The Hey You Lady

In the 1997 movie "The Bucket List" Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play Edward Cole and Carter Chambers, two terminally ill men escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die. Edward Cole runs the hospital where he is admitted, and is paired up with Carter Chambers, an auto mechanic for 45 years, as his roommate. The film trailer below gives you a brief overview of the story: Cole was a very, very successful business man, and was proud of his accomplishments. Rightly so. There is nothing wrong with a healthy pride, receiving recognition for a job well done. One modest response to pride would be to say, "Thank you," giving the recognition to those who helped you along the way, and to move on, continuing to accomplish things in your life. Unfortunately, Edward Cole did not stop there. He went through life seeming to act as if he were the most important person in the world. He called the shots in his life, and lived ...

Image by dno1967 via Flickr This week our Topical Blogger bvaliant4him wanted the group's input on the 24th chapter of the gospel of Matthew . In this chapter Jesus addresses concerns that his disciples had about what many today refer to as the "End Times." At first reading, many of the events that Jesus speaks of are pretty frightening: wars, earthquakes, famine, persecution, stars falling from the sky, more. Many people over the past 2,000 years have made many predictions as to when Jesus is expected to return. There are people in this present day who avidly study world events and End Times prophecy who believe that we are now in the days that Jesus speaks of in this chapter of Matthew. So what is my input? Are we in fact living in the End Times? Is the return of the Son of God imminent? My honest answer is I don't know. I do not claim to be a Bible scholar. Nor have I seriously studied Biblical prophecy with any real intentionality. And I'm not alone in ...

One of my favorite films in recent years is “Finding Neverland,” which tells the story behind the story of Peter Pan. Early in the movie is a scene in which playwright J. M. Barrie is walking with his large dog in the park and has just met the four boys and their mother. The first time I saw the movie, I cried at that scene. Why would a s cene about a dog imagined to be a dancing bear make me cry? Because like Peter, I had lost the wonder of being young. I was at a place in my life where I had taken on many adult responsibilities. I had allowed my grown-up challenges and relationships crowd out my sense of adventure. My ability to see the unseen was limited to the outcome of what I could only see before me, and many times I found myself visualizing disastrous results. I had forgotten what it was like to think as a child thinks, to be brave enough to imagine that I could interact in a world where Pirates and Indians were more than baseball teams, and a young hero ...

The world in which we live - both our public world and our private world - is riddled with tension and conflict. It seems the issues that cause us worry have been around for many years and are likely to be around for many more, never to go away or become superannuated. In the midst of all this chaos, how can I get any peace in my life? Consider this: When two people are in conflict, peace can most effectively be brought about when one party surrenders to the will of the other. I seem to live in a constant power struggle. You see, I have an insatiable need to be right, and to be in control of my circumstances. There are times that the situation at hand is obviously bigger than my abilities and wisdom. The result does not match the picture that I at first had set out to create. I feel powerless, and my sense of peace is lost. If I give up my autonomy - my "Mary-Do" mindset - and share the load, then the bigger tasks could still have the end result I originally envisioned, and ...