They woke up Punxsutawney Phil Tuesday morning long enough for the prognosticating rodent to let us know whether six more weeks of winter must be endured. According to Phil you should plan on bundling up for next month and a half. Phil looks about as happy as I do when when I am disturbed in the morning. Seventeen years ago a funny and underappreciated  movie came on the scene. Groundhog Day told the story of a self-absorbed news reporter (redundancy alert?) that finds himself stuck in an endless repeat of the same day. Bill Murray is perfect in the role of reporter Phil Connors. Since I live in the odd world of broadcast television I can relate to the cynical personality of Murray’s character. Reporter Phil is less than thrilled that he has been assigned to cover Punxsutawney Phil’s annual peek outside to predict winter’s duration. He feels he is “above” such an inane assignment. Connor’s looks into the camera and cynically reports:
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(I received a little e-note from Robert today. “Thanks for the insightful discussion of Bev Shea’s signature song. As today is his 101st birthday, I’ve posted an article about him, plus a video clip of the song, on my daily blog on hymn history, Wordwise Hymns. I invite you to take a look. God bless.”  Check out his site if you are interested in some of the stories behind the great hymns of our faith. Here is the article about Mr.Shea and his signature song.) I have been doing this church thing for a lot of years. I have sung hundreds of songs over the four decades or so that I have been darkening the church door. Some songs have great meaning to me. Some lyrics moved me to deep worship of God. Some times I really meant what I was singing. Other times I was singing through the motions while thinking about lunch and when the kick-off was going to happen. Gotta think
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The Wall Street Journal reported that more and more employers are enlisting happiness coaches. Love that image. “Line-up for smile drills. Jones, why are you frowning? Give me 25 guffaws pronto!” The actual concept is a trainer or speaker who will teach you how to practice new behaviors, cheer up and stop stressing out. The Journal notes that the methods these trainers teach differ from the skills coaches usually promote, such as advancing your career or learning teamwork. Instead, they draw on psychological research and ancient religious traditions to teach inner peace, gratitude, kindness and resiliency in the face of adversity – of which there is plenty in today’s workplace. Employees are urged to meditate, send daily e-mails thanking their co-workers for things, write in a journal about things they’re grateful for or help someone without expecting anything in return. It seems I have read a lot of those ideas in a text once…what is called…oh yeah…the Gospels. Okay, the e-mails weren’t mentioned by Jesus but I
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We have been watching a miracle of God’s healing grace in the lives of some dear friends. It made me think of a favorite go to song during difficult parts of the journey. The song, Bless the Broken Road, became a hit for the group Selah. Here are some of the lyrics. I set out on a narrow way, many years ago Hoping I would find true love, along the broken road But I got lost a time or two, wiped my brow and kept pushing through I couldn’t see how every sign, pointed straight to you It is so interesting to look back over the landscape of over three decades of this journey with Jesus. I can see God’s hand in so many events and even heartbreak in my life. My early church experience was a broken road of legalistic and judgmental Christians who crushed the spirit of a young and fumbling Christian. That experience became the basis of my books. I
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I read with sadness a story about erstwhile singer/actress Heidi Montag. She admitted that she’s “obsessed with plastic surgery” after undergoing 10 procedures in one day. Seriously? Only ten makes you obsessed? The 23-year-old discussed the 10 procedures in a People cover story interview in the magazine’s January 25 issue. “No one is perfect. But I am obsessed with plastic surgery and with maintaining my looks,” she told People. Montag shared these confusing statements with ABC’s Good Morning America. “I think that I do look like myself, I just think that I’m a different, improved version of myself.” Despite the plastic surgery, Montag insisted that her “main message is that beauty is really within.” I would suggest that her actions suggest that she doesn’t believe that at all. “I’m in the limelight, I’m in a different industry, and I have to do things that are going to make me happy at the end of the day,” she explained on the Good Morning
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Recently I wrote a story about a saintly woman named Billye Casey. I called her my hero because I learned so much by simply watching her walk with Jesus. Yesterday she finished her journey and went home to heaven. It struck me as no surprise that she died at 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday. She always (I mean always) made it to church to worship. Instead of struggling to make it to church to worship with all of us Billye got to worship in glory. That is an upgrade of unfathomable proportions. If you missed the article on Billye I hope you will read it now. She will be missed. But don’t make the mistake of saying we “lost” Billye Casey yesterday. We know exactly where she is. Later, sweet lady, later. As I have grown older I learned that heroes will usually let you down. I admired political leaders only to be sorely disappointed by their actions. I  placed some spiritual leaders in high esteem only to
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I am blessed by the incredible response by churches and Christian ministries across America to the suffering souls in Haiti. But sadly a big part of the media coverage is focusing on some remarks by television commentator Pat Robertson. Mr. Robertson speculated on why Haiti has suffered so much over the years. He believes that the country sold their soul to gain freedom from the French and that their nation is cursed because of that pact with the devil. I will not resort to the kind of comments I am reading elsewhere about Pat Robertson. I do think his timing was terrible. Our entire focus as followers of Christ should be aid and prayer for our brothers and sisters in that country. To be fair, Robertson said that he prayed that out of this disaster a spiritual renewal would take place in Haiti. Still, I wonder how anyone can say definitively why suffering takes place. The Old Testament offers an interesting story about a place that
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