Presby-Musings

Twenty-seven years ago,  I heard my wife Merideth's voice on the answering machine after not speaking to her for nearly five years.   We had been high school sweethearts, but circumstances, pride, dumb decisions and a host of other factors had separated us and kept us apart.  Both of us had experienced hardships during those years.  We were broken inside, hurt, tired and resigned to the fact that we probably weren't going to ever be as happy in life as we once hoped we would be.  An old classmate of ours ran into me and was so concerned about how terribly sad I seemed that she called Merideth to ask her if she'd seen or heard from me.  Merideth was three weeks away from getting married to her fiancee of four years.  I was busy drinking, and smoking myself into numbness.   And then she called me, and I heard her voice on the answering machine, and nearly killed myself trying to reach the phone before she hung up.   We...

When I was in my early twenties, I was driving back to my apartment very late after hanging out with my friends to the wee hours.  My car broke down in the middle of nowhere, but luckily not too far from a gas station and a pay phone.   I was not living my life very well then, to be honest.  I drank too much, partied too much, smoked too much and generally did too much of every other bad thing you could think of--all of which made my poor parents worry.   For about a half an hour I tried everything I could think of to get the car moving again but to no avail.  I had one quarter in my car, which I found underneath the floor mat.  That's all the money I had on me, which meant that I had one phone call to make.  So I called my dad.   That was a hard call to make because my dad and I didn't get along very much at all at that point in our life.  We disagreed on just about everything--particularly on matters of faith....

I graduated from high school in 1986, and finally received my Bachelor's degree in 2000.  I am fond of saying that I was on the "fourteen-year college plan."   For the first few years of those fourteen years of slogging through college, I wasn't all that serious about it,  but I finally got myself together and spent the last two years doing everything I could to keep a 4.0 average.   My hope was that I would be able to overcome the sins of my youth and somehow get a scholarship to go on to post-graduate studies.   In the middle of all of my efforts, I took a test in an upper level British Literature class and when the professor returned it, I realized I'd left an entire page of the test blank. He'd written a note at the top: "See me."   After the class, I dragged myself to meet with him, and explain I'd just plain old made a mistake.  He looked at me for a bit and then took my paper.  He wrote, "97 - A" at the top....

When I was in my early twenties, I was driving back to my apartment very late after hanging out with my friends to the wee hours.  My car broke down in the middle of nowhere, but luckily not too far from a gas station and a pay phone.   I was not living my life very well then, to be honest.  I drank too much, partied too much, smoked too much and generally did too much of every other bad thing you could think of--all of which made my poor parents worry.   For about a half an hour I tried everything I could think of to get the car moving again, but to no avail.  I had one quarter in my car, which I found underneath the floor mat.  That's all the money I had on me, which meant that I had one phone call to make.  So I called my dad.   My dad disapproved of me big time.  He and I didn't get a long very much at all.  We disagreed on everything, mostly as it related to drinking, smoking, and other assorted poor behaviors on my part....

Twenty six years ago,  I heard my wife Merideth's voice on the answering machine after not speaking to her for nearly five years, and I thought I was dreaming.   We had been high school sweethearts, but circumstances, pride, dumb decisions and a host of other factors had separated us and kept us apart.  Both of us had experienced hardships during those years.  We were broken inside, hurt, tired and resigned to the fact that we probably weren't going to ever be as happy in life as we once hoped we would be.  An old classmate of ours ran into me, and was so concerned about how terribly sad I seemed that she called Merideth to ask her if she'd seen or heard from me.  Merideth was three weeks away from getting married to her fiancee of four years.  I was busy drinking, and smoking myself into numbness.   And then she called me, and I heard her voice on the answering machine.  Six months later we were married.   There is a verse ...

I graduated from high school in 1986, and finally received my Bachelor's degree in 2000.  I am fond of saying that I was on the "fourteen-year college plan."   For the first few years of those fourteen years of slogging through college, I wasn't all that serious about it.  In fact, I got a "D" in an Intro to Business course because I decided that if you didn't take the last couple of tests, including the final they would consider you "withdrawn."   This was a policy created entirely in my mind, of course.  I'd had an "A" in the class up to that point, which makes the whole thing ridiculous.  I wish I could go back in time and shake 19 year-old Leon, and smack some sense into that idiot.  At any rate, nearly fourteen years after that debacle, I was doing everything I could to keep a 4.0 average so I could overcome that bad grade and somehow get a scholarship to go on to post-graduate studies.   In the middle of all of my...

T his week for our Daily Devotions, we'll be focusing on the coming of a new year, and what it means to be given a fresh start, a second chance and another opportunity to become the people that God has always dreamed for us to become.    The book is called Opportunity it's first chapter is New Year's Day - Edith Lovejoy Pierce  Several years ago, I saw a billboard for an attorney's office that was extolling the virtues of bankruptcy at the onset of a new year.  It displayed a huge photo of a video game console and posed the following question below the photo in large letters:   "Don't you wish life had a reset button?  It does."    On the surface it seems like a pretty good idea if, when things started to go poorly, you could just push the reset button on life like you can on a video game.  But would it, really?   What if all of our mistakes, missteps, and misdeeds were actually part of our journey?  What if all of t...

This week for our Daily Devotions, we'll be focusing on the coming of a new year, and what it means to be given a fresh start, a second chance and another opportunity to become the people that God has always dreamed for us to become.     "Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress." - Charles Kettering In just a few days we'll be ringing in a new year.  We'll "tear a leaf off" the calendar, figuratively if not literally.  I love the feeling that accompanies the beginning of a new year, actually.  There's a freshness to it.  I can imagine that the slate has been wiped clean, and all of the mistakes and missteps of the past year are behind me.  I have the chance to do things differently.  I stopped making resolutions a few years ago--at least out loud where anyone could hear me make them.  The reason?  I'm sketchy when it comes to keeping my new year's resolutions.  Most of us...

My ten year-old son has been building an elaborate Lego set that he got for Christmas for the past several weeks.  It was so enormous it took him a couple of months to even gather the courage to begin it.  He works on it in the playroom, taking great pains to keep his emerging creation away from his four year-old brother, who would almost certainly destroy it before it got started properly. Each time he completes a portion of the Lego set, he hides everything out of reach of his brother in a place of safekeeping.  He's been patient.  Whenever he has a free moment, which isn't often, he pulls it out and works on it a little more. The other day he brought it out to show me how much he'd gotten done.  It was fairly impressive, I have to admit.  And he's done it all on his own, without any help from me--which is a first for a set this large. Here's the thing, though.  At some point it's going to get trashed.  Something bad will happen to it...