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For Wilshire Baptist Church

We recently had the surprise of eating dinner with the Corsicana Tigers football team. OK, that’s not entirely true. We didn’t actually eat with them, but we were in the same restaurant, and it was interesting to observe an entire football team in the “pregame zone.”

We were driving to Waco on Friday afternoon for the Baylor-Auburn football game and we stopped in Corsicana for a late lunch/early dinner. Yes, I’ve looked at the map and I know I-35 is the most direct route from Dallas to Waco. But, I discovered more than 20 years ago that I-45 to Corsicana and Texas 31 to Waco is a more sane, peaceful and engaging route. After enduring an hour of trucks and traffic racing to Houston on the interstate, you get an hour of cotton fields and wildflowers, windmills and wind turbines, cattle and horses, and small-town life.

Continue reading “First Down and Life to Go”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

LeAnn and I set out on Saturday morning for one of our regular walks to the big city park nearby, but when we got to the end of our street, we heard a familiar sound. The Garland Owls marching band was rehearsing, so we turned north instead of south to check it out.

Standing behind the band under some trees, we apparently were watching one of the early pre-marching season practices. The band was spread out in a typical “stage” formation on a parking lot painted with gridiron yard lines and numbers. While most of the band had instruments in their hands – the sousaphones didn’t – they weren’t playing. From atop a three-story steel tower with a drum major just below on the second story, the director worked the band through the basics.

Continue reading “Friday Night Memories”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

“In a world full of unending destruction . . .” That’s what I thought I heard Wilshire’s Katie Murray say at the beginning of the Prayers of the People on Sunday morning. A millisecond later I realized she said “unending distractions,” but now I can’t separate the two phrases. They’re welded together in my mind because I’m distracted from destruction.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say we’re living in a time of unending destruction. The pictures from Ukraine and Gaza are gut-wrenching. Thousands are dead and injured, and once vibrant cities have been reduced to piles of broken concrete and twisted steel. Imagine waking up one day and seeing downtown Dallas – or any place you call home – in ruins. It’s unimaginable, and yet it is happening in those cities “over there.”

Continue reading “Distraction and Destruction”