Nice Weekend, Happy Birthday

I've always believed birthdays are one of the best reasons to be on Facebook, and this year was no exception. In a pretense of humility, I will not count up how many birthday wishes I received. It wouldn't be easy, anyway, because some commented in response to my last blog post, some commented in response to a quote about aging I posted, and some commented in response to a shameless self-promotion plug I posted the day after my birthday--all in addition to Facebook's birthday notification at the top of friends' home pages.
It IS nice to hear from folks I might not communicate with any other time, though. I'm not planning on signing off of Facebook!
Actually, this year, I got my birthday cake as a result of one of those posts (not sure which one). My big day was Sunday, and it was a busy day at church. Evelyn and I had Welcome Center duty, and I filled-in as teacher of the Seekers class at 9:00. Then I had been asked to emcee a fundraising lunch that happened in the church parlor after the last service. When the event organizers, Dave and Valerie Reed, saw it was my birthday, they stopped by Kroger on the way to church and bought me a cake so everyone could sing "Happy Birthday" during the luncheon. I loved it!
The lunch was very nice, designed to raise funds to name a room in CCU's remodeled Rine Hall after

I opened my eyes and snapped this picture during the
closing prayer at the end of our lunch Sunday.

Vic and June Hunter. June was a graduate of the school and an active supporter. Her "adopted" daughter, Marilyn Pitzer, gave a fine tribute to Vic and June and presented Dave Faust (he was there and made a nice presentation, too) with a check for $25,000 from the Hunter estate plus a personal gift from her family. It was a moving, enjoyable day. We sat with Dale and Judy McCann and Cliff and Becky Leighty, plus one of the students who accompanied the Fausts to church for the event.
I attended the 10:30 worship in the gym (I'm usually in the auditorium or the chapel) and was especially blessed by Trevor's sermon about Solomon. I plan to discuss again with our men's Bible study Thursday four words Trevor chose to characterize Solomon's life:

• Compromise
• Exception
• Meaningless
• Duty

A couple of quotes I jotted in my bulletin:

"The road to folly starts with the word except."

"When a good thing becomes a god thing, that's a bad thing."

"Do something big with your one and only life."

We stopped at Kohl's on the way home and used a coupon to buy my birthday gift, a new pair of Skechers I can wear to work on jeans Friday.
Anticipating rain on Monday, Evelyn and I mowed grass after we got home. (For the record, that's lawn mowing no. 4 this year.) Shirley Wuske wanted to come dig some hydrangea sprouts from the bushes in the front yard, so we invited them to come share my birthday cake. After grass, before the Wuskes, both of the kids called, and we enjoyed nice catch-up visits with them. We had a great time digging and eating and visiting with Terry and Shirley (they brought ice cream to go with the cake!), and by the time they left, we were ready to get ready for the week.
It was a busy day, which is why I didn't have time to write about it then.
The birthday continued Monday; Evelyn got up in the morning and baked two coffee cakes for me to take to work. And then today the Magazines people took me to lunch. I chose Jason's Deli, the restaurant Sev and Paul Friskney had introduced us to earlier this year.
So I feel fully entered into my year as a 64-year-old. It was a happy birthday!

Symphony Selfie

Tomorrow (Sunday) is my birthday, and Evelyn and I decided a few weeks ago to celebrate tonight by going out to eat and to the symphony.
We had a Groupon to use at Trio's Bistro, and bought the symphony tickets with a senior's discount. Ah, the life of two Queen City gadabouts.
The dinner was wonderful, and the symphony was nice. The artistry of the piano soloist was remarkable, although one of the works, Stumble to Grace by Steven Mackey, was a bit difficult to get into, and the Bernstein symphony (No. 2 The Age of Anxiety) was unfamiliar and largely unmelodic as well.
But the three dance episodes from On the Town reminded me of other works by Bernstein, and it was a treat to hear Barber's Adagio for Strings played by a live orchestra in an acoustically perfect hall.
This is only the second time this season we've been to Music Hall, and it was nice to be there and wonderful to be out and around on a beautiful spring evening.

Only at Q

Perhaps my title overstates it a bit. Perhaps I could or would see some of these people at other events besides the Q Conference. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't see them this close-up or hear them say the things I heard them say here:

Susan Giglio, David Crowder, and Chris Tomlin, all from Sixsteps Records.  Chris Tomlin: "My goal is to give people a chance to connect to God and say what they want to say. Scripture always informs it for me. I'm not giving my opinions. I'm just giving people what God has already said about himself."

Neil Clark Warren, who founded e-Harmony when he was 65 years old, after serving as dean of the School of Psychology at Fuller: "After 35 years of counseling, I decided to do something about all the divorce I was seeing. So many of these people who divorced were in trouble the day they started. If a person gets married to the wrong person, there's nothing else that's quite so punishing."

Carrie Underwood: "I talk to my mom a lot. She's my 'straight and narrow' so I don't look back and say, 'Why did I do that? Why did I sing that?'"

Her husband, Mike Fisher: "Now I see hockey as a ministry platform. . . . I've been blessed with a unique ability,and hopefully I can be a leader."

Along with all the speakers and ideas to think about, I've really enjoyed my time with Dick Alex-ander. Also tonight and last night, he and I ate dinner with Dean and Penny Collins. Dean is president of Point Uni-versity, and I really enjoyed getting to know these special people better. We snapped a couple of pictures this evening in front of the giant Q logo outside the War Memorial Auditorium where all the main sessions were held.

Asking the Right Questions

Last evening Dick Alexander and I drove from Cincinnati to Nashville to attend the annual Q Conference. It began this morning and continues through Friday noon. Dick has attended several years; this is my first time to come.
The program consists mainly of a string of presenters from a wide range of disciplines, each of them offering insight, exhortation, research, or advice on how Christians can advance the common good. Gabe Lyons, Q founder, offered four questions we should be asking about the world and considering
as we hear the presentations:
1) What is wrong? (Stop and confront it.)
2) What's confused? (Clarify it and compel to action.)
3) What is good? (Celebrate and cultivate it.)
4) What is missing? (Create solutions and catalyze wider action.)
I have pages and pages of notes, and I took a bunch of photos. Below I'll publish a few of the photos, with quotes below each. But this only scratches the surface of all the input swimming around in my head and begging for further thought (and action!)

Donna Freitas, college professor and researcher into the hookup culture on college campuses, author of Sex and the Soul and The End of Sex:
Young adults believe they are supposed to be casual abou sex in college. . . . Students often believe hookups are their only option. I see a lot of stress and sadness. . . . 43% of them are profoundly unhappy with the hookup culture.

Brian Fikkert, author of When Helping Hurts:

Economists think of human flourishing, i.e., success, as consuming more and more things. And since consumption is limited by income, we need greater income. And economists aren't the only ones who believe this. This has been the world's general approach. Such methods, at their worst, create dependencies as we hurl resources at poor people. At their best, we make them just like us. . . . And yet as our prosperity has increased in America, the incidence of mental illness and suicide has multiplied. This is because of sin. Sin is a human flourishing problem. Material poverty is rooted in this central problem: Our relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation is broken. Poverty is in the broken systems that broken people have created. We eed to repent of material definitions of success and our faith in technology. The goal isn't to transform Bahgladesh into the United States, but to transform both into the New Jerusalem.

Russell Moore, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

For many years there has been an understanding that Christianity is a normal and expected way of life to be a normal member of US society.

That is changing, and I think that is good news.

One of the most dangerous things we, as the church, can do is to try to normalize Christianity. Christian standards are not made up by men, and this approach doesn't work. Christian standard have always been a scandal.

Seeing ourselves as a minority is to see that we’re living in a time that is not yet the kingdom of God. We speak a word that is prophetic and that is seen as something strange.

As we work for human flourishing, we communicate and articulate the gospel itself.

 We speak with conviction and with kindness, because we realize that the thing that transforms ultimately is not a list of ideas, but hearing a Galilean voice.

We say what Jesus said, but we say it as Jesus spoke: “Come unto me all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Gary Haugen, International Justice Mission:

2.5 billion people in the developing world today have no access to law enforcement. 

There are more slaves in the world today than in any time in history.

The Day Before Easter Is a Good Day for a Funeral

The flower beds around our church building
are filled with tulips and phlox in full bloom.

If one must go to a funeral, let it be the funeral of a fellow-Christian on the day before Easter.
That was my thought this afternoon after we went to say, "We're so sorry" to Bethany Bellamy at the visitation for her husband, Tim, who died in his sleep one week ago. Tim and Bethany are young (at least a lot younger than Evelyn and me!). He's usually on the platform playing keyboards for one or more of our worship services, and we had worked with Bethany in more than one Christmas pageant in the past. They attended a short-term small group I led this fall, and all of us were shocked at Tim's sudden, unexpected death.
But we Christians say Christ's resurrection gives us hope in the face of death. We believe Christ's resurrection gives the promise that all of us will live again. And tomorrow we will celebrate the life we find only in him while we remember that this life is not the end and this world is not our home.
It was a beautiful day today, above 70 degrees, bright sunshine, brilliant blue sky. After the winter comes the spring. After death comes life as surprisingly beautiful as the green lawns and multicolored tulips and blindingly white pear trees in full bloom everywhere this weekend.
As wonderful as spring's new life is to see and smell, it happens in a world where Satan still brings disappointment and dysfunction and disease and death. We can only imagine how wonderful the next life will be without any of the devil's influence and in the eternal presence of the Author of Life.

Good Preaching, Good Pictures

Quote of the Day:
Mark Mueller, one of our church's elders, preached this morning, and he did a super job. The sermon told the story of David: his call, his battle with Goliath, and his integrity in sparing the life of King Saul in the cave.
It was a sermon filled with challenges for the man on the street, laced with Mark's slightly bent and deadpan humor.
My favorite smile from the sermon:
"If your father-in-law is trying to kill you, and his daughter (your wife) and his son (your best friend) are trying to help you, you don't need to be a clinical psychologist to know the family Christmas party just became very interesting."

Pictures of the Day:
Evelyn got a new hair-do, and she decided the short cut in her Facebook profile just doesn't work
anymore. So she asked me to snap a new one for her. By bedtime it had received 115 "likes" on Facebook!
This afternoon I ran over to Dr. Charley Horsley's house in Lebanon. Charley is a semiprofessional photographer, and, in response to a Facebook inquiry from Evelyn a couple weeks ago, he offered to send our family picture taken last summer to the place that prints all his pictures, a high-quality print-output company that makes prints for professional photographers.
Below is the print we're having enlarged to hand in our living room. Daughter-in-law Lisa orchestrated and directed the photo shoot in Central Park last summer (and color-corrected the pictures for us). After we get the print, we'll work on getting it matted and framed. The Horsleys have a recommendation for a good framer in Lebanon.
Finally, Evelyn will be getting her family portrait to hang on the wall!

Warm and Wonderful

Picture of the Day:
I've been playing with a new app I learned about after seeing some photos with cool effects on David Ray's Facebook page. (It's called Waterlogue.) Our magnolia bush in the backyard has joined the whole neighborhood in beginning to bloom, and my quick shots of it gave me something experiment worthy.

It was a glorious day, in the high 70s, with a cooling breeze. The perfect day for the lawn mowing Number One this season. I mowed and edged and blew all the grass, and I was delighted that all three tools worked perfectly without a hitch. I picked up some potting soil, a parsley plant and a packet of lettuce seeds before lunch and planted two flower  pots for the deck bannister after I got the lawn mowed. 

Evelyn baked a coffee cake this afternoon, and we took a plateful down the street to welcome new neighbors, Nina and John Creech. They moved out here from their house in Clifton just a block off Ludlow, and we discovered they love the Indian restaurant we used to visit there. We don't go there so often now, because the same family has opened a restaurant in Mason. We decided to go together there this Friday night!

After supper, Evelyn and I watched 42, the Jackie Robinson story. I had heard good things about the movie, and I'm so glad we rented it. We really enjoyed it, especially Harrison Ford's portrayal of the Brooklyn Dodgers manager.

Cold, Indeed!

News Flash:

Coldwater Creek, the retailer of women's clothes, especially for women past—well, shall we say, the young adult category—filed for bankruptcy today. 

Evelyn and I learned this, not by reading the newspaper or scouring the web, but by a shopping trip to the Coldwater Creek store in Mason this evening. I gave Evelyn a Groupon to Coldwater Creek for Christmas, and she's been waiting to use it. Tonight was the night, and this morning was the day for the bankruptcy announcement. From today forward, the company isn't honoring the Groupons. The clerk assured us Groupon would refund our money if we give them a call. I'll be making that call tomorrow. Stay tuned.

It's Spring! It's Really, Really Spring!

Pictures of the Day:
One of the best things I can say about my company under its current ownership is the location. We have a bright, modern office, far better than anything I would have imagined in my early days at Standard Publishing. It occupies one floor of an office park not far from I-71 and Fields-Ertel, a newer, well-maintained facility. And the nicest thing about it is its surroundings. Green. Leafy. A beautiful fountain. Fresh blooms rotated in and out with the seasons.
And daffodils. Every year I've gone around outside taking pictures of the daffodils that return year after year.
It was warm and sunny at lunchtime today, and I decided this is the time for my annual tradition. So here they are, harbingers of spring and of sunny, warm days ahead: daffodils in cream and yellow just beginning to pop open around our office building.

One Nice Surprise

Picture of the Day:
It was a day of surprises. One of them I can't talk about, and one of them I won't. But this one, the most pleasant one, I'm glad to describe and picture.
Long-time friends John and Mary Jane Burgess sold their farm last October and since then have been traveling the country. They've become sightseeing retirees without a home. They're in this area for a few days, and Mary Jane wrote this morning to see if we could meet them for dinner.
We met at Mimi's (Mimi's again!) at about 5:30 and sat and talked till after 8:00. It was great to hear about their travels west and south and east, including three months in a rental on Hilton Head Island.
I talked Evelyn and Mary Jane into posing for a picture as we got ready to leave.

Quote of the Day:

“Praise is often much more powerful than prayer, simply because praise is filled with faith, and prayer often isn’t.” 

—Alan Ahlgrim, in a newsletter to friends and supporters today.

A Nice Weekend

Pictures of the Day:
A highlight of the weekend was the concert by the Purdue Glee Club at Christ's Church at Mason Saturday night. More than 500 made a nice crowd in our auditorium to see the uniquely energetic and entertaining show/concert performed by this stage full of young men singing in tuxes. Their repertoire covered the gamut: sacred, classical, Broadway, gospel, pop, and patriotic. Always with strong voices, sometimes with complex harmonies, varying their stage presence from formal rows to seemingly unchoreographed interactions with each other and the audience, their performance was a joy to watch as well as hear.

We made an evening of the outing by inviting the Webers and the Friskneys to join us for supper at

The singers filled the aisles with song more than once, this time
to serenade ladies they chose from the audience.

5:00 and then go to the concert with us. We enjoyed the meal and the laughter at Mimi's and got to the church by 6:15 or 6:30 to get good seats for the 7:00 concert. Afterwards, Evelyn was one of the volunteers serving trays of homemade cookies to the crowd that lingered in the large lobby area outside the auditorium. Several of the singers had nice reunions with family members made more pleasurable by our church's hospitality.
Bill and Verna stayed overnight with us and left about 10:00 Sunday morning to worship at Lifespring Christian Church and spend the day with the Webers 2.0. We decided to go to second service at Mason Sunday morning; the net effect was two long, hashing-out-life visits with the Webers: Saturday night till almost midnight and then again over a leisurely breakfast Sunday morning. (Evelyn had made our favorite coffee cake--yum!)
Friday night was a typical Big Night Out for Evelyn and me: dinner out (Macaroni Grill --and that was special!) and a shopping trip at Costco's followed by Evelyn snagging this quarter's sale at the Clinique counter at Macy's.
Sunday we sat with our friend Alan Guttman in the Classic Service at 10:30, ate lunch quickly at McAllister's, and then returned home for a productive afternoon. Evelyn graded papers, and I worked a couple hours in the yard (trimmed all the rose bushes). It was a sunny 60-degree day, and I went with Evelyn on her walk after my yard work. Then I came in and did something I haven't done for a long time on a Sunday afternoon. I took a nap--a long nap! Evelyn was afraid I wouldn't sleep that night, but I managed to quit waking to see the alarm clock by about 11:00 p.m.

Quote of the Day:
"We think obedience is fine for kids and dogs. But we don't celebrate obedience in our culture. . . . Obedience puts us in our place. It's God's wisdom and strength we can't outgrow."
—Trevor DeVage in his excellent sermon in our The Story series, this week on King Saul's sorry pattern of disobedience.