For God’s Sake Archive

“For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” the Apostle Paul wrote in a letter from a prison. He was not disillusioned and looking to end it all. “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

Yet which I should choose, I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

The other day while grocery shopping, an older couple hustled by me headed for the dairy section.

In addition to their spryness, what made them stand out was that they were dressed identically, tan shorts, navy top, white crew socks and identical athletic shoes. I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t be caught dead!”

A group of men from Compass Church and I have begun meeting weekly to study the book “Disciplines of a Godly Man” by R. Kent Hughes.

This excellent book is founded on the command in the Bible for Christians to “discipline” themselves for godliness. The author begins by highlighting famous, successful men, who made their craft look easy.

My idea of an enjoyable morning is sipping coffee with my wife at a café and watching the world pass by. Our favorite perch when we lived in Naples was a bagel shop in a very busy plaza.

On Friday mornings, we’d seat ourselves at a table facing the small, very full, parking lot to watch the clumsy ballet of cars attempting to enter and exit.

“What is prayer?” read the title of a chapter in a weekly study I am leading. It is an excellent and important question, one with which I have been wrestling for years.

If you perused a typical prayer list, you would find a list of people with problems, some sick, some unemployed, some in financial straits.

Years ago, I enjoyed a short career as a professional musician, a choice that took me in an unexpected direction.

I had been working at an animation studio in Toronto churning out Scooby Doo cartoons for Saturday morning consumption.

One word that I would never use to describe myself is “athletic.” I played baseball in a municipal league in my youth, but I hung up my cleats and became a musician.

So, it was strange that, some 20 years later, I would be standing on a basketball half-court, about to go three-on-three against teenagers half my age. I have no recollection of how that absurdity came to be.

I met Rev. Williams through his son, who served on a church staff with me. It was early in my ministry. He was near the end of life, his mind ravaged by dementia, living in a care facility. Sometimes when I visited him, he was lucid; often he was not.

Every Wednesday, his son would bring him to the church to have lunch with the staff. The staff’s lunch conversations were lively affairs, sometimes humorous, sometimes serious.

“Michael, lead us in another one of those familiar, old hymns,” the pastor said in the middle of a worship service. I was gripped with fear because I didn’t know any other hymns than those we had just sung, but there was no avoiding his request.

I was the church’s new minister of worship, thrust into that position, so it seemed to me, with no other qualification than I was a musician.

When this column is printed, my wife and I will have just celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary and I can say after these many years, marriage is great!

We were married three months before I entered full-time ministry. The timing was fortuitous because it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be worth spit as a pastor without my wife.