in large painted letters at the top of one wall, it said, This is a No Judgment Zone.

There was a scene from the movie Apollo 13 where Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) looks at the moon, closes one eye, and then uses his thumb to cover up the moon. Through the camera work, we see from his perspective that his thumb fully covers the moon.

Recently in our home bible study group, we were looking at passages in Proverbs, and the wisdom of trusting in God.  One of the passages we read is my favorite – Proverbs 3:5-6.  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”  We talked about how we should make God a part of our decisions.  We should actively seek his counsel and guidance.  We ask him to show us the way we should go.

I am in the process of building a courtyard in the front on my house. It is to be enclosed by a waist high brick wall. But the brick wall must be built on a firm footer. I have been reading about footers and foundations, how deep and wide it must be to support a certain size wall, the amount of cement in the concrete, the positioning of rebar for strength, etc. Since our house is near the gulf, our soil is mostly sand (not a good foundation for a wall) which makes a firm foundation even more important.

He lived at the turn of the first century. A descendant of King David. One of the most respected teachers in all Jewish history. His name? Rabbi Hillel.

Not only was he known to be humble, but he also had the talent to take complicated scripture and condense it into little nuggets of wisdom. This made him a favorite of both scholars and commoners alike. To this day, his teachings continue to shape Jewish thought around the world.

When I was young, around the age of seven or eight, I couldn’t do much to help with chores, but one thing I could do was pick weeds in the garden and around the house.  This was not a job I enjoyed.  It was, perhaps, my least favorite task.  And to top it off, the job of weed picking, I soon found out, was never-ending.  If I picked all the weeds in the garden on Saturday, by Sunday afternoon just as many would be poking through the dirt as I had picked the day before! 

I recently had a thought. I have had a lot of thoughts that revolve around the basic premise of this thought, but never as clear as it came to me today. Some of the following will sound technical, but it needs to be included, in order understand the main premise of this article. The premise: Any truly new thought, one that is not derived from a stored memory or external stimuli, is a metaphysical process, not a physical process. Even if one were to accept that there are never any truly new thoughts, that we are simply biological computers (more on that, later), then we are still left with this quandary. Computers were created by a higher intelligence.

Is the attribute of kindness limited solely to human beings? I'm not a pet owner, but I imagine a loud chorus of "no way" would arise from pet owners worldwide in answer to that question. How, then, I would ask, did that behavior come to be present in non-humans? Perhaps domesticated animals learn to act kindly from observing their human masters (companions), simply aping human kindness or reciprocating the kindness shown to them.

In the 80’s, the rock band AC/DC had a song “Who Made Who?”, which was a theme song for the Stephen King movie “Maximum Overdrive.”  The premise of the movie was the earth passed through the tail of a comet, and when it did, all the machines came to life, or started doing whatever they wanted to.

Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia which means to make a defense.  It also carries the idea of making a reasoned argument.  In 1 Peter 3:15 we see the word used in the following passage:

1 Peter 3:15 (NASB) but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;

When I see our young (and older) people engrossed with their mobile devices it reminds me of the Eloi of H.G. Wells "The Time Machine." Are they disengaged from reality? Technology can be a blessing and a curse. It can be addictive and pull you away from what is really important.

In the movie City Slickers 2 (1994) the premise was that the main character, Mitch (played by Billy Crystal), found an old, battered treasure map that was missing a corner in the hat of his deceased friend, Curly. So, Mitch and his friends decide to go looking for this treasure which leads them on a comical adventure. Along the way, they meet up with Curly’s twin brother, Duke, who joins them for the journey.

Last week I heard someone say, "We know God does not listen to the prayers of sinners." I was surprised he would say such a thing since he appeared to be knowledgeable of the Bible. I then wondered how many other people may think this.

In his book, “Learning to Love,” Willard Tate has a segment where talks about going through life like a referee.  What is the job of a referee?  He goes around looking for trouble, and when he finds it, he makes everyone aware of it.  Willard Tate’s point was that too often, we also go around like referees looking for trouble and making it our mission to point it out.  Sometimes it seems our sole purpose here is to point out what’s wrong with everyone else.

A group of us were looking at the book of Proverbs the other night, and during that time, a theme caught my attention.  The discussion centered around wisdom and several aspects of it.  One aspect I thought was interesting is that wisdom is not just knowing WHAT to say, it is also knowing WHEN to say it.  That is, if you have something that is true and right, having wisdom means you know when to actually deploy that nugget of truth.  The goal of having something to say is for it to stick with who you’re sharing it with.  You don’t want the other person to tune you out.

Shhh. We need it quiet. Look around. Make sure we are in a safe place. I have a word to share, a short phrase actually. I want to say it. I think we all know it, but for some reason we don’t often say it out loud. It’s too dangerous, even offensive. Offensive? Yes. Perhaps more to us than to someone unfamiliar with the phrase. That seems strange to me but it’s true none-the-less.

Listen to the words of the the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Recently President Trump announced plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.

I lived on the Gulf for 20 years, and during that time I jokingly referred to it as the Gulf of Texas. While sitting on the beach, it just seems like it belongs to me and not Mexico, hence the Gulf of Texas.

When I was taking college classes to work on my accounting degree, one of those classes was on income taxes.  Some friends and I were sitting around a dorm room one night, discussing this tax class, and one of my friends hit on an epiphany – the answer to any tax question is “it depends!”  “Is this expense deductible?”  “It depends!”  “Do I have to report this as income on my tax return?”  “It depends!”  “Am I required to file a tax return?”  “It depends!”  And on and on.  We thought we were pretty clever.  I was never bold enough to attempt to use that on any test though.

While we were at the youth rally one time, I was walking around the building during some down time and I saw that someone had left their Bible laying on a table in the church’s foyer. There was nothing odd or special about that; there were hundreds of teens there that weekend. Someone was bound to leave their Bible laying around. What caught my attention, though, was that whoever owned the Bible had written some words on the outside edges of the pages, so that when the book was closed and all the pages lined up, you could read it. It read: “This is how I fight my battles.”