I guess we will just have to run out of money

This is when people ususally change their ways. As Rick Warren says, we don’t change when we see the light but when we feel the heat.

In our bailout frenzy, it seems to me that the only thing that will change the feeding frenzy is financial collapse. At some point along the way even the poor will wake up and see that there is no way out through governement largesse. We are now propping up car manufacturers that sell autos that no one wants to buy and pay their employees the best of wages and pensions to make them. The only sector of our economy that has grown this year is government!!!

I think the people in governement know this. They just can’t figure out how to get elected and tell the truth at the same time.  At least, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt on this. May God raise up someone(s) who will inspire us to do the hard thing. My prayer is that our new President-elect will use his bully pulpit well and call us to listen to our better angels.

Sacred Glances-War Stories of Hampton Roads Veterans

My wife, Sharon’s, niece, Laurel Owens, wrote this piece about her grandfather (Sharon’s dad) that was published under the title above. Laurel is a high school senior.

Johnnie William Henry Sporhase:Uncommon Valor in the Tides of War
This is the story of Chief Petty Officer Machinery Repairman Johnnie William Henry Sporhase. This is the story of my grandfather and my hero. It may contain nothing special or nothing you may ever remember. But it is the story of a brave veteran and the journey that changed his life.

Johnnie was a country boy from Nebraska who joined the Navy in 1940 and went to Great Lakes for basic training. He entered as a seaman, woking in the bakery. He then moved up to a mess cook, making 21 dollars a month.

My grandpa fixes stuff and always has. That’s what he’s known for, and the Navy made sure he could do what he was good at. He became an electrician, then a ship fitter. After that he went on to machinery work.

When war came, he stated working with gun, with his general quarters on 5-inch 51 broadsides, 50 millimeters, and mostly 14-inch. His wife, Norma, jokingly says, “He lost his hair because the recoiling guns (36-inch) make your hair stand on end!”

I asked where he was when the atack on Pearl Harbor occurred. He remembers being somewhere in the Atlantic, having to wait till the ill-fated Reuben James sank to do anything and move on. Reuben James was an American destroyer that was providing excort for convoy HX-156 when it was torpedoed by a German submarine on october 31, 1941.

He also recalled attacks that occurred when he had taken leave from his ship to go ahsore in Okinawa to visit his brother-in-law, a soldier in the Army. During his visit, he reminded himself that he had to get back to ship by sunset. This was because planes would fire as the sun beat down onto the men’s eyes as it aligned with the horizon.

Once, he was caught in a bombardment and had to hide to keep safe and wait for a cease fire before returning to his ship. Remembering the terrible events of that time cause him to cry, for of the 130 men who had departed to fight on the front lines, only 30 made it back. One of these, fortunately, was his brother-in-law, who returned muddy, dirty an hungry. My grandfather cared for him the rest of the day.

As the suicide bombings increased following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he became a fire chief on the topsed fo the USS Manila Bay, helping with fire and rescue after bombs and planes bombarded his ships. He says suicide planes were the worst, with the burning blood and skin sticking to the deck, leaving a rank odor that never seemed to go away. The recollection of burials at sea will forever stay in his mind. “We would stack ‘em up on a table, weigh ‘em down with lead, cover ‘em up with a flag,a nd let them slide off the ship – something that always bothered me,” he barely gets out as a weakened voice and tear appear, “to go off andleave him.” He speaks of men fallen overboard-fathers, brothers, sons, uncles. “You know he’s out there somewhere.”

My grandfather kept a diary, with simple entries dating from 1940 to 1950: “june 23-Saild to the Pananma Canal. June 30-Landed in California.” One date stands out in particular: September 14, 1942, the day he sailed over the resting place of Benjie Kock. Benjie had been in his class in grammar school and died when his ship was bombed.

The experiences Johnnie Sporhase had during his Navy career, which ended with his retirment in 1959, shaped the man he is today. I read a passage from Nicholas Spark’s The Notebook that reminded me of the way my grandfather thinks of himself: “I am a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, andmy name will soon be forgotten…but this has always been enough.”

While no monuments have been dedicated to Johnnie Sporhase, he clearly didn’t live a common life. He endured hardships and events that I never will, and he became a man I will always admire. Please take this story as a challenge to lvie the best life you can, to affect the world, and know that you did.

Trying to Concentrate

That’s my MO for this week. Must keep my “to do” list current and then move things from the “to do” to the “done.” Had one of those “four nights sraight out” weeks last week. This week I pared it down to three straight!!! Two to go.  It reminds me of Eugene Peterson’s metaphor of the pastor as the harpooner in the boat, seeminlgy lazy where everyone around him is busy rowing. But, of course, he is gathering the energy and the readiness to thrust the harpoon to the target. If this goes wrong, everything is wrong. I try to keep this metaphor in mind.

Last night I went to DivorceCare. Of all that I do at night this is a can’t miss appointment. It’s too raw, too searching, too tender for me to miss it. I did everything I could to keep from crying. I wish I could videotape one of these sessions and send it to anyone who is considering leaving his or her spouse. It is easier to learn to love the person you are married to than to live with the damage done when you leave. The DCers are my heroes. I have never had to reach so deep or believe so fully or trust so vulnerably as these who fight for the very air they breathe. May God hear their cry and remember them.

What a phenomenal privilege it has been to spend my life pastoring. No one could deserve this invitation from the Almighty. And no one could ever measure up to its demands. Sometimes it feels like baseball – just to get a hit three times out of ten at bats is success. And, oh, are those seven times painful. Because it’s not just my failure. It’s a failure for which others pay the cost. I have lived my life seeing what happens to people when I fall short of being the shepherd I should be. No, I am not a narcissist, nor am I deluded into believing everyone else’s life is my responsibility But I am a “soul doctor.” And I am stunned that I get to do this thing.