aging | Branches Blog

7/31/23 MondayMatters: Grandparenting

Written on July 31, 2023 • 0 Comments

How do you connect with your grandkids? How do we talk to the younger generation in general? Here are five things to remember when you are working with the young people in your life.

Remember they are people.
Remember they have personality.
Remember they have parents. (And you are not them.)
Remember they are the present (the gift.)
Remember they need prayer.

Look at the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:45, and the verses following.

Provide rituals.

Teach remembering.

And model righteousness.

https://youtu.be/j_k1wYdR5Ok

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5/8/22 Monday Matters: Respect the Office

Written on May 9, 2022 • 0 Comments

Mother wounds and father wounds are perhaps the most painful emotional wounds of all. The pain we carry from the very people who were supposed to protect us is at the core of most of our emotional struggles. And yet, the Bible says, Honor your father and mother. Here are some thoughts about respecting the… Continue Reading

History Lessons

Written on January 1, 2018 • 14 Comments

I have always liked history. My 8th grade history teacher was named W.W. Davis. Isn’t that cool? If you grow up with the initials W.W., you are destined to be a history teacher. He had horned rim glasses and a handlebar mustache. He always wore a bowtie to class and he fiddled with it when… Continue Reading

The Paper

Written on April 22, 2014 • 2 Comments

I loved breakfast at church camp in Batesburg, SC. We would stand in line outside the canteen, waiting for them to unhook the screen door and let 60 sleepy-eyed, bed-headed, teenagers stumble in to heaps of sausage links, scrambled eggs, and a huge pot of grits slathered with butter. We couldn’t even spell cholesterol in… Continue Reading

Precious Memories

Written on December 27, 2013 • 0 Comments

I have a small cabin in the woods in Dickson County, TN. It is not much, a two room shack with battery powered lights and running water borrowed by hoses (1000 feet of them) from my neighbors well. But it is a wonderful place to escape, to get away, to be quiet and let God… Continue Reading

A Thanksgiving Story

Written on November 28, 2013 • 2 Comments

In the beginning (No, not that beginning!) In the beginning with Chonda and me there were four of us, me, the oldest boy followed by three stair-stepped sisters, Chonda being the usually loud one in the middle. We lived pretty close to both sets of grandparents and what seemed like hundreds of cousins, many of… Continue Reading

The Ministry of Presence

Written on August 20, 2012 • 7 Comments

“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not… Continue Reading

Geriatric Jesus

Written on March 17, 2009 • 0 Comments

“I wish Jesus had lived to be 60.” Isn’t that a strange thing to say? But a former pastor of mine, a man I worked with for several years used to say that all of the time. He was a little eccentric so I just chalked it up to terminal weirdness. Now, at 55, I’m… Continue Reading

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