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For Wilshire Baptist Church

It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life, perhaps even a top 10. 

I was on my back in the dentist chair, beginning to relax after having a molar pulled. The tooth hadn’t caused any pain or problem, but it was wobbly with little jawbone support, and a root canal wouldn’t save it. 

Everything went fine with the extraction and a bone graft, and after the dentist stitched me up, he asked, “Do you want to keep the tooth?” He asked because it had a large gold crown, and even I had thought about that before I went in. I paid for that gold years ago and figured I could get cash for it somewhere. I nodded my head, and he said he would sterilize it. And then he said this: “You might want to be careful where you take it. A lot of jewelers are Jewish, and they won’t take gold from a tooth because it brings back memories of the Holocaust.”

Continue reading “Painful Reminder”

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 . . .”