Author: Jeff Hampton

For Wilshire Baptist Church

I often come to these weekly writings with something that is jumping up and down in my mind and it just spills out on the computer screen in front of me. At other times, I have to push and pull to get something going. And then there are days like today when my head is full of so much noise and static that I can hardly think. I need silence.

In a loud, chaotic world, sometimes silence is a good place to be for a while. There is so much swirling in the news and in our personal lives that we can get caught up in the noise of it all and become overwhelmed. My personal news feed ranges from the crucial to the superfluous: the ongoing pandemic, work projects and deadlines, fate of Big 12 athletics, climate change, health and happiness of loved ones, justice and equity, maintaining the house and yard, trying to be a good husband, brother, son and friend. You have your own list too.

I can’t fix many of the things that concern me, and talking about them feels futile. So, silence feels right today. Silence can be a prayer. Silence can be a place to wait for and listen to the Holy Spirit. Silence can soothe and heal the soul.

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Apparently, I touched a raw nerve last week when I commented on a photo that a pastor posted on Twitter. The photo showed him standing at a lectern and praying with his music team behind him. One of those musicians was sitting directly behind him with his legs spread. He was wearing shorts and sneakers. At first glance it looked like the pastor had on shorts. At second glance, it looked like he had four legs, two of which were bare. The main thing is it just looked peculiar.

Continue reading “Got Pants?”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

If you had just 15 minutes to grab whatever you could out of all your earthly possessions, what would you grab?

That was the impossible challenge presented last weekend to residents of the Crestview Towers condominiums in North Miami Beach, Florida. The building was evacuated and has been deemed unsafe following the horrific collapse of the Champlain Towers condo building a few miles away in Surfside. Crestview will remain closed until it can be recertified and only then after structural and electrical repairs have been made. There is some hope that the residents can return someday, but there also is the possibility that the building will be condemned as was the case for the half of the Champlain building that didn’t collapse. The Crestview residents may lose everything, so that 15 minutes when they were allowed to go back in to grab their stuff was fraught with tough decisions.

Continue reading “Grab and Go”