The Muse is Loose

We are deep into High School playoffs. All but TWO South Texas teams have put away their helmets and pads. Calallen and Refugio are still playing. That is not unusual.

Spotlights will be on the BIG Five A and Four A schools. Some will play in the Alamodome and others at the new Texas Stadium. Some but not all. There will be two teams fighting to reach the finals, and they will meet head on at.....Comanche??? That's right! The Richland Springs Coyotes will try to get hold of the Milford Bulldogs...again. Milford enters the semi-finals at 12-1. Their only loss was a season opener with Richland Springs. They lost 54-56!

Richland Springs is a ranching town of 350 deep in the heart of Texas. I hunted three miles from there last year. Got to a game at half-time and it was over! They had such an impressive lead the game was called. Milford is about 750 folks. They are on Highway 77 about 20 miles from Waxahatchie. They play serious football as well.

These two teams are in the Division II of SIX-MAN football. The winner will play either Sterling City or Matador. Those two teams are playing Friday in Sweetwater. Six-man football is BIG in Texas. There are a lot of small towns that simply can't field an eleven-man team. Six-man football gives those guys and gals a taste of the sport.(They have cheerleaders too). There won't be a lot of scouts from colleges or universities, but that's okay. They will enjoy the sport and then go back to riding horses or four-wheelers. It really isn't a bad life out there in the country.

The Richland Springs Coyotes were on the howl....er...prowl. They took on the Milford Bulldogs in Comanche, Texas. It was a slaughter 50-0!!! That score means the game was mercifully called before any more bloodshed. Don't know any details but imagine something pretty bad happened to Milford. They may have been short of players for whatever reason. This team lost to Richland Springs by TWO POINTS in the first game of the year. They had not lost again until Friday night. That is six-man football...Texas style.

"Path Between The Seas" is a book written by David McCullough. It is a 698 page book about the digging of the Panama Canal. I have just finished reading this book. It was of special interest since in a couple of weeks, Lord willing, Ann and I will be on a cruise which includes a trip through the Big Ditch.

We are the blessed recipients of a 15 day cruise that originates in Fort Lauderdale and ends in San Diego! James Duprie (son-in-law) and family are going. His sister and her husband the Routh family of Austin are our hosts. It is a trip of a lifetime. We will stop in Cartagena, Colombia; Puerto Limon in Costa Rica; Huatulco, Mexico; Acapulco; Puerto Vallarta; and Cabo San Lucas. All our nights will be aboard ship, The Celebrity Constellation.

I have been on one other cruise. It was aboard the USS Butner. We sailed from New York to Bremerhaven, Germany. There were over 6,000 happy travelers. A train awaited our arrival at Bremerhaven, which took us to the ancient city of Mainz, Germany. There we would be guests of the US Government for eighteen months as a part of the final Army of Occupation, following World War II. This was in 1955-1956.I am hopeful our accommodations and travel comfort will have improved a bit! We fly out of Dallas December 17 and board ship December 18. Scheduled to arrive at San Diego, January 2.

A word about the canal: The French first tackled this project. After a venture lasting more than a decade they threw in the towel and quit,estimating it had cost 287 million dollars and more than 20,000 lives, mostly from yellow fever and malaria. They left a huge gash in the land and many millions of dollars of rusting equipment. Teddy Roosevelt saw a way the US could do the job. In 1913 the work was completed. Through those years yellow fever and malaria were brought under control. It remains virtually the same today, perhaps the greatest engineering project ever. I am hopeful to see it Christmas Eve.

When do you discover a burned out headlamp? At home in broad daylight when you can take it to a garage or fix it yourself? When the officer flashes all those lights in your rear-view mirror and stands behind his door as he checks you out? When it is dark and you are in a shopping mall forty miles from home?

I chose number THREE. Suddenly the trip's objective is NOT a super robo at Toys or Who Else.It becomes an adventure in getting home without getting uzied by an irate driver as I drive all the way with my BRIGHTS on....... OR......experiencing NUMBER TWO of the above.

All the way home I was working on an appropriate answer to give the arresting officer: "Yes sir, I did know it was burned out.". "Yes sir, I do know it is illegal to drive with a lower beam burned out." "No sir, I did not think of parking the car and taking a taxi home.". "No sir, I do not check my headlights each time I leave home." None of my answers were convincing. I will get ticketed for sure. But what about driving with the high beams on (They were both working fine) Is that against the law. I honestly don't know.

Well, we made it home all right and next morning I was buying a bulb. Congratulations to the South Koreans. They have the lower beams operating in such a way as you release a spring and slip the bulb out. Total time was less than fifteen minutes. Total cost $8.00. Total stress with the situation...100%.

I was reminded of an old hymn sung in my youth. "Let The Lower Lights Be Burning".

Jim Denison writes in his blog, of a group who call themselves American Athiests. They have gotten in the news this last week (athiests are always newsworthy - remember Madelyn O'Hair?) These folks are claiming that the story of Jesus is a myth. What else would you expect from such a group?

It doesn't bother me when there are opponents to the Christian faith. There always has been and will be. Athiests should not be intimidating. They only have faith to go on in their beliefs. It is an empty faith. We also have only faith to go on. It is a Creator given and blessed faith. Who is right?
Well we will not be the judge. The One in charge of judgement will be the One.

The ones hard to deal with, and live with, are those who DO have a God. Some even have Jehovah God. But God without Christ is not God, for He is the great Three In One! He sent His Son who is a part of the Trinity, on a Divine Mission. It was not a pretty or easy assignment, but it was a total success and has literally changed this world as the results have changed myriads of lives.

To seek to communicate and win a person who has a religion is far more difficult than dealing with an athiest. Jim reminded us of a Billy Graham quote. When asked how he could know there is a God, the great evangelist said, "I know because I talked with Him this morning."

Have you talked with Him this morning?

Every day we read of a progress, or lack of progress, report on Bret Favre. The latest is that he is questionable. I knew some of his actions have been. It would be his 298th straight regular season start.Without question he has been a great quarterback. Like so many others he hasn't known when to move on to something else. Troy Aikman knew, and now is becoming a good sports broadcaster. Don Meredith knew and found a new life in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He passed away a few days ago. I saw him play when he was with SMU. He was an exciting football player and a great color announcer in the days of Howard Cosell. "Turn out the lights, the party's over".

What is it about coaches and players that they cannot turn loose when the time is right? We see it in all sports, not just football. Maybe the money. Certainly the recognition. Joe Paterno is a classic case. It is obvious his assistants do the work.

Then there are preachers. Why do these old guys hang around and keep preaching when younger ones are waiting in the wings for their day in the pulpit? It is one of those mysteries to me. Guess it is also the money and recognition.Anyway, I can't go on rambling like this. Got to get a sermon ready. Sunday is coming and I am still interim pastor at Taft.......ooops!

Sunday, Dr. Robert Edwards spoke about Missions at church in Taft. This is the season when many have focused on foreign missions and given to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering.It is one of the greatest gifts one can give at Christmas.

Robert told of a special time in Colombia when several missionary families were actually going to have a turkey for their Thanksgiving meal. Mistakenly a lady working in the kitchen sliced it up before it was placed on the table. Knowing the kids would be disappointed not seeing the turkey on the table as a whole bird , the two surgeons present proceeded to assist in the matter by sewing the turkey back together! Only on the Foreign Mission field would such an event take place! Well, maybe on MASH in Korea if any of you remember that show.

Like making a turkey become a whole bird again, the same kind of thing has been done a thousand times over with lives that appeared not possible to put back together. With the experience of New Birth many have been made fit for service, not by suturing, but by being made new! Born again. That was the case in Colombia those thirty- plus years Robert and Dolores served there.
Others have now taken the field to keep the work going. It takes a supreme dedication to serve in such settings, but called servants do it willingly, in far away places and right here at home.

Please be sure you make a gift to missions during this Christmas season. God multiplies that gift as it is placed in the hands of dedicated servants of the King.

No, that is not a new Christmas Carol. It is what will be happening to this infernal machine until January 5 or so. We leave in the morning for Midlothian. There we plan to have "Christmas" with our son and his family and with James and Laura and their kids. On Friday we fly to Fort Lauderdale and then sail Saturday for a fifteen-day cruise. Wow!

In the meantime, if it can work out the computer will be purged of all it's evil intent, for the moment, and made usable again. As many "bad guys" as there are out there playing with it, I doubt that anything will last very long.

Wish for all you readers a great Christmas Season with family and friends. It is a joyous day when we celebrate the most amazing and world-changing Birth ever! Just think of it! The One who was involved in the building process of the heavens and the earth took on a mission to come to this earth because sin, like viruses on my computer, infected all people everywhere. He did His work and through it all, offers us a clean machine. A new heart. A hope for life ever more. That is all so amazing.

Well, I need to wrap this up for now. Take care, as we will try to do, sailing the Atlantic, Pacific and Caribbean in two weeks. I just hope we have no thirty-foot waves or power failures. May the Lord richly bless you all, my millions and millions of faithful fans.....(been watching Ophrah) I do know of four who read faithfully. Thank you. dp