Author: Jeff Hampton

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Memory is not neutral or static. It can be a tool for good by reminding us who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, what we’ve endured and what we’ve learned. It can help us stay on the good roads and not go back down the bad roads. Memory can also be a burden, reminding us of our mistakes and failures. It can keep us frozen with fear and self-loathing.

It’s a topic singer-songwriter John Prine covered simply and yet deeply in “I Remember Everything,” a song I had never heard until attending Wilshire’s first-ever Songwriter Vespers on a recent Sunday evening. I won’t peel back all the layers of that song here, but as one who likes words, I’m intrigued by how the first verse seems to encompass the depth and breadth of memory:

Continue reading “Memories and Benedictions”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Driving home past a church in our neighborhood, we stopped at a traffic light and noticed a man lying on the sidewalk. He was in the shade under the live oak trees, face up, with his feet hanging off the edge of the curb. As we stared, we wondered out loud what was up and what we should do, but that was mostly a rhetorical exercise because we knew what we should do.

Continue reading “Samaritans – Good, Bad and Hesitant”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

I mowed the lawn for the first time last week. While the grass is still mostly dormant, the weeds are in full bloom – especially the dandelions with their bright yellow flowers and tall stalks topped with wispy white seedheads.

If you’ve ever mowed dandelions, you know they don’t go away without a fight. The flowers — pretty but invasive — are close to the ground and usually escape the wrath of the blade. The stalks, on the other hand, stand tall and defiant as if to taunt you. Accepting the challenge, you push the mower forward thinking “this’ll get’em,” only to look behind you and find many of the stalks have simply bent over and popped back up. So, it takes several passes of the mower from different directions to cut them down.

Continue reading “The Parable of the Dandelions”