Author: Jeff Hampton

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Valentine’s Day can deliver a mixed bag of emotions and experiences depending on who you are and where you are on the journey of life. 

For children, it’s a friendship day, and for adolescents a potential first blush of feeling the gyrations of something more than friendship. For lovers it’s a day to share and express their love. For happily marrieds, a day to renew and recharge; for older marrieds, a time to remember and rekindle. And, realistically, for many it can be a day of regret and reflection over mistakes and miscues, broken hearts, shattered hopes and dreams that never came true.

Continue reading “Happy Valentine’s Day . . . Maybe”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

On a recent Sunday at Wilshire we sang “To God Be the Glory,” an old hymn of the Baptist church written by Fanny Crosby in the 1870s. We don’t sing it often, but when we do it always triggers a memory of a Sunday morning in my childhood or youth when we sang that hymn and I was convicted by the words of the second verse:

Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,

To every believer the promise of God;

The vilest offender who truly believes,

That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

I don’t recall what was going on with me at the time. I’d always been a pretty good kid, but for some reason the words “vilest offender” troubled me deeply as if I was guilty of some heinous crime. And while the word “pardon” was supposed to give me hope and relief regarding the state of my immortal soul, I wasn’t so sure. Ever since then, whenever I hear that hymn, I sort of swallow hard.

Continue reading “I Beg Your Pardon, But . . .”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Monday was one of those long, busy days when you wake up to it and you’re not sure it’s do-able, but you gather yourself up and set out on the journey and see where it takes you.

It started with an omelet prepared by LeAnn because she knew I wouldn’t get another meal for a while. And then I was off to my annual physical where there was good news and bad news. The good news was aside from typical age-related complaints, I’m healthy with nothing that needs treating or watching. Vitals are normal, while blood counts are mostly where they should be after they were thrown off balance by cancer treatments.

Continue reading “One of Those Days”