This has been a hot Texas summer. Even by Texas standards this has been a scorching July. How hot has it been? Thank you for asking. The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard-boiled eggs. The cows are giving evaporated milk. The trees are whistling for the dogs. You learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron. You discover that in July  it takes only 1 finger to drive your car. (Note to environmental hall monitors…I am not making light of global warming. Please work with me on the analogy to follow. I wrote about how it is not easy to be green and evangelical in an earlier post.) We are struggling to keep our lawn alive while trying to be good citizens and obeying the water conservation guidelines. Some flowers planted by our entry way have lost the battle and died. Others struggle to
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My wife has many endearing qualities. But she has one trait that is really annoying. She has a amazingly fine tuned balderdash detector. I toyed with other words to title her detector but decided that even a Bad Christian should show some decorum now and then. Her gift is a problem for me. I am a world class vendor of “balderdash”. So occasionally I find myself in an uncomfortable moment. One of those moments that I used to hate was when Joni would ask me this question. “What is God teaching you?” I hated that question. How can you fake an answer to that one? Even if I could fool my bride (unlikely) I could certainly not fool the object of the question. I would hem and haw and then come to the uncomfortable truth. Not much. And that was a real revelation to me. If I could not answer that question then there is not much going on in my relationship with God. When
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Regular readers of these ramblings have been contacting me this week. Thousands of irate viewers…uhh…make that hundreds….okay….seven people have written to ask what is going on? “Why I have been *&*#$^ banned from your website?” asked one reader who represents the demographic I reach. For a week I received the same message that all of you read. “You (Bad Christian) are not authorized to view this (your very own site) website. Contact the webmaster if you think this is in error.” And therein was the problem. My webguy was busy cruising the seas with his beautiful bride and had no email access. Apparently a new spam filter installed to block some very persistent jerks decided to block all of us as well. Since I could not contact him we were caught in a perfect cyber storm. So please forgive us. And be encouraged that starting Monday you will be deluged with several days of  pent up “Bad Christian” rants! Thanks for
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The website went down a week ago and we have been unable to keep you updated via this site. So much has happened that I decided to put this update in the form of an old movie serial… First of all we must update you on the previous episodes. When last we left you we were poring over Joni’s white blood cell count after the last round of the very difficult A/C chemotherapy. The counts were low but good enough for us to venture on a little R&R adventure to a lake cabin in Arkansas. We left on July 10th and headed to the hills of Ouchita National Forest. All was going well until late in the week when Joni began to have some pain in her right arm. A late night call on Friday to our doctors in Dallas was a little unnerving. They were afraid Joni had developed blood clots and they advised us to find an emergency room right away. That was not an
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I am taking a week off to spend with my bride. I am posting “gently read” articles from the very early days of this blog. Some of these posts are like new…only read by little old ladies on Sunday afternoons. Seriously, many of you missed these offerings. I hope you find something to enjoy. Blessings, Dave   First I must apologize to the three or four readers who eagerly show up each weekday to read these ramblings. I was stuck on the road with a defective power pack and no other computer access. So I have to admit that I “blogged” down for a couple of days. Sorry. I am now powered up and ready to ramble. Last night I was returning from a corporate meeting being held at a casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Your reaction was likely the same as mine. Unca – where? Turns out it is about an hour from Hartford. But that is a future blog. My panic happened during
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I am taking a week off to spend with my bride. I am posting “gently read” articles from the very early days of this blog. Some of these posts are like new…only read by little old ladies on Sunday afternoons. Seriously, many of you missed these offerings. I hope you find something to enjoy. Blessings, Dave   This little planet can be depressing at times. I picked up a magazine this week and came across three quotes that made me realize how desperate we are for a little hope. The first quote was an odd mix of funny and sad. Country singer Kenny Chesney had a very short lived and well publicized marriage to actress Renee Zellweger. His description of the pain he was feeling was like a parody of a bad country song. You know what I am talking about. Songs like My Girl Ran Off With My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him. Chesney compared the
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I am taking a week off to spend with my bride. I am posting “gently read” articles from the very early days of this blog. Some of these posts are like new…only read by little old ladies on Sunday afternoons. Seriously, many of you missed these offerings. I hope you find something to enjoy. Blessings, Dave   I hope you read my blog about going to Homecoming last weekend at Baylor University. It was a wonderful weekend spent with family and friends. But I want these ramblings to be authentic and real. I have an embarrassing admission to make. I drove and parked carefully in Waco last weekend because I feared I was a wanted man. Let me explain. October 22nd dawned sunny and pleasant in scenic Garland, Texas. I blissfully strode to the mailbox to retrieve my daily dose of catalogues, junk mail, and bills. I sorted through the stack. “No annual fee for 12 months” – Correct. I
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