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Benjamin Spock once said (or was it Mr. Spock on Star Trek), "Trust Yourself. You know more than you think." Many people panic when the pressure is applied for them to perform from the depths of their knowledge. I remember my first time delivering a speech before my Toastmasters club members where I had to have the speech memorized. My heart pounded, my pulse raced, my mind cluttered and I just about backed out of the speech.

Anxiety can deflate people very quickly. Just recently I saw this in two of my church members. One is preparing for a life change with a new job while…  ( Click for more )

Not long ago I told a good friend of mine that we were expecting the pitter patter of little feet around our house late this year. Knowing my wife and I to both be in our mid 50's he cocked one eyebrow and asked, "So, are you getting a Chihuahua?" "No," I responded, "we're expecting our first grandchild sometime in December." He was elated over the news.

As time went on we were anxious to know the sex of the baby whether it is to be a boy or a girl. I remember the day that Jennifer, our daughter-in-law, was to go to the doctor for the thingamajiggy that would tell her and Sean…  ( Click for more )

There we were, along with twenty-five other teams, hoping that it would quit. Surely it wouldn't continue for the rest of the round. Surely it would stop. I mean, this is for a good cause. We're benefitting a quality mission organization here. Someplace along the way we have to get a break. At every next tee it was the same frustrating story. It was still raining.

This past Monday some twenty-six teams gathered at The Peninsula Golf Course near Lancaster, Kentucky to play a scramble event to benefit Teen Mission, USA. Several holes into the event it started drizzling. …  ( Click for more )

Spending a weekend in Ohio is usually fun for me. I get the chance to see people I haven't seen for some time and spend time with some really great friends. This past weekend was one of those fun weekends with one exception. Everyone was talking about the Ohio State Buckeyes football team now mired in a three game losing streak.

The Buckeyes are one of the premier collegiate football programs in the nation. They are coached by one of my all time favorite coaches, Jim Tressel. Tressel was formerly the coach of Youngstown State in Ohio and had won national championships in Division…  ( Click for more )

"He's a snappy dresser." "He looks very dapper." "He has that GQ look." These phrases are associated with men and how they look in their clothes. The idea of a snappy dresser could be a man in a worsted wool blazer in a bright summer color with a freshly pressed and starched dress shirt. Someone in a tweed jacket and a pair of corduroys might look very dapper. A black tee shirt worn under a double breasted pinstripe suit could elicit the "GQ" comment.

Books have been written about it as well as nurmerous articles. People make their living designing and fitting clothing to…  ( Click for more )

Rising straight up out of the water is the Lorain West Breakwater Light near Lorain, Ohio. It is a simple frame structure looking more like an old house than a lighthouse. The light tower protrudes from the front left corner of the structure as a straight column that projects some ten feet above the roof level. The structure is painted white and the roof is red. It is unmistakeable.

While browsing at a Hallmark store recently I noticed a model of the Lorain West Breakwater Light sitting on a shelf. I had been wanting to add this to my collection and was very excited to see…  ( Click for more )

Not long ago someone asked me what I would do if I were ever given a comb. For those of you who have not seen me in some time or who do not know me at all, I am, well, follically challenged. I am bald. What hair I have is trimmed very short. So when faced with the above mentioned question I responded very solemnly, "I would never part with it."

Some people love to give and receive gag gifts. You know what I am talking about. The dress tie for the man whose wardrobe is mostly tee shirts. A Jeff Gordon bobblehead doll for a diehard fan of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I can remember…  ( Click for more )

I'm back. Bet a lot of you didn't even realize I was gone. I did receive a number of phone calls and, from what I heard from some close friends, some e-mails asking what happened to me. Truth be told I got caught up in the swirling mass that is the internet. I was swept away by the impersonal manner in which some Internet Service Providers (isp) dealt with their clientele.

America Online, good old AOL, busted me for sending what they called "objectionable material" over the internet. This was early in my life with Study Light. The "objectionable material" was too many e-mails…  ( Click for more )

My very first car was one that I had taken a number of rides in during my teen years. It was a 1956 Chevrolet BelAir two door hardtop with a 265 cc. V-8 and black rolled and tucked interior. I bought it from my grandfather for the princely sum of in the summer of 1970. I put a lot of miles on that car in a short period of time. It was the car I took with me to Kentucky Christian College which was three and a half hours from my home in Jeffersonville, Ohio. It was the car I drove to my preaching assignments which were always at least 90 miles from KCC. I drove it to my fiance's…  ( Click for more )

The ability to communicate is what has made civilization fluorish. Man has the ability to accomplish great things, and has, but those things would have been frustratingly difficult were it not for the ability to communicate with others. A verbal and written language enables us to share ideas and concepts which have been of immense importance for the development of what we call a civilized world.

However, not all communication is either written or verbal. Sign language is a system of communication which transcends language. While there are different dialects of sign language,…  ( Click for more )

I remember a lot of my years playing Little League baseball in my home town. I remember the kids and even some of the coaches. I remember Don Morrow telling us to count the hops on ground balls. Not so we could actually know how many times the ball hopped, but so we would be concentrating on the ball enough to field it without missing it.

I remember one particular practice where Mr. Morrow was hitting ground balls to us infielders. I was surrounded by my friends; Bobby Thornberry, Terry Baker, Todd Johnson. We were all working at the thirdbase side of the infield. Mr. Morrow…  ( Click for more )

Commercials can be absolutely the most entertaining part of TV or they can be the most disgusting and vulgar. There is one little slice of life that I have seen recently about a boy and a garbage bag. His mother fills the bag in front of him, even to the point of pressing items inside the bag that stretch the sides rather alarmingly. The little boy is bug-eyed. Then dear sweet Mom tells the boy that he gets the happy privilege of taking the loaded to almost bursting garbage bag down to the trash can. The boy begins carrying the bag but ultimately winds up dragging, flipping,…  ( Click for more )

Have you ever been reemed out for going the right way? No, seriously! Have you ever been going the right way and had someone just absolutlely take you to task for doing so? The other evening my wife and I were going to our local WalMart. As we entered the parking area we were ready to go down the proper lane of parking when, lo and behold, an older woman was coming the wrong way against the traffice arrow for the parking lane. As I pulled to the side to allow her to get out of the way I noticed that she was shouting things at me through her closed window. I can only imagine…  ( Click for more )

Just the other day, while coming back from Lexington, I saw a bumper sticker on the back of an SUV. It posed what, I'm sure, the driver thought was a rhetorical question. In other words, the answer to the question was so obvious that it was a slam dunk the reader would get it right. The question was, "Who would Jesus bomb?" A "no brainer," right? I mean, after all, Jesus came "that the world, through Him, might be saved. (John 3:17) Why would Jesus bomb the very people He wants to save? Add to that, the very nature of a bomb blast is so inhumane that…  ( Click for more )

Just this past evening I followed a woman with a car full of people and a rather dubious bumper sticker on her rear bumper. "If you think Education is Expensive - Try Ignorance!!!" I then watched her as she made her way across Long Lick Road. Long Lick Road (State Route 32) is a meandering highway that is rife with hills and dips. Blind rises abound and passing zones are all but nonexistent.

As I followed the woman I began to realize that she was taking her own bumper sticker to heart; she was trying ignorance. The very root of the word ignorance is the concept of struggling…  ( Click for more )

Back in the late 80's I attended a seminar in which the leader asked a very interesting question. "If you know everything that other people know who are successful in their fields could you do their job?" He proceded to show us a number of examples which illustrated that even to the point of shoving a straw through a potatoe. He then demonstrated a very important truth.

The word "try" should not be in our vocabulary. He set a chair in front of us and called a volunteer to come and help him. He then stood and looked at the chair and told us, "This is not picking up a chair."…  ( Click for more )

Last evening I was reminded of my days working for the Fayette County Highway Department in Ohio. No, I didn't see a dump truck or a road crew or a grater. Last evening I had a sharp pain in my left achilles tendon. I hadn't had a pain there in quite some time. The reason I have those pains periodically is due to an incident while working with the Fayette County Highway Department.

We were assigned to fill burms one day. That was a task which required a piece of machinery called a burm box and three workers. The burm box was a slanted hopper with a gate on the low end which…  ( Click for more )

"You can't see the forest for the trees." Ah, yes. Those pithy sayings that carry the weight of the knowledge of generations. The one I just shared with you is one that is applicable for someone who just simply doesn't seem to see the obvious. Notice, we usually apply this to someone other than ourselves. After all, we see all things clearly. At least I do.

Consider the father who observes three teenaged sons with multiple piercings and colored hair and more tatoos than skin to hold them. One is his, one is a friend's, one belongs to who knows who. The unknown one is out…  ( Click for more )

"Houston we have a problem." Those words signaled the beginning of difficulties for Apollo 13. The crew radioed NASA and informed them of various malfunctions that were happening. Being separated from help by miles upon miles and cast into the vastness of space left many of the crew with a sense of hopelessness. One of them commented later that he was sure that they were doomed to drift in space until they died.

Twenty-four years ago I realized I had a problem. I had just drifted aimlessly through a complete year of college at Johnson Bible College with no goal in sight and…  ( Click for more )

Ward Cleaver always appeared from work just as starched and clean as he could be. Who is Ward Cleaver? Ward was the Beaver's dad in "Leave It To Beaver". He was played by a charming actor named Hugh Beaumont. He was the epitome of fatherhood along with Robert Young during the 60's. However, that was the not the father I often saw return from work.

My dad worked at a feed mill run by a conglomerate known as Opekasit. The feed mill was located in South Solon, Ohio, about seven miles from Jeffersonville. When dad got home from work he often smelled of a mixture of sweat and…  ( Click for more )

Back in the mid 60's there were a number of us in my home town of Jeffersonville, Ohio, who were devoted to sports in general and baseball in particular. During the late Spring, through the Summer and on into the warmer days of Fall, we played baseball. But the public diamonds in town were so heavily scheduled that we could not play on them. Kenny Houseman, a farmer/businessman in the town, gave us some land on the north edge of town just over the bridge on 729. He owned the field and had farmed it. It became our ballfield.

Our little group of somewhere around fifteen guys…  ( Click for more )

There he was standing on the seventeenth green at Shinnecock poised to take a place in history few men have taken. A simple downhill four and a half foot putt stood between him and being tied for the lead at the U. S. Open Golf Championship going into the final hole. Three putts later Phill Mickelson walked off the green dejected and two strokes back of a very steady playing South African named Retief Goosen.

Goosen had already won an Open title. His playing partner for the day, Ernie Els, also South African, had won two. But Phil had the chance to win the first two legs of…  ( Click for more )

Modern technology is wonderful but sometimes frustrating. Repeated attempts to log on yesterday were met with warnings that my computer had done something illegal. I kept thinking that someone was going to burst through the door at any minute and arrest my computer. I finally decided that Thursday morning was just not going to happen for me and the internet.

We have several landline connections for phones in our house. There are four phones serving our home right now and each one is a marvel of technology. With caller id, call back features, redial, stored phone books, ad…  ( Click for more )

Being in the ministry has its ups and downs. One of them is the trust factor of the people you serve. Many times, as a new minister in a congregation, I have not been told about problems people are having until the problems have intensified. But, then I find out that a former minister, who is still in the general area, knew about it and had called them and prayed with them.

A few years ago that situation repeated itself for me. I was the new man in and a minister, several years removed from the church, saw me and asked me how one of our people was doing. I responded with a…  ( Click for more )