Jeff Hampton – Page 49 – Jeff Hampton, Writer

November 17, 2023

Inhale . . . Exhale

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Some weeks crawl along or breeze by with nothing remarkable happening, and then some will make your head spin and mess with your breathing. This week has given my lungs a workout.

It started on Monday when we had lunch with my cousin Katherine – my second cousin, actually. My parents had no siblings, so I have no first cousins. But, by a quirk of spread-out births among my grandfather and his brothers, my father’s cousin Katherine is exactly my age. We didn’t grow up knowing each other, but we started at Baylor in the same classroom on day one, sat together alphabetically on commencement day, and we enjoyed getting to know each other during the four years in between.

November 9, 2023

Opening Doors

For Wilshire Baptist Church

The Nextdoor social media app is packed with information – some interesting and useful, some trivial or just weird – and then there are questions about the who, what and how of navigating life in the community. Such as this recent post: “Hey guys, am I able to just walk into a church on Sunday? And if so, what are times they usually start so I can be on time?”

At first I thought it was a joke, because having been raised in the church, I take it for granted that everyone knows the answers: Yes, you can just walk in on Sundays, and 11 a.m. is prime time for most everyone. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the questions are evidence of the decline in the once-pervasive influence of the church in our society.

November 2, 2023

Tricks, Treats and Hugs

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Halloween 2023 will be remembered for plentiful treats, a few tricks and abundant hugs.

We had 91 kids come to our door. We thought we had enough candy for the crowd, but as the bucket began to dwindle, we raided the pantry for other packaged snacks such as pretzels and peanut butter crackers. We joked that maybe we could hand out random fast food condiment packets such as ketchup and salad dressing, but the treats outlasted the kids and no tricks were needed.