And Now We Come To The Most Important Part Of The Service Tuesday, Mar 29 2011 

Uncategorized kennethbow 8:33 pm

And Now We Come To The Most Important Part Of The Service

Over the last ten years as I have rambled over the United States, I have encountered a somewhat new viewpoint among some friends of mine.

Having great respect and affection for the friends I have, I sure want to be careful in disagreeing and taking the chance of losing those good friends.

Sometimes the issue is big enough and important enough, that you just can’t sidestep the issue in the name of friendship.

This is one of those times that friendship just can’t elbow out my loyalty to the right concept. I think I would like to speak up on this.

It has generally been friends that are involved in music ministry. They have made the comment to me that they disagree with ministers saying “Now we come to the most important part of the service”.

This of course refers to the preaching. These friends usually preface their comments with how important preaching is, and other comments, but they make it clear that other parts of the service are important also.

Most of the time they express that this is indeed somewhat old fashioned, and we have now matured to the place we recognize that many parts of the service can be, and are, just as important as preaching.

Well, I sure do admit that I am not a spring chicken, but I am not yet on social security either! I like to think I am somewhat current on music.

Our church took second place last year at a music fest at the fair grounds. Our little area of four million people in the Puget Sound has quite a few churches. I ain’t bragging, but neither am I taking the tuck head as a red neck, old geezer who is living in the fifties either.

So I think I will air out my perambulating thoughts about “Is the preaching the most important part of the service?” Here goes.

We take pride in basing our doctrine, our baptism, our spiritual experience in the book of Acts. We stick our chest out and say, hey, we go back to the book of Acts!

So let me challenge my music friends and dare them to show me just one example, just one incident in the entire New Testament where music was the factor or even a factor in New Testament conversion.

Now I love music, and we sing it loud and long at FPC. But fair is fair. Is it in the book of Acts or not? Hate to inform you but it is not there.
Acts 2, Acts 8, Acts 10, Acts 19, are all passages of conversion. The day of Pentecost, the Samaritans, the Gentiles, and the disciples of John the Baptist were all converted without music and with preaching.

My point being many were converted to full christianity with preaching and none were converted with music. No one has ever been converted without preaching!

Can I safely say that preaching is essential? Would I do better to say “We now come to the essential part of the service?” Would that make my music friends feel less agitated?

How about this? Hindus sing. Buddists sing. Muslims sing. Are they saved?

How bout this? All christians sing. Apostolics sing, trinitarians sing, charasmatics sing, in fact we sing many of the same songs. Are we all saved?

Jesus said in that day many will say, Lord Lord have we not….and He will say depart from me ye that work iniquity!

Is the difference between truth and error preaching or singing?

It is the preaching that sets true believers apart from false believers.

True believers and false believers sing many of the same songs, but they do not and never will preach the same doctrine!

It is preaching that separates the chaff from the wheat.

Another point. I can start, build, and pastor a church without music. I do not want to, and do not plan to, but it is possible. I cannot start, build, and pastor a church without preaching. So what really is the most important part of the service?

So forgive me for getting a little worked up. I am just a wee bit tired of hearing this statement. All of you are welcome and wanted at First Pentecostal Church of the Puget Sound. We would love to have you visit.

But just so you know, I will say during the service, “And now we come to the most important part of the service”. And I won’t be introducing the choir. It will be time to take the good book and preach the word of God.

Preaching is essential.

It is based in the book of Acts.

It separates the true believer from the false believer.

It is the most important part of the service.
Thanks for reading today.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

 

Acts of the Apostles Thursday, Feb 24 2011 

Biblical history and New Testament and Uncategorized kennethbow 2:24 pm

Acts

Oft times I have wondered about certain books of the Bible.  I have thought, what if we did not have this book in our Bible?  How would that affect the whole?  When I place the book of Acts on that pedestal, and consider, I am certain of the answer.

Only Acts and Genesis seem to hold the place of absolute.  Without them we simply could not survive.  They are both irreplaceable.

The book of Acts was written by Luke.  Luke is the only Gentile writer in the Bible.  It is interesting to me that Luke is responsible for 25% of the New Testament.  His two books equal one fourth of the volume of the New Testament.

I am not positive, but it appears to me that Luke wrote at the bequest of a wealthy patron named Theopholis.  His two books address this individual.  This was a common practice that carried well into the middle ages.  A wealthy patron would sponsor someone to write a book or thesis. This is how men like Voltaire and Rousseau were supported financially.

To me, Acts is about three men.  Those men are Simon (Peter), Saul (Paul), and Stephen. The book is evenly devoted to the ministry of Peter and Paul with Stephen being the bridge from one to the other.

The contrast of these two men is stark.  Peter is a country fisherman.  Paul is a polished cosmopolitan.  Peter was ignorant and unlearned.  Paul was a trained rabbi, having studied at the feet of Gamaliel. Peter spoke Aramaic, the common language.  Paul could speak that language, as well as Greek.  Peter was a country Jew, Paul was a Hellenistic Jew and a Roman Citizen.

The first twelve chapters of Acts are about Peter.  In chapter 13 the spotlight shifts to Paul and never moves back to Peter again.  Peter, the great apostle fades from view in Acts.

How important is Acts as a book?  It is irreplaceable! Without the book of Acts we would go from the Gospels to Romans.  We would wonder who is Paul?  What is the church?  How did it start?  Acts is the link to all of the New Testament.

Acts begins with the ascension of Jesus.  It moves on to choosing Judas’ replacement. It then tells of Pentecost, the beginning of the church, and eventually documents the church’s emigration to the Roman Empire.

Christianity conquered the Roman Empire, period.  The Roman Empire paved roads, established peace and continuity, and through this open door walked the church.  The church flourished during the Pax Romana, the empire wide peace. Within 300 years 10% of the Roman Empire was Christian.

The book of Acts documents the beginning of this conquest of the church.

When the spotlight shifts to Paul in chapter 13, Luke begins to relate Paul’ missionary journeys.  Paul made three journeys.  ( Some scholars say up to five).  The dates of these journeys are:

  • 46-48, first journey
  • 49-52, second journey
  • 53-57, third journey

It is simply amazing that in 47AD there were no churches in Asia Minor.  In ten years there was a ring of churches that included every major city in Galatia, Macedonia, Asia and Acacia.  This remarkable achievement has never been repeated anywhere globally.

On his first journey, when he gains his first convert, the Apostle Paul jettisons his Hebrew name Saul, and forever becomes know as Paul.  He was the Apostle to the Gentiles and he bore his Gentile name to his death.

Luke is a gentile, writing a book about the gentile revival by the Apostle to the gentiles.  This fact shows up in the book repeatedly.  It is very clear in the story of the appointment of the deacons.  When the division came and the controversy showed itself, out of the seven men chosen, 5 were Greeks according to their names.  Luke makes this point, or rather the Holy Ghost does.

The final chapters of the book of Acts are concerning Paul’s last days.  I am left with one of the biggest questions of my life as to why the book ends so inconclusively.  With the Holy Ghost inspiring the man called Luke, why no closure?

My only hypothesis is that the book is still being written in heaven.  Maybe the final words were something like “to be continued”.

What chapter will you write to add to the book of Acts?

 

Romans Wednesday, Feb 23 2011 

Uncategorized kennethbow 7:49 am

Paul was 51 years old.

Working with his hands making tents lent time to ponder and muse. His brilliant mind was filled with the wonder of his Lord.

His thoughts wandered around the world while his body remained at Corinth where he was in the midst of the greatest move of God he had yet to witness.

It had been a near fatality.

He had arrived on the brink of despair.

Then the simple decision to preach just Jesus and nothing else had exploded the city of Corinth.

The conversion of many high officials, as well as thousands of ordinary people, had kept his mind occupied for almost a year and a half. No one had ever seen anything like the revival in Corinth.

Today his mind had dreamed of something akin to this happening in Rome. From that epicenter his precious gospel could truly turn the world upside down.

It had begun with a conversation with Sister Phebe.

She commented she was going to Rome. Instantly Paul had pleaded with her to take a greeting from himself to the saints there in the center of the empire.

Laying aside his tools, he picked up his writing instrument and began….

Paul a servant of Jesus Christ…..to all that be in Rome…..

The letter to the Romans. The book that offers the grand view of the Gospel.

The overview of the majesty of God’s plan to man. Sweeping vistas, mountain peaks, and unparalleled heights of revelation.

In Romans Paul unveils God’s plan, man’s depravity, and the ultimate solution to sin.

He scales the ramparts of Jew and Gentile relationship. He plumbs the depth of the death, burial and resurrection.

He laughs at the Law’s ineffectual conclusion and exalts grace as man’s only hope.

What began as a greeting to a far off fraternity of believers, becomes the grand work of the Gospel to the world.

When Phebe stopped by to pick up the greeting Paul had asked her to deliver, she held in her hands the greatest masterpiece of God’s purpose to His creation.

She carried on that ship the summation of 4000 years of law and it’s failure.

She carried Heaven’s solution to Eden’s tragedy.

In about ten to fifteen years Paul would finally catch up with his letter. When he arrived in Rome many years later, he would discover his letter had been received and circulated.

He arrived a prisoner of Jesus Christ, for no mere Caesar could imprison an Apostle.

It was there in Rome, where his mind had gone ten years before, while working on a tent during the Corinthian Revival, that his incredible life came to an end.

He ended his life in a prison.

The irony is the prison was the place he had desired to send others when Jesus called to him on the Damascus Road some 30 plus years ago.

But the dream of the Corinthian Revival also happening in Rome, and ultimately the Roman world, was unfolding.

In the next three hundred years, ten percent of the Roman Empire became Christian.

The gospel to the Romans became the Gospel to the world, watered with the blood of the man who dreamed it could be!

Thanks for reading today!

 

You can’t make money selling hamburgers! Tuesday, Jan 25 2011 

Uncategorized kennethbow 9:14 am

Ray Kroc founded McDonald’s when he was 52 years old.

After trying for two years and talking to more than one hundred people to raise the money, he started the hamburger chain.

One of the men he asked to invest was Tom Seay. Ray Kroc came to Tom Seay’s office and offered Tom thirty percent of the new company for $100,000.00.

It was a Friday afternoon and Tom was busy. He said he would take the business plan home over the weekend and take a look at it.

Tom considered it a “crazy plan”.

Monday morning rolled around and when Tom got to his office, Ray Kroc was waiting for him at the front door.

Tom invited him in and said, “Ray, I read this plan three times; even shared it with a friend. And we both decided that there’s no way in the world you can make any money selling hamburgers”.

Ray had a dream.

Dreams are free and just having them makes life worth living.

Thanks for reading today!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

 

The Spirit of Herod Friday, Dec 17 2010 

Biographical and Motivational and Uncategorized kennethbow 9:29 am

Recently while reading the story of Herod killing the children again my mind drifted back over the years of things I had heard of this event.

I read the number of children killed reached into the thousands.  Maybe as high as ten thousand.

I thought of the prophecy teachers who said this was the fulfillment of the verse in Daniel that says He shall not regard the desire of women.  This verse is usually used by prophecy guys to say the antichrist will be gay, but some have said it referred to Herod because the Biblical definition of desire of women is children.  Meaning that Herod did not regard the children, hence the desire of women.

As I tried to grasp the enormity of this event my mind thought of the spirit behind this atrocity.

Selfish.

Heartless.

Ruthless.

The leap for a preacher was not a long one. The spirit of Herod lives on.

Killing infants.

Spirits in a church that would cause spiritual babes to be exterminated.

Jealousy.

Envy.

Strife.

Bitterness.

Hatred.

Things God hates!

Jesus left the country until the spirit of Herod died.

Then He came back.

Do you ever wonder if Jesus leaves?

Do dry empty altars possibly mean He is not comfortable with some spirit, and leaves until that spirit dies?

Thank you Herod for your help in making our nation more independent of Rome.

Thank you for the magnanimous temple you built our nation.

But I would like to say to you Herod, all your contributions are washed away in the grief of mother’s wails!

Thank you for singing in the choir saint of God.

Thank you for going on outreach.

Thank you for all you do for the church.

I wonder if all those good deeds are washed away in the silent wake of Jesus leaving because you grumble.

Does your gossip cause him to leave and our altars are dry and barren?

 

Thousands of children murdered! Thursday, Dec 16 2010 

Uncategorized kennethbow 6:40 am

Jerusalem Gazette: Thousands of children murdered!

The Gazette has learned through informed sources that before dawn today soldiers of Herod’s army began the massacre of thousands of small children. The murders have been literally from house to house. All the children killed are young, in fact none have been over two years old.

In attempting to find out what is behind this unprecedented horror, we have asked Herod to make a statement. At ten this morning Herod’s press secretary read a statement from the King.

It stated that recently there had been a formal request to see the King from a group of Magi. These wise men had journeyed from the east for approximately 18 months in search of the King of the Jews.

Their claim was that they were astrologers and were following a star that reportedly was to lead them to the King of the Jews. Herod took them serious. There were about forty Magi in the group, the normal number that travel in these troupes. The Magi claimed they had gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

Herod complimented the Magi and requested when they found the new King, that they inform him so he also could go and worship him.

An unidentified source informed us that Herod was livid. After the magi left he went into a tirade. No one would take his Kingdom from him that he had spent years developing in conjunction with Rome. He was the rightful King of the Jews! He had Caesar’s guarantee!

Our source also informs us there was a heated family argument on how to handle this recent threat to the Herod’s throne. Antipas, Philip, and Herodias all put forth different ideas. After long and acrimonious debate, it seems Archalaeus won out. It was he who put forth the simple solution.

Well, he said slowly, there is one sure way to rid us of this threat. All eyes centered on Archalaeus, he took a deep breath and said, just slay all the male children under two years old. Our sources say it was as if the air left the room. The enormity of the idea was nauseating. Even the ruthless Herod clan was speechless. All eyes were on the floor. For many minutes no one said anything.

Herod stood and left the room.

Before dawn today the soldiers of Herod began the massacre that is to eliminate any future King of the Jews.

Our latest news states somewhere around ten thousand young children have been murdered.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

 

Guess who’s coming to town? Thursday, Dec 9 2010 

Uncategorized kennethbow 11:03 pm

Guess who’s coming to town?

Well let me give you some hints!

He wears Red.

His hair is white.

He arrives in the middle of the night.

He knows if you’ve been good or bad.

He lives in the north.

He let’s children sit on his lap.

He sits on a throne.

When he laughs he says…Ho, ho!

Yep, you got it…..

His name is…….

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Jesus!

He wears a scarlet robe,

His hair is white as wool,

He is coming as a thief in the night,

He knows all things,

He lives on the sides of the north,

He welcomes the children,

He sits on a throne,

Zechariah says he laughs….Ho, ho!

Just don’t forget who is really coming to town!

Thanks for reading today.

 

Abraham’s nephew…..Job! Monday, Nov 15 2010 

Uncategorized kennethbow 8:09 am

Abraham’s nephew.

No I am not speaking of Lot. I am actually speaking of Job.

As best as I can research, Job was the son of Abraham’s brother Nahor.

This would make Job and Lot first cousins. What a contrast!

Lot leaves with the man of greatest faith in history and still struggles in Sodom.

God leaves Job in Uz without any support from Uncle Abraham and Job leaves behind a “memorial” to a life of faith to rival that of his Uncle Abraham!

The story is familiar to most of us. There is the introduction with a cosmic contest beyond the human senses.

God and Satan discuss Job without Job’s knowledge.

God says I bet you can’t and Satan says I bet I can.

Satan was wrong. He is always wrong. A classic bimbo and loser. Who would follow such an idiot with a track record of repeated stupidity?

After the first failure Satan slinks back into the throne chamber and says Ya-but.

God smiles and says okay, but I still bet you can’t and Satan says I can.

Mr Stupid tries again and guess who was right again? Yep. God was again right and Mr Stupid Satan is wrong again.

Let me introduce you to Job’s friends.

Eliphaz: a descendant of Esau, an Edomite. Gold digger, money lover and idiot like his ancestor.

Bildad: Abraham’s brother’s son’s son so another cousin. Classic family troublemaker. We all have them. False accusers, arrogant “better than you”, cousins who stink up the place.

Zophar: A flaky friend whose name means to “leave early”. With wit only the Almighty could dream up, he calls the flake who leaves early Zophar! He only goes Zophar (so far), then flakes out.

Finally after three rounds in which Zophar flakes out on the last round because he only goes so far, there enters another character on the stage.

Elihu: This is Job’s younger brother. Trace the names and they both have the same father. This is important because of a couple of things. First the content of his dialog is not against the character of Job, thereby showing Job is being truthful. He has grown up with Job and knows his brother has not sinned. He is only defending God and the contrast of God and evil. Therefore, he is not reprimanded by God and does not have to apologize to Job like the other three have to.

In the story, after the introduction, there are three cycles of discussion. Eliphaz accuses Job and Job defends himself. Then Bildad the critical family member accuses Job and Job defends himself. Then the flake jumps on the band wagon and Job defends himself. The cycle repeats a second time. Then a third time only the flake only goes Zophar and drops out.

Then younger brother steps in and defends his brother by defending the character of God.

Finally God speaks, and everybody shuts up!

Just a note for controversy…..

In chapter two, Job’s wife says do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die. An interesting note is the word curse used there. It is used about 311 times or so in the Bible, and in over three hundred times it means to kneel, to bless God by an act of adoration.

In only three times is it used in a negative form. More importantly, the word we associate with to curse is used in the next chapter by Job in contrast.

So, could it be……

Job’s wife was saying, “Do you still have your right mind? Then before you die, kneel down and pay adoration one more time before death arrives”. To which Job replies, “you speak as one of the foolish women speaketh”. Maybe Mrs Job has gotten a bad rap all these years. Maybe she was convinced her husband was dying and was only saying before you lose your ability to think straight, why don’t you give God one more act of adoration. To which he assured her, I am not dying, this is just a test from the almighty.

She was venerated by her husband later in the book as a wonderful wife. Would he have done that if she was the bitty we have thought for so long?

Would God have given her ten more children and allowed her to live for another 140 years is she cursed him?

Just something to think about while you drink coffee today and jump start your brain.

Oh yeah, one last thing. The passages we love the most in Job when he says I know my redeemer liveth and shall stand on the earth at the latter day, and I wish my adversary would write a book, were both spoken by good old cousin Bildad.

There just ain’t nothing like those relatives and family members to make us pray is there?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

 

The song of the cave Friday, Oct 8 2010 

Uncategorized kennethbow 12:27 pm

Caves are not the ideal place for morale building.

There is a certain sameness to them all, no matter how many you have lived in.

Dark.

Wet.

Cold.

Stale.

A cave becomes even worse when you are its sole inhabitant … and in the distance you can hear the dogs baying.

But sometimes, when the dogs and hunters were not near, the prey sang.

He started low, then lifted up his voice and sang the song the little lamb had taught him.

The cavern walls echoed each note just as the mountains once had done.

The music rolled down into deep cavern darkness that soon became an echoing choir singing back to him.

He had less now than he had when he was a shepherd, for now he had no lyre, no sun, not even the company of sheep.

The memories of the court had faded.

David’s greatest ambition now reached no higher than a shepherd’s staff.

Everything was being crushed out of him.

He sang a great deal.

And eventually, even though he did not know how to throw spears, he did become the most prolific song writer in God’s family.

Alone, cold, hungry, and forsaken, he wrote and sang…..I will bless the Lord at all times.  His praise shall continually be in my mouth……

The song of the cave!

Thanks for reading today!

 

The Walk Saturday, Sep 18 2010 

Motivational and Uncategorized kennethbow 7:04 am

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes…

My father never drove a car. Well, that’s not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.

He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: she said “He hit a horse.” “Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars — the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford — but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we’d ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. “No one in the family drives,” my mother would explain, and that was that. But, sometimes, my father would say, “But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we’ll get one.”

It was as if he wasn’t sure which one of us would turn 16 first. But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn’t drive, it more or less became my brother’s car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn’t bother my father, but it didn’t make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive.

She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving.

The cemetery probably was my father’s idea. “Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?” I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps — though they seldom left the city limits — and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustine’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he’d sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I’d stop by, he’d explain: “The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.”

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out — and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. “No left turns,” he said. “What?” I asked. “No left turns,” he repeated.

“Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn”

“What?” I said again. “No left turns,” he said. “Think about it.. Three rights are the same as a left, and that’s a lot safer. So we always make three rights.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, and I turned to my mother for support. “No,” she said, “your father is right. We make three rights. It works.” But then she added: “Except when your father loses count.”

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. “Loses count?” I asked. “Yes,” my father admitted, “that sometimes happens. But it’s not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you’re okay again.”

I couldn’t resist. “Do you ever go for 11?” I asked. “No,” he said ” If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can’t be put off another day or another week.”

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003.

My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom — the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily — he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he’d fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising — and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, “You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.”

At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, “You know, I’m probably not going to live much longer.” “You’re probably right,” I said. “Why would you say that?” He countered, somewhat irritated. “Because you’re 102 years old,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “you’re right.”

He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: “I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet”

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: “I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable, and I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”

A short time later, he died. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I’ve wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

I can’t figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns.

” Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don’t. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it & if it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.”

Thanks for reading today.

 

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