What Was I Thinking?

Let me preface my remarks today by saying that I have eaten entirely too much sugar this morning and should probably atone for my sins by grazing on a big, green salad and drinking a gallon of pure, still water. If my words do not make perfect sense today (if they ever do), I blame it on the amount of sugar coursing through my veins and discombobulating my brain cells. There. Now I have justified any irrationality and I can begin to write in earnest. One of my favorite inside jokes that I share with Julius Thompson is based upon Jeremiah 9:23 & 24. Paul Baloche performs a song on his "A Greater Song" album that is based on these verses. It is raucus drum- and bass-driven song that makes us laugh as we imagine ourselves performing it on stage in church (which would never happen) since it is one of those anthem style songs that the singers seem to shout more than sing. "I will boast in the Lord my God" and "I will make my boast in Christ alone" are repea...

I awoke this morning to the howls and whistles of the wind outside my windows and the staccato splatter of rain being driven onto the shingles and panes of my little home. How I longed to roll over and pull the blankets over my head and sleep at least until there was some glimmer of daylight! But I dutifully tore myself away from the warm sheets, stuffed my feet into my slippers, and shuffled out to the kitchen to start my day with a Aciphex pill and a multi-vitamin, as usual, to keep my body running semi-regularly. My Sentra was buffeted sideways by strong gusts as I motored down Route 40 to work. When I turned left onto the roadway leading to the parking lot entrance near the gymnasium, I spied Gary Yates, some sort of tool in hand, cleaning up trash from the edge of the property in the dark. I prayed that God would bless his day. No sooner were the words out of my mouth when I spotted Christiane Beinroth traversing the parking lot, teaching materials in tow, so I entered the element...

When I was thirteen years old, I transferred from an affluent school district into Southern Maine Christian School, a new school meeting in a former Catholic building called the St. Louis Home. My new classroom was a room across the hall from the kitchen that served the cafeteria. I had the only traditional school desk - the old school wooden kind with the seat attached to the desk which had a top that opened. My classmates sat around tables on mismatched chairs. There were no lockers or intercoms, no bells or drinking fountains like I was used to. We had old, second hand books. My teacher sat a table and wrote on a chalkboard that had seen better days in its youth. I stayed in the same classroom all day except for lunch and recess. There was no band, no sports, no school bus to pick me up and take me home every day - no anything that I had been accustomed to in my nice public school. It would seem I had been deprived of much. Yet I thrived. I discovered that God had given me a good mi...

Listening to Pastor Schaller speak last night about living a prepared life, I thought of something I had written to a student just yesterday morning. He, like other students, was having difficulty finding the time and motivation to get his schoolwork done. I encouraged him to think about his high school education as preparation for his life beyond high school. I likened doing schoolwork to dropping the loose change in one's pockets into a jar on a bureau. Individually, the coins don't have a lot of value, but collectively they could be converted into something of great value in due time. Instead of of squandering the nickels and dimes on candy or bags of chips, saving enough of them could result in the purchase of steak dinner at Ruth Chris! Doing schoolwork on a daily basis may seem tedious and not of much value, but when you think of it as little deposits of preparation for the future and have faith that God will bless your obedience to prepare, it helps now and pays dividend...

This is one of those entries that I start writing with only a vague notion in mind as to where it is headed. The title, Side-by-Side, was the first thing I wrote. Sometimes I don't have a title for my blog entry until after I have finished writing - the title emerges from what I have written. But today I am hoping that the reverse will prove to be true - the blog entry will be inspired to emerge from the title I have given it. Side-by-Side suggested itself to me as a title because today I am taking delivery of a new side-by-side refrigerator. No, I am not living the lifestyle of the rich and famous in my 14 x 70 manufactured home in Essex, buying new appliances willy-nilly with my exorbitant salary and fabulous wealth from Wall Street investments and the Dunbar family fortune (my father would laugh at that notion).   No, I am going into debt to purchase a new refrigerator to replace the old one that has mysteriously developed the personality of a stinky old crank. It has been arbit...

2010. Two thousand ten. Twenty-ten. Here we are at the beginning of a brand new decade. I have been alive for part of the 60s, all of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, and now I am starting the 10s! My grandparents were born in the last century during the 10s, and two of them are still alive and hoping the Lord Jesus returns soon to take them away in the Rapture of the saints. I'd like that too. We have three weeks before the second quarter of school ends here at GGCA. I hope that the students are doing their level best to stay on top of their schoolwork and are applying themselves to learning. Last night in church, Pastor Scibelli spoke about how our school is one where we honor and teach The Book (a.k.a The Bible), because with all the knowledge we are learning, we need divine wisdom. Boy, do we ever need divine wisdom! I speak as a guy who is desperate for divine wisdom in his job, in his relationships, in his finances, in all of his decisions. Without divine wisdom, I blunder from on...