“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” – Romans 12:15 

We have these great neighbors who live next door, Matt and Alicia.  Mostly we meet up when we are working in the yard.  One day recently we returned home from running errands to find Matt in our front yard with a pruning saw cleaning out a yaupon tree that had been damaged by a springtime storm.  He didn’t need to do that, of course, except being a much younger man I suppose he thought I could use a strong helping hand.  But that’s just the kind of guy Matt is, like the way he takes care of an elderly lady’s yard across the street, mowing, raking leaves, and trimming her shrubs.  Maybe she pays him something, although I doubt it.  Either way, he certainly doesn’t do it for the money.  I try to reciprocate as much as I can by lending him tools or looking after their house when they go out of town.  But what impresses me most about Matt is how he ends every conversation we have.  “If you ever need help with anything – I mean anything!” he will always say, “please let me know.”

Having Matt as a neighbor has taught me two things.  One, we need more Matts in the world, people who help others for no other reason except out of pure goodness.  And two, I need to work on becoming more like Matt.  The fact is, I really did need help pruning those broken limbs out of that yaupon tree.  You see, I had wounded my shoulder recently – nothing serious, but enough to put me temporarily out of commission from using a saw.  Matt didn’t know that, though, not until I thanked him for what he had done.

How can any of us get through life if we are not helping one another along the way?  Or, as songwriter Richard Gillard expresses so well in The Servant Song: “We are pilgrims on a journey / Fellow travelers on the road / We are here to help each other / Walk the mile and bear the load. . . I will weep when you are weeping / When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you / I will share your joy and sorrow / Till we’ve seen this journey through.” 

In other words, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.  Live in harmony with one another.”  It is a sure formula for an abundant life.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  – Romans 12:21 

Sadly and tragically, mass shootings in our country these days seem almost as commonplace as automobile accidents.  That’s an exaggeration, of course, but they certainly have become epidemic, have they not?  For me, though, this most recent shooting was different – much different!  It occurred in my own backyard, less than ten minutes from our home.  That outlet mall is a place we frequently shop, as do our children and grandchildren, friends and neighbors.  For us, this shooting was not just another tragic news story, it took place in my own community, among my fellow citizens.  It was personal!  And that in and of itself places part of the blame on me.

How so, you may wonder?  There is a legendary story about Fiorello La Guardia who was mayor of New York City during the Great Depression.  One night the mayor showed up at a night court in one of the poorest wards in the city, dismissed the judge, and took over the bench.  A tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with steeling a loaf of bread.  She told the mayor that her daughter’s husband had left, her daughter was ill, and her two grandchildren were starving.  The shopkeeper, however, refused to drop the charges, insisting she should be punished.  Sighing, La Guardia turned to the woman and said, “According to the law I’ve got to punish you.  Ten dollars or ten days in jail.”  But as he was pronouncing the sentence, the mayor dug into his own pocket for ten dollars to pay the woman’s fine, then commenced to fine every person in that courtroom for “living in a town where a person has to steal bread to feed her grandchildren.”

Like you, the news of this mass shooting filled me immediately with rage that someone, anyone, would senselessly murder innocent people.  I grieve for the victims – and beyond the fatalities, the wounded, and their families, everyone at that mall was a victim in some way.  This tragic event makes me fear for my family’s safety, and my own.  Mostly, I am sad that we live in a culture where loneliness, abuse, addiction, and lack of love exists, like the poor woman who lived in a city where she had to steal bread to feed her grandchildren.  I wonder, could I have unknowingly crossed paths with that shooter once upon a time and failed to show kindness?  Could it have made a difference if I had?  Could it have saved lives?  The Apostle Paul’s words could not be more relevant for these times we live in: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

“Let us not give up meeting together . . . but let us encourage one another.”

• Hebrews 10:25 

My dentist’s office called the other day reminding me of my upcoming six-month cleaning and checkup appointment next week.  Shortly after a warning light came on in my car indicating it is time for an oil-change and routine maintenance.  Then I noticed on my calendar that I am due to visit the dermatologist soon for a routine checkup on my bald head.  Similarly, the heating and air company we use recently left two messages that it is time for spring maintenance on our AC units before the hot summer months arrive.

There once was a time when people only went to the dentist when they had a toothache, or to the doctor when they were sick or hurt.  Cars went to the shop when they broke down, and the repairman was called when the AC unit quit working.  Routine maintenance – or wellness checkups, the term the medical profession prefers to use – is relatively new, so it seems, over the past fifty years or so.

No doubt the promotions among various professions and product vendors for regular checkups and routine maintenance have added substantial revenue streams to their bottom lines, but not without, in all honesty, tremendous benefit to the consuming public.  Consider, for instance, how life expectancy has increased, and not simply living longer but healthier as well.  Seventy is now the new fifty as they say.  And cars?  There was a time when after three to five years of normal driving a car began to wear out.  Now it is not unusual for an automobile, properly maintained, to remain reliable for years.

If regular routine checkups are healthy for automobiles and AC units, as well as dental and general health, how might the same principle apply to our spiritual and emotional wellbeing?  Here is my experience.  Over the past twenty-five years I have been meeting every Tuesday morning with a small group of men for a spiritual wellness checkup during which there are three simple questions for which we hold each other accountable: (1) How is your relationship with God?  (2) What are you reading or studying to support that?  (3) How are you reaching out to others in a Godly way?  The result has been, for each of us, that our spiritual and emotional health has done nothing but increase.  “Let us [then] not give up meeting together . . . but let us [continue to] encourage one another.”

“. . . it had its foundation on the rock.”  – Matthew 7:25 

Jesus, in one of his great parables, tells about “a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”  He goes on to contrast that with “a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Spring is storm season across much of our country, many of them devastating.  This spring in particular we have seen violent tornados, wind, and hail wipe out entire communities.  Sadly, in many cases there is little that can be done to avoid massive destruction from such violent storms.  But for structures that did manage to withstand the storms, it is a good bet they were built on a solid foundation; like trees with deep root systems; or ships tethered to strong anchors.  More so are the people, the victims of the storms, many of whom lost everything.  Their very survival and recovery, both physically and emotionally, will depend on the strength of their foundation, the depth of their roots, and the anchor to which they are tethered.

A solid foundation is not only critical in the case of surviving a storm, but equally so in attaining sustainable success.  “If anyone wants to be around for the long haul and experience sustainable success,” according to Forbes Magazine, “then it is vital to understand the things that matter most.”  I recall going through what I like to call my ambition season of life.  It was a time when my career was on the rise, and I had “fire in my belly” to succeed.  But every so often my wife would reel me in a bit, reminding me of the things that matter most – marriage, family, our core values.  She was the solid foundation and the anchor in our family back then – and still is – otherwise, my chasing after success simply for the sake of satisfying my ambition risked being like the foolish man who built his house on sand.

But it goes deeper than that.  My wife’s solid foundation is not a product of her own creation, but a foundation built upon a rock; more specifically, built upon The Rock, steadfast and unmovable.  It is my Rock too.  Who is yours?

“. . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” – Hebrews 12:1 

I have never personally had the pleasure of meeting Boots O’Neal, but I have seen him a few times, especially when I was a youngster growing up out in Northwest Texas.  Back then he was dating a girl, who he eventually married, whose family at the time lived around the corner from us.  That’s about as close as I ever got to meeting him.  Almost ninety-years-old now, Boots is one of the most renowned and respected, and certainly one of the oldest active cowboys in Texas – perhaps anywhere.  Boots still resides in the bunkhouse of the famed 6666 ranch in Guthrie, Texas where every morning he gets up, pulls on his boots, and saddles his horse for a long day’s work “punching” cattle, after which he retreats to the bunkhouse, and as he is quoted as saying in an article published last year in Texas Monthly magazine, “I’ll go to sleep lookin’ forward to doing it again tomorrow.”  (ref. https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/legend-of-boots-oneal/)

“If people see their best years behind them, they’re probably not going to finish very well, because you can’t finish well when you’re going backwards,” the late Bob Buford wrote in his book Finishing Well: What People Who REALLY Live Do Differently!   Well, one of the things Boots O’Neal has done differently is that he has refused – quite literally – to hang up his spurs, besides the fact that he loves what he does and finds purpose in it.  And that is the formula for “finishing well” for which Boots O’Neal is a role model.

The aging process seems to be teaching me the same lesson, that if you want to finish well, every morning you better get up, suit up, and be armed with a purpose.  Otherwise, if you quit, you’re done!  Few spend seventy-five years in the same physically demanding profession as Boots O’Neal who has been cowboying since he was fifteen.  In fact, many of us go through three or four careers during our lifetimes.  Benjamin Franklin, it is said, spent his first forty-two years becoming successful, and his last forty-two years giving back – always with a purpose.

And we all have a purpose, a race that has been marked out for us, but as Rick Warren pointed out in his best-selling book from several years back, The Purpose Driven Life, that purpose is never about ourselves.  So, “let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us,” like people who REALLY live do, who also seem to finish well.