A Special Birthday Reflection

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and don’t reject your mother’s teaching, for they will be a garland of favor on your head and pendants around your neck.” (CSB Proverbs 1:8-9 – Read the chapter)

Some of the best movies are the ones that create a potent sense of nostalgia around an idyllic childhood. The Sandlot is a classic in this genre. It is ostensibly a movie about baseball (and one of the greatest ever released), but it’s really a movie about nostalgia. It’s about making the viewer feel a certain way. Our culture is enamored with the idea that childhood should unfold in a certain way. It should be carefree and safe and familiar and encouraging and challenging and so on and so forth. It should happen in the context of a family with a mom and dad and a sibling or two. It should be happy and fun. On that score, my childhood was about as idyllic as they come. One of the two main reasons for that turns 70 today. This is for him.

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Something Special

“And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live today in a world in which changing jobs is a fairly regular thing. It is not uncommon, though, for people to change not merely jobs, but whole careers. There are literally millions of job openings around the country today because people are quitting their jobs at a record pace in order to get a new one somewhere else making more money. The whole country is feeling the effects of the chaos this is causing. Historically speaking, though, this idea of not doing one thing your entire life is new. It is becoming rarer and rarer to find someone who has pursued one path for an entire lifetime. It is even more unusual for someone to do that well. Milestones like that are worth acknowledging. This morning, we are taking a detour from our journey through Hebrews because I have one such milestone in particular that I’d like to share and celebrate with you. Today is the 40th anniversary of when my dad started practicing law.

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