"Turn Your Lights On"

 Several years ago, I attended an Alumni Officer Meeting at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  It was a three-day event to train State officers how to host an alumni meeting and how to solicit money from poor alumni, mostly ministers.

I found out that there are donors with lots of money that want to donate to our Southern Baptist Seminaries.  They give according to the number of alumni that give.  These donors reason that if alumni do not give to their alma maters, then why should they.

As an Alabama Baptist State Alumni officer, I supported the seminary by giving ten dollars for each year after graduating.  I encourage all alumni to give at least ten dollars.  The large donors do not look of the amount of each alumnus, but the number that give.  If you are a New Orleans alum, consider that ten-dollar donation.

One of the benefits of attending the meeting was the food.  The first night the Seminary hosted a crawfish boil.  There were two canoes filled with boiled crawfish, corn, and potatoes.  I am not a big fan of boiled “mud bugs,” but I do like their tails fried.  Being a big man, the servers thought I needed a large serving.  I gave them to a couple of my fellow alumni.  I did have a generous portion of corn and potatoes.  The warm brownie was pretty good too.

I ate at the seminary cafeteria for breakfast and dinner.  The second night the seminary took us to the French Quarters to eat.  Alan and Tony from Florida, Marco from Arkansas, and I went to Deenie’s.  Did I say that we walked the streets of New Orleans guided by a GPS?  I thought we would never get to Deenie’s.  It was fun trying to keep up with those technological advanced guys.  It was trying to rain and turning dark as we entered the restaurant.

I was hoping for some fried crawfish tails, but I settled for a generous portion of fried shrimp, catfish, and French fries.  I had the best time listening to these “music” guys argue over the validity of Contemporary verses Traditional.  I made the comment that Contemporary has been around so long that it has become the new traditional and that the millennials had their own style.  I thought they were going to pound me with hush puppies.

When we left the restaurant, it was still trying to rain.  We were to meet other alumni at the Café de Monde around nine.  As we hurried, we were stopped by a parade, in which I took part.  I have always wanted to be in one the funeral dirges in New Orleans.  Since Alan was most familiar, we followed him.  As we neared the Café de Monde, the parade stopped us again.  I told Alan that I could have stayed in the parade and beat them.

On the way back to the seminary in a steady rain, we had a black man following us and flashing his lights.  Now, it being a bad part of New Orleans and a little rain, it is not an area that you want to be stopping.  The driver of our rental was Tony, who is Puerto Rican.  He did not see the flashing lights; hear the honking horn, and the waving hands of the adjacent driver.  Alan and Marco did and they were very uncomfortable.  Tony and I were trying to see the poorly lighted streets.  Things have changed in New Orleans since Katrina and the once familiar was now the unfamiliar.  There remains much work and rebuilding to be done.  Some Baptists wanted to pull the Seminary out of New Orleans, but Seminary president Dr. Chuck Kelly reminded the powers that be that removing the Seminary would remove the little light that remains in the city.

Suddenly, the adjacent driver got along side of Tony.  Tony rolled down his window and the guy shouted, “You’re driving with your lights off.

That explains a lot.  That is the reason Tony almost went straight instead of making the curve.  It also explains why the cars were awfully close behind us and to the right.  That explains why Tony and I could not see the road signs until being right on top of them.

When Tony turned on his lights, we could see much better.  The only problem was we were very close to the Seminary.  We started to go back and see if we could see what we missed.

I have driven several times with my headlights off.  One time the Clanton police pulled me over for driving without headlights.  When asked why, I looked down at the dash and replied to the officer, and his green teethed sidekick, that I forgot to turn them on while I turned them on.  He told me not to get smart with him.  I did not get smart with him because I didn’t think he, nor his hayseed sidekick knew smart when they heard it.  They accused me of drinking and shined their big four-D batteries flashlights in my car.  Arguing with them that I did not drink, they again accused me of getting smart.  I looked them in the eye and told them they were crazy and pulled away leaving the green-toothed hayseed waving his flashlight.

My experience in New Orleans and in Clanton reminds me of Christians today.  We are traveling life’s highway, having a good time, and enjoying one another but our lights are not on.  Sure, we can see, but others may not see us.  Thank God for people like our black friend in New Orleans that reminded us to turn our lights on.  Seems like I read that somewhere.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matthew 5:16 KJV).

"Decisions"

 

Christmas poses many options.  There are places to shop, parties to hop, and resolutions to stop.  There are presents to buy, people to shy, and old friends to send a card to say hi.

Speaking of old friends, the week after Thanksgiving in 2006 the Bethel Baptist Chain Saw Team did some ministry in New Orleans.  It was a very fruitful week making new friends with some of the survivors of Katrina as we ministered to them by cutting dead trees from their yards and driveways.

While there, we worked under the direction of a “Blue Hat” which with the North American Mission Board is the person that supervised our team.  Our “Blue Hat” was an old friend from up home.

I remember back in 1984 a mission trip that he and I ministered together.  We traveled to Baxter Springs, Kansas to help a church build a bigger sanctuary.  It had been an adventurous trip out having taken a couple of wrong turns, mostly before we left the state of Alabama.

Traveling in caravan of a car, new Chevy pickup, and church van, we started home after a good week of work.  The car and church van had CB radios, but the pickup did not.  The car ran lead and the church van pulled up the rear.

Somewhere around Springfield, Missouri, a new route home, we were traveling down the interstate when someone in the lead car yelled over the CB, “Right turn, right turn, right turn” and quickly moved from the left lane to the exit ramp.

I was driving the church van and I did not have time to exit, as did the pickup.  The pickup stopped under the overpass.  I radioed the lead car that the pickup and I missed the turn and told them that I would go to the next exit and would catch them.  The next exit was seven miles.  Those in the car wanted to know where the pickup truck was.  Here is what happened.

Not having any form of communication, the three in the pickup were in a panic.  My friend, the “Blue Hat,” was a college professor and very analytical.  His companions were carpenters who had never been out of Alabama and, in a fluster; they wanted to know what they were going to do.

My friend responded this way.  “We have three options.  We can back up the interstate, go up the off ramp, or we can catch the van.”  At that moment, the 454 cubic inch engine in the new Chevy screamed and roared like a jet plane taking off.

I had communicated to the car that I would wait on the pickup.  At the next exit, I waited.  I heard it before I saw it.  It sounded alike a jet plane.  I stood on the interstate and flagged them down and when they landed, I asked how fast they were going.  The driver said, “Over a hundred.”

The car traveled at a slow pace and we caught them after we got their location and we continued our journey home on a new route.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.  And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.  And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.  (Matthew 2:10-12 KJV).

This Christmas will present many options.  Let us seek the one for whom we celebrate Christmas and follow the Lord’s directions for our lives.

Chernobyl, Katrina, and Hope

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods remind us that there are more opportunities for ministry than normal.  Watching tragic events unfold before our eyes makes one realize that our world is in a mess.  It is messes that help us keep the perspective that we need a Savior.

Hurricane Katrina was a reminder of how quick death and devastation hit.  Missing people, sex predators, and disregard for human life are demoralizing to any society.  Overnight, New Orleans turned diabolical.  What happened in moments will take a lifetime to rebuild.  Some things will never recover.  Local residents told me that one third of New Orleans’ population will never return.

There seems to be no end to world turmoil and the reality that at any moment there could be a nuclear holocaust that would make Chernobyl look like a boy scouts’ campfire.  The Chernobyl explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and extensive parts of western Soviet Union, Eastern, Western, and Northern Europe, and North America.  It had four hundred times more fallout than the A-bomb of Hiroshima.  Ireland experienced a light nuclear rain.  The Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly  contaminated.  My friend Alice was teaching school in Italy at the time of Chernobyl and witnessed the devastation.

Speaking of first hand Chernobyl experiences, I had the honor and privilege of flying to Los Angeles to spend a week at Dr. Rick Warren’s Saddleback conference several years ago.  The man sitting next to me on the flight was a retired editor from Time Magazine.  He was returning from an editorial summit in South America.  He had been there to judge young journalists and rate their potential as writers for major magazines.  He was very articulate and global in his conversation.  I shared with him that I was a former cement worker.    

When I asked him to share some of his travels, he related my cement vocation to the Chernobyl incident.  He told me of a Russian general he had befriended while in Russia.  He said that this General was wealthy by American standards and lived an extravagant lifestyle, but could not enjoy it because he dying from radiation poison.  He had been exposed to radiation while working in the Chernobyl nuclear facility when it developed the leak and became one of many victims.  The editor said the world would never know just how many died trying to save the earth from radiation poison.

I told him that I had a friend who was teaching school in Italy when it happened and that she said the devastation was so severe that livestock and vegetation were died where she was teaching.  It was then that he told me the horror of what happened according to the general.

The general said that the radioactive material from the leak was eating into the earth at an alarming rate.  Russian scientists feared that it would eventually eat to the core of the earth causing worldwide catastrophic problems.  Hundreds of workers perished as they tried to stop the leak.  Massive earth moving machines raced to dig below the material to pour concrete several feet thick to contain it.  They were trying to form a bowl.  After several unsuccessful attempts, they finally stopped the leak.  The human cost was great.

This is one of many detrimental incidents to our planet.  All the things that we have done to the spaceship we call earth has a price.  Hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, and rumors of wars are the result of sin.  Sin caused the creation to fall from its perfect state.

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:19-22 NIV)

How has a catastrophe affected your life?

Are you optimistic of pessimistic about the future? Write down your feelings.

What are you doing to help the environment of this planet we call earth?

Prayer: Father, as believers, we can see the world physically decaying and spiritually degenerating. Help us to be optimistic and not to be pessimistic, because we have a blessed hope. Thank you for the brighter days that lie ahead for the whole creation, for a time is coming when the curse will be removed, and creation will be restored to its original splendor. Thank you for the promise of resurrection with our glorified bodies, like the body Christ now has in heaven.