Reason for the Hope

It’s a little late for Christmas shopping (I finished mine a couple of hours ago), but if you are looking for a story Bible for any of the children in your life, please consider The Jesus Storybook Bible from Zonderkidz. I’ve written about this book here before, but it’s worth doing again; it’s that good.

It was written by Sally Lloyd-Jones, and contains beautifully captivating illustrations by Jago. The beauty of this book, however, lies not in the illustrations, as great as they are, nor even in the writing, as clever and engaging as it is. The true beauty of it lies in its clear focus, from beginning to end, on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Where so many products like this take Old Testament stories and turn them into self-contained moral lessons, this book keeps the broad narrative of scripture clearly in view. Most children’s Bible story books take the story of David’s triumph over Goliath and use it to tell children that they can face the “giants” in their lives if they’ll be courageous like David. This book points that when the people needed a hero to rescue them from their enemy, God provided that hero in the form of a shepherd boy, and that one day, God would send another Hero to rescue his people. Each and every story points to God’s unfolding plan of salvation in a way unlike any other children’s story Bible I’ve ever seen.

So if you’ve got youngsters, I highly recommend that you check out this book. And as my way of wishing you a great Christmas, I close with a couple of excerpts from the book’s retelling of the Nativity story, titled simply, “He’s here!” (pp. 176-183):

Everything was ready. The moment God had been waiting for was here at last. God was coming to help his people, just as he promised in the beginning.

But how would he come? What would he be like? What would he do?

Mountains would have bowed down. Seas would have roared. Trees would have clapped their hands. But the earth held its breath. As silent as snow falling, he came in. And when no one was looking, in the darkness, he came.

…

Mary and Joseph named him Jesus, “Emmanuel” - which means “God has come to live with us.”

Because, of course, he had.

Merry Christmas!

Man, is it ever dusty around here. It’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, a fault I intend to correct. But first, some updating is in order.

First of all, I’m grateful to God for my wife’s recovery thus far from her accident in September. It has required one rather significant surgery thus far, in which an artificial disk was inserted in her neck. Since the accident, she has experienced a continuous burning sensation in her hands, apparently the result of an injury to her spinal cord caused by the impact. The artificial disk will restore necessary space for the cord to begin to heal, a process that takes four to six months. So while she still has the pain, it should be able to heal now. She still has an issue with her lower back, and we’ll be visiting the neurosurgeon again in January to find out what the next step is. Considering the severity of the accident, it clearly could have been much worse. We’re grateful to be on the road to recovery.

All of this turmoil has posed challenges in other areas, as you might imagine. The date of my last post here was just two days after the accident, and I’ve been only slightly more active over at SBC Today. I intend to improve in both areas. I miss the release that blogging can be, and I miss the interaction and the iron-sharpening that goes on in a good blog fight discussion. So while I don’t think I’ll ever return to 2006-2007 levels, I do intend to post somewhat more frequently that I have over the last couple of months.

Another impact has been on my studies. I had enrolled in eighteen hours for this Fall semester, which is what I completed in the spring. That load was divided between two subterms of three classes each. After the accident, I was forced to drop all three classes in the first subterm, and I ended up dropping one of the three in the second. I finished the remaining two courses last week, and was within two points of an “A” in both classes. My Spring schedule is populated by the four classes dropped this Fall, two classes per term. That’s a more manageable level for me at this point. Those eighteen hours I took in the Spring may have spawned undue optimism on my part. I realize now that there is a significant difference between ENGL 102 and BIBL 450.

It’s good to be back (if you can call this back). I’ll likely not post again here between now and Christmas, but I look forward to returning to a much more consistent schedule in the new year. To the handful of folks who still check in every day, I’m very grateful, but perhaps a feed reader would serve you well. Just sayin’…

You’re welcome to to question my theology here, but the theory under which I’m operating is that God, to whom alone belongs vengeance, has taken his righteous vengeance upon our traitorous Windstar in an act of divine retribution for its having abandoned us in Indianapolis. At least, that’s what I think. You can click on the image for a larger view of the aftermath of this wrath.

On a serious note, we have much to be grateful for. While my wife is incredibly sore, and we’re concerned about the potential for some less obvious injuries, it clearly could have been much worse. Our son, who would have normally been with her in the van as she headed to pick up our daughter from school, was with some church members. Truly, God was watching out for my family.

We still don’t know the condition of the driver of the truck, who was airlifted from the scene of the accident. He remains in our prayers. Thanks to all who have prayed for my wife. Your expressions of concern mean so much to us.

This post seems a little disjointed, but there is a lot of diverse background to this story, so stay with me. When I was 8-9 years old, we lived in Alexandria, Indiana, where my whole family was working for Bill Gaither. My aunt was a backup singer for the Bill Gaither Trio, my uncle was the trio’s music director and manager of their recording studio, my dad managed the sound & light crew, and my mom designed album covers. I spent a lot of time at the studio and at Bill & Gloria’s house, swimming in their pool and getting into various & sundry mischief with their son, Benji.

Fast forward nearly thirty years to this summer. The Gaither Vocal Band performed on the opening day of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, and one of the songs they sang was called “Jesus & John Wayne.” I’m not really familiar with the song, except that it apparently talks about finding oneself “somewhere between” the two people in the title.

I was sitting next to Bart Barber during their performance, and after that song was sung, Bart, feigning indignation (at least I think he was feigning), declared himself to be offended by the song’s implication that there existed some distance between Jesus and John Wayne.

When the convention ended, my wife and I, having returned our rental car after picking up our traitorous Windstar ($2900!), prepared to head north to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be reunited with our children. They had spent the week in the care of grandparents, and apparently missed us not a bit. It had been many years since I had visited Alexandria, and so we took a side trip to tour the town.

We stopped in to Gaither Family Resources, a store next to the Gaither’s studio complex, right about where I remembered the bus barn having been on my last visit. After browsing for a few minutes, we walked over to the studio, just for old time’s sake. The receptionist was someone whose name was vaguely familiar to me, and when I introduced myself she immediately knew who I was.

As we chatted about family, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a man in shorts and a t-shirt, looking somewhat dissheveled, walk past us as if he was looking for something. I thought nothing of it, but when he came back through, I recognized him: It was Bill Gaither. He recognized me immediately (amazing, since it had been something like ten years since I had last spoken to him), and we chatted for a few minutes. I took the opportunity to tell him how he had “offended” my friend Bart during his convention performance, and he chuckled. As my wife and I talked later, we agreed that it was a somewhat uncomfortable chuckle, and we concluded that he wasn’t terribly happy about it.

Turns out we were wrong. Bill Gaither is a major backer of my uncle’s record label, Doxology Records, and they work closely together. My uncle called me a few hours after our conversation with Bill to tell me that Bill thought Bart’s line was absolutely hilarious, and he would likely be using it on stage whenever they perform the song. Apparently, he just needed some time to process the remark.

I’m glad we took that sidetrip, as it was fun seeing the town that was a part of my childhood. We met up with my family in Michigan, and spent a relaxing few days with them and by ourselves at their home and at their condo. You can read more about that part of the trip on my wife’s blog.

This concludes my posting on our convention/vacation trip. My fall term begins today, and I’m enrolled for 18 hours, so posting will be at least as sparse as it has been the last few months. I appreciate those of you who still read this blog (you both know who you are).

Readers should be forgiven for not remembering the first “Brush With Fame” post, its having been posted nearly two years ago. They should also be forgiven for deciding that this “brush” isn’t nearly as exciting as being bear-hugged by Bill Murray. It isn’t. Still, it’s somewhat interesting, especially if you’re a watcher of politics, as I have been most of my adult life. Here’s the brief story behind this picture.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, my grandfather served as pastor of Victory Park Baptist Church in McAlester, Oklahoma. During those years he developed something of a relationship with the congressman from Oklahoma’s third congressional district, the Hon. Carl Albert. My grandfather left McAlester in around 1964, but Rep. Albert stayed a resident, and stayed in the congress, where he was elected Speaker of the House in 1971.

In October of 1976, when I was five years old, my family visited Washington, D.C., and received a tour of the Capitol building that was guided by Speaker Albert himself. Apparently, his office was part of the tour, as I am here pictured seated behind his desk.

Too bad I don’t remember any of this. It would probably make for a pretty cool story if I were telling it from memory, rather than from an academic knowledge of my family history.

Well, it has been a while since I shared the beginning of our journey to Indianapolis and beyond, so it’s about time I continue. Besides, I needed to do something to get that demon serpent off the top of my blog.

My last installment left us in Franklin, Tennessee, where we awoke early (and with ears still ringing) on the Saturday before the convention and began to make our way north. We stopped just south of Louisville to visit some friends, and it was upon leaving their house that the first sign of impending calamity made its appearance. Nothing major, just a slight hesitation and revving of the engine when I would accelarate from a stop. Probably nothing, I told myself.

Things went well as we cruised north on I65 through southern Indiana, and I was beginning to entertain the notion that we had somehow escaped the flooding-related troubles that had ensnared many of my fellow convention-goers. That’s when I saw the brake lights.

We were making good time en route to our planned detour at Columbus, where I intended to exit in order to take my family to a restaurant I had visited as a child. The Brown County Inn in Nashville, Indiana is where I learned to appreciate the beauty of fried biscuits and apple butter, and I was so looking forward to reliving this childhood dream of a memory that my stomach was rumbling when traffic ground to a halt just south of Seymour, some 25 miles from the exit. And there was that hesitation again, slightly worse than before. Oh well, it’ll make it.

We left the interstate at Seymour, and made good time on the back roads heading north to Columbus, then west to Nashville. A stop at a convenience store revealed a slightly deficient reading on the transmission dipstick, but the addition of a quart (and some of another one) of fluid had the old Windstar jumping off the line like the good old days.

Along the road between Columbus and Nashville, we got a glimpse of what all the fuss (and snarled traffic) was about. Major flooding had closed interstate highways (and many lesser ones) and thousands of people were without electricity, or homes, or both.

We ate the fried biscuits (and assorted other old-people food), then wound our way north toward Indianapolis. It was in the northern part of Greenwood (an Indy suburb) where we got a glimpse of what all the fuss was about with our Windstar. And by “glimpse,” I mean “there were copius amounts of transmission fluid on the ground under the van.”

The van was all finished moving forward with this transmission. By God’s grace, we were on a very flat road, at a traffic light in front of a Wal*Mart (soon to be Walmart), a relatively safe place to be stranded, all things considered. I was able quickly to summon my wife to the driver’s seat to do the steering while I began to push. The van rolled easily into a parking space, and the adventure began in earnest.

Some three hours later, we left the parking lot in an airport-bound taxi, which was the undisputed highlight of the trip so far, from the perspective of my three-year-old son. When we prepared to load up into the Chrysler PT Cruiser we rented, he asked, “Daddy, is this a race car?” I’m glad someone was enjoying this.

The next day, we handed off our youngsters to my dad who drove down from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to collect them. We then saw to the towing of our traitorous Ford to a nearby transmission shop, and finally checked into our convention hotel in time for the start of the Pastor’s Conference on Sunday. Three days (and nearly three thousand American dollars) later, we had our Windstar back, now fully able to move forward under its own power.

In my next installment, I’ll skip the convention altogether in order to share some snippets of our visit with Bill Gaither (during which I was able to make him angry at Bart Barber) and our actual vacation, which was considerably more relaxing that the trip thus far.

This snake was in my driveway. It was at least five feet long, possibly more. What kind of snake is it, and why am I still shaking? (Click the image to see it in terrifying larger size)

Though I had taken a Sunday off last fall, it had been eighteen months since the last true vacation I took with my family. So when the time approached to head to Indianapolis for the convention, my church graciously agreed to allow me to combine that trip with a week’s vacation. We had been looking forward to this convention because my dad and his wife, who live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was planning to keep our children for us during the meetings, and now we would be able to join them for some relaxing family time afterward.

We left on Thursday before the convention and spent that night in Little Rock with my wife’s sister, then headed out on Friday morning, planning to stop in Franklin, Tennessee to spend the night with my aunt and uncle. We stopped in Memphis long enough to ride the monorail out to Mud Island, where we hustled through the museum and let our kids play in the model of the Mississippi River, then stopped at Corky’s for some pretty good ribs before heading on to Franklin.

My aunt had called earlier in the week, wanting to know if it would be alright with us if they found a babysitter for Friday night for our children, because my uncle had heard about some live music we could hear in Franklin on Friday night. My uncle has spent his entire career in the Christian music industry. He began his career as music director for the Bill Gaither Trio and Amy Grant, and in subsequent years, produced records for artists such as Leslie Phillips, Margaret Becker, and Bryan Duncan. He was vice-president of A&R for Myrrh Records, where he was responsible for signing and developing acts such as Fernando Ortega, Crystal Lewis, and Mark Schultz. He now serves as president/GM of Doxology Records, a label he helped found in order to “give the Church songs of encouragement, testimony and invitation.”

I share all of this background not to build up his ego (though I’m sure he would appreciate it), but to establish that when someone with this background wants to take you to hear live music, you should not hesitate, and I’m glad we didn’t.

We went to a little cafe inside an old house a few blocks south of the center of downtown Franklin. We packed ourselves into a room that was roughly 30 feet square, along with around 150 other people (it was apparent that the Williamson County Fire Marshal was not among them). It was probably upwards of ninety degrees in that room, but it was well worth it.

On stage (ten feet in front of us), in what was intended to be simply a few friends getting together for an informal jam session, were Tom Howard on keyboards, Lynn Nichols on guitar, Dave Perkins on guitar, Cactus Moses on drums, along with Rick Cua on bass and Phil Keaggy on guitar. They played for nearly three hours (with a twenty minute break in the middle), and it was amazing. From Booker T. & the MG’s to the blues to the Beatles, they played a wide variety of music, and they played it loud. It was sometime Sunday evening before my hearing returned to normal. It was a great experience, though, and a great start to our vacation.

In my next installment, read about the Saturday trip to Indianapolis, including detours around flooding, a stop to re-live a fond childhood memory, and a traitorous 4F50N that led to a taxi ride to the airport.

Well, obviously I’ve been a little busy lately. I was able to take a vacation with my family following the convention, and we had a great time (with the exception of that little transmission incident). We had some great experiences, from being nearly deafened by Phil Keaggy to having a laugh with Bill Gaither (he actually laughed later). I’ll be blogging here about these in coming days.

Before we left, our church conducted a one-day Vacation Bible School using a previous year’s Club VBS cirriculum (it was free, which is nice). So until I can write more, enjoy our Jungle Jaunt highlights:

or, what did Dr. Hunt just whisper in Scott’s ear?