Strong Word

The word hate is a strong word. According to the dictionary it means to dislike intensely or to have extreme hostility toward someone or something. 

For all of my adult life I have shared that I hate cats. I love most other animals, but I have intensely disliked cats. Early on we discovered that Jeremy was allergic to numerous things including cats, and then Amanda became so allergic to cats that she could not be around anyone who had petted a cat. 

That was reason enough to justify my dislike for cats, but my aversion began long before having children. I just did not trust any animal who stealthily moved around humans. 

There were numerous other reasons to mistrust cats as I believe that they can sense people who don’t like them. When they have opportunity a cat will leave their body waste in your car or in your luggage when you are visiting cat-loving friends. And, as I can attest, they are capable of actually attacking a cat-hater. 

Once when I bought a goat from a farmer, he gave me the price for the goat on the condition that I would have to take home a cat. He had a plethora of cats and was strategically trying to get rid of some of them by forcing buyers of his livestock to accept a feline gift. I reluctantly agreed because I wanted that goat. 

That cat became a valuable animal on our farm. Living on a mountainside in the middle of the woods lends itself to having regular problems with mice and rats. Viola (named by our granddaughter, Abbey) provided varmint control in our garage and barn for 10 years before passing away. 

Thanks to the Feline Society in our town, our new cat, Gus, is patrolling Ton Tenga and bringing us evidence of not only rodents, but small copperheads, moles, squirrels, and birds. 

Over the past 14 years I have learned not to hate cats. Now I still don’t want them in my lap, but I confess that I occasionally rub Gus on the back to thank him for his service to our family. 

Right now many people around the world will say that they hate Russians because of the invasion of Ukraine. Like most people in the western world, I am appalled at the atrocities they are inflicting upon Ukrainians, but I don’t hate them. I have Russian friends. God created them in His image just like you and me. 

In First John, the Bible says that “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness,” and in Leviticus it says “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” Our challenge as followers of Jesus is to hate the aggression and anguish that is being cast upon the Ukrainian people, but not to hate the people who are inflicting the damage. Lord, help us because this is so difficult. 

Egg-citing Ending

Much like people in all societies, the villagers in Burkina Faso liked to express their appreciation for a kindness. As I traveled from village to village on my motorcycle, often a villager would give me gift. These gifts ranged from a chicken or guinea to an egg depending on the prosperity of the subsistent farmer. Many times when I received a gift I would regift it to another villager.

Frequently I received either chicken or guinea eggs, and it was extremely difficult to transport eggs on a dirt bike. When we think of transporting eggs here in the USA we think of egg cartons—but there were no egg cartons in the villages of eastern Burkina Faso. I carried these eggs either in my cap or inside my shirt along my waistline. Did they ever break? Yes, and it was a mess! However, I don’t recall ever breaking a guinea egg as they have extremely hard shells.

When I arrived home with eggs, I laid them on the kitchen countertop so Cheryl could give them the “float” test. She would put them in a bowl of water and if the egg did not float, then she would keep it. If the egg floated, then it was certainly a bad egg. If the egg stood on one end but remained at the bottom of the bowl, then the egg was not fresh, but it was still edible.

This particular day I came home and laid the eggs on the counter, but Cheryl did not immediately give them the float test. Soon afterward we heard a baby chicken chirping. That was not an unusual sound for us around our home, but this sound was not coming from outside the house. It was coming from the kitchen. To our surprise, a chicken egg had hatched on our kitchen countertop!

I enjoy caring for all kinds of fowl. I love throwing cracked corn on the ground for my ducks and guineas. Every time they hear me driving down to the barn on the Kubota RTV they come flying in from all directions.

My preferred meat is chicken, and I like it cooked in every kind of way. I also prefer chicken sandwiches over hamburgers, deli sandwiches or barbeque sandwiches.

Have you ever thought about how much we talk about chickens in our everyday conversations? Here are some samples of everyday sayings about chickens: Mad as a wet hen. Flew the coop. Nest egg. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Hen pecked. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Ruffle your feathers. No spring chicken. Egg on your face. Rule the roost. Chicken feed. Scarce as hen’s teeth. And on and on.

The age-old question about chickens is this: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It doesn’t matter to me—I enjoy eating both!

I bet you thought I was going to ask this age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road?!

I do have the answer to that one: To show the possum how to cross the road without getting run over!

Pap

All my life I have not been proud of my mother’s father. His name was Henry Downs and the children of his eleven children called him Pap. Pap died just before my fifth birthday, so I don’t remember much about him. He had long white hair and a scraggy white beard that was stained by tobacco around his mouth.

It was not his appearance that embarrassed me, but his lifestyle. He and three of his sons made home-made corn whisky. Pap died at the age of 59 because of complications related to alcohol consumption. These three sons died at the ages of 50, 52 and 66 because of similar health challenges.

As I have spent a lot of time over the last 10 months helping to care for my mother, I have learned that my grandfather was a generous man. Everyone knew that he “never made a dime on his corn liquor” because he gave it all away! Everyone in the county knew he made the contraband brew in the hollow just below his home, but no one would turn him in to the authorities because he gave everyone in the county some of his homemade recipe in Mason jars—including the authorities.

But Pap was generous in other areas also. All his life he farmed and logged—that’s Mississippi talk for cutting timber and sawing and selling raw lumber. In the eyes of the world, he was a poor dirt farmer with 80 acres of hills and gullies that yielded poor corn and cotton crops. My mother said that while growing up, she and her siblings talked about their family being rich because everyone that they knew in rural Carroll County Mississippi lived just like them, so they must all be rich!

Pap was, however, generous in other ways. He and one of my uncles cut timber and sawed logs into lumber to build Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Black Hawk, Mississippi. That building lasted for many years until a tornado destroyed it.

In addition to the 80-acre homestead, Pap owned a couple hundred acres of land in another part of the county, and he decided to give that land to his first cousin with the agreement that no houses would be constructed on the land without Pap’s permission. This seems odd to me today, but I suppose he had his reasons for doing this. Even today, Pap’s children (only 4 of the 11 children are still living) must sign off if another member of the Downs family wants to build a house on the acreage.

As I reflect on these and other stories my mother has shared about Pap, I have more appreciation for him. When I was young I was embarrassed to let anyone know that this moonshiner was my grandfather. I am older and wiser now, and I can see good things even among the bad things in people’s lives. The fact is that Pap was indeed a generous man. Some of what he shared with others wasn’t acceptable in my Christian worldview, but the fact remains that he was generous.

I am happy that God is not embarrassed by some of the thoughts that I have, by some of the things that I say or by some of the things that I do. He loves me despite all my faults. I don’t love some of the things that Pap did, but I love the memories of Pap and I love most of all that he liked to give to other people.

"Bricolage"

As the vending machine business managed by my dad expanded, my mother had to prepare more and more sandwiches, so the sandwich-making operation moved from our kitchen bar to a large kitchen at a remote location. My mother hired two people to help her, so I was free to pursue another job—one that actually had a salary!

One of the ladies who worked with my mother was Zola Mae Ivory. Her husband, Frank, worked with my dad, so the Ivory family were very special to my family. Frank is the person who taught me how to drive in an old International pickup.

At work one day my mother was telling Zola Mae that she wanted to have her ears pierced, but she did not want to pay anyone to do it. Zola Mae told her that she could pierce her ears. After a little convincing, Zola Mae dug around in her purse and found a needle. She heated the needle with a match and pierced both of Mom’s ears. Then, Zola Mae picked up a toothpick on the counter and broke it in half and pushed a piece through each of my mother’s ear lobes. For several days Zola Mae cleaned my mother’s ears with hydrogen peroxide, and my mother had no problems.

The process worked and to this day my mother still wears ear jewelry in those holes. Zola Mae performed her little procedure with things that she had on hand. The French word “bricolage” describes what Zola Mae did. She did the best she could with what she had.

I find it interesting that one language has one word to describe something while another language needs several words to say the same thing.

Have you ever heard someone say something like this: “She is a wise woman. She doesn’t say much, but when she does people listen.”

 “Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent." (Proverbs 17:28). 

Hold the Cheese Please

The seventh and eighth grades are tough school years for anyone. In addition to the physical changes and growth spurt, adolescents acquire the ability to reason logically, manage abstract ideas, and connect between cause and effect.

Like most adolescent boys, I began to pay more attention to girls, avoided gang showers after PE at school, and wished that I had more money to spend on what seemed like important things at the time. Unlike other boys, I had a regular job, but it did not put any money in my pockets.

I spent most of the afternoons after school during the eight and ninth grades helping my mother make sandwiches. My dad managed a food vending company, and my mother made sandwiches for the vending machines on the kitchen bar in our home. During the day she would make the tuna salad, pimento cheese and chicken salad and get all the other ingredients together so that when I came home from school the two of us would make hundreds of sandwiches.

The “chopped ham” came in a long metal can about 15” long, and we had to slice the meat with a non-electric hand operated slicer. The processed cheese came in long packages about the same size as the ham, and it was thin sliced horizontally so that we only had to make vertical cuts about the size of the sandwich and then peel off the cheese slices.

There was a lot of incentive for me to go out and find another job when I turned 15 and could get my driver’s license. My pay for working with my mother was that I could eat all I wanted. To this day I hate processed cheese, any kind of tuna fish and any type of processed luncheon meat.

However, my “pay” left me with more than coins in my pocket. I have never known anyone who worked as hard as my mother and my dad. The work ethic that I continue to exhibit even in my senior years was instilled in me by my parents. My earliest understanding of profit and loss was working at the kitchen bar in our home making sandwiches for vending machines. Other life lessons were about food presentation, quality, freshness, how to properly store food, food sanitation, and on and on.

Let’s ponder all the small things that we learned from our parents and how much these seemingly insignificant lessons have influenced our lives, and then how we have unintentionally passed these on to our children and grandchildren.

French Driver's License

For those of you who have lived in another country, you know that many countries in the past issued a driver’s license with no expiration date. France was one of those countries. Until 2013, Germany also had no expiration on their driver’s license.

We lived in Tours, France for a year to learn the French language. During that year of studies, we had a new Peugeot 504 station wagon that we shipped to the Ivory Coast after our French studies were completed. While driving our Peugeot during language studies, we used an international driver’s license which you could obtain in your country of origin where you were a registered driver. You did not have to forfeit your US driver’s license to get an international driver’s license.  

When our studies were completed, we had to stay in France for a couple weeks longer than a year because our house was still occupied in Abidjan. That was good news for us because getting a French driver’s license required a year’s residency in France, so we could get a French license.

During the time we lived in France, we had to always carry an ID card and the international driver’s license. Both documents were laminated and very large. It was impossible to carry them in a wallet or a pants or shirt pocket. You either had to wear a sport coat or overcoat to carry these documents. The only other way to keep them on your person was to carry a “man purse.” Yes, I adapted to the French culture and bought a man purse.

When we arrived in West Africa, I still had to carry the large French driver’s license, and it was blazing hot ALL the time, so I decided that I was going to fold my laminated license and carry it in my wallet. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do because it was a mess, but at least I did not have to carry my purse.

Fifteen years later we moved to Germany. I was traveling to 21 countries in eastern Europe for 70% of the time, so I decided that I was not going to get a German license. I worked hard to get the French license, and I did not want to give it up. Getting the German license was quite an ordeal for Cheryl, but that’s a story that I am not going to touch!

Year later we moved to London, and Cheryl took the driver’s test and got her license, but I never did. Again, I was traveling a lot more than she was, so she was the primary driver on our car insurance. I was never a registered driver in the UK, so that meant that I drove on my old French driver’s license.

Over the past 44 years I have driven in dozens of countries all over the world, and each time an official has stopped me I have shown them my French driver’s license. Cheryl’s UK license expired many years ago, but my French driver’s license lives on!

Smoking on Planes

Just after the fall of communism my job was to lead workers in 21 countries from Norway in the north to Greece in the south. This area included many of the former Soviet satellite countries. We operated from an office in Wiesbaden, Germany, very near the Frankfurt Airport.

This was an exciting time to work in eastern Europe as the people in these countries were introduced to many new freedoms, and many government restrictions had disappeared. However, their economies were in shambles as they moved from a communist system that replaced private property and profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of many industries and natural resources.

People often asked me if I learned German while living in Germany, but frankly, with traveling to these 21 countries to help new workers get settled in and oriented to language study, I was not in my home in Germany enough to learn German. Each one of these 21 countries had their own language.

They also asked how many frequent flier miles I accumulated during this time since I was traveling so much. My response was that after 3 years of doing this work in eastern Europe, I had not gained enough miles to earn one free trip.

If I had been able to fly Lufthansa to every country, I would have accumulated a lot of miles. However, each country to which I was traveling had their own airline, and these airlines were always less expensive than Lufthansa. So, if I was flying to Warsaw, I would fly on LOT. To Bucharest, TAROM. To Prague, CZECH Airlines, and so on.

Occasionally I flew Lufthansa, but this was during the early days of the European airlines enforcement of providing non-smoking seats for passengers. Lufthansa’s interpretation of providing non-smoking seats went like this. In the Business Class, there were two rows of non-smoking seats followed by several rows of smoking seats. Then there were two more rows of non-smoking seats followed by rows of smoking seats for the rest of the plane. As you can imagine it was impossible to escape the smoke.

I had been working in Belgrade and was aboard a Yugoslavian Airlines flight. It was a prop plane with two seats on either side of the aisle. It was an old Soviet-made plane with thin seat cushions, and the floor under the seats was just the metal of the superstructure of the plane. I was in an aisle seat, and the guy directly across from me in the aisle seat (like 20 inches from me) lit up a cigarette. I looked at my paper boarding pass to confirm that I had requested a non-smoking seat. Yes.

There were no buttons to push for any service, so I started waving my hands in the air at the flight attendant who was sitting in the back of the plane—yes, she was also smoking. She meandered up the aisle to my seat and asked me in broken English, “May I help you?” I asked her to look at my boarding card indicating that I had a non-smoking seat. She replied, “Yes.” Then I said to her, “The man next to me is smoking.” She said, “Yes.”

At this point I was wondering if she was understanding me, so again I showed her my boarding card. Non-smoking. She said, “Oh yes.” She pointed to my side of the plane and said, “This side no smoke.” And then she pointed across the aisle and said, “This side smoke.”

These experiences plus many others in the former Soviet Union, the Arab world and Asia have caused me to inhale enough smoke to do serious damage to my lungs. Maybe that’s why I had to have my middle lobe removed a few years ago!

Halitosis

No one ever tells you that you have sweet breath, but family and close friends are quick to tell you that you have bad or unpleasant breath. I think a sensitivity to halitosis is a cultural thing, and I think it is 100 times more prevalent in the USA. Furthermore, I think that the biggest promoters of that issue are the makers of breath refreshing products.

We have lived in six countries outside the USA, and I don’t recall the mouth refreshing industry having a grip on the population’s wallet.

If you are wondering how I began thinking about this, it all started when I was timing my breathing. I take an average of 12 breaths a minute, and then I began to wonder if I was average for my age.

As I typed into the search engine “average number brea…” this is what popped up: “average number of breaths per minute.” So, you see, there have been others who have already performed that search. Therefore, I am not that weird—at least in this respect.  

I learned that for the first year of a child’s life, the normal respiratory rate is 30-60 times per minute. The average respiratory rate of a healthy adult is 12-18 times per minute. For someone in my age bracket 12 breaths per minute is average, so I felt better about my breathing.

Breathing is something that we take for granted until we are not able to catch our breath. Thinking about breathing led me to appreciate the fact that every breath I take is a gift of God. Every cell in our body depends on a steady flow of oxygen into our body. All our living processes depend on our breathing. We stop breathing and we die. And isn’t it amazing that God knows how many breaths we will take.

Stop now. Take a deep breath. Then thank the Lord for letting you take another breath.

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” (Psalm 150:6)

Generosity Planning

Have you known one of those people who say they don’t plan their vacations—they just take off and head in a direction and see what happens? Are you one of those? Well, my thinking on this is that they cannot say they don’t plan their vacations. You see, they had to do some planning: taking PTO from work, syncing the kids’ schedules, determining if they are going to drive or fly, arranging for the financial resources to take a vacation, arranging (notice I am trying not to use the word “planning” here) for someone or a kennel to take care of the dog, arranging for picking up the mail and making the house look like it is lived in while they are away. And on and on.

The issue is not about saying, “I don’t plan the vacation,” but more on how much planning you must do just to get ready to go. Face it—we are planners. We make grocery lists on our phones. We make lists of things to do today and this week either on our phones or post-it notes. Our lives revolve around “to do” lists. I am certain that there are people with better memories than mine who make their lists in their head.

We plan our finances with budgets. We plan birthday parties for the children or grandchildren. We have plans for family holiday gatherings and plans for our health including medications and supplements.

Planning gives direction and facilitates coordination of objectives.  It reduces risks and encourages ideas. If one fails to plan, one plans to fail. Planning is an integral part of our lives.

We have a plan for most things in our lives, so why don’t we have generosity plans? The sharing of our resources is done in an improvising or extemporizing manner. Giving patterns in most households are  spontaneous or because of guilt.

Your generosity plan must first include the why. Some would respond to this quickly and say, “Because the Bible tells us to be generous,” but that is not necessarily your why. This is about your motivation for being generous. What are the passions of your family? What are your values? What is the Lord saying to you?

Your plan includes the what—meaning to define the causes that you wish to support and then identify the organizations that you believe are doing the best job addressing these causes. Do not move through this too quickly as you need time to do a deep dive into organizations to make sure their mission and values align with your family’s. By the way, this is not just about your money. Generosity includes your talents, your time, and your treasure.

The plan also includes the how—matching the resources that God has given you and your family to have the greatest impact on the causes that you have identified.

We need to bring greater intentionality to our giving, and we also need to align our valuables with our values. The best way to do that is to have a generosity plan.

Hiding

How long has it been since you have played Hide and Seek? I was watching a show on TV this week where the child told his mother to count and that he was going to hide. One, two, three, four, five, six, and then the mother was distracted and completely forgot about her preschooler hiding in another room. Finally, the boy cried out to his mother, and she replied by saying, “Twenty. Ready or not, here I come!” With 16 grandchildren I have played more than my share of this 2,000-year-old children’s game.  

Beman was a young Ivoirian Muslim friend when we lived in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He was a handsome dude, and his smile, kind voice and affability easily won new friends.

We had much time together in Adjame’ on the outskirts of Abidjan where I was regularly meeting with a group of young men to study the Bible. Beman was smart, and he asked good questions.

He was my favorite participant, but one day I was totally discouraged with something that he shared with me. We were talking about the omniscience of God and how we cannot hide from God. Beman shared with the group that he could successfully hide from God. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him to elaborate.

He said that during the fast of Ramadan he would cover himself with a blanket so that God could not see, and he would eat and drink during the daytime fast.  Beman thought he was hiding from God.

It is easy for us westerners to laugh at this simple attempt to hide from God, but the fact is that most people’s understanding of omniscience is either elementary or non-existent. When I have shared this story of Beman with others, many have been amused at the simple mind of this West African, but if we are honest with ourselves, all of us at some time have been guilty of trying to hide from God.

Genesis 3:8 tells us that Adam and Eve hid from God. When we are disobedient to God, our sinful instinct is to run away and hide from Him. Rather than running away from God, we should be running to God for restoration and help.

“Can anyone hide from me in a secret place? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” Jeremiah 23:24.

What Do Angels Look Like?

Very few of us failed to see some kind of Christmas pageant during the past month. Our five-year old granddaughter, Amelia, was in a children’s dramatic musical presentation at our church recently. She was a star—and a comical one. When the “stars” lifted their hands in sync with the music, their costumes covered their faces. But, of course, it was a magnificent program.

During Christmas programs, my attention usually turns to the angels because they always look the same. Dressed in glittering white, they have a halo and wings, and they are usually smiling, right? At least that is what they look like in all the pageants that I have seen.

How do we know what an angel looks like? For sure it is not a western cultural thing as the Sumerian, Assyrians, Babylonians and ancient Egyptians have left us carved images of angles that look just like the ones in our Christmas pageants. So it looks like our notion of what an angel looks like has been passed down from generation to generation.

It strikes me that when an angel is introduced in The Word, the people to whom they appeared must have been afraid. Matthew 29:5 states: "But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified." So, what did the angel look like if the first thing it said to the women at Jesus' tomb was "Don't be afraid?" Probably not what our stereotyped notion of pageant angels is.

Then, there is I Chronicles 21:30 where the angel carried a sword: "but David could not go before it to inquire of God, for he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD." How many pageants have you seen with an angel carrying a sword?!

Many times in our lives our minds are set -- on what something is supposed to look like, on what you think something tastes like, on what someone believes, on where someone fits in the societal rankings, on how we are going to like someone -- before we ever get an opportunity to see, experience and understand for ourselves.

Perhaps you are guilty as I have been of forming an opinion of someone based on what others tell you before you ever meet the person or before you get to know her or him. I really do not want to allow someone else to choose my friends for me by accepting their opinion before I have the opportunity to make up my own mind.

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge." James 4:11

My Bad

How many times have you heard the expression, “my bad” recently? And, in my case, how many times have I said that expression recently? I find myself saying it regularly.

There is debate about the origin of this idiom, and stories range from Shakespeare to Louis Armstrong. However, there is no doubt that an NBA superstar in the 1980s made the phrase mainstream.

Manut Bol was an NBA star in the 80s who came from Sudan to play basketball in America. His native language was Dinka from South Sudan. When he was playing basketball, he did not have a good enough grasp of English to express himself with “my fault,” so he would just say, “my bad.” His teammates picked the saying up and the expression has become conventional idiom.

We have a photograph of Manut Bol and one of our former colleagues who worked in the Horn of Africa. She was a nurse and hardly stood five feet tall. In the photo of her standing beside the 7’7” NBA basketball star, who at the time was the tallest NBA player ever, our former colleague barely came to his waistline.

Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone is willing to say “my bad.” I have found that good leaders admit their mistakes, and when they do, they show vulnerability. The best leaders own their mistakes and use them to become better leaders.

Proverbs 24:16 tells us, “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again” (NIV). Everyone makes mistakes; the Bible is clear on that. Mistakes are useful—they teach us what doesn’t work. 

Look around you. Everyone you see has made mistakes, and they will continue to make mistakes.

However, God does not make mistakes. This is Christmas Day. We celebrate the birth of a baby born of a virgin who died a cruel death on the cross. We celebrate Christmas because of the birth of our Savior who was resurrected and now offers eternal life for all who trust in Him. Rejoice!

Lead with Questions

I have always been curious. It is said that farmers are a curious lot. I was born on the farm and grew up around the farm, so maybe that’s why I am so curious.

Cheryl and I studied French for a year at the Institut de Tourraine in Tours, France. We were in classes together through most of our studies, and Cheryl “talked” to me often about embarrassing her in the classroom. She performed better than me on our dictations, so she was better at grammar than I was. However, since I asked a lot of questions in the classroom and I was not shy about speaking in class, I became a more fluent speaker than she.

In a third-degree class, our professor asked me: “Etes-vous Chinois, Monsieur Cox?”  Before this blond-haired blue-eyed fellow could respond, Monsieur Herot said that since I asked so many questions, I must be Chinese.

One of my mentors, Avery Willis, spoke many times as he traveled with me across eastern Europe. After he chose me to lead one of the regions of the world for the IMB, he told me that he first became interested in me because I asked hard questions that made him think before responding. I don’t recall planning hard questions to ask him, so I guess it is just my nature to ask a lot of questions.

I ask a lot of questions because I do not know the answers. My grandkids—the preschoolers at least—think I know everything because for every question that they ask me, I always have a response. Cheryl bought me a T shirt a couple of years ago that says, “Papa knows everything. If he doesn’t know he makes stuff up really fast!”

There are certainly many questions that I cannot answer, but that was never true of Jesus. He knew all the answers, and yet he focused so much of his interaction with people on asking them questions. The four Gospels record over 300 (exact number depends on the translation) questions that Jesus asked.

Fifty years ago Grady Nutt wrote a little book called “Being Me.” The premise of the book is summed up in this statement: I am a person of worth created in the image of God to relate and to live. God created us as relational beings, and, as such, we grow through asking and responding to each other’s questions.

Jesus taught that we are changed as much by what we say as what we hear. Mark 7:15 (NIV) “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’”

Jesus asked listeners a question to explain the point of a parable. He answered questions with questions. He asked questions for opinions or to remind people of what they already knew. His questions warmed up a crowd or provoked an argument.

We ask questions for information, but Jesus asked questions to provoke transformation. We ask questions for answers, but Jesus asked questions for awareness.

Good leaders ask questions. A leader who leads with questions will usually be more effective than a leader who only leads by telling.

Black Hawk

Russia’s new President Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a speech in 1986—just one year after being elected—where he criticized the Soviet Union’s economic system and introduced a new era with two words: Perestroika (reconstruction) and Glasnost (opening or transparency). This was the beginning of the fall of communism and the opening of Eastern Europe to the western world.

It was a great privilege to be able to work in Eastern Europe in the 1990s during the first post-communism decade. There had been no expat missionaries working in Eastern Europe during decades of communism, so the opportunities to send missionaries into the former Soviet Bloc countries was an answer to the prayers of millions of evangelical Christians.

The Area Director of Europe asked me to come and work on a leadership team to begin work in Eastern Europe. My responsibility was all the countries from the Baltics to the Balkans. That included all the Nordic countries down through Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Poland, Slovak and Czech Republics, Romania, Bulgaria, and on through Croatia, Serbia, and the rest of southern Europe. My colleague, Dan Panter, led workers in Russia and the rest of the Soviet satellite countries.

Since we were opening work in these countries, a huge challenge was getting families settled new areas. I had to do a great deal of traveling in those 16 countries to encourage new families as they began studying language, getting their children enrolled in schools, and learning how to buy groceries.

Those years were also difficult for Eastern Europeans as they were able to buy and sell commodities for the first time in generations. People all over Eastern Europe were hungry for western currencies as their currency rates were unstable. Prices for some items were relatively inexpensive, so I took the opportunity to buy some antique maps. All my life I have loved geography and especially old maps. I enjoyed browsing small old shops in Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. One of the “treasures” that I found in Poland was a small map printed in German and made in Berlin. It was once part of a North American atlas. Most antique maps were part of a book at one time. If you are shopping for an antique map printed in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, look for a crease in the middle of the map to help authenticate the map. The crease was formed as the map was bound originally in a book.

A small 8” X 12” map caught my eye. It was printed in the late 1800s, and it featured the USA states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. and when I examined it closely, I was delighted to see the small town of “Black Hawk” printed on the Mississippi map. My mother and dad lived on a farm near Black Hawk when I was born. My dad graduated from Black Hawk High School in 1945. On this old map Black Hawk was registered as one of the stops on the stagecoach line from Nashville to Natchez.

Formed in 1828, Black Hawk, Mississippi is one of the oldest settlements in North Mississippi. The town was incorporated in 1836 but it had been a village long before Mississippi ever became a state. Some of the early settlers to this community were Coxes. I had a fast bond with this little antique map

Today there is no town of Black Hawk. All the little stores are gone and the road where the stagecoach once passed through Black Hawk is not even a through street. But the old Black Hawk School building is still standing, and it continues to be used for special events such as Bluegrass concerts or impromptu “picking and grinning.” Most governor candidates for the past 150 years have spoken at political rallies at the Black Hawk School.

Back to maps—today we do not value maps. We utilize GPS so much instead of maps that kids growing up now do not ever look at maps. GPS is very good at getting you to that next location, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the places that you’re passing along the way.

I had the little Black Hawk map framed, and I presented it to my parents. The map still hangs in a prominent place in my mother’s den today. Every time I visit my mother’s house, I study that map like it is my first time to see it. It brings back a lot of memories. Maps connect people to their memories.

Maps can tell you how people understood their world when that map was made. Maps are a time capsule.

Look at a map with someone else and it won’t take long for you both to start pointing to different spots and sharing stories of that place.

Am I advocating giving up the GPS—nope! I love using it although on occasion it has instructed Cheryl and me to “get out of the car and walk to your final destination.” Where’s my map?

Feet on the Ground

While living in the “bush” of eastern Upper Volta/Burkina Faso, we made family trips to the capital city every four to six weeks. Ouagadougou was the only place to buy most of our groceries and other supplies. It was always a treat for the kids as they would get to see the children of fellow workers. They also looked forward to staying in the mission guesthouse because it had a window unit air conditioner. It was a huge treat for us coming from the bush to get to sleep in an air-conditioned room. We did not have electricity unless the generator was running much less an air conditioner.

There was an American Club that had a pool, but it was always crowded with families of American Embassy staff. On one particular trip we decided to splurge and pay to swim in the pool at the nicest hotel in the city.

After a four-hour trip to Ouagadougou on dusty roads with all the windows rolled down on the Land Cruiser (no A/C either), we had all eaten so much dust that we could not wait to get to the pool. Upon arriving at the pool, we were excited because we were the only people at the pool.

After about 30 minutes of alone time at the pool, we saw four men headed to the pool. These were white men, so we knew they were foreigners. One of them had on a Tee shirt and swimsuit, and oddly enough, the other three had on suits—and it was over 100 degrees.

The one with the swimsuit sat down on the side of the pool with his feet in the water while the other men just stood around him. I was playing with the kids and overheard them speaking English, so I decided to wade over and talk with them.

I introduced myself, and the swimmer said, “You don’t recognize me?” I replied that I am sorry, but I did not recognize him. One of the men on the side of the pool said, “This is Rev. ____, the famous tele-evangelist.” I responded with a “Nice to meet you.”

The Reverend asked me questions about our family and what we were doing in Ouagadougou. I explained how we were working with villagers while living among them.

I asked him what they were doing in Ouaga. He said that he wanted to have feet on the ground to raise money to help hungry people. A film crew had accompanied them to Ouagadougou. They had rented a helicopter to take the Reverend to a village for filming. I did not even know there was a helicopter in the country! As he talked, I realized that the three “bodyguards” were his “yes men.” They were eager to please the Reverend.

The Reverend’s party was spending a great deal of money for him to have his feet on the ground for a couple of hours of filming time so that they could buy television time in the USA to show how benevolent he was. All that money was spent so that people would see his compassionate work in villages and be moved to give generously to his ministry.

I have no idea how much of what people gave would actually wind up feeding hungry people, but the irony of this encounter is that at the same time we were actually feeding hungry villagers with money from Baptist church members in the USA who had given generously knowing that 100% of what they gave would go to actually feed these hungry people, and none of it would be used to rent a helicopter, pay for the team members’ and filming crew’s travel expenses, pay for television broadcast,  and on and on.

Faithful people in our Southern Baptist churches give today though Send Relief International knowing that the missionaries who will utilize those funds are taken care of through the Cooperative Program, so all the money given for hungry or needy people will be used to help them.

Be careful where you invest your charitable dollars. Many Christian mission or relief organizations keep administrative and fundraising dollars in the USA and then have additional admin costs in offices overseas.

Those feet on the ground can gobble up much of what you intend to help people who are hurting.

Stinky Food

I have been spending a lot of time with my 91-year-old mother. She is persona non grata with the assisted living homes in the area since she became an escape artist at the first one in which she resided, so Cheryl and I go often to Mississippi to stay with her and try to keep her out of trouble.

Although she is legally blind, she still insists on cooking. Last week she cooked a pound cake before I arrived, and even though I am not fond of pound cakes, this one really tasted good.

However, another day she cooked some cornbread. I was on a business call, so I was unable to watch her as she mixed and cooked the cornbread in the oven. I smelled something strange when I finished my call. She had cut the cornbread and left it in the well-seasoned iron skillet. The cornbread was brown through and through instead of the normal yellow, so I leaned over to smell it. I bet you do that sometimes too. When something looks strange, we want to smell it!

Well, it did not smell like her normal good-tasting cornbread. I think I hurt her feelings when I did not eat any of it for lunch, but something just was not right about that cornbread.

Many traditional foods in other countries don’t really smell good. You don’t have to lean over the dish to detect the smell as it is sometimes very strong.

One such food in Southeast Asia is a fruit called durian. Durian’s pungent odor is so bad that in Singapore you are not allowed to have durian with you on public transportation or in hotels. I have often seen it in the markets in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Singapore, but I have never tasted it as I cannot get past the awful smell.

When we lived in Burkina Faso, every market day was marked by a West African fermented spice called Dawadawa. This fishy aromatic spice is made from the seed of the Locust Bean tree. The seeds are cooked into a gooey black paste, and after fermenting, it is one of the most used spices among all people groups of West Africa. The fermented pungent flavor of Dawadawa means that a little of it will go a long way.

Once in a village in Upper Volta (now known as Burkina Faso) our whole family was asked to sit under a shade tree away from villagers. You may be thinking about sitting at a table with chairs, but this was not the case in West African villages. I never saw villagers sit at any kind of table to eat a meal. They either squat or sit on a small hand-carved wooden stool about six inches in diameter. Cheryl and I had small stools and the kids squatted around us as they brought us a calabash bowl full of fat rice and meat. Ordinarily, we would dig into the food as we had become accustomed to the seasoning of village-cooked food.

However, in this case, something did not smell right, so I told the children not to eat anything yet. I pulled out a piece of meat. I did not know if it was goat, mutton, pork or whatever, but it was not good. It had a very strong odor of spoiled meat.

We were in a predicament. We did not want to embarrass our hosts by not eating the meal, so I had to get rid of at least some of the food to make it look like we had eaten.

The villagers were being served their portions nearby and they were watching us. We needed a diversion so I could dispose of the rotten food. Being the only white people within an hour’s drive in any direction had its advantages. I asked the kids to walk toward the villagers and shake hands with everyone to create a diversion so I could dump our food somewhere.

I had a couple of plastic bags in our vehicle, so I poured some of the food into the first bag. The food was so hot that it melted the plastic bag and fell on the ground. With my foot I quickly tried to cover the food with some dust, and then one of the elders of the village walked up and smiled. He said in their More’ language: “You white people don’t like our food, do you?”

Of course, Cheryl and I were immediately embarrassed, but the elder laughed and announced to the whole village: “Larry and his family don’t like our food.” The whole village laughed, and in the end, we still had a good relationship with the people in that village.

Isn’t it great how much those villagers accepted us strange foreigners and loved us despite our inabilities in adapting to their culture, language, food and customs? I only wish that Americans would be so understanding with those foreigners who come to live among us.

An Elephant in the Room

Having traveled for most of my life, I have numerous stories about motels and hotels. I have been awakened a half dozen times by the hotel fire alarm, but only once was there a real fire. Fortunately, it was in the parking garage and did not destroy my room—but I spent the night sitting on a curb outside in the cold. Several times I have been given keys to rooms that were already occupied by one or more persons, and yes, I walked in on these people! I have slept on every kind of bed including hammocks, extremely hard Asian beds, and even a piece of yellowed foam with no covering.

There are stories of obnoxious, noisy, partying, and just crazy people staying beside me or above me, but I will only share my most recent sleep deprived night. During a visit to southern California recently, I was staying in a Double Tree Hotel in Pomona. After a busy day of meetings, I needed to unwind, so I prepared for bed and started reading a book, “Washington’s Spies.” Just on the brink of falling asleep, I sat up quickly in the bed as it sounded like someone running across my room.

Actually, the noise was coming from the room above me. It sounded like an elephant tromping across the room. I was on the first floor, and I knew my room carpet was laid upon concrete, but the second floor had to be wooden because I could hear every step of someone walking heavily back-and-forth the length of the room. Suddenly, he or she or it started pouncing across the bed as it walked around the room.

I sat down hard on my bed and jumped up and down trying to duplicate the noise from the creaky bed I heard above me--but to no avail. I don’t know how any creature could make that much noise walking. I wondered why it was pacing so much. The pace was not a regular one. It was as if it deliberately chose a different path around the room every 30 seconds. I could not go to sleep.

I turned on the television thinking that would drown out the noise and make me sleepy. Didn’t work. I tried reading. Didn’t work. I tried holding a pillow over my head but that’s not a good situation in which to go to sleep. I had to wake up at 6 AM, and it was already past midnight.

My human nature wanted me to bang on the ceiling, but I was afraid that some psycho would come down and pound on my door. I thought about going to the front desk and complaining, but I remembered that there was a young lady at the desk, and I did not want her to confront the psycho.

 Somehow, I drifted to sleep. During the very short night, I had to go to the bathroom and guess what? The elephant was still in the room, and it was still pacing the floor and the creaky bed.

When I awoke in the morning, IT was still pacing the floor, and I wondered to myself, “Doesn’t this thing above me ever sleep?” My first inclination was to pick up my shoe and stand in the desk chair and bang on the ceiling.

That’s the modus operandi for us as human beings, isn’t it? When someone does something bad to us, we want to do something bad to them. Like someone cutting you off in traffic makes you want to catch up with them and cut them off. Or you learn that someone in your extended family made a snide comment about one of your immediate family, and your reaction is to make a smart remark about someone in their immediate family.

While grabbing my shoe, the Lord brought this to my mind from I Peter: “Put aside all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander.” I didn’t bang on the ceiling – although I wanted to really bad!

Street Called Straight

Our knowledge of world and national events is controlled by the media. As the media move from one tragedy to the next, we move with them. Media tire of one tragedy and seem to welcome a new one because ratings determine the cost of advertising. Media need sponsors to pay their bills, and old news does not attract viewers/listeners/readers. It is all about money

One such tragedy that has not been in our attention for months is the Syrian crisis. What began as part of the Arab Spring uprising in March 2011 escalated into civil war resulting in over a half million people being killed—160,000 of those civilians.

There are, of course, the tragedies of Yemen and Haiti that have also taken the back seat of media coverage since the Afghanistan crisis, but my attention and prayers today are focused on a whole generation of Syrian children who have not been in school during this 10-year war in Syria.

Cheryl and I were in Damascus visiting with some of our personnel before the outbreak of the war. As we traveled around the city, we were amazed at the number of young people in the country of 22 million people. Everywhere we went children were about. Today those children are afraid to come out of their homes—if they even have a house to call home!

We walked the “Street Called Straight.” Today it is called “Souq Midhat Pasha.” We had to buy something from one of the small shops scattered along this historic street just because the Apostle Paul had walked along that road. This two-thousand-year-old road was a Greek and later a Roman road that runs east to west through Damascus for over one mile.

People from all over the world have walked down the “Street Called Straight” for centuries with no fear from warring factions, but today that is not true. Half the population of Syria has been internally displaced. Another 6-7 million Syrians have fled the country. Syrians who remain in the country are pessimistic about the future of their country.

Would you join me in praying for cessation of the war in Syria?

Goose Liver

Living in six other countries and traveling in more than 130 countries over the past 45 years, I have eaten some weird things.

But I started eating different foods at an early age. When I was 3 years old I would sit on the meat chopping block behind the meat and cheese cooler in the general store owned by Leon Tate in Black Hawk, Mississippi. Mr. Leon would cut me a small slab of “goose liver,” and I would gobble it down. The patrons laughed at me because they were not accustomed to any child eating “goose liver.” 

God was preparing me for a lifetime of traveling and eating different foods. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta where cotton was king for generations. Many immigrants settled in the Delta because of  job opportunities. Growing up I had many Chinese friends whose parents usually ran a small grocery store. They lived in the rear of these grocery stores, and they would often cook Chinese food and sell it out of their home kitchens.

The specialty of my favorite Chinese grocery store kitchen was actually not a Chinese dish, but it was sliced pork with a homemade sweet Asian barbeque sauce. Barbeque may not sound very Asian to many people, but it was my introduction to a lifetime of enjoying barbeque.

Our family enjoyed eating in restaurants owned by Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, and Syrians all in our small town. As a teenager working in the men’s store, I ate a lot of lunches in these restaurants and learned to love capers and anchovies on my salads. My pizza of choice today is anchovies, jalapenos, and onion—but no one ever wants to share it with me!!

My dad ran a food vending company owned by a Lebanese family for 26 years. My first experience with Arab food was in my hometown as we often ate Mediterranean delicacies from my dad’s boss’s kitchen and the kitchen of other Arab-Americans in our hometown.

When we lived in Upper Volta, West Africa, a delicacy of villagers was the stomach of sheep. It was boiled and it was so tough it was hard to chew and get down. Villagers usually served their delicacy to important people, and unfortunately, I was always important. It was difficult to gnaw on a bite of stomach while some kids near me were eating the delicious tender parts of the sheep.

One of the most popular cooking spices in the Sahel of West Africa is the dried fruit of a locust bean tree which is called by a different name in every local language. Children eat the yellow powder around the seeds, but the seeds are soaked and allowed to ferment to get the intense aroma that it gives. Frankly, it just stinks! During the eleven years we lived there, I always dreaded shaking hands with someone who was working with this spice. The strong aroma passed from their hands to my hands and then to my nostrils. Yuck! Remarkably enough, when cooked, the stinking substance does not taste bad at all.

Traveling in Central Asia for six years during the time of the fall of Communism, I was frequently offered the traditional fermented mare’s milk called “Kumis.” It is a mildly alcoholic drink originating with the Mongolians that is enjoyed all across Central Asia. Is it tasty? What would you think? The Central Asians love it, but most of their foreign visitors think it is not so good.  The Kyrgyz and Kazakhs say that you have to develop a taste for this delicacy.

In my travels in the Horn of Africa, I discovered another slightly fermented food. Injera is a sour flatbread used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine that is thicker than a crepe but thinner than a pancake. It is made from teff, an ancient grain, and when cooked it has a sour taste. It is usually served with toppings called “wat.” I am not fond of the “fermenty” bread, but I do like the “wat” which can be any of a variety of toppings such as lentils, eggs, chicken stew, boiled collards, and other delicacies.

By the way, I was served a meal on my first ever flight to Paris on Air France in June 1976, and the appetizer was “pate’ de foie gras.” It is a popular food in France and is served in some of the most exquisite restaurants in the world. I have enjoyed eating it on every opportunity—although it is a pricey delicacy. Guess what it is---goose liver!

S. Truett Cathy once said, “Food is essential to life, therefore make it good.”

Thank you, Lord, for giving us between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds in our mouths so that we can enjoy good food.

Fear

Our church is one of many that sponsors a Trunk-R-Treat event in the parking lot of our church as an outreach ministry to the community. We participate gladly giving pretzels, candy or other treats to the hundreds of kids who come all dressed up. No one has measured the effectiveness of this event at our church, but I know that people have come to our church for the first time as a result of this event. So, in my mind it is worth all the efforts if just one person comes to a right relationship with the Heavenly Father.

Halloween is big business. I was appalled at reading this: “According to the National Retail Federation, spending on Halloween-related items is expected to reach $10.14 billion, up from $8.05 billion in 2020 and an all-time high. Individually, Americans are anticipated to spend an average of $102.74 on Halloween this year.”

Then there is the horror movie industry—I read some stunning figures on the amount of money made on horror movies because they are so wildly popular and compared to other movies, they are much less expensive to produce. Good news for investors in horror movies: huge ROI.

Horror movies, horror features on TV, buying costumes, decorating houses and paying for spook venues—all that money to scare people.

We are fortunate to live in a country where we don’t live in fear. So, we pay money to get frightened! So many people around the world live in fear every day. I have traveled in 130 plus countries over the years, and the most frightened people I have ever seen were in North Korea. Walking down the street people don’t even look into the face of other people. You never see smiles on their faces. Everyone is suspicious of others. The government rules by fear.

Albania was the last of the former communist European countries to renounce communism. My first trip to Albania was in 1995. As the Lufthansa aircraft landed at the Tirana airport the noise from the tires rolling over the pavement was alarming. The runway was so rough and the cracks in the pavement were so wide that the jet was required to halt at the end of the runway so a crew could come out in a truck to examine the tires of the jet. After a few minutes of inspection, the jet taxied to the point of disembarkation.

Driving from the airport to the city, I was amazed at the proliferation of concrete bunkers that looked like igloos scattered across fields. The bunkers were built all over the country because the leadership of the country instilled a fear into all Albanians that the Americans were going to invade their country. Hundreds of thousands of metal spears pointing upward were mounted on farm fence posts to kill the invading paratroopers from America.

The government of Albania strong-armed people of the country and ruled the hermit nation through fear. This is another example of how many nations have been ruled by instilling fear in the citizens of the country.

Even though we do not live in a country that intentionally instills fear into its citizens, fear is something we all face every day, and it can steal our joy and peace if we let it overwhelm us. The Bible is filled with stories of people who overcame their fears with the strength of God.

Rolfe Dorsey, one of my mentors, told me this when I was 19 years old: Preach Jesus. Hate nothing but sin. Fear nothing but God.

Godly fear isn’t the same as fear of a tyrant or a dictator. We don’t need to fear God’s anger unless we have an unrepentant heart because of sin. The act of fearing God is absolute reverence and awe for the Almighty God, the creator and sustainer of all things.

During my treatments for my second bout with cancer, Joshua 1:9 was my verse: Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” I am not afraid because the Lord has planned every step of my life, and I trust in Him as He directs my journey.