Thursday Thought

Red hearts…dark chocolate…diamond rings: Valentine's Day. With so many getting engaged on February 14, I could hardly resist sharing the findings of a new report from Atlanta's Emory University.  Titled, A Diamond is Forever—and Other Fairy Tales, the report features a survey of 3,000 once or still-married American couples. Maybe you've heard the “two-month's-salary rule” that jewelers love to foist on couples.  According to this “rule,” you are supposed to save up (or at least spend) two months of your salary for an engagement ring. Turns out that little rule has worked well for jewelers.  Not so much for couples….

I am about to ruffle some feathers. Forgive me. Here’s the issue: I am personally uncomfortable with our commitment to comfort during church.  More to the point, I have a problem with the emerging assumption that drinking coffee or water during the church service is normal—almost a right. If worship is what we are supposed to be about—the total investment of our energy in the magnifying of another—then where is there room for satiating our own thirst?  Understand, I’m preaching to myself, too, because I enjoy a bottle of water. Recently I attended a Sunday morning service where communion was…

It was foolish.  Not even a two-year old would have made the mistake. May I tell you about it? Trekking along a pathway in the Sonoran Desert's Saguaro National Park, Charlie, Kathy, Diana and I were struck by the landscape.  No other place on the planet has as many Saguaro cacti . Nor was the Saguaro the only cactus around.  There were dozens of varieties.  Deserts, I am learning, offer a strange beauty—and I was determined to capture it all on my Nikon…or die trying. Convinced I had framed up a pretty cool shot, I asked my wife to smile…

Six degrees Fahrenheit.   Walk a mile and a half in that kind of weather and you discover an alternate meaning to the expression, “chill out.”   Though our day began in the windy city of Chicago, it ended in the warmth of Arizona. Our friends, Charlie and Kathy, were kind enough to host our visit and drive us down to Tucson's Saguaro National Park.  What a contrast to the snow and ice we'd left behind.   Midwesterner that I am, it took a while for me to process that we were driving through an honest-to-goodness desert.   Red rock formations, gray dust and…

It was cancer, they said. Didn't have long to live, they said. So we began praying for George (not his real name) from my wife's side of the family.   George, age 59, had lived his entire life apart from God.  Some drinks.  Some divorces.  He was irreligious, irreverent and fully cognizant he was in his last weeks of life. A family member suggested my wife send him a Christmas card.  So she found one that presented the essence of the salvation message, and included our little family newsletter, which also pointed to Christ. At night—every night—Diana and I prayed urgently…

If dogs make you nervous, make no plans to visit the country of Romania.  For whatever reason, the nation is loaded with dogs—stray dogs.  When you go for a walk, or get out of a car, or head to the store, you cannot escape them—scruffy, matted, but usually harmless. In the capital city of Bucharest alone, there are an estimated 65,000 wild dogs—enough to fill Ford Field in Detroit or the Alamo dome in San Antonio (imagine the sound of their collective barking). In Romania, 9,760 people were reportedly bitten by the stray dogs last year.  Nationally, experts believe there…

Call me obsessive compulsive, but I like to celebrate the new. I remember the distinct smell of new pencils in first grade.  Or the smell of new erasers (“Pink Pearl” was the brand to buy). Over the years, I've always loved the sheen on a new book cover—and have gone to great lengths to preserve my books.  I want the covers to look new.  Forever. A particular peeve of my mine is when I loan someone a magazine or book and they bend back the cover on itself.   Or bend page corners as a book mark. We once bought a…

Have you ever given a toy that made you laugh? One week before Christmas, Diana and I launched out into our day-long shopping extravaganza.  We’ve got a lot of “little people” on our list to buy for, so we headed straight for the toy section, where we were captured by the sound of two babies giggling. My sweet Love—Baby Kisses sat on the shelf blowing kisses and giggling, apparently activated by light or motion.  My sweet Love—Giggling Baby offered her own lovely laughter. Unable to resist, we plopped one of each into the cart, rolling off in pursuit of the…

More than half. That's how much of my monthly paycheck our mortgage cost when Diana and I were first married.  The little two-bedroom ranch was all we could afford and there simply wasn't much left over for things like winter coats.   As I recall, the early winter was unusually harsh, even by Chicago standards, and I needed a new coat.  What I was wearing was embarrassing to look at it, and insufficient for the three miles a day I walked in the Windy City.   Second hand stores weren't as available then, so we trudged through the mall. I can still…

Tough choices.  Life is full of them.   I faced one at the airport in Timisoara, Romania.  We'd finished a major “Global Partners Training” event with about 150 Christian media professionals.  Flying on to Bucharest to visit friends, I now toted a (massive) bright red suitcase that was entirely empty–but not quite big enough to nest my second suitcase.   On the trip over, it was loaded with supplies for the conference, all properly distributed.  But now, the airline wanted $75 to transport it to Bucharest.  It would cost another $75 to haul the hollow box home to Chicago.   Given…