Running Mate Speculation
By John W. Kennedy | July 24, 2008
With the identity of presidential nominees decided long ago, pundits lately have been obsessed with trying to handicap the contest for vice president.
A pair of new polls indicates that voters favor Barack Obama picking his closest rival Hillary Clinton as a running mate. Likewise, much of the populace wants John McCain to select Mitt Romney as his partner.
I don’t think either will happen. Those rivals carry too much baggage and really won’t help the standard bearers attract new voters.
Obama and Clinton didn’t get along too well. Plus, Obama has emphasized change and Clinton represents the status quo. And, it’s unlikely that the first major party candidate to be African American will pick a woman as his running mate when this country has had nothing but white men as presidents for more than two centuries.
McCain and Romney also didn’t hit it off during the primary season. And McCain, in need of shoring up the evangelical base that has been the bastion of the Republican Party for a quarter century, won’t help himself in that regard by tapping a Mormon.
Conventional wisdom dictates that Obama pick someone who has served a lengthy stretch in government, is experienced in foreign affairs, is older and white. Likewise, McCain needs to find a running mate who is younger, more conservative, more dynamic and experienced in tackling economic problems.
Of course nominees sometimes disregard conventional wisdom. In 1992 Bill Clinton defied advice to balance the ticket by picking Al Gore, another Southerner his same age. It seemed to work.
George H.W. Bush shocked everyone in 1988 by choosing a wild card: the young, conservative, obscure Dan Quayle. Bush stuck with Quayle when he ran a second time and that didn’t help him.
John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both picked their chief competitors as their vice presidents.
The vice presidential candidates this year might have a significant impact. If McCain chooses Mike Huckabee it could swing a lot of undecided evangelical voters his way. If Obama names Evan Bayh to the ticket it might soothe those who view him as too liberal. I’m anticipating the choices with great expectation.
Topics: Politics | No Comments »
Church Planting Never Gets Old
By John W. Kennedy | July 23, 2008
Since this article appeared in Today’s Pentecostal Evangel on July 29, 2007, Pastor Dan Estes has once again returned to full-time ministry and church construction is complete. “We’re attracting many young people who weren’t going to church,” Estes said recently. “Stories of people embracing Christ are so refreshing. It helps me realize why I have done what I’ve done.”
Middle Age: A Great Time to Return to Church Planting
By John W. Kennedy in Indianapolis
After 16½ years, Dan R. Estes had grown to love the members of Living Hope Church in Merrillville, Ind. He led an established congregation of 550 adherents that had more than doubled in size since his arrival. He supervised a staff of 37, most of whom worked for the day-care center the church operated. During his tenure, Living Hope hadn’t experienced any splits over leadership, worship style, finances or other issues.
But Estes had grown a little too comfortable.
“I felt I had become the keeper of the aquarium rather than a fisher of men,” Estes says.
By middle age, many pastors are simultaneously looking back wistfully at their careers and carefully planning ahead for retirement. Dan Estes instead set out to find a location where Christ needed to be proclaimed. He found it in Lawrence, a city on the east edge of Indianapolis with more than 60,000 residents and no Assemblies of God church.
A little more than a month before his 56th birthday, Dan Estes embraced the bivocational life he left behind a quarter century ago. He is a church planter — and a full-time car salesman.
In order to support his family, by day Estes is a preferred customer manager at an auto dealership, able to communicate with congregants via his BlackBerry at a moment’s notice. During the evenings and on weekends he’s typing church bulletins, visiting the sick in hospitals, writing sermons and preparing a worship music set.
Sharon, his wife of 35 years, is an English teacher at a local community college as well as the church secretary, janitor and keyboardist.
At a time in life when most people are trying to minimize risk, Estes is living proof that middle age isn’t too late to go out on a limb and pursue a ministry challenge.
“If you’re not afraid to start over, this can be fun,” Estes says. Striking out on his own with no support from a mother church, Estes planted a new Living Hope Church on the edge of Indianapolis a couple of years ago. He and Sharon accessed the money they had set aside for retirement, and those funds are helping as they pioneer the new congregation. They left their home in suburban Chicago for more modest digs in suburban Indianapolis.
The move has meant both sacrifice and stretching. In Merrillville, Living Hope had excellent musicians and singers. At the church plant, Estes is the worship leader and sole guitarist. He’s learned how to be computer savvy. He even helps clean toilets in Living Hope’s restrooms.
Around 60 people attend Living Hope. Although a few have been in a pew every Sunday for decades, most have never attended church, or at least not been in a sanctuary for a long time.
“My target is people who are sleeping in on Sunday morning,” Estes says.
A month ago, Living Hope moved into its own building, after nearly two years of renting facilities from another Pentecostal church nearby. But even more than improved facilities, Estes is passionate about transformed souls.
“I want to see people change on their journey with Christ,” he says. “Sometimes that involves baby steps. I don’t want to lose anyone on the way.”
Estes knows from experience the Christian walk is a process. His parents divorced when Estes was 4. By age 17, living with his mother and third stepfather, Estes looked forward to getting away from his Louisville, Ky., home and going to college. As a senior in high school he already had landed a job with an architectural firm and saw that profession as his ticket to a better life.
He also had another obsession: a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass with bucket seats. His sister Pat Walters, then 31, promised to co-sign on a car loan if he would come to church with her. On his third Sunday attending, Estes made a salvation commitment to Jesus.
Despite his architecture desire and skills, Estes opted to attend Central Bible College in Springfield, Mo., for a year to start learning about Scripture. He figured the Lord would bless his architecture career if he made such a sacrifice. However, that year in school changed his thinking. He stayed at CBC for four years.
Upon graduation, Estes, at 22, planted a church in Richmond, Ky., and left five years later. By then the congregation had grown to 175. Later he pioneered a church in Paducah, Ky., that attracted 75 congregants in his two years there.
After pastoring a couple of other churches, Estes settled in for the lengthy stretch in Merrillville. When he arrived, the tight church budget didn’t even allow for the purchase of postage stamps. When he left, members donated $100,000 annually to missions.
“We loved the people a lot, but we thought it was time to leave,” Estes says. “The only logical thing seemed to be to start a new church.”
Of course, it’s a bittersweet experience to leave behind parishioners whose faith has been strengthened, babies who have grown to teenagers, a worship team (including Sharon) that recorded a compact disc, and a full-time youth pastor who had befriended 17-year-old son Daniel. In addition, the couple’s 28-year-old daughter Ashley Monroe, her husband, Sean, and their 8-month old son, Aidan, still attend Living Hope in Merrillville, 150 miles away.
But if anyone can plant a church in the wake of such an upheaval, it’s Estes, who obtained his master’s degree from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Mo., in 2004. He is jovial yet sincere; tenderhearted but frank; well educated though still in tune with common folks; full of dry humor yet serious when driving home a biblical point in a sermon.
The seasoned shepherd knows the personal touch is key to making newcomers feel welcome. A simple breakfast is served before the Sunday morning service. Children get to pick candy from a box as they are dismissed following worship. Before and after the meeting Estes inquires how various congregants’ jobs are going. If anyone misses a Sunday service he is quick with a follow-up phone call. He sends handwritten birthday greetings to attendees.
The new property is situated on 4½ acres. The initial building seats 100, but Estes has a timetable for growth and eventually believes the church will grow to 400, at which time a daughter congregation will be planted. By then Estes will be a full-time pastor, no longer selling vehicles.
Estes has assured attendees he is staying for the long haul.
“I don’t think about retirement and I have no intention of going anywhere else,” Estes says. “This is going to be a great church.”
Topics: church planting, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Customer Indignation
By John W. Kennedy | July 16, 2008
It’s the wise business that treats customers with respect and dignity. And it’s the savvy consumer who doesn’t get his nose bent out of joint over a perceived slight.
On occasion, I’ve become angry and exasperated at the rude and indifferent treatment from employees at the three major airlines on which I fly. If I had chosen to do so I could have made threats, become angrier and walked away unsatisfied.
Instead, I realized that every business has a few lemons and that’s not the way to judge a company. In other instances, I’ve also had workers from those same three airlines go out of their way to accommodate my needs, making an extra effort to help me even though it provided no reward for them beyond customer satisfaction.
In my journalism career I’ve witnessed many magazine and newspaper readers who have become irate at a story. Sometimes the indignation is justifiable because of an error that has been printed; other times it’s someone being upset that we would print a certain quote from someone or cover a particular topic. Whatever the case, it’s best for the editor not to get into an escalated argument, even if the reader is off base. I’ve learned that a sincere, gentle answer usually turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1).
Subscribers also sometimes become incensed when something isn’t covered in our magazine that they think should receive attention. For instance, Today’s Pentecostal Evangel doesn’t run articles about pastors who have been preaching at the same church for 50 years. As awesome a feat as that is, it’s not unique. I receive a call or letter several times a year from someone in a local congregation asking for such a story.
We also typically don’t cover the deaths of district officials. Nor do we single out district Bible Quiz or Fine Arts winners. That doesn’t diminish the contributions those achievers have made; it’s simply a matter of limited space. If we ran one article on such an event our magazine would be filled with nothing but that kind of material.
So please understand we’re not trying to be insensitive. We’re trying to do it fairly. And I hope with compassion and integrity.
Topics: business | No Comments »
The Race Is to the Swift
By John W. Kennedy | July 9, 2008
Chimney swifts look like bats as they dart in and out of their summer brick home that is our chimney. Recently we had an employee of a local chimney company come to our house to discuss repairs needed for our fireplace before next winter. My wife, Patty, told the repairman he would need to make sure no birds were nesting in the chimney before he began working. We learned that because chimney swifts are protected by federal law, the repairman would not do the work if he found any of the species flapping around.
When we mentioned having birds in our chimney every spring, our savvy repairman incredulously explained that the inhabitants are the same individual birds every year—they winter in South America, and then fly back to our chimney thousands of miles away. Somehow God has given them the ability to wing their way back and locate the exact house they lived in the year before. They build nests for their young impressively by forming twigs together that cling to bricks via a saliva-like substance.
Chimney swifts are cleaner than most birds, and are monogamous for life—so much so that when one bird dies, its mate never seeks a replacement.
These amazing creatures can teach humans a thing or two about life. They are resourceful, hardworking and loyal.
Topics: birds | 2 Comments »
Accolades for Vulgarity?
By John W. Kennedy | July 2, 2008
Many in Hollywood and the media spent last week eulogizing George Carlin as a great national figure. They attached such phrases as “counterculture icon” and “First Amendment trailblazer” to Carlin, who died of a heart attack at 71. But many others will remember him merely as a foul-mouthed comedian who accelerated the path of vulgarity in late 20th century America.
Carlin could be witty and funny when commenting on everyday life. For example, his early stand-up routine included the joke, “Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?” Or his “The weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.”
Yet with a younger generation Carlin became a hero because of his crass rebelliousness. That included a lot of nightclub and HBO satire laced with obscenity and profanity.
Saturday Night Live rebroadcast its premiere episode from 1975 on Saturday as a tribute to Carlin, who served as the host. He offered mostly tame humor, including his well-known analogy of baseball versus football and the since-oft-repeated observation: “Jumbo shrimp is like military intelligence; the words don’t go together.” Yet his final monologue served as an irreverent rant against God, who “is batting .000” because “everything He makes dies.”
Of course Carlin is most famous for uttering “the seven words you can never say on television.” Such behavior, which would have been roundly condemned by society half a century ago, now is seen somehow as liberating. I’m sure that when pornographers Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt die they will receive similar accolades as “free speech advocates” for peddling their wares.
Topics: vulgarity | 2 Comments »
Hanging by a Thread
By John W. Kennedy | June 26, 2008
Father’s Day is over and thankfully I didn’t receive a necktie. Apparently most other fathers didn’t either. The necktie is having trouble hanging on in today’s culture. It has become a victim of changing fashion trends.
After 60 years, the Men’s Dress Furnishing Association, the trade group that represents U.S. tie manufacturers, ceased to exist this month. With business casual in vogue in the American workplace — including at Assemblies of God headquarters — tie sales have plummeted nearly in half since peaking at $1.3 billion in 1995, according to market researcher NPD Group. A recent Gallup poll indicated that only 6 percent of men wear ties to work every day. And with new ties costing an average of more than $15 apiece, a tie isn’t a popular fashion accessory in a troubled economy.
At the beginning of the decade I wore a suit and tie to work every day as well as to church on Sunday. Now, a couple of dozen pieces of neckwear and a dozen suits are collecting dust in my bedroom closet. I say good riddance. I enjoy wearing a tie about as much as my wife likes to put on pantyhose.
The transition to tieless workplaces has been swift. In fact, not that long ago men wore ties everywhere. Check out film footage from a professional baseball game crowd or a game show audience in the late 1950s. Virtually all males are attired in ties.
Some churches of course are still the place for people to dress up. I understand the notion of my parents’ generation that we shouldn’t walk into the sanctuary to see how scruffy we can look. Yet at the same time, we need to remember that Jesus doesn’t turn people away because of torn clothes, body piercings or tattoos. Jesus taught in Matthew 23:28 that appearing righteous on the outside isn’t important if inside we are full of wickedness and hypocrisy.
Topics: fashion | No Comments »
Pass on the Plate
By John W. Kennedy | June 24, 2008
Unsurprisingly, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit last week against South Carolina over the state’s new plan to issue “I Believe” specialty license plates to Christians willing to shell out the extra bucks.
The suit was filed only nine days after the enactment of a law allowing the “I Believe” plates, which would include an image of a cross and a stained-glass window background.
AU filed suit on behalf of two mainline Protestant ministers, a rabbi, a humanist and a Hindi organization. If AU hadn’t filed suit, the American Civil Liberties Union or some other liberal group would have done so.
Inexplicably, lawmakers in the Palmetto State overwhelmingly passed a bill allowing the first such plates in the nation. Now a lengthy battle involving tax dollars likely will ensue. The Christian cause will no doubt lose, because under the Constitution the government cannot show preference toward one religion over others.
Although the words Jesus, Christ or God don’t appear on the plates, Americans United argues the message is clearly an endorsement of the Christian religion.
In this pluralistic society government has no business being a conduit for religious messages of the masses. If the court allows “I Believe” tags, soon we will have demands for “I Don’t Believe” and “Allah is Great.”
If you want to display your faith, the state shouldn’t be a part of the proceedings. It would be better to buy a bumper sticker, although when you forget to use your turning signal, drive too slow or make rude gestures, a slogan proclaiming your Christianity isn’t the best testimony for Christ.
Rather than announcing our beliefs on the back of our vehicles, it might be a better idea to show our faith in more tangible ways. Loving our neighbor who doesn’t believe is a good place to start.
Topics: evangelism | 2 Comments »
Salute to a Trucker Chaplain
By John W. Kennedy | June 19, 2008
The New York Times on Wednesday published a complimentary article on Assemblies of God trucker chaplain Shannon Rust. Through the ministry Headlight in Trucking, Shannon and his father, Sam, have been ministering to lonely truckers along the Pennsylvania turnpike for decades. Sam, at 74, is still at it. On Wednesday, he told me on the phone, “Just staying faithful to the call is the main thing.” The article I wrote for TPE in November 2006 about the amazing father-son team is reprinted below:
Father-son chaplains minister to dispirited truckers
By John W. Kennedy
Sam Rust grabs the microphone on his citizens band radio in the cab of his 18-wheeler as he approaches TA Truck Stop in Breezewood, Pa. After identifying himself as a chaplain, Sam commends drivers for the hard work they do and then prays a blessing for the hurting and depressed. He paraphrases Matthew 11:28: “Come, unto me all you drivers who are pulling hard and overloaded, and I’ll shift your load onto Me.”
“Thank you man,” a trucker replies on the CB channel.
“Amen,” responds another.
“Bless you,” says a third driver.
As he draws closer to the truck stop, Sam asks God to open up a parking space near the main doors of the plaza containing a variety of restaurants and other facilities. Visibility is important for Sam’s mission. As he maneuvers around dozens of tractor-trailers in the congested parking lot, Sam eyes the prize: a vacant spot closest to the stairs of the truck stop doors. He skillfully pulls into the tight space. Truckers will have to walk past his rig to get into the two-story complex.
Although he has ministered across the continental United States, on most Sundays and Wednesdays Sam Rust can be found at TA Truck Stop near the intersection of interstates 76 and 70 in south-central Pennsylvania.
His Headlight in Trucking ministry clearly has an evangelistic mission. As the chaplain with distinguished-looking silver hair opens the side trailer doors, one panel reveals the Lord’s Prayer, the other the Ten Commandments. The back door quotes Psalm 119:105.
Anymore, though, Sam spends a great deal of time trying to hold marriages together. Many financially strapped truckers get into the industry with unrealistic expectations of what they can earn, at least initially. When money shortfalls persist, depression may result. A nationwide shortage means the 1.8 million existing heavy-duty drivers frequently are on the road for days, or weeks, at a time. While loneliness is a major struggle, truckers also face temptations such as indulging in pornography or drinking alcohol to excess.
Although Sam usually is accompanied by Norma, his supportive wife of 51 years, trucker chaplaincy can be lonely and discouraging. Sometimes Sam waits for hours and no one climbs aboard his trailer, which is a ready-made chapel. Sam keeps at it, even though he underwent triple heart bypass surgery a year ago.
“I’ve wanted to give up many times, but the Lord reminds me it’s not my ministry,” says Sam, 72. “Enough good things happen to make me keep coming back.”
As Sam opens up the trailer doors, Ed Small, a long-haul driver for Wal-Mart starts a conversation.
“Too many of us drivers are out here seven days a week,” says Small, of Dwight, Kan. “We don’t have a chance to get home for church, so having a chaplain on the road gives us a chance to fellowship with others who know the Lord. We have problems just like people back home.”
In a few minutes, Sam is ready to start a Sunday morning church service in the trailer, outfitted with padded pews, a podium and communion cups.
Two married couples come aboard. Sam, acclimated to the trucking culture with blue jeans, a denim shirt and black boots, spends several minutes getting to know his congregation of the day. He commends the husband-wife teams for hitting the road together, saying that will help them stay together.
Richard and Joy Hunt of Elizabeth, N.J., bring a Bible with them. Initially a bit miffed that his wife needed a restroom break, Richard is now grateful.
“It was meant for me to pull off the interstate,” Richard tells Sam. “I have to confess I haven’t been to church in quite a while.”
The other couple, Curtis and Bonnie Jones of Dallas, are in their early 20s and take turns driving across the country.
The couples watch a safety training video that re-enacts the true account of a 64-year-old trucker who, after being on the road for 950 miles, fell asleep. His rig struck a school bus and killed a 6-year-old girl.
The safety film makes an impact on Richard, who has been driving since 1979. He’s been thinking about packing it in, or at least going on hiatus. His wife accompanies him, but doesn’t drive.
Sam goes on to relate a gripping story of a truck wreck that he came upon in which a driver named Bill crashed on a foggy mountain. Tears well up in his eyes as he recalls how God miraculously enabled Bill to escape certain death.
“I could sit here all day long hearing you talk,” Curtis says after the informal service. “I like it that you’re not afraid to get emotional.”
Afterward, the couples stay to chat with the chaplain, who knows the dangers semi drivers face firsthand. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he drove a moving van, a logging truck and a tanker carrying acids. He knows what it is to contend with blinding snow and icy pavement on mountain roads.
Sam had been pastoring a thriving church in Silver Spring, Md., when he sensed the Lord calling him to minister to truck drivers in 1974. Initially, Assemblies of God officials told him they had no place for such a ministry. Undeterred, Sam went out and raised his own financial support. The AG granted him appointment as its first trucker chaplain.
Compared to when he started as a chaplain, Sam today sees more drivers taking risks on the road. Highways in the scenic mountains of the Keystone State are dotted with signs reading “Beware of Aggressive Drivers” and “Don’t Tailgate.” The CB airwaves are raunchier. And greater numbers of women are hauling, some more hardened to the gospel than their male counterparts.
In such an environment, it’s important to have a good-natured, tenderhearted and soft-spoken chaplain such as Sam Rust around.
For the past 15 years, Sam’s son Shannon also has been a part of the Headlight in Trucking ministry, making the duo the only father-son trucker chaplain team in the AG. Although they rarely work together, they usually are in the same vicinity.
This Sunday morning, Shannon is just on the other side of the highway in the basement of the Petro Truck Stop.
Shannon, 37, fell in love with the chaplain ministry as he saw his dad reach seemingly unreachable truckers time after time.
“If just one soul is saved from hell, it’s worth it,” says Shannon, a burly man with a broad smile and gregarious laugh. Shannon announces over the plaza’s intercom that a service will start in 10 minutes.
Petro allows Shannon to hold meetings in its TV room, which is next to a tattoo parlor and across the hall from video poker machines.
At the scheduled time, no drivers have arrived, but Shannon’s wife, Becky, who has brought a portable sound system and accompanying instrumental tracks, begins to belt out Southern gospel songs.
“God will send people who are supposed to be here,” Shannon says.
Soon, a driver from Michigan stops by and compliments Becky. The trucker inquires and learns that Shannon and Becky’s son Matthias, who is sitting in the front row, is a third grader.
“Pay attention to what the teacher tells you,” the driver advises the boy. “If I had it to do all over again I’d pay better attention; I wouldn’t have to be doing this.”
The trucker asks Shannon to pray for a safe trip that he is about to make to Washington, D.C.
As the service winds to a close, a cynical, argumentative driver enters the room. “How come the Lord forgets some people?” he asks Shannon. “Is He choosy or somethin’?”
The low-key Shannon calmly explains how the Lord has helped him throughout his life. The agitated driver agrees to take a copy of God’s Word for Today. As the Rusts pack up for the day, they see the driver seated on a bench near the video machines, reading the Bible devotional.
Although Sam has an ever-shifting congregation, many truckers fondly remember him. After lunch at his home of 32 years south of Bedford, Sam receives a phone call from Jim, a trucker he met a quarter century ago. Back then, a distraught Jim met with Sam in West Virginia and pleaded with the chaplain to pray for his daughter who had run away from home two days earlier. A few days later, while at a truck stop in Mississippi, Jim found his daughter.
Jim hadn’t been in touch with Sam for years, but today he phones for another need: he has lung cancer. Jim, saying he still has the Bible Sam gave to him 25 years ago, asks the chaplain to pray for him.
Although most people his age no longer are involved in the trucking industry, Sam knows he is needed. There are few chaplains dealing with the myriad troubles facing truckers such as depression, loneliness and marital strife. “When a driver takes the time to go aboard a truck stop chapel, he is ready for an answer to prayer,” Sam says.
Topics: chaplaincy | 2 Comments »
Brewing Up Trouble?
By John W. Kennedy | June 18, 2008
I’m a bit bemused at all the hand-wringing going on in St. Louis by locals worried about the potential sale of Anheuser-Busch, the nation’s largest brewery. InBev, a Belgian conglomerate, has made an unsolicited cash bid to purchase Anheuser-Busch in an effort to become the world’s largest beer company.
The proposal has caused public protest marches, implementation of angry Web sites and denunciations from politicians.
More than 47,600 people, including Gov. Matt Blunt and Mayor Francis Slay, have signed an online petition to keep the brewery from falling into foreign hands. Blunt declared the “offer to purchase the company is deeply troubling to me.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill vowed to stop the deal between the beer titans.
InBev has said it has no plans to shutter any of the dozen breweries that make Budweiser, Busch and Michelob. But opponents are casting the battle as a patriotic cause in almost religious terms. “We can fight the foreign invasion of A-B,” declares the saveab.com Web site. “We will fight to protect this American treasure.”
Foreigners have gobbled up millions of acres of farmland and industrial sites, as well as thousands of businesses in the United States. Meanwhile, millions of manufacturing jobs—for clothing, toys, furniture, electronics, vehicles and just about everything else—have moved overseas. A visit to any major retailer shows that most of the consumer goods purchased in this country aren’t from this country.
Why is it that beer is stirring up such a fuss? Is that really our most precious commodity?
The bottom line is that foes of the sale can’t do much in a free enterprise system to try to keep a corporation from accepting a generous buyout offer. Our country might be better served if citizens exhibited as much opposition to some of the immoral social behaviors trying to overtake our land.
Topics: beer | No Comments »
30 Years of Matrimony
By John W. Kennedy | June 17, 2008
Today marks three decades of wedded bliss for my wife, Patty, and me. Of course it all hasn’t been bliss. It’s been sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse. Marriages that survive must endure many heartaches and unexpected turns.
As I reminisce about that muggy day in a rural Iowa church 30 years ago, I’m reminded how uncertain life is. I didn’t know that my sister Margaret would die the following year. Or that Jim, my best friend growing up and one of my groomsmen, would die in a head-on car crash a few years later.
I didn’t know that Patty and I would be blessed with three sons before her hysterectomy at 32. Or that I would be fired from my first newspaper job because I helped form a local pro-life group. We learned Philippians 4:19 firsthand as God supplied all our needs during four months of unemployment.
Certainly, as someone who grew up in a small town in Iowa, I didn’t foresee ever living in Sacramento and later the Chicago suburbs to pursue my career. How could I have predicted that I would move to Springfield, Mo., working within blocks of where my parents grew up in the 1920s?
As I recited those vows so long ago I didn’t understand that my wife would endure a five-year debilitating illness that threatened the viability of our marriage. Or that she would emerge from that awful period with her health miraculously restored. During that difficult, confusing interim, she often quoted Oswald Chambers: “If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.”
Sadly, I look back over all the friends we’ve known in churches over the years and count as many broken marriages as intact ones. For one reason or another, many couples—usually one but not both of the parties—decided to call it quits along the way.
Through all the surprises and disappointments one fact is clear: God is in control. Without Him it’s impossible to meet the uncertain challenges that face us beyond 30 years.
Topics: marriage | 3 Comments »