by Greg | Oct 4, 2012 | Blog Posts
In this emerging era of social media, particularly Facebook, it is very easy to be a fan. For the uninformed, on Facebook one is frequently asked to be a fan of most anything and anyone that makes a request. Company’s like Amazon.com and Target will request that you “become a fan.” One can be a fan of a celebrity or a politician or a political cause or political party. Our church has a page on Facebook and we are constantly soliciting others to become a fan of FBC Augusta. The idea is to generate as many fans as possible because that helps get your message out and, after all, the one with the most fans wins, right? Here is the thing about being a fan: it requires absolutely no commitment. None whatsoever. Whether one is a fan on Facebook, or a fan for a favorite team, being a fan requires nothing. In fact, sometimes a fan is just part of a fad. When I was a kid I loved the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburg Steelers. One Christmas I received one of those cheap athletic jackets with the colors and logo of the Steelers. I watched them a bit on television, but I was not particularly devoted. I just liked the idea of being a fan. That phase lasted maybe a season or two and then I moved on to other things. Have you ever heard of the phrase “fair weathered fan”? It refers to fans who look fully engaged and devoted when the team is winning, but let them go through a losing streak and they are absent in...
by Greg | Sep 20, 2012 | Blog Posts
This past Father’s Day I was gifted, to my agrarian delight, with a Lemon Tree. I have grown up around peach trees, pear trees and apple trees. I know a little about figs, plums and blackberries. Growing lemons is something completely new to me. I did a little reading on the subject of lemon trees, repotted my cherished plant, and counted ten small but growing green orbs destined to be lemons that will brighten our future. In the ensuing months several of the fruit did not make it due to deer who evidently like a little lemon with their tomatoes. Still I had several more on limb. One in particular had gotten fat and ready for the picking. Weeks past and it remained green. I worried that it would turn brown before yellow. While it stayed green my patience was getting about thin. All of my family speculated and advised. The group consensus was that this was no lemon tree, but a lime in lemon clothing. Further reading revealed that the foliage of a lemon and a lime was practically indistinguishable. Figuring the matter settled, I hastily plucked my juicy lime before varmints or time rendered it lost, and brought it into the kitchen. I had no edible plans for my solitary lime. It was just joy enough in knowing I had saved it from certain demise. Slicing into it, first by smell and next by sight, I realized my mistake. This was no lime in lemon’s clothing. It was a lemon, still green, still waiting to let nature do its work, but apparently nature’s lesser evolved creature (yours...
by Greg | Aug 23, 2012 | Blog Posts
For a hypocritcal sermon, click this link:...
by Greg | Aug 22, 2012 | Blog Posts
It was a good tent. If memory serves correct we bought it when Clark was a baby, if not a bit earlier. This means it is somewhere around 20 years old. It is a dome tent that advertisers claimed would accommodate four, but soon after Aaron entered the picture we realized it was going to be too small for all four of us to sleep in comfortably. Still, we used it camping through the years because it was easy to set up. As the boys grew larger and longer we bought a second tent to allow for extra space and parental privacy. We have other tents: small backpacking tents, a newer dome tent, and a large cabin tent (sleeps six!), but this one old tent has staying power. In the last few years I would throw this tent in the back of my car whenever I would go camping but was not planning to backpack. It has held up quite well on a foot of snow with temperatures in the single digits. It has been of great service along a stretch of lonely beach on Little Tybee. It was even of service last fall when we took the high school juniors and seniors camping (I think it was leaking then too). It was a good tent. Amy used it last week when she headed up to the Great Smoky Mountains and camped for a few days all by herself. I was able to get away and join her for just one night, but had to head back the next day and leave the camping for her to carry on...
by Greg | Aug 8, 2012 | Blog Posts
Yesterday without much fanfare and just a bit of sulking, we experienced our very last first. It was the very last first day of school for the family. Aaron, our youngest, is now a senior and so the rituals of closing a summer with the first day of school are now over. I baked cinnamon rolls, even though he did not want one, and we snapped pictures, even though he is “too old” for such nonsense. Traditions and rituals are hard to break; we have been doing this, after all, for a total of fifteen years. Once you become a parent the seasons marked by school take on a heightened significance. I remember holding his hand walking with him to his kindergarten class and worried and thinking to myself, “This school is too big for my small son.” What I did not know is that he seems too big for any school to contain his dreams and ambitions. The school bus no longer stops for him because he drives to school. It has been years since he brought home a drawing to post on the refrigerator. I am no longer invited to eat lunch with him in the cafeteria. There have been many “last firsts” along the way; I just did not always know it or recognize it. This is the way of life. Things come and move and have their being and then are no more. Life cannot be frozen or halted. Children grow up; parents get old; employment changes; friends move and the seasons unfold. Growing involves shedding or losing things along the way. We were never...
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