The Big Dark Woods

I was five years old and I was ticked.  My older sister had pushed me too far this time, and I decided it was time to get away from her and head out on my own.  So I packed my car and left.  Ok, I put my favorite hot wheels into my pocket and went out the door.  Same difference.

I marched across our big backyard, looked both ways at the road that came behind our place, marched across it and across the big field and down the hill into the big, dark woods.  Usually the big, dark woods were not a place I would go to play by myself.  But this day was different.  I was angry and I didn’t care.  So I marched my little five-year old self right into them.  Down the big hill I went and came abruptly to the big creek.  It was a bit big for me to cross, but no matter. I would turn and walk along it.  Anywhere just to be free from her. 

I hadn’t noticed that it was getting close to dark, because I was mad.  Have you noticed that when you’re mad you tend to miss important things like that?    So there I was, ticked off and marching upstream along the creek with the sun going down.  I pushed on through the briars and the thickets, thinking five year-old angry thoughts.

“Who needs her anyway?” I muttered.  “Well, I’m five years old and I can take care of myself!  I’m never going back! Never. Never. Never!  I’ll live out in the woods like Swift Arrow.  Only I won’t live with the Indians.  Just out in the woods.  I’ll learn to swing from tree to tree and everything.”  On and on I went for some time.

When I finally noticed the lengthening shadows and the deepening darkness, I reasoned that I could live in the woods a bit closer to home. I would still be in the woods, but closer to home, you know,  just in case. So I turned around and headed back down the creek bank the way I had previously come.  Only now, I wasn’t quite as mad, and I was starting to get a little bit scared.

In the part of the country where we lived at the time, there were coyotes that roamed quite freely.  Usually, after dark.  In my five year-old anger, I had also forgotten about them.  Now somewhere behind me, farther upstream, I got a chilling reminder.

“AHHOOOOOOOOOOW,” came a coyote howl.  The little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.  I was a little less angry and a little more scared.  I picked up the pace as I pushed back through the briars and thickets I had come through earlier in my anger.

“AHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWW!” came a response a little closer to where I was.  I picked up the pace again.  Not real angry anymore, but a whole lot scared.  As I pushed on, my ears and my imagination began to hear everything that was and wasn’t out there.  I heard (or thought I heard) heavy, coyote breathing.  I could imagine the saliva dripping off of the long coyote fangs, just like the cartoon wolves looking at a flock of sheep, as the coyotes could see me with their night vision skills.

“AAAAHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!” a loud one came real close by.  Forget the anger…I was now in a full-scale panic.  My eyes bugged out, my heart raced and I began clawing my way through the thickets, bouncing off of trees and yelling my little five year-old lungs out.  

“HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!!!” I screamed as loud as I could.  I bounced off the sixth tree before I heard a voice that was sweet music to my ears.

“Donnie! Dooooonnieeeeeeee! Where are you?”  It was DAD!  He was looking for me! “Donnie!”

 “Over here!” I yelled as loud as could. 

“Keep talking, son!” dad yelled back.

“Overhereoverhereoverhereoverhereoverhere.” I yelled, and soon I was scooped up into my Dad’s strong arms, and before long found myself being carried out of the big, dark woods, across the meadow, across the road, across the big, backyard and into the safety of home.

Here's the point! There is in the heart of God a place I know as home.

It doesn’t matter how angry I get at my sister.  It doesn’t matter how far into the big, dark woods I go.  It doesn’t matter if the coyotes are coming.  No matter how dark and scary my picture looks, if I listen, I can hear the voice of my Father calling.   He’s looking for me!  He’ll stride right into the middle of my dark and scary woods, even though my anger and my running is what caused the problem, and He’ll pick me up and carry me back to the safety of home.  There is in the heart of God a place I know as home. 

And if I read scripture correctly, there is a place in the heart of God for you too! 

John 6:37 says:  “I will never turn away anyone who comes to Me.”

Matthew 6:6, “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.”

And here’s one of the best: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.”    Matthew 28:20

This world has become a dark and scary place to live.  As the shadows of earth’s history lengthen and the darkness deepens, we know that our enemy is on the prowl.  The Bible doesn’t compare him to a coyote, but to a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (see 1 Peter 5:8)  He’s closing in because he knows his time is short.

You, like me, may be angry at a brother or a sister in the church.  You may be running away from home.  Running across the street into the big, dark woods.  You may suddenly find yourself being tracked by a ferocious predator, and your hope is rapidly vanishing into a world that seems dark. 

But stop.  Stop running and listen.  The Father is calling your name.  He’s looking for you!  He's asking you the same question He asked Adam and Eve.  “Where are you?”  And if you answer, He’ll come and scoop you up into His big, strong arms and carry you back to the safety of HOME.

There is in the Father’s heart, a place that you can know as home.  He’s calling.  Are you answering?

Me at the age of 5 standing by my dad.------>>>

Indoor Rapelling (or the coolest way down to lunch)

Somewhere in my younger life I got the impression that to be a good Christian, one had to look like they had just sucked on a lemon and have breath that smelled like they had refused dental care because of the Lord’s imminent return, as it would just be a waste of money.  
 
I think I got the impression from a few of the older ladies in our church when I was growing up, one in particular, who backed me into the corner of the church porch with her cane and wilted me down with both her breath, and a verbal barrage about not “being ready for the Kingdom with behavior” like mine.  Her style of Christianity was fine, I guess, but it sure didn’t appeal to me. Besides, I reasoned, if she were going to the Kingdom, it would be reason enough for me to stay away.
 
I just wasn’t wired that way.  I had a hard time keeping my mind on anything very long.  If there was any lull in the action, I could think of something to occupy it.  My mind would race along with new ideas popping in all the time.  I just never knew when something new would come in.  And I wasn’t always good at deciding whether it was a good idea or a bad one until I had tried it.
 
“Wherever did you come up with that idea?” my second grade substitute asked after she discovered all of the boys in their seats after recess and mud on the windowsill. During recess one of my friends and I had been discussing the “girls are always first” rule.  He had stated that he didn’t like waiting all of that time, because he felt some of the girls took advantage at the water fountain and drank like camels and used up all of the guys time to get a drink.  Then we were all told to cut it short because we needed to get back to class.
 
I simply observed that it was actually a shorter distance to the ground-level windows of our classroom than back around the building to line up.  All of the guys could climb through the windows, I reasoned, have their drinks and be in their seats before the girls line got there.  We would tell the substitute that our teacher always let us do that to save her time.  What did substitutes know anyway?  We passed the word and Operation Windowsill was born.
 
It worked as planned, except that I hadn’t factored in the substitute’s lack of patience as she waited with all of the girls in the hot sun outside.  I also hadn’t figured it would actually get us in trouble since we didn’t do any damage.  All of us got marched back down the hall and had to line up outside, and then each of us got a whack on the seat with the paddle as we were then sternly told, “Now WALK down the hall and to your desk.”
 
Then there was the time in seventh-grade when my friend, Charlie and I decided to test the theory of gradually increasing the temperature of water on a frog to see if it would jump out.  It didn’t. Stupid frog actually stayed in and met his demise.
 
Or the time in high school when another friend and I put on garbage cans with a “push” lid, and tried to follow the night watchman that we had dubbed “Barney Fife”, up the center campus sidewalk. Each time he would spin around with flashlight in hand, we would stoop down on the side of the sidewalk in the garbage cans.  “Hmmm,” he would mutter, “I could have sworn I heard something.”   It would have worked if we hadn’t gotten fancy and tried to criss-cross the sidewalk each time.  As we were running across we accidentally banged into each other. When he spun around this time, he found himself face to face with two garbage cans with legs!  It was hard outrunning him with those cans, but somehow we managed.
 
So, given my history of unique ideas coming from a lull in the action, it should have been no surprise that my History of Western Civilization class in college, became a veritable think-tank.  A time of churning out the ideas.  Some good.  Some not.  But who’s to know till you try?
 
History was at 1 p.m. And, as any college student can tell you, there is no worse time to have to take a class than right after lunch. There is no blood leftover from the digestion process to go to your head and actually make it work.  And when you have a history teacher that has been teaching the one o’clock slot for years because his delivery matched the time slot, you’ve got a real recipe for disaster.
 
Our professor was a real nice guy, but his delivery of the material was designed to aid in the sleep and digestion department.  We had a class of about 120 students.  History majors had dibs on the front seats, and then it was alphabetical from front to back down each row. I sat, alphabetically, about half way back in the middle. Which is too far back for my type to get anything from a class which doubles as a sleep aid.
 
The Prof would look down at his lectern, simply reading the material. Every so often, not at any regular intervals, mind you, he would stop, look up and smile.  Then he would look back to the lectern and proceed in his best monotone.
 
So this is what I got. “In the year, humahumahum, there was humahum, blah blah blah humahumahuma.” Pause. Look up. Smile.  Look back down.  “Furthermore, they wanted to hummmmmahummma….” Snore.  And my grade reflected my rapt attention.
 
I woke up one day in the middle of class to make an accidental discovery.  My arousal from slumber inadvertently coincided with one of his “pause and smile” points.  I accidentally happened to hear what he said just prior to the smile, and realized that it was a humorous statement.  Well, as humorous as history can be under the circumstances. I was jazzed.  To think—each time he smiled, he was spewing forth historical humor, and I was missing it.
 
I woke up several friends around me to share my discovery.  “Hey, you know when he smiles?” I asked.  “Yeah, so?”  “Well, every time he smiles, he’s just told a joke!”
 
“No way!”  
 
“Way!  Just watch.”  I now had about 12 in my immediate area watching and trying to listen intently. Suddenly he looked up and grinned. Somehow we had missed it.   
 
“Excuse me, sir,” my friend Rick now had his hand in the air, “but could you repeat that last line.”
 
The Prof looked truly pleased for any sign of life and was only too happy to oblige.  He reread the line and it was, indeed, somewhat humorous.  Of course we all burst into laughter, and again, looking intensely pleased he made a note in the margin.  I think it must have been, “This is a very funny joke.  Pause longer, smile broader.”
 
His notes were so old they were yellow, and one day, as he turned the page, the page actually broke off.  It was the first time anyone ever heard him say anything in class that wasn’t scripted.  I didn’t actually see it break, but those who did, described it as a scene of extreme frustration and bewilderment. He had flipped the page and the papyrus had actually broken.  (Ok it wasn’t papyrus, but it had to be the first run right after they discovered paper.)  Anyway, he couldn’t figure out what to do.  A horrified look crossed his face, and the awkwardly long pause is what woke me up.  
 
I woke up to actually hear him utter his now infamous, unscripted statement.
 
“Hmmmmmm,” he said. Just like that. “Hmmmmmmm.” Then he continued, “Guess I’ll have to retype that page.  (Yes, boys and girls, this was back in the day before computers, when every page had to be re-typed, not just reprinted.)
 
At any rate, he abruptly went on with the lecture, and I went into warped-mind mode.  A few days earlier, I had discovered a little door at the back of a mechanical closet in the student center.  Being the curious sort, I opened it to see where it went.  Well, as luck would have it, it didn’t go anywhere, it just sat in its frame and swung back and forth.  But on the other side of the door, I made a grand discovery.  The little door was actually an access door to the space above the college dining hall.  Not having time to do anything with this new information at the time, I had closed the little door and gone on my merry way.  
 
Now, in the middle of history, my mind began to formulate a plan.   Wouldn’t it be cool to somehow tie on to a beam up there, open one of the ceiling tiles and rappel down to lunch?  Oh, that would be cool!  But I would need help.
 
My friend, Ronnie, quietly slumbering two rows over, was well known for his mountain climbing skills.  He had all sorts of equipment.  He would be a great choice for a partner on this escapade.  I hastily wrote a note describing my discovery and my idea and passed it to Rick, sitting next to me, to pass over to Ron.  Rick quickly scanned the note and then passed it on, while leaning back my direction to let me know that he wanted in on the gig too!
 
As soon as class was over, we headed for the student center.  We slipped into the closet, and swung open the magical access door.  Wonderment and glee played on Ronnie and Rick’s faces as we eased out onto the catwalk above the dining hall ceiling.  It was a whole huge room by itself.  Ronnie quickly located a beam above the ceiling grid that would work, and we lifted one corner of the tile to see where we would be in the dining hall.  Perfect.  We would drop right into the front left corner closest to the tray return.   There was an exit nearby, so we could make our grand entrance and then if necessary, beat a hasty retreat.  
 
We decided since the next day was Thursday, and as such, there was chapel just before lunch, we would all take a chapel skip and set up while everyone else was in chapel.  Then, after chapel let out, the dining hall would fill up quickly with the chapel rush.  We would wait until it got fairly full, and then make our big appearance.
 
Thursday, we worked the plan.  Ronnie showed up with all of his gear.  He’d even gone so far as to put on his little German leather knickers and lederhosen, to give it the alpine flair.   We checked to make sure no one was looking and then ducked into the mechanical room.  Once inside the attic of the dining hall, Ronnie located the right spot again and slipped a piece of webbing over the top of the beam and brought it back through, tying it off to make a loop.  
 
Next, he tied the rope to the webbing and then pulled seat harnesses out of his climbing pack. After giving each of us one, he showed us how to put them on and how to clip in and went over safety procedures. We became aware of the cafeteria starting to buzz below us.
 
Chapel was out and the rush was on.  We had told no one of our plan, except my roommate Keith, so he could take pictures of the big event.  We waited until the noise below us grew very lively, and then Ronnie stooped down and picked up the tile, moving it out of the way.
 
“You’re first, Keele,” Ronnie said.  “This was your idea, so go for it.”
 
“What do I do? What do I say?” I stammered, suddenly thinking maybe this was not such a good idea. 

“Just clip in and go. As far as what to say…say something witty like you always do, and we’ll build on it when we come down,” Ronnie said as he dropped the rope through the hole in the ceiling.
 
A hush suddenly fell on the crowd and Ronnie clipped me in.  I swung off the catwalk over the hole and began my descent.  I got about halfway down and stopped as I looked all around the dining room.  About a thousand people were staring back at me.  I looked back up towards my comrades.  Rick gave me the thumbs up sign and grinned.
 
“We should have turned left instead of right back there, guys!”  I said, still looking up.  The crowd roared.  I slid on down the rope and landed right beside the academic dean who stood holding a tray waiting for me at the bottom of the rope.  How had I missed seeing him before now?
 
“Keele,” asked the dean, “does your mother know you’re out doing stuff like this?”
 
“Um, no sir,” I said, “And it would probably be best if you didn’t tell her either.”
 
He laughed and walked away! I was to later find out that he thought this was some sort of SA announcement and that I had asked permission from Mr. Evans, the cafeteria director.   I looked around and there was Mr. Evans, who naturally assumed since the dean was laughing and walking away, I must have asked permission from the dean. So he turned and went back into the kitchen.
 
Rick was next. He came down about halfway and stopped.  “Whoa, we should have gone over a lot further!”  He said.  Again the crowd laughed.  
 
He came on down as I said, “No, I think we should have turned left instead of right back there.”
 
“No, we should have gone over farther!” he countered.
 
“Let’s see what Ronnie thinks!” I said.  “Hey Ronnie!”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“Come on out and give us your opinion.”
 
“Ok, just a second,” came the voice from the attic.
 
I told you that Ronnie was wearing the little German leather knickers and lederhosen.  What I didn’t tell you is that Ronnie decided to really look the part, so he had put on his climbing pack with an ice axe and crampons and ropes all on the outside of it.  In fact, he is wearing so much stuff, that his ice axe gets stuck in the ceiling as he tried to come through it.  Ronnie had to pull himself back up with one hand and free his ice axe with the other, then turn and wiggle his way through the hole in the ceiling. Once free of the ceiling, he slid down about halfway.
 
“Hey—this ain’t the girls dorm!”  The crowd roared its delight yet again.
 
“I told you we should have turned left instead of right!”  “No, we should have gone over farther.”  “You guys said we’d be in the girl’s dorm.”  We went around and around with our lines as we walked out the nearby exit.
 
For months, people would stop me to ask me why we did it.  “To bring a smile to someone’s face, and to let them know that you can have fun as a Christian,” was my only answer.
 
Some would just laugh and walk away.  Others would walk away shaking their heads muttering about reprobates. Still others would simply make a statement about how Christians should act, implying that our behavior wasn’t truly representative.
 
Let me ask you a question: Do you think God loved me any less at the bottom of the rope than he did at the top?
 
Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that God the Father is sitting up on his throne as, humorist Ken Davis portrays Him, saying, “My people are having fun.  NO!” as he stomps on the ground.
 
I think Ken is right when he continues.  “What God is probably really saying is: ‘Hey angels, come look at this idiot. Ah, I love this guy!’” (video: A Twisted Mind)
 
See, what I’ve learned since being cornered by a cane and halitosis is that God isn’t stuffy at all.  God loves me, warped ideas and all.  God loves you, too.  Which brings me to my point.
 
 God’s vision for me: Life as He lives it.  When you’ve got the most Creative Person in the universe, how could He settle for a boring drab life?  God is concerned with the quality of human life.
 
3 John 2 says: I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.  (NIV)

God wants you to enjoy life.  Maybe not slide down a rope into the dining hall, but truly enjoy life.  Too many of us slip into a humdrum life of just going through the motions.  We go to school, go to work, go home, go to bed.  And in between, we seek to fill our days with artificial things; the glitz and glamour of this world.  And we wonder where the joy is.
 
While that may be ok for a little while, God has much bigger plans for you and I.  Check out one of my favorite texts in all of scripture.
 
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”        Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

God cares about your life!  He cares about how you live it, because He wants you to maximize it.  Don’t use the line: “You only go around once” as an excuse to throw your life away.  God’s vision for you is life as HE lives it.  Full. Abundant. Exciting. Creative. Adventurous. Free of guilt, shame and despair. He wants you to have a quality life. To have LIFE as He lives it. 

Family Photo Albums

My mother loves photo albums. Oh, it’s not just the albums. She loves taking the pictures for them. Growing up I can’t remember an event where she didn’t have a camera in her hands. For years it was the Kodak Instamatic with the little flash-cubes that rotated on the top after each picture. She used to buy those flash-cubes in bulk. It’s obvious by our photo albums that my sisters got preferential treatment.

See, for each of us kids, mom started a photo album. All the pictures she took of each of us went into our individual photo album. One for Pam, my eldest sister, then me, then Rusty, my kid brother and then years later, Michelle, my baby sister. Each photo album chronicled each life. All of the birthdays, vacations, big events and candids went in. Then there were the school pictures.

I hated those things. You know the ones. Your teacher lets you go to the bathroom to check your hair in a mirror. Then you head back to the classroom where you fill out the information card. Once your card is filled out, you get in a line. Next, you walk into the school gymnasium or cafeteria or library or wherever the photographer happened to set up for that year. Then they process you.

“Hand me your card please,” the photographer’s assistant would chirp. Then she would make some sort of comment about each one. “Oh, you’re a cutie.” “How precious.” “Look at this gorgeous doll.” “You must be an angel from heaven.” When my turn came she said, “My, that’s a colorful shirt.” Then you go to “the stool of unnatural positions.”

The photographer would say, “next please” in a voice that was neither friendly nor unfriendly—just kind of bored and flat-toned. He would then grab the stool and deftly raise or lower it to accommodate your particular body size. Then he would position you on the stool and walk around behind his camera. After making adjustments to the height of the camera and very quickly checking his lighting, he would try to get your body into a position that would rival the moves of the world’s best contortionist.

“Ok. We’ll put your knees pointing this direction. Lean forward. Turn your head slightly to the left. Good. Chin down. Tilt the top of your head slightly to the right. Chin down. Good. Look into the camera.” Then he would say the line that almost always cracked me up. “Look natural and SMILE.”

And I always wanted to say, “Buddy, I don’t naturally put myself into this body position, so there’s no way I can look natural while I’m here. Smile, maybe—but it sure won’t look natural.”

Of course, I never said anything, because it would have broken both my pose and his thinly veiled veneer of patience, so I just tried to smile and look as natural as one can in that uncomfortable position. Click. Flash. And your torture was over.

“Next Please.” And you got to watch your buddy behind you squirm on the stool as his body was forced to do unnatural things. They would hand you an information card to take home to your parents, and barring any horrible mishaps requiring retakes, you could rest easy for another year—or at least until the pictures came.

Most years they would hand them out at school and the comparison games would begin. “Let me see yours! Ha! You look like a dork!” “Oh yea? Well let me see yours? Well you look like a contortionist!” Well, that’s not my fault! That photographer made me get in that position.”

You would dutifully take them home and your parents would decide whether they wanted them or not and send the money back in the supplied envelope. Naturally, my mother would always buy them, and naturally they went into my book, which was rapidly becoming the world’s guide to human contortions.

That system changed my seventh-grade year. Actually, we moved to another state, I changed schools, and the new school was trying out a new system. Instead of the teachers having to go through the hassle of trying to get everyone’s money or their pictures back, it was announced that this year everything would be pre-paid, and the photographer would mail them in a special cellophane-panel envelope directly to your home. No money. No pictures. If you didn’t like your pictures for any reason, there would be guaranteed retakes until you were happy.

I decided I would be happy with the first time around, since retakes would bring on the "humorous" remarks from your classmates. Oh, I had heard the comments from the class clowns to those who had to get retakes when their name was called. “What, you broke the camera the first time so they had to come back with a special beefed-up ‘no-break’ camera just for you?” Hahahahaha. Or: “It doesn’t matter how many times they do it, they can’t fix it, because they got nothin’ to work with!” Hahahaha. Or: “Hey, keep your mouth shut this time so the flash doesn’t bounce off your braces and blind the photographer.” Hahahaha.

Not only had I heard the class clowns spewing forth such comments, I had joined in. Ok. Sometimes I started it, thinking I was being clever. So why would anyone who made those comments want to go back for retakes until they were happy? Be happy the first time, because it probably wouldn’t get much better anyway.

Let me digress just enough to tell you that I was not much of a looker in the seventh-grade. As a matter of fact, I didn’t lose my two front teeth until the third grade, and I had already started playing trumpet by then, so in the absence of my two front teeth, my gums became rock hard as I practiced my trumpet. Unbeknownst to me, it didn’t stop my two front teeth from growing, it just didn’t allow them to cut through the now-thick gums. I went almost 10 months without front teeth, all the while they were growing up towards my brain. When I began having severe headaches, we went to the dentist and x-rays revealed my need for help in freeing my front incisors. A few pain injections and a sharp dental tool cutting through my numb gums quickly set them free. My teeth dropped down half an inch in the first hour, and to my horror, I discovered that, not only did I have two front teeth instantly, but they were HUGE! They were way bigger than the rest of the teeth I had in my mouth, and instantly earned me a nickname from my loving, elder sister.

“Beaver, beaver…you are a beaver,” she exclaimed as she saw them for the first time. “You know,” she continued, “I read that if beavers don’t gnaw on something, their teeth will grow into their brain and they will die. Do you want something to chew on?”

School the next day was no better. In fact, it was worse. My teeth became a hot boredom-busting topic. You got nothing else to talk about? How about MY TEETH?

Fast-forward back to the seventh-grade. The only thing that had changed was that I had lost all of my baby teeth, so my other teeth were now a bit larger, but still no match for my “killer fangs”, as one of my new classmates had dubbed them. Only he had such great wit as to warp my last name into the mix as well when he called them “Keele-r Fangs”, trying to put a fake Hispanic accent on my name to make it sound like he was saying “killer fangs.” As in, “You got some real Keele-r Fangs, Senor!” Bahahahahaha.

“Did your mother have any kids that lived?” I retorted. To which he only gave me a confused look and said, “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” I replied, “it’s obvious she didn’t.” He was unfazed.

“Do you have any venom in those Keele-r Fangs?” Bahahahaha. “Don’t bite me, if you do, Senor!” Bahahahaha.

Back to the story. Picture day in seventh-grade. New photographer. New protocol. Pay in advance. Retakes until you’re happy. Yeah, right.

“Next please.” Some things never change. There was the stool of torture. He deftly adjusted it for my body. He quickly positioned me on the stool and then walked around behind his camera. After making adjustments to the height of his camera and very quickly checking his lighting, it was contortionist time. Only this guy was like a hyperactive squirrel on caffeine. Everything came in rapid-fire, machine gun cadence.

“Ok. We’ll put your knees pointing this direction. Lean forward. Turn your head slightly to the left. Good. Chin down. Tilt the top of your head slightly to the right. Chin down. Good. Look into the camera. Look natural and SMILE. WAIT!”

What? Wait? Wait for what?

“Your lips look a little dry, son. Why don’t you lick your lips?” he said as his trigger finger toyed with the button on his wired remote. “Go ahead, quickly now,” he continued. “We have lots of other children to photograph.”

I was halfway through licking my lips…that is, I had wet my top lip and big teeth with my tongue, and was using the back of my big teeth to wet my bottom lip, when his twitching trigger finger got the better of him. Click. Flash. “Next please.”

“Um, wait. Could we do that over? I was like this,” I said as I put my protruding incisors out in front of my lower lip.

“We’ll do it over on retake day if you aren’t happy with it. Next please,” he said all in one breath.

“No, you don’t understand,” I pleaded. “That picture will make me look like a beaver or killer fangs or something that I don’t want to look like. Can’t you just take another one now?”

“On retake day…not a moment sooner. Move along. Next please.”

The laughter of my classmates faded into the distance as my world closed in around me. All I could think about was a special cellophane-paneled envelope showing up in our mailbox. All of the postal workers would have a good laugh. I could hear them now. Probably even with New York mobster accents.

“Hey Chah-lie! Get a load of ‘dis kid! Looks like a beav-ah or somethun.”

“Is ‘dat right? Lemme see…whoa…poor kid. Looks like he needs to gnaw on somethun. Ya know, I read somewhere dat if beavers don’t gnaw on somethun, ‘deir teeth will grow right up into ‘deir brain and kill ‘em.”

“No kiddin’? Wow, maybe we should have Mavis put a note on ‘dis one when she delivers it to warn his mo-thuh. She could at leas’ stock some celery or somethun’.”

I shook my head and cleared the images of my imagination. Then a thought more horrifying hit me. What if Pam found them first? I’d never hear the end of it. I determined to be the first one to the mailbox everyday until they came.

Two weeks later, I opened the mailbox to see three cellophane-paneled envelopes staring back at me. The top one was my brother. Third-grade. Lively. Energetic. And the photographer’s assistant always said, “Oh, aren’t you a cutie!”

Next, was my sister’s. Eighth grade. Long-hair. Sophisticated, and secretly, though I would never admit it out loud to her, I thought she was beautiful.

On the bottom, probably out of pity for “that poor beaver-kid”, lay mine. It was as bad as I had expected. Two giant pearly whites shining forth like beacons in the night. I rapidly developed a plan. I took the mail inside and removed my envelope from the pile.

Quickly running downstairs, I lifted up my mattress and slid them under. No need to open the envelope and stare at 36 more identical pictures. If you don’t like the 8x10, you definitely won’t like the 5x7’s, the 3x5’s and the 20 wallets “for trading with your friends.”

Instantly, to avoid my siblings, I set about doing my chores. I said nothing about the mail, and they didn’t seem to think of it, so it lay in a pile on the kitchen counter until mom and dad came home with my younger sister.

“Oh, look,” mom exclaimed. “Your pictures came! At least Pam and Rusty’s are here..”

Pam ran to grab her package from mom’s hands while proceeding to do what every eighth-grade female does when they get their pictures, but before they actually see them. “Oh, mother, those are horrid. Don’t let anyone see.”

“No they’re not, dear. It’s a beautiful likeness of you. Don’t you think so, hon?” she asked, showing them to dad.

“Oh, yes,” dad said, pulling the picture from inside the cellophane envelope and studying it. “You’ve become a very lovely young lady.”

Pam snatched them away from dad and then proceeded to do what every eighth-grade female does after they see their pictures. “Oh, look at these…they’re horrid. Look. No. Don’t look. What do you think? I think they’re simply awful. Look. No. Don’t look. Aren’t they terrible?” Inwardly you knew she liked them, but she wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Rusty said looking over her shoulder. “You do look like a real dork.”

“You hush your mouth! I wasn’t asking you anyway.”

Mom was working on opening Rusty’s package. “Oh, these are precious! You’re so cute! I know that Grandma will like these!”

Where are yours, Donnie?” my dad suddenly asked.

“Oh, they must not have come yet.” I lied, trying to sound convincing.

My younger brother was quick to rat me out. “Um, no. They came. Um. ‘Cause I, um, saw him putting them under his mattress in his room.”

“You little ratfink!” I started, but was cut short by my dad.

“Go get them, son,” he commanded.

“Ah, well, they’re really not very good.” I began.

“That’s what your sister said,” my mom responded, “and hers are absolutely beautiful. Now go get yours.”

“Well, see,” I was grasping for anything to save me, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. Then out of nowhere, “Um…I think I will need to have retakes, cause I wasn’t ready when he took it and the picture came out looking really dumb.”

“Well, considering what they had to work with,” my sister started.

Dad cut off the rest of her remark as well as my quickly formulating comeback. “Well, you let us be the judge of that. Go get your pictures—NOW!”

“Yes sir.” I knew it was best not to try and argue the point. I went downstairs to my room and got them. I would have to try a new tactic.

“You have to promise not to laugh.” I started as I came back upstairs clutching the cellophane window to my chest.

“We would never laugh at you,” my mom countered. “You’re our son and we love you very much. A little picture won’t change that.”

“Maybe not, but I know you're gonna laugh, and I don't want to you laugh.” I shot back. “Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“Ok,” said mom. “We promise not to laugh. Now give them here.”

I handed her the cellophane-paneled envelope upside down. She turned it over and with one look at the picture, her hand went over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“It’s cute,” she chortled. “I think we should keep it. I’ll put it in your album.”

“NO! Don’t EVER put it in my album!” I shouted.

“Calm down, son,” my dad said. Then to my mom, “Let me see it.”

He took one look and a big grin came across his face followed by a suppressed chuckle. Next it was my sister’s turn. “Beaver, beaver…you are a beaver!” Then she imitated what she thought a beaver would sound like by rapidly smacking her lips. Chupchupchupchupchup.

I was getting angry now. “I told you it was an awful picture and you promised not to laugh—and now you’ve broken your promise.” I shouted.

“We’re not laughing at you,” my sister began. “We’re laughing with you!”

“Yeah, only I’m not laughing,” I shot back angrily. “So that means you’re laughing at me and I don’t like it at all.”

Fortunately mom did concede not to send my school picture to all the relatives that year. But no matter how I pleaded, it still went into the album. And every time I would steal the picture from the album, another would mysteriously appear to take its place. And, why not? She had paid for the whole package.

I’m grown now, with young adult children of my own. We still get together for holidays and birthdays, and sometimes when we are together, out come the old albums. I always know whenever someone is looking at my album and they turn to the page containing my seventh-grade picture. It still brings a laugh and a comment. And I’ve learned to laugh at it as well. I did kind of look like a beaver.

Dad died almost 15 years ago and mom lives alone now. Sometimes, she tells me, on a Friday night, she’ll pull out all of the albums and go through them. She’ll relive the good times and recall stories of our growing-up years. She’ll remember how we were at every stage, and yes, she still laughs at that stupid seventh-grade picture. But most of all, she looks forward to the day when we will all be reunited as a family; her, dad, all of us kids and now, grandkids. Actually, she doesn’t just look forward to that day, she longs for it. But as much as she longs for it, God the Father, longs for it more.

Point : God keeps a family album, and my picture is in it.

It’s true! God keeps a family album and my picture is in it. And so is yours. As a matter of fact, He has a family album for each one of us, and He longs for the day when we’ll all be home, together for eternity.

But aside from eternity, the Bible says that God loves me and has a plan for my life right now. And He has a plan for your life as well. And He wants to complete His purpose in us so that He can take us home and be reunited with Him for all eternity.

The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me. Lord, Your love is eternal. Complete the work that You have begun. Psalms 38:8 TEV


So that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave His life for me. Galatians 2:20 NIV

Though God longs for the day He can take you and me home, He also longs for the day that you and I will learn to live our lives according to His purpose and through His strength. As He turns the pages of His family album, He relives those days that we lived with Him and it makes Him long all the more for the day when He will reunite His family for eternity.

Grandma's House

My grandma’s house hasn’t changed in 50 years. Well, ok, there was the addition of vinyl siding and central heat and air, but besides that, it still looks the same. My grandfather built the house back in the 1950’s when they moved to Collegedale, TN for my dad to go to college. But ever since I was born, I’ve only known that house as “grandma’s house.” To be sure, granddaddy lived there too, and sometimes we’d say that we were headed to “grandma and granddaddy’s” house. But to keep things short and simple, it was “grandma’s house.”

I loved to go to grandma’s house. It had the best brick wall on the side of the carport that went halfway up to the roofline, and from there, two sets of fan-shaped poles bolted to the top of the wall held the roof up.

Early on, my cousins and I would have to stretch to reach the bottom of the poles on the top of the wall, and we would strain to pull ourselves up, while our bare feet wind-milled their way up the red brick. Once on top of the wall, we could go back and forth along it for what seemed to be hours without getting bored. We would swing around the poles and balance along the wall until all of a sudden, something more exciting would capture the attention of one of us on the wall, and off they would go. Once one person had jumped down to run off, the others were sure to follow if the new pursuit was indeed more exciting than the wall.

There were lots of exciting things to do at grandma’s house. The tree swing. The tree house. Running through the sprinkler on a hot day. Games of Simon Says and Mother, May I and of course, the favorite on the large front lawn was Red Light, Green Light.

We also each had to take our turn helping granddaddy plant the garden, water the garden, fertilize the garden, weed the garden, or pick the garden as well. “The Garden” was actually 2 and a half acres of plowed ground on either side of the house from which corn, popcorn, watermelons, cantaloupes, okra, squashes of all kinds, beans of more kinds, peppers, radishes, lettuce and all sorts of other great things grew. We knew it was hard work, because we all had to help and our small hands and backs would grow very tired until finally we were released from the hard labor. Then we would head back up to the house, and with our last ounce of strength, pull ourselves back up to the top of the wall, where we would sit and brag about who did the most work in the garden.

But what was, and still remains, my favorite thing of all at grandma’s house, is what happens when I first get there. As a kid, I was usually one of the first out of the car and into the house, so I could hear it. The Greeting. It usually went something like this.

“Hey kid, C’mon in. Sit down and rest your feet. Can I get you something to eat?” (I loved that last part) If grandma was busy she’d just say, “look in the refrigerator and see what you want. I’m just saving”…and she would list what we couldn’t touch in the fridge. Everything else was fair game.

I still love going to grandma’s house. It’s not because of the wall, though my kids enjoyed it growing up. It’s not the tree swing or the tree house because they are both long gone. I no longer get jazzed about running through the sprinkler on a hot summer day, though my cousin’s youngest has just discovered it. Simon Says and Red Light-Green Light are rarely played there anymore. Even the garden is gone, because a few years back, my grandfather died and my grandma can barely make it around the house.

No. I love going to grandma’s house because of grandma. And the greeting. No matter how old I get she still calls me kid. I walked in a few weeks ago and there it was. “Hey kid, C’mon in. Sit down and rest your feet. There’s some cake on the counter if you want something.”

Through the good times and the bad of my life, no matter how much life changed around me, I’ve always known that I could go back to grandma’s house and my acceptance there was always automatic and unconditional. That never changed.

Grandma is now in her 90’s, and I know that at some point in time I will get a call letting me know that grandma’s house has changed forever. I don’t look forward to that day, because there are so few things in this life that you can always count on. As a matter of fact, I’ve only discovered one.

Here's the Point: Jesus Christ is the One who never changes in a universe that always does.

The bible says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Heb. 13:8 NIV

As to His divine Holiness, He was shown with great power to be the Son of God by being raised from death. Romans 1:4 TEV

This is My Son, whom I love. Listen to Him! Mark 9:7 NIV

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you have a place to go that never changes? A place where you know that you are safe and loved. May I suggest Jesus? He never changes. Your acceptance with Him is always automatic and unconditional. That will never change.

Of Rulebooks and Roadmaps

I went to college in the late 70’s at what was then known as Southern Missionary College, in Tennessee. There’s nothing unusual about that. My parents lived in Arizona. Here’s where the problem lay. If you know anything about United States geography, you know that there was no quick route home. As a matter of fact, during the days of the 55 mph speed limit, it took about 36 hours by car to go between the two. That’s a long way to drive by oneself. So I didn’t.

My cousin, Paul, who also attended Southern, but lived six hours further away, in Southern California, purchased the coolest truck from the California Highway Department roads crew. It was a 1972 Dodge step-side pickup. Oh, it didn’t look like much when he bought it. Road-crew yellow. Plain. Ugly. Not the sort of vehicle college guys try attracting women with. The only ones that would have been attracted to it would be ones that naturally wear safety vests around the house—which weren’t exactly the types that we were interested in. We at least wanted ones with a full set of teeth.

Anyway, back to the truck. After he and his dad did a makeover, this thing was one cool ride! Metallic-blue paint job. Mag Wheels. A topper on the back with a full carpeted deck to stretch out a sleeping bag or two and plenty of room underneath to pack all of our luggage. Along with all of that, in keeping with the rage of the late 70’s, it had a nice Cobra CB Radio to communicate with all the truckers across country. And for internal communication, there were windows in between the cab and the back for shouting through or even crawling between when we were tired of one or the other.

Once my cousin had completed the makeover, and knowing that my ’69 Ambassador Rambler was on it’s last leg, he called to offer to share the truck with me at college if I would help him drive it across each time. I was game. Three days later he pulled into my driveway driving what he had now dubbed “The Blue Burrito”, ready to head east. What a setup! One could stretch out in the back and one could drive. We could drive it straight through and feel good when we got there. It turned out to be a great way to go.

By Christmas, there were many more “westerners” wanting to ride with us back across. We quickly calculated that with 6 of us in the truck at 14 miles per gallon, if we split the gas cost among everyone, we could get by on about $20 each cross-country. (This is back when gas was at an unbelievable high of $.88 per gallon. Hard to fathom, I know. We were outraged.)

We crammed four in the back in sleeping bags and put two in the cab. Since there was no heat in the back, we figured that four across would add the extra warmth, with the warmest sleeping bags on the outsides. In the cab, one would, of course, be the driver, while the other rode “shotgun”. The person riding “shotgun” would be responsible for navigating through the cities to make sure we stayed on Interstate 40 and didn’t end up heading north or south. We would rotate teams every two hours for safety and to let someone in the back sit up for a while as well as warm up, and let the driver and navigator lay down in the back for some shut-eye. In this manner, we figured that we would always have an alert driver and navigator. Besides, after four hours in the back you were ready to get out and do anything but lay down.

We divided into three teams of two. Since each person would only drive every other time their team came around, we figured that each person would only have to drive 9 of the 36 hours to Phoenix. Paul would have to drive the additional 6 hours to Southern California himself.

It was 4 a.m. The back of the topper door was abruptly jerked open and cold air blasted in to awaken us. “Keele, Jansen—your turn to drive.” Paul was already scrambling for his shoes, knowing that he was the next driver, and as such, he had to pump the gas so that he would be fully awake to drive. I slid out of the back and just slipped my feet far enough into my shoes to allow me to step on the heels and tiptoe around to the cab. I was seat-belted into the “shot-gun” position in the warm cab in no time, and with my head on a pillow against the door, was quickly back in dream land.

Abruptly Paul jerked open the driver's door, slid in behind the wheel, and slammed the door shut. I sat up, eyes half-open. “Well, navigator,” Paul said, “Which way?”

“Wha?” I half-responded.

“Which way?”

“West, you dufus!” I leaned my head back against the door and started back to slumber city.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean? Where’s the freeway, and which way is west?”

I sat up and looked around. The station that the last team had selected was out in the middle of nowhere. Looking all around us, I couldn’t see the freeway either north or south of us.

“So do we go left or right?” Paul asked.

“Go left…no right…no—hold on.” I opened the little window from the cab to the back, but they had the topper window shut tight against the cold. I banged. No one moved.

I got out and walked around and jerked open the back window. “Hey, which way is the freeway?” I shouted. One guy looked up and said, “It’s down there,” and pointed toward the roof of the topper. He abruptly broke into a snore and I was sure there would be no more helpful information coming from his direction. The other three never moved.

I closed the topper door and walked back around to the cab.

“Do you think we should ask for directions back in the station?” Paul queried.

“What, and break the man-code?” I gave him a shocked look. “No—we’ll find it! Besides, I got a small clue from the dead-heads in the back. They said, it was ‘down there’, so that means we need to turn South. So go left.” I was proud of my powers of deduction and Paul seemed to be satisfied.

He turned the “Blue Burrito” left and we headed out. After about three miles, he turned to me and asked, “Are you sure this is the right way.”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“Why don’t you check the map?”

I flipped on the cigarette lighter, flexible-necked map light from K-Mart and opened the glove compartment and started fishing around.

“Will you look at this?” I exclaimed, drawing out a California Highway driver’s manual. I flipped it open and began to read.

“Seat belts are now required of all occupants traveling in a motor vehicle. You got your seat belt on?

“Yes, but are we going the right way?” Paul countered.

“If you’ve got your seatbelt on and I’ve got mine on—looks like we’re doing fine. Oh, look at this. It says you are not supposed to follow any emergency vehicle closer than 500 feet.” I scanned the dark horizon. “Look dude, I can’t even see any emergency vehicles, so we’re doing great!”

“Yeah,” Paul said weakly, “but are we going the right way?”

Point: The Bible is the Word of God—not a rulebook, but a roadmap.

Heb. 4:12 says For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

2Pet. 1:21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible isn’t there to just let you know all of the rules. God gave you the Bible to help you get where you need to go—heaven. Has it ever occurred to you that you could be doing everything right and still miss The Way?

NOTE: For those of you who remain curious. Yes, we did turn around and yes we found the freeway about 4 miles back.

The Nerd Factory

By Don Keele Jr.

Who makes them? Is there a factory somewhere? How come we seem to have so many of them running around? Where do nerds come from?

Everywhere you look, there are nerds (or nerdettes) running around. You know the type: They don’t when to be quiet, they drop their tray in the cafeteria, they wear half-matching clothes, and most of them know the cube root of an airplane propeller (or at least could find it with the help of their trusty, ever-present calculator.)

I befriended a real nerd a few years ago, and as soon as it seemed safe, I asked him that question. “Where did you come from?”

His reply was typically nerdy. “From my parents,” he said.

Seeing that I wasn’t getting anywhere, I began relentlessly interrogating the nerd in search of some clue to answer my question. I asked about his parents, his clothes, and even the cube root of an airplane propeller (he didn’t know). Now, in hopes of helping all of us, I will report my findings. I must let you know that I have found, at least in part, the answer to this perplexing question.

Let me tell you his story.

Alan was born young, as many nerds are. But he didn’t know that he was destined to be a nerd for life, because actually Alan was very normal at birth. He did things like normal kids do. It wasn’t until later that he began developing nerd tendencies.

At first the problem centered in Alan’s parents. They didn’t want him. He was, as they told him many times, an “accident.” A ruining of their lives. At best, he was a major intrusion into their already-rocky relationship.

And he was hard to take care of in their nomadic existence. They had to be up early to get their trailer into the best slot at the flea market of whatever town they happened to be in. And to stop and feed a baby, or to chase him down as a toddler, was a huge bother. Sometimes too much of a bother. Mostly he had to go hungry or put up with being locked in a tiny trailer closet most of the day so he wouldn’t wander off. Sometimes when he cried he got beat severely. I mean, who was he to get hungry at their busiest time? So what if he was only 1 year old? The kid had to learn patience and obedience.

Alan grew, and as state laws dictate, he had to be put in school. His parents couldn’t afford to pay the fines for keeping him out of school. But putting him in school would restrict their travels and their income.

To make matters worse, they had another “accident” about this time and were having to teach this new one the hard facts of life like they had taught Alan. They finally decided to settle in a community close to a large metropolitan area. At least while Alan was in school, they could lock the younger one in the closet and go sell at the flea market.

Life for Alan was getting more complicated. He tried to do well in school, but he had problems understanding everything. It probably had something to do with the time, at age 3, when his dad knocked him unconscious and fractured his skull. But Alan never thought of that. He only knew that he wasn’t as quick as the other kids. He’d heard his teacher tell his mom and dad that he was very slow, and that’s why he needed to repeat the first grade. On the way home his dad cursed him for being stupid.

Learning wasn’t the only area that caused him problems. Some of the other kids said he smelled funny. Some said that he had a bowl haircut (before it was popular). Others simply laughed and pushed him away whenever he asked to play with them. Sometimes he didn’t mind, but sometimes it made him mad, and soon he was labeled a discipline problem for fighting with the other kids. His dad beat him severely for being so violent with other kids.

By the time Alan reached the third grade, the other kids absolutely despised him, and his teacher simply tolerated him. The other parents talked about him, the principal knew him well, and the cafeteria director was totally disgusted with the way he “snarfed down” his food at lunch. “Why, it’s as if he hadn’t eaten in a week!” she exclaimed.

One day Alan’s dad dropped him off at school (it was kind of embarrassing to climb out of their beat-up motor home) and told him he would pick him up at 3:00 p.m. as usual. Alan said good-bye and went on into his third-grade room. At 3:00, he wandered outside and waited for the old “rolling garbage can,” as some of his classmates called the motor home. But it never showed up.

He waited: 4:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 7:30 p.m. And he was really getting hungry.

The police caught him digging through the trash dumpster behind a local college cafeteria. They took him to the trailer park where he lived and dropped him off.

His parent’s motor home wasn’t there, so Alan went to the office. “They checked out about 10:00 this morning. Paid their bill up and pulled out. Didn’t say where they were going. They musta left you behind accidental-like.”

Alan crawled underneath another trailer and curled up to sleep. He would look for them in the morning.

Three days and 65 miles later, he found them at a flea market in a neighboring town.

“How did you find us, you little jerk? You were supposed to find somewhere else to go. Don’t you know by now that we don’t want you?” His dad drove him back to school and drove away.

The pattern that had begun three days prior was repeated again and again until Alan’s parent’s finally gave up.

At school it didn’t go without notice that whenever Alan did come, his clothes were dirty, his hair was uncombed, his face and hands were filthy, and he took unusually large portions in the cafeteria at lunch. Alan learned that society is cruel and vicious to people who don’t look just right. The more his classmates teased and taunted him, the more Alan lashed out at them. Yet he wanted their acceptance more than anything.

By eighth grade, Alan was considered a real nerd. He tried to fit in, but his vile mouth and nerd-like ways won him more rejection, more lunch hours by himself, and no friends. If anyone did feel sorry for him and show him the least bit of attention, Alan would dog the person’s steps like a puppy gone mad with affection. Of course, this would inevitably end in rejection, because he would drive the person right up the wall.

Upon Alan’s graduation, his dad heard about a school that boarded kids—an academy, they called it. And his dad found out that a kid could word off most of his bill. So he dropped Alan off at the academy in midsummer. That’s where I met him.

Alan was always grinning stupidly or fighting, either loudmouthed or foulmouthed, always dressed wrong, and always so insanely dumb that he could be nothing but a real-life nerd. A case study in the making, I thought. At least that’s what I thought until our conversation.

As we talked I suddenly began to realize that Alan was the way he was because of the people around him: his parent, his elementary classmates, and people like me, who are so incredibly blind and insensitive that we heap more rejection on someone who needs so badly the acceptance we could offer. I mean, what would you or I be like if we’d been treated like Alan all of our lives?

My conclusion? There really is a “nerd factory”. And its workers are those of us who constantly dole out large or small doses of rejection. Those of us who make fun of or play jokes on the nerds in our life. When we try to make ourselves look better by climbing high on the broken pieces of those we destroy daily, we are worse off than any nerd.

Is it possible that Jesus could have been referring in part to nerds as “the least of these brothers of mine”? (Matthew 25:40, NIV) Or might Paul have had nerds in mind when he wrote “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought,” “but in humility consider others better than [yourself]”? (Romans 12:3 and Philippians 2:3, NIV)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided to quit the “nerd factory” and begin working at the “De-Nerding Center for Socially Deprived Children of God.” It’s going to be a hard and dirty job, but the way I see it, someone’s got to do it. And from what I hear, they have lots of positions available. Need an application?

COPS

By Don Keele Jr.

The mall had just closed and I had barely left the mall parking lot, heading down a street lined with condo’s, when suddenly I found myself in a scene reminiscent of a special episode of COPS. A police car just ahead of me had pulled in behind a white Suzuki wagon, and a second police car had stopped just behind the first, but partly blocking my lane. A blue Chevy pickup facing the same direction sat angled across the left side of the road with enough room between it and the police car for my car to ease through. Thinking it was a minor fender bender, I started to ease between the two cars when a man in a brown leather jacket brandishing a drawn revolver leaped from in front of the truck and banged on my hood.

“Stop!!” he cried. “Back up...NOW!”

No argument here. I slammed the car into reverse and started to back up when two more cruisers, lights flashing, pulled beside and behind me. Another cruiser came screaming down the road in front of me and parked in between the blue pickup and the other police car. I was trapped. For the next 20 minutes I sat there trying to stare past the flashing lights and watch the unfolding drama in the beam of the strong searchlight mounted on the first patrol car.

“Driver, get out of the car with your hands on your head!” A voice sounded from the grill of the patrol car. Around the scene, about 9 officers, both male and female, stood with guns drawn, aimed at the car. A tall, large-boned, heavy-set teen struggled to get out of the tiny car without using his hands that he had placed on his head.

“Everyone else put your hands on the inside ceiling of the vehicle.” Through the spinning whir of lights, I could see other hands being slowly raised to the roof.

I looked back to the driver who was now standing with his hands behind his head. He looked to be a young man of about 18 or 19 years of age. He was imposing in stature, and the whirling lights revealed a face that did not seem overly concerned with his current predicament.

The commands through the loudspeaker continued. “Kneel down—keep your hands on your head.” He struggled to kneel in his baggy denim shorts, while keeping his hands on his head.

“He’s still too close,” shouted one of the other officers.

Again the voice through the loudspeaker, “Stand up!” He struggled again, trying to keep his hands on his head as he rose to his feet. “Walk backwards.” He complied. “Kneel down.” Once back down on his knees, five officers rushed in and quickly handcuffed him. They pulled him to his feet and steered him to one of the waiting patrol cars right next to where I was trapped. Placing a hand on top of his head to keep him from bumping it, one of the officers guided his descent into the back seat. Still, he did not seem overly concerned. A cool, arrogance seemed to pervade his gaze as he looked over at me. I turned my attention back to the on-going drama.

“Passenger in the front seat,” called the loudspeaker voice, “come out slowly with your hands up.”

The passenger from the front seat was a girl who looked to be about 16 or 17. She was tall, slender and very attractive with long, dark hair. She had no look of arrogance or cool. She was visibly shaken by the experience she now found herself in the middle of. Tears streamed down her face as she cried out, “don’t shoot me, please.”

“Back up and kneel down,” said the voice. She did and two officers quickly had her handcuffed and led her to another waiting car. She sobbed uncontrollably as she passed between my car and the one where the driver sat watching coolly. She saw him in the back of the car next to mine and screamed at him through her tears. He just stared straight ahead, unwilling to meet her gaze. She was deposited in the car behind mine.

“Passenger in the back seat, come out slowly with your hands on your head.”

The heavy-set girl in the back seat bent down as if to pick something up. Nine officers with guns all aimed at her started screaming, “Get your hands up where we can see them.” She looked back over her shoulder into the glaring spotlight. A look of defiance clearly marked her features.

“Come out of the car with your hands on your head!” the voice repeated more sternly.

“Come and get me,” she mouthed into the light at no one in particular.

The loudspeaker voice intoned, “You have 10 seconds to come out of the car or we will come in. These officers have been authorized to shoot.”

Was I going to watch someone get shot right in front of me? “Please, girl, come out with your hands up,” I pleaded silently.

Suddenly the back door burst open and the girl started to make a break. The guy in the car next to me laughed and cheered her on. Instantly there were 5 cops on her. She struggled and kicked and even tried to bite one of the officers, but they soon had her subdued in handcuffs. As they pulled her to her feet, a defiant sneer crossed her face.

When they led her past my headlights, to put her in the car to my left, she was almost laughing at them. She saw me watching her from my car and she shot me a look of searing scorn. I held her gaze but inwardly flinched. I had seen that look before.

Defiance, hatred and a determination were there. How does one get to this state? It is in the daily decisions; the decisions that come to each of us from moment to moment. It is in the decisions to serve self rather than God. With each decision we begin to look more like whichever side we choose. And the more choices toward Satan, the more the look begins to be fixed.

It is the look of one who has beheld and idolized the dark side one day at a time until, little by little, they become so controlled by the enemy of our souls that they fail to realize the extent of his control. It is the look of one who, thinking they are being their own person and making their own decisions, are unable to recognize how deep they have moved into Satan’s territory. Even as the noose tightens around their neck, they continue to insist that they are free and nothing can touch them; they are above the law. It is the look of one who has taken on the appearance of a greater master.

It was apparent that, though she was young, Satan had left his mark on this one. I could almost see him laughing through her. She jerked her head away from the guiding hand of the officer and banged her head on the top of the door. “Don’t touch my #@$*# head,” she screamed as she fell backwards into the car.

Once they put her in the car, they moved the pickup truck aside and let me go through.

As I drove on home, I couldn’t help thinking about that look. It haunted me. And then I began thinking about me. And my church. What are we doing to help ones with “the look”? What responsibility do we have for those going to hell? Not just those who come to our youth groups, but ones that inhabit our neighborhoods. What is our responsibility to our community?

Have we taken our call to “come out of her, My people” so seriously, that we refuse to engage any but those who show up to our evangelism series or send in a Bible study card? Are we unwilling to take Jesus back into the world?

Has it ever occurred to any of us that Jesus called us to love even those with “the look”? To pursue them in love and let them know that they aren’t stuck with that sneer, that hatred and scorn.

Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35 NIV Do they see it in you?