The first Jaws movie came out in 1975. I was traveling to Nashville Tennessee that year and my friend persuaded me to go to the theater to watch it. I could not go swimming in the ocean for months after that because I would hear that music in my head.

Isn’t is amazing what movies can do in shaping our thinking and living?

Billy Graham’s body is being laid to rest here in Charlotte, North Carolina today.

Few ministers have impressed me like Billy Graham. Though he was a man who was not perfect, he reflected a key value which I wish many other ministers did: Humility!

Reading this morning, I am challenged to reflect on the thought, “Am I Laying The Ground Work For The Future”?

There is a story of the prophet Elisha being ministered to by a woman through her acts of kindness.

Sometimes thinking about the future can be confusing at the least and overwhelming at best, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can choose.

We all choose the paths we walk on, whether we realize it or not. We may choose to walk with a certain crowd of people and therefore we are on a path based on the groups preferences, yet it now becomes our path because of our association.

We may choose a path because it promises joy and happiness. Someone convinced us this path is the best. Let me tell you, unless it’s God ordained, the end will not be what we thought.

We may choose the path in life because our culture or family are on it. Sometimes it’s just easier to go with what’s familiar rather than thinking through things on our own, but what if they all are on the wrong path? Culture and family, unless God ordained, is headed the wrong way no matter if it’s familiar or not.

Remember when you were a kid and you discovered you could drag you feet along the carpet and shock someone with a spark of electricity? I do. In fact, it was my favorite thing to do in the school library. I would get a really good charge happening and then walk up to an unexpected person from behind and touch their ear. Sometimes the spark was so big that I only got within a few inches and “Pow”, the spark would fly. The victim I did the prank to would scream so loudly they would get in trouble with the librarian which made the prank so much better. ( this was my BC days – before Christ)

Before we had electricity, we had candles and oil lamps. It wasn’t for comfort so much as it was for the purpose of seeing in the dark. Spiritually, the same idea can be applied to prayer.

Candles have a way of making us feel warm and cozy even in warm weather. When visiting Hawaii recently, I would see candles and torches burning all over the place. Along the beach, at the pools, at restaurants and just about anywhere people want to set the mood of warmth and comfort. It also helps tourist spend money!

Since I grew up in a non-religious home, we didn’t go to church and light candles for others, but I was always curious why people did it. It is my understanding that Catholic’s and Orthodox Christians lite candles as a prayer for other people. For Jewish people they would light candles to start the sabbath at sun-down. For me I just like to light candles and watch the flames. I love camp fires to just sit and veg. Fires have such a hypnotic affect and I can almost melt watching the flames dance.

Sometimes things in life seem to almost crush our souls, and we struggle to make sense of “Why” things turned out like they did. Often, there is no easy answer.

Today, Lazarus Jensen came into the world, but could not live outside of his mother’s womb. He passed shortly after coming into the world.

Lazarus was born with such a beautiful face it was hard to comprehend how this beautiful child could not survive. His little body was to frail and underdeveloped so he could not breathe on his own.

As I got up this morning, I opened my phone to see a text from Josh saying they had gone to the hospital around 2am and now they were holding Lazarus, but he was passing soon. The text this morning broke my heart. Not only did they lose a son, but Sue and I were losing a new grandson. When people you love are suffering you just want to hold them and make the pain go away, but the most you can hope for is to bring comfort in the midst of their suffering.

Growing up in grammar school, grades 5-8th, I had a favorite book I would always check out of the library which was, “Air War Over Hitlers Germany”. It had tons of picture of B-17 bombers fighting during WWII. My reading skills were pretty poor back then, but I could look at those pictures all day long and dream of being a pilot or door-way gunner fighting against the evil of Hitler and the Nazi’s.

Even growing up in a non-religious family, I knew you have to confront evil or evil will overtake all that is good. At every school I attended before high school, which were five, there would be one bully that would terrorize all the other boys. One particular bully ruled for two years at one school, until we all graduated to high school. He would always pick a fight with a guy smaller than himself to prove he was the toughest. This time, now in high school, he picked a fight with a kid that was trained in boxing and the smaller kid cleaned his clock! The bully lost his reputation and transferred to another school because of shame and embarrassment.

I did a google search on people sticking their head in the sand, relating to ignoring facts in life, and came up with some interesting facts that I wasn’t aware of.

The idea of a person sticking their head in the sand has to do with that person ignoring obvious facts or refusing to accept advice, hoping that simply denying the existence of a problem will make it go away.