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For Wilshire Baptist Church

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 6:26

Yes, look at the birds . . . but what happens when they’re orphaned? 

That was the question we faced last Wednesday night when we stepped outside and found a mother dove lying dead on the porch, no sign of fight or struggle. Inspecting the hanging basket overhead where she had been sitting for days, her nest was empty, but below the nest and down in the fern was a baby bird probably a week old, silent but shivering.

Continue reading “Look at the Birds”

For Wilshire Baptist Church

I only went to Sweet Temptations twice, but both times changed my life. It wasn’t the place; it was the people. It’s always the people.

Sweet Temptations was an intimate cafe and bakery near Skillman and Audelia in Northeast Dallas. It was popular with the Lake Highlands crowd, and while I’ve never lived in Lake Highlands, I heard good things about it from people at Wilshire who lived up that way. So, I was interested in checking it out sometime in 2004 when I was invited to a small lunch there to meet Doug Haney, the man who was to be Wilshire’s new minister of music. I don’t recall if he was prospective or already called at that time, but I was there representing Wilshire’s ushers.

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For Wilshire Baptist Church

“If you want to hit the big time, you have to write and polish and keep doing that over and over again.”

That was the advice from the cowboy-hat-and-boot-wearing author of top-selling Western novels at the end of the day at the East Texas Book Fest a few weeks ago. He was funny and engaging as he talked about his journey from childhood dreamer to career man to second life as a prolific author of hide-and-leather fiction. And, he spoke the truth in his summary sentence about what it takes to be successful, but it was the end of a long day like so many other long days, and his words sort of floated to the floor as the other authors got ready to pack up and go home.

Continue reading “The Best Time”