Hero: Jésus Eduardo Ortiz

Our first encounter was in Mexico City. We were guests of a former Mexican congresswoman and her husband who was a former cabinet member in the government of Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón. This couple had invited WinShape International to partner with them in presenting some business conferences in Mexico City.

My first impression of Jésus was that this bald, jovial, loud Colombian was so full of self-confidence that I was not going to enjoy his presentation about his work with young people. You know how you sometimes form an opinion of someone before you ever listen to them and learn about them and their passions for helping others. Well, I was wrong because I was mesmerized by the stories he told of young people who were destitute and living on the streets of Bogotá and how their lives were changed by hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Jésus Eduardo and his wife, Marcela, established a nonprofit, Operation Reconciliation, that provides financial resources for their ministries. Jésus has a captivating testimony of how God brought him out of a life of addiction and nonsense to follow Jesus Christ and serve Him instead of himself.

In Colombia, as in most developing countries, students are separated into those who will pursue a curriculum to prepare them for university studies and those who will not have an opportunity to do any college work when they finish high school. Jésus has committed his life and his family resources to develop programs that equip these students who reach a dead end in getting prepared for their livelihoods. For many years he and his family have worked in public and private high schools to introduce a curriculum that teaches business principles and entrepreneurship.

I have traveled many times to Colombia over the past 18 years to witness first-hand how these extra-curricula training programs provided by Operation Reconciliation have helped shape the future for thousands of young people in Bogota.

Jésus has led efforts to use round table discussion of 40-character principles that are grounded in the Bible in businesses, manufacturing plants, hospitals, and schools. Some of the most successful round tables have been with the Colombian military forces and in the Colombian prison system. His work has spread into many other South and Central American and Caribbean countries. I could write pages on the life changes that have taken place in police forces, national justice systems and in the marketplace.

For many years Jésus has also been working with children and youth who are living on the streets of major cities in Colombia. Many of them suffer from drug addiction, and through the grace of God, Operation Reconciliation has helped them to overcome their addictions, receive coaching and mentoring, and find a job to provide housing, food, and clothing for themselves.

Our grandson, Collin, traveled with me on one of my trips to Colombia. While I was leading conferences for businesspeople, Jésus had some of his reformed young men entertain Collin. In a phone call to Collin’s mother, she asked what Collin was doing and who was taking care of him while I was teaching. Neither Collin nor I wanted to inform his mother that he was in the care of former drug addicts! However, these young men all walk with the Lord, and I would have trusted any of my grandchildren with them.

Early on in our friendship, I asked Jésus Eduardo about the mission of his family. The first words out of his mouth were: “Make money to use it for Jesus Christ.” I have watched this family for the past 17 years, and I can testify that they do not use their wealth on themselves, but they steward all their resources (time, talent, experience, money, and hospitality) to glorify the Lord.

 If I had any influence in nominating someone for a Nobel Peace Prize, I would nominate Jésus Eduardo Ortiz. But you know it is much more important that when Jésus passes from earth and arrives in heaven, the Lord is going to say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

No Fear

My first visit to Yellowstone National Park was in 1984. A friend and I drove from Memphis to Sheridan, Wyoming to speak at the first annual meeting of the Wyoming Baptist Convention. We drove from there to speak at the Idaho-Utah Baptist Convention for their 25th anniversary.

After we finished our speaking responsibilities, we traveled to Jackson Hole for some adventures in Yellowstone. A college friend was an outfitter and guide for hunters, and he invited us to go elk hunting with him one day. There was three feet of snow on the ground, so fortunately, my friend provided horses for our outing.

My Jackson Hole friend had an elk permit, but all we saw on the hunt was several moose. We did not have all the necessary permits to carry a gun and hunt, but it was a great adventure just riding through snow that reached the bellies of the horses.

Cheryl and I toured Yellowstone in 1991 after we had a meeting in Idaho Falls. I have not returned to Yellowstone until last week. Jason and Jeremy planned a fishing trip for the three of us on the Shoshone River near Cody, Wyoming, and in Yellowstone. I have a generous friend who allowed us to use their Wyoming home between Cody and the east gate of Yellowstone, so the house was perfectly placed for fishing on the Shoshone and in Yellowstone.

Now I love to fish, but not as much as Jason and Jeremy. On day four of our fishing trip, I was weary of jumping from rock to rock, stumbling through slippery streams and hiking to the best fishing spots. I saw a washed-out place on a sand/rock bar in the middle of Soda Butte Creek. I found a big rock to put under my head, and I lay down on the warm rocks. It took a few minutes to remove some rocks that were ill placed for a comfortable back rest.

As I relaxed and closed my eyes and put my hat over my face, I started thinking about bears. Yes, we had seen several bears. As a matter of fact, one sighting was a close call. As we were driving between our house and the east gate of Yellowstone, a large grizzly bolted across the road in front of us, and we almost hit the bear. Additionally, earlier that day Jason had a scare. He was fishing on the side of the river with dense vegetation, and he heard a rustling in the tall grass and small trees. Then, he heard what sounded like a growl, and he took off running. As he ran across the rocks in the middle of the river, Jeremy was watching him and laughing. Jason told us that he had seen bear tracks along the river, but he did not think much about that, as we knew there were bears in the area. The only casualty from the scare was Jason’s glasses which he lost during the escape.

So, there I was lying down in the middle of the creek with my eyes closed and wanting to take a nap. But all I could think about was bears. All kinds of thoughts went through my mind, and then I decided that it was silly to be afraid of a bear attacking me. If a bear came along, it would just think that I was already dead if I was sleeping. I don’t know where this came from, but I started thinking about the apparel years ago with the slogan “No Fear.”

I decided that the only thing that I should fear is God, so I removed a couple more small rocks from under my back and I relaxed. I drifted off to sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but I awakened to some shuffling in the rocks, and it was not a bear. It was Jason working his way along the creek and casting his dry fly.

He took this photo of me and sent it to Cheryl in a text. Jason’s caption for the pic was “This is the biggest catch all day.” Cheryl’s quick reply was “It looks like a keeper to me!”

We grow up being afraid, but with maturity we get over most of our fears. It is interesting to search the web for fears of most adults or teenagers. There is actually an official word for the fear of God phobia—zeusophobia.

For us followers of Christ, the fear of God does not mean that we are afraid of God, but it is more of a submission or a sense of awe in the presence of God. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. What’s a grizzly anyhow?!?

Giving the Best

I was shopping for some painting supplies at Home Depot. The brushes and rollers are arranged like this: the cheaper items are on the bottom shelf, and they are labeled “good.” The next shelf was labeled “better,” and it contained brushes or rollers that cost more than the “good” items. At eye level the most expensive items were labeled “best.” These were all brushes and rollers that were their own company brand.

Once I bought a brush from the “good” shelf. The only thing really good about it was that it was cheap. The brush shed bristles worse than a dog shedding its winter coat. I tried picking the bristles from my painted boards, but it was fruitless. My fingers would mess up the paint, and then when I brushed over my fingerprints, the brush would shed more bristles.

Needless to say, on my next trip I did not buy from the bottom shelf. My dilemma was this: do I buy the better product or the best product. This really bothered me because I started thinking about why companies would sell a product that was not the best product that they could sell.

I decided not to buy any of the company branded products that were labeled good, better, best. I bought a more expensive brand called Wooster Pro. Granted, it was more expensive, but the brand did not have different qualities of effectiveness—only one line of brushes.

Many times we settle for less than the best. Restaurant food quality and restaurant table service, fast food quality and service, automated car washes, assistance in the grocery store and big box stores, home repairs and remodeling and pet obedience just to name a few.

God commanded people to bring their best throughout the Old Testament. In Exodus 12:5, they were instructed to offer the lamb without a flaw rather than the lamb that was lame or ill. We should always offer our very best. That was the cause of Abel's contribution being accepted as opposed to Cain's being rejected. According to Genesis 4, Abel offered the fat sections of his flock's firstborn while Cain gave some of the crops of his farm. In those days, people thought that the firstborn and the fat portions were the best. While Abel's offering was accepted, Cain's was not accepted. Cain only desired the best for himself.

In the same manner, many of the church's offerings and our donations to Christian charities are made in the same manner. People’s hearts today are not saying, “Lord in heaven, you gave your best and you are the best and you are worth more than I can offer to you.” David said in II Samuel 24:24: “I will not offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

If we look at our giving, we must ask ourselves, “Is our giving sacrificial?” “Are we giving like Cain and offering to the Lord a portion of the fruit of our lives?” When I think of that I think about a person on the street corner and how we only give her/him some pocket change instead of paper money.

Our giving to our church and Christian charitable organizations is much like Cain’s giving. We give from our dispensable income rather than our wealth.

God expects our best. Our giving must be sacrificial like Abel’s gifts to the Lord.

Imprinting

Guineas are strange creatures. Some hobby farmers raise them for fun because they have a unique talent: they are good “watchdogs” for the farm. Whenever a varmint (i.e. fox, racoons, coyotes, hawks, and many others) comes around the farm day or night, the guineas make a huge amount of racket. Their squawks are like they are dying.

Many small farms have purchased or swapped for some guineas without knowing much about them. Most think like this—if I can raise chickens, I can raise guineas. Wrong! They do not do well in pens as they like to forage the pasture. They are great in the garden as, unlike chickens, they do not scratch up the plants, but they consume all insects.

Free range chickens know their turf, but not so with guineas. They roam away from your farm and onto the neighbors’ properties. Guineas are good at hatching their young (called keets), but they are poor mothers. They are entertaining as they wobble when they walk. Chickens can flutter their wings and stir up some air, but they generally cannot fly. Guineas don’t just fly, they soar. They can easily fly over a house. They roost high up in trees where they watch for any night invaders.

Since they are poor mothers, I never had any baby guineas, so I purchased 11 keets from a neighboring farm. The babies are susceptible to cool breeze and dampness, so I had to put them in a brood box with a high intensity lamp to keep them warm and dry. I still lost two of the two-day old keets in the first few days.

After the keets had been in the brood box for 4-5 days, a mother duck showed up with one duckling. King snakes feast on chicken, guinea, and duck eggs, and they particularly like duck eggs since they are so large. I decided to relieve the mother duck of her responsibility of raising just one duckling by placing the duckling in the brood box with the baby guineas.

At first the keets picked on the duckling, but after a few days, the duckling thought he was a keet, so they got along just fine.

The duckling grew faster than the keets, and it was much cuter than keets—according to all the grandkids. After several weeks I released them in the barnyard, and that duckling thought he was a guinea. The baby guineas had not developed their wing feathers sufficiently enough to fly, so the duckling followed the keets everywhere they went in the pasture.

A couple weeks later, as I was watching the keets and the duckling eating grass seed from the tops of tall grass in the pasture, the duckling saw some ducks, and it was like he realized for the first time that they were like him. The duckling wandered from the keets and took off after the ducks. When the ducks came to the water, the duckling followed the ducks into the pond. There was no turning back for the duckling. He had found his family.

There is a term for what happens when some baby creatures are born. Imprinting is the learning of a behavioral pattern that occurs soon after birth (or hatching in the case of our duckling) in certain animals, in which a long-lasting response to another creature (usually a parent) is rapidly acquired. True imprinting is found mostly in birds that can walk soon after birth, but it is also seen in some mammals such as zebras, racoons, guinea pigs and hyenas.

Imprinting is that critical period early in an animal’s life when it forms attachments and develops a concept of its own identity. When I placed the newborn duckling in the brood box with the baby guineas, I had never heard of imprinting. I had no idea that the duckling would develop such a strong bond with the guineas. Imprinting in animals usually takes place during the first few weeks of life, and it works in such a way that the young form a life-long attachment to their mother.

In humans, this process is often called bonding, and it usually refers to the relationship between the newborn and its parents. There are few things in the world more wonderful than this bonding.

When we first decide to follow Jesus, the principles of imprinting work in our lives. However, I have known people who have professed Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and then within a few weeks or months there is no evidence of a changed life.

After my duckling left his adopted guinea family, there was never any relationship with the guineas. With followers of Jesus, imprinting is different. When people declare they are followers of Jesus, and then afterwards they do not show evidence of a relationship with the Lord, they still have a relationship with the Heavenly Father. They are still part of the family of God.

All of us probably have friends like this, and we need to continue to bring them to the Lord in prayer. We must never give up on them as we encourage them to walk with the Lord.

So many new believers are not discipled because there is no one to disciple them. It is our responsibility because Jesus commanded us to make disciples—to equip people to know Christ and to make Him known.

 

Afterthought:

Understanding this imprinting process helps me better interpret my childhood perceptions of the legendary Tarzan being raised by the apes.

Core Memories

Family traditions sometimes start from a family enjoying a serendipitous happening, and sometimes an event is planned to become a family tradition.

For example, Cheryl and I started using the “Red Plate” in 1980 when a friend gifted the “Red Plate” to us as we were preparing to return to West Africa. We still have that plate after a couple dozen moves, raising four children, and sixteen grandkids all getting the Red Plate on their birthdays and other special occasions. The special plate is red with white script around the edge of the plate that says, “You are special today.” Although the custom of honoring someone with a red plate started in early America, the Red Plate is made by Waechtersbach in Germany.

We did not plan to make The Red Plate a family tradition when our friend gave it to us, but we used it for a birthday, and started a tradition that has been going on in our family for 43 years.

Cheryl planned a family tradition when she made stockings for the four kids while we lived in West Africa. When she made these four huge stockings, she had no idea that she would have to make 26 of them. Plus, we would have to fill them up with goodies at Christmas time. Several years ago, when we started having grandkids, Cheryl also made very small stockings that matched the mammoth ones. When grandkids are in our home at Christmas time, she hangs their small stocking on the Christmas tree, and each day she puts a candy treat inside the stocking.

This family tradition was planned to become an annual event, and our kids and grandkids look forward every year to seeing what we have loaded in their stockings.

Yesterday, we carried on a family tradition that we started about 12 years ago. Twenty-two of our twenty-six family members gathered at Lake Winnepesaukah just south of Chattanooga. The popular name is Lake Winnie. It is a family-owned amusement park and water park that first opened in 1925. By 2023 amusement park/water park standards, it would probably be just an average park. But for our family it is a special place where we have made a barrel of memories.

The park allows you to bring in coolers and picnic food, and they have hundreds of covered picnic tables that are first come first served. Twenty of the twenty-two who were able to come were there waiting near the first of the line when they opened at 10 am.

We give all the grandkids some money just to spend on whatever they desire. Most of them invest in a funnel cake whether they split one or eat the “whole thang.” Some of them play the games trying to win the biggest prize, but mostly we go home with small stuffed animals or Hawaiian leis. However, Allison became so astute at one game that she won the large stuffed unicorn prize three times. Of course, dipping dots, frozen lemonade, sno-cones and Icees are very popular with our family. Pete bought some sunshades, and I think he just wanted to be like his Papa who has to wear sunglasses most of the time because of his eye problem.

Madelyn is working in New Orleans this summer and staying in Abbey’s home. She did not want to miss the Lake Winnie experience, so she flew to Georgia on Friday, spent Saturday with us at Lake Winnie, and flew back to New Orleans today. Hands down the grandchild who talks the most about Lake Winnie year-round is Libby. By the way, her family has a dog named Winnie.

Last night after getting home, the kids were completely worn out and everyone had to take a shower, and it was a busy time around our house. Cheryl and I were in the bedroom trying to stay out of the way as Will and Allison prepared the kids for bed. In a moment of lull amidst all the activity, Allison came into our bedroom and said thanks for the great day. She said something that I will never forget. She said that this experience at Lake Winnie was one of those “core memories” for her children.

Let’s make some more “core memories” for our families.

Poor

My mom and dad both grew up on small 80-acre farms in the hills of Mississippi. The land was not very productive, so that made it difficult to have big harvests each year. Their families would have been considered poor people in the U.S.

I asked my mother about growing up poor, and she responded something like this: Everybody around us on other small farms was just like us, so we did not even know that we were poor. In thinking of the context of my mom growing up, there was no communication with the outside world except for a radio. On rare occasions my mother or dad would get to go to town. My mother says that a highlight of her childhood was when she got to go to town and her mother would give her and her three sisters each a nickel to spend at Sterling’s Five and Ten store.

Our family lived for several years in one of the poorest nations in the world—Burkina Faso. We were considered wealthy among the villagers around us because we had a house made of concrete blocks instead of mud bricks. We also had the only vehicle anywhere around us. We regularly ate meat. We had running water in the house, toilets, concrete floors, and a metal roof instead of thatched elephant grass. In all respects we were wealthy.

According to www.weforum.org 2021 stats, the bottom 50% of the world’s population has only 2% of the world’s wealth while the top 10% of the world’s population has 76% of the world's wealth!! In another report on the ranking of poverty in countries around the world the USA’s median income in 2022 was $70,200 (US Census Bureau says it was $70,784 so these are collaborating reports) while the rest of the world’s median income was $2,800 per year. That means half the households in America make 25 times the median worldwide income.

TWENTY-FIVE times the worldwide income – talk about being rich!

So, am I trying to make us feel guilty about being Americans? No. Here’s what I want to say.

God is watching how we handle our money—though it’s not really our money. He just loans it to us. It is going to be somebody else’s after we leave the earth. We just get to use it while we’re here on earth.

Few things test our faith and maturity more thoroughly than how we use money. It is the acid test of our spiritual maturity. Jesus says in Luke 16:11, “If you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?” (NLT). God is watching us to see how we handle whatever wealth we’ve been given.

In America we are so blessed, and I believe that God intends for us to respond by blessing others. God expects believers to be generous with our resources.

Proverbs 19:17 says, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.” (ESV).

Job

Through the years, I have not been good at journaling, but I have had spurts of effective journaling. An entry in my 1981 journal on July 2 goes like this: “Woke up at 6 am. Walked by the boys’ bedroom. Jeremy was in his bed reading the book of Job.”

It was not unusual for me to see Jason and Jeremy reading at all hours of the day and night. But Jeremy had just turned seven a week before this date, and he was reading Job.

Our house was in the middle of three small villages in southeastern Burkina Faso, and there was no place in the country to buy English books. However, it was not like Jeremy did not have anything else to read. We had lots of children’s books, but Jeremy preferred my collection of Louis L’Amour paperbacks and started reading those at the age of 5. He had an insatiable appetite for reading, so I was not surprised that he had delved into Job.

Most people are like me in that we don’t look forward to reading Job.  We are trying to read through the Bible, and we dread reading through books like Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and then there is Job.

Job's story begins with a guy who has everything—health, riches, respect, a happy family, and a love for God. But Job's love, according to Satan, faded as God took away the blessings he had lavished upon him.

We have all referred to the patience of Job, but I believe that Job was not nearly as patient as he is usually thought to be. Throughout the book's long dialogues and speeches, Job is shown as angry with his suffering and far less pious and trusting in God than the conventional impression of him allows.

The Book of Job addresses one of the most frequently posed questions: if God is good, why does He allow evil and suffering to exist in the world?

Here are a few lessons I have learned from Job. Satan cannot bring destruction into Christians’ lives without God allowing it to happen. God is sovereign over what Satan can and cannot do. We should give up trying to figure out why God did this or why God did not do that and why there is so much suffering in the world. It is beyond our abilities as mere mortals to understand.

We must also quit trying to reconcile why the wicked flourish or why God does not punish them on the earth. Whenever those thoughts rack my brain, I like to think about W.A. Criswell’s famous sermon: “Payday Someday!”

God may use hardship, suffering and grief in our lives to test our resolve, to strengthen our passion for Him, and to teach us His way or His truth or His will.

Isaiah 55:8-9 helps me as I struggle to be content in all things no matter what happens: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Rules

I was flying Air Yugoslavia from Belgrade, Serbia to Frankfurt. As I walked out of the terminal and onto the tarmac, there was a twin-engine prop plane waiting for me and the other 18 or so passengers. I boarded the old plane with some anxiety about its airworthiness.

My seat was an aisle seat and there was no one sitting in the window seat next to me. After the plane had climbed for several minutes, the pilot announced that the aircraft had reached the necessary elevation to level off, and the man sitting in the aisle seat directly across from me lit a cigarette.

I looked at my boarding pass to make sure that I had a nonsmoking seat, because less than 2 feet from me this guy ws smoking. I waved my hand in the air—no, there was no call button for the flight attendant. After a few minutes of waving my hand in the air, the sole flight attendant came from the back of the plane.

She did not speak any English, and I spoke no Serbian. I pointed to my boarding pass and said, “no smoking.” She politely said “Yes.”

Then I pointed across the aisle to the man who was smoking and said, “smoking.” She replied, “Yes.”

Then I did a dramatic shrug of my shoulders and again pointed to myself and said, “no smoking,” and I pointed to the guy who was by this time blowing smoke towards my face and said, “smoking.”

She finally pointed to my side of the plane and said, “Yes. This side no smoking,” and as she pointed to the other side of the plane she said, “This side smoking!!”

I could not help but laugh at the fact that the smoking section was on one side of the plane with the nonsmoking section separated only by the aisle. I stewed over the fact that Air Yugoslavia had fulfilled the mandate from the international airline regulating authorities in that they had provided both a smoking and a nonsmoking section in the aircraft.

There were rules to follow and as far as Air Yugoslavia was concerned, they had fulfilled the separation of smoking and nonsmoking passenger regulation according to their own interpretation.

That’s what we customarily do. We either bend the rules or we adjust them to our convenience or desires. I have read that people who are more creative are more likely to break or bend rules. Now my wife is a musician par excellence. I don’t know how to classify her creativity, but when it comes to rules, she is very strict. We were standing in line outside the door of the shop waiting to buy a kebab in Bayeux, France recently. It started raining and I started to move inside to get out of the rain, but she said that we could not do that because it would look like we were trying to break in line. I was more interested in staying dry than what other customers would think about me. I did not see a rule to be broken, but she did.

It's all about interpreting what is right and what is wrong.

I wonder how many employees really wash their hands before returning to work. And absolutely no one uses their cell phone while driving! And everybody has jaywalked at some time in their life. It is actually against the law to drive in the left lane on a four-lane road unless you are passing, and then by law you are supposed to move to the right lane immediately after passing. Guilty? Yep. Most of us are!

I just started an old movie about Douglas Macarthur. He once said, “Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.” That’s where we get the expression “Rules are made to be broken.”

Some great things have happened when someone broke a rule. An example that I like is when William Webb Ellis in 1823 grew weary of playing football (that’s soccer for Americans). One day he took the ball in his arms and ran away with it towards the goal, and everyone else on both teams took off after him and tackled him. That was the beginning of a new sport—rugby!

There is one rule that if the whole world would live by, then this would be a better place for all mankind: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

President Carter

Why wait until he passes away?

That’s what I have asked myself this week. I was going to wait to write a tribute to President Jimmy Carter after his death. I read reports about his deteriorating health, and after all, he is 98 years old. But the Lord is not finished with him yet, and for that I am grateful.

I am sure that ever since the beginning of the United States, presidents have been critiqued until everyone was sick of hearing about the miscues, poor judgment, lousy decision-making, political favors, partisanships, and on and on. I admit that I did not agree with all of President Carter’s policies and decisions, but then again, I cannot remember a president in my lifetime with whom I have been in total agreement of all their decisions and political leanings. Many said that Jimmy Carter was one of the worst presidents we have ever had. Of course, that is an opinion. Opinions are like armpits. Everyone has one, and some of them smell better than others.

Regardless of his accomplishments, mistakes, and political decisions while in office, I do not believe that any president has accomplished as much after serving as president as Jimmy Carter. I think he is the best “former President” of the United States.

In 1982, he formed the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. Among many other projects to save lives in developing countries around the world, Jimmy Carter led the Carter Center to eliminate river blindness in many countries Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, and along with their partners they are on track to eradicate this dreaded disease around the world. While serving in West Africa, we saw firsthand the devastation and loss of life caused by this awful debilitating malady.

As a former president Jimmy Carter put Habitat for Humanity on the international map. He did not just promote building houses for the underprivileged; he and former First Lady Rosalynn actually helped construct a number of houses.

President Carter has been a champion for human rights. He not only criticized world leadership for the mistreatment of the vulnerable; he also mitigated internal disputes in some countries.

Carter served as a diplomat-at-large and helped to settle clashes in places such as Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, and Ethiopia. He brokered a nuclear disarmament deal with the North Korean regime and a short-lived cease-fire between the Bosnians and Serbs.  He remained an influencer in Middle East politics after his presidency.

President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The Nobel Committee stated that they had chosen him due to "his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

In 1993 I was invited to visit with President Carter and Rosalynn at the Carter Center in Atlanta to consult on an agro-forestry project and to talk with President Carter about the possibility of coming to work at the Carter Center. During my two-day visit, President Carter invited me to a Carter Center Executive Leadership meeting.

When we entered the boardroom there were about a dozen people seated at the table, and they all stood up to honor the former president. President Cater pulled a chair from alongside the wall and placed it at the head of the table on his left side and asked me to be seated. I wanted to wait on him to be seated, but he insisted that I sit down first. Then he was seated, and the rest of the leadership was seated. President Carter was a true southern gentleman who knew how to make his guests feel honored.

As the meeting progressed, President Carter crossed his right leg on his left knee, and I saw something that I will never forget. I looked at the bottom of his shoes (yes, I pay attention to details) and they had half-soles. On top of that, there was a hole in the half-sole! This former president of the United States, who had family wealth before he ever became president, could have bought entire shoe stores if he wanted, but he chose to have his shoes repaired with half-soles.

I admire women and men who understand what being a good steward of our resources is all about. However, Jimmy Carter is at another level. He is an unabashed follower of Jesus Christ who knows that God owns it all, and that our job is to steward or manage all that God has entrusted to us.

I am grateful for the personal time he invested in me.

Truism: Great Job

The five most important words in the world: “You did a great job.”

NOTE: Periodically, I will be passing along some truisms that I have gleaned over the years. A truism can be defined as received wisdom. Many truisms that I write will come from others. Some will be anonymous sayings. While some may be experiential, the wisdom in them comes from the Heavenly Father with whom I walk.

To Tell the Truth

When I was growing up in the sixties, there was a TV program called “To Tell the Truth.” A person with an unusual occupation or who had done something bizarre, and two impostors would try to convince a panel of four celebrities that they were the real person. The object of the game show was to get the panel to vote for the two imposters. The real person and the imposters would get money for each wrong vote.

I liked the show, but I do not like people saying to me, “To tell the truth.” I am thinking, have they not been telling me the truth in previous conversations?

I also do not like for someone to throw in “Honestly” in our conversation. When have you not been honest with me. Yes, I realize that those are just common phrases that a lot of people use without thinking about it. But I do think a lot about them.

Same with “truthfully.” Now I have been challenged with my nit-picking hangups. Some wise guys, including a member of my immediate family, have said to me, “Well, Jesus used the words “verily, verily” several times in the Bible.

My response is that Jesus always spoke the truth, so He could use the word “truthfully” for emphasis if HE wanted to. However, you and I are not perfect, and we do not always speak the truth.

“Therefore, ridding yourselves of falsehood, speak truth each one of you to his neighbor, because we are parts of one another. (Ephesians 4:25 NASB)

Mark Twain once said, “Always tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember what your said.”

Unexpected Opportunities

During my Chick-fil-A years I had the privilege of working on some projects with Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A. He had many famous sayings such as “If it is meant to be, it is up to me” and “How do you recognize someone who needs encouragement. That person is breathing.”

One of the things that I remember the most about him is how often he talked about “unexpected opportunities”. Just one example of hearing him use this phrase was when he bought a building in Fayetteville, Georgia, that had been a McAllister’s restaurant. He called the opportunity to buy that building an unexpected opportunity to open a restaurant he called Upscale Pizza.

Life is full of unexpected opportunities, and this past week I had one of those. A 93-year-old lady friend of our family called me. Since her number is in my contacts, when I answered I said, “Hello Marilyn.” She immediately began to tell me how sorry she was that so-and-so had passed away. I told her that I was sorry, but I did not understand who she was talking about. She said, “This is Joe --, isn’t it?” I told her no, and I identified myself and said how happy I was that she called me by mistake. She was beside herself and said that my name was next to Joe’s in her address book.

It was a busy day for me, but I let her talk all she wanted, and I made her believe that talking to her was the most important thing that I had on that day. We had a great visit. Among other things, she told me all about moving into an assisted living facility. She is on the fourth floor and has a corner room with a large picture window that overlooks a wooded area in Louisville, Kentucky. She described the view to me and told me that every day when she first sits down to enjoy the view, she sings a song. Marilyn asked me, “Do you know what song I sing,” and before I could guess she sang it to me over the phone.

“God’s beautiful world. God’s beautiful world. I love God’s beautiful world.  He made it for you; he made it for me. I love God’s beautiful world.” I have been singing that simple little song every day since I talked to Marilyn. It is a good reminder that God did an awesome job in creating some amazing scenery for us to enjoy. People travel all over the globe just to look at natural wonders created by our Heavenly Father.

When an unexpected opportunity comes your way, relax and enjoy the moment. You never know how much your reaction will be treasured by others or how much you might enjoy living out this opportunity.

What Is the Right Hand Doing?

I speak three languages, and I don’t know my right from my left in any of those languages. All my life I have had to hold my left hand in front of my face with the thumb and forefinger extended forming an “L” to remind me that was left.

When I was growing up in rural Mississippi and spending time on my grandmother’s farm, they had mules, and I loved hooking one of them up to a wooden sled and letting the mule pull me through the fields. I could holler “Gee” and the mule would go right. “Haw” and the mule would go left. It is strange that I never had any trouble with left and right when I was behind a mule. I guess there was a lot of pressure on me because I did not want to be as dumb as the mule!

While living in West Africa I absolutely had to tell the difference between my right hand and my left hand. The culture there dictated that the left hand was your “dirty” hand because that was the one you used to clean up after performing your bodily functions. Therefore, a person never offered their left hand to greet someone. You would never give anything to anyone with your left hand. To touch someone with your left hand was taboo. You could not even wave to someone with your left hand.

Once when I was riding on my motorcycle through a village, I met a man on a bicycle. He was carrying some wooden poles about 12 feet long on his right shoulder and balancing them with his right hand. As I approached him, he jumped off his bicycle and shifted the poles to his left shoulder so he could wave at me with his right hand.

Of course, there were children who were born as natural left handers. So, the parents would take drastic measures if the child tried to use his left hand to eat with—many poor villagers still eat with their hands even today. The parents would tie a naturally left-handed child’s left hand behind her back, so she was forced to learn to eat with her right hand. I know there were many left-handed children because our sons grew up playing soccer with the local village boys and many of those boys preferred kicking the ball with their left foot.

I suppose I am not alone with the right and left challenge. The last verse of the book of Jonah in the Old Testament says, “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left” (ESV).

Today we use this popular expression “The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.” Generally, it is used in the context of referring to an organization where one part of the organization does not know what another part of the same organization is doing. Anytime this expression is used, it has a negative context.

But the origin of this phrase comes from Matthew 6:3 in the Bible: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what the right hand is doing” (NIV).

I think that like today during the time that Matthew was written most people were right-handed. So, we could assume that one would give money with their right hand. Jesus uses this metaphor to remind us that we should even hide our good works even from ourselves.

Doesn’t it make you feel good to give money away? A joy of our lives is to give money to a person or a family in need or my church or a Christian charitable organization. We get real joy from sharing our resources with others.

If we continually replay in our minds our giving or our serving or other good works that we do, we begin to think how generous we are or how great we are or what a great follower of Christ we are. But we should give to honor the Lord and not to promote our greatness. If we puff ourselves up, we are like the Pharisees.

There is certainly a place for helpful evaluation and reflection when we have made a gift to honor the Lord, but it should be brief, and then we should move on according to Philippians 3:13: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (NIV).

We have found great joy in sometimes giving gifts anonymously. I challenge you to try giving a gift to someone in need without them knowing it came from you.

My prayer: Oh, God, as I give may I give only to honor you and bring glory to you with you being my only witness.

Leadership and Loneliness

I thought about the adage “It’s lonely at the top” while reading this week  the story of Jesus and the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane in the book of Luke.

Having read this passage many times over the years, it is still hard to fathom that even in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ disciples never really got Jesus’ mission on earth. During Jesus’ moment of great need, these guys who were his closest associates, took a nap. Jesus needed some collaboration and encouragement. He needed someone to talk to, but the disciples did not come through for him.

Leadership can be lonely. One of my favorite leadership role models is Colin Powell. He once said, “Command is lonely.” Being in charge means operating in a different manner than being everybody’s friend.

Once a colleague came to me with a leadership challenge. He was not a direct report, but occasionally he would drop by my office after 5 pm. When he first started catching me at the end of the day, I was upset because I thought he needed to take his challenges to his supervisor. But I really liked this young man who had much potential as a leader, so I talked with his leader, and he was ok for this young leader to come by my office to chat if it did not bother me.

Our conversations were usually no more than 10 minutes, and I began to look forward to his interruptions. He could think of more “good ideas” in one day than anyone I had ever known. As a matter of fact, it was at this time of meeting with him that I started telling team members that I loved hearing new ideas and that they should come to me and share any idea they had. But I did not want them to come to me with a “good Idea” because it was not a good idea until it worked!

The young leader came to me late one afternoon just as I was trying to wrap up the day’s activities and clear my desk. He told me that he was having trouble being a boss and a friend with those he led. He had recently been promoted to director of a department of 14 professionals, and most of them were his good friends. He was having difficulty being their friend and their leader.

Here’s what I recall sharing with him: 1) Sit down with each of your direct reports who have been your buddies and talk about the change in your relationship emphasizing that you still want to be their friend, but you are first of all their leader. 2) Now that you are a leader, you must treat each team member equally and not show favoritism to your friends. Be fair in making the tough decisions.

This encounter with this young leader happened 20 years ago. If this same situation were to happen today with social media revealing so much information about each other, it would be more challenging to define leader/friend relationships, but I believe that the same principles would be applicable today.

I like what Harvey Mackay says: “It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.”

McDo

We returned from a trip to France this past weekend. A couple who are lifelong friends accompanied us. We had planned this trip for April 2020, and we all know what happened then.

Cheryl and I had lived in Tours, France and studied French for a year so many years ago that it seems like another lifetime. We enjoyed visiting in Tours in the middle of the Loire River valley where all the beautiful chateaus are. It was a walk down memory lane for us.

After visiting Mont St. Michel and Normandy, we spent a few days in a small hotel in Paris in the Latin Quarter a block and a half from the Seine. Right across the street from our hotel was a fine dining restaurant called McDonald’s.  

My grandkids think that I am full of trivia—the type of trivia that does not really help you in any sensible situation. So, to keep my papa trivia reputation intact, here’s one for you: The French call McDonald’s “McDo.” I think that is primarily because it is difficult for a native French speaker to say the “nald” sound, but the French are, well, yes, we all know how the French are!

Seeing the McDonald’s each day and hearing the seeming constant blare of the distinctive siren of emergency vehicles in France made me think through the details of my first visit to a McDonald’s in France.

We arrived in France over 40 years ago to study French, and before we ever started our classes, some new workers were arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport. My assignment was to meet them and get them and all their baggage to the train station at the airport and accompany them to Tours. Easy enough assignment even though I only knew a few words in French. I decided to take Jason with me on the train to Paris to meet our new friends. We took an early train so that I could treat three-year old Jason to a meal at a McDonald’s in downtown Paris.

We arrived at the McDo and immediately I knew I was no longer at our McDonald’s in Vicksburg, Mississippi as this McDo served wine. The building was very narrow, so the serving counter was tiny, and there was no seating available on that level. A sign directed diners to a dining area on the upper level. I noticed that OSHA would not have approved the stairway as there was only one railing—that is only one single bar to hold onto at waist level for adults. I had food in my hands, and as we were mounting, I noticed that the steps were wet, so just as I was about to tell Jason to be careful and stay close to the wall, he slipped and fell from the stairway and plunged under the single handrail to the cement floor below.

At first, I was frozen with shock. I don’t remember what I did with the food and drinks, but I ran down the steep stairs to my son who was lying on the floor below. Jason started crying, and I was grateful that he was still alive. I asked for ice, but there was no ice at this McDo, as the French do not use ice in their drinks.

Jason had fallen on his forehead, and he was clutching his face with both his hands while crying. I cradled him in my arms while sitting in a metal chair. In all the confusion, someone had called an ambulance, and it showed up. They loaded Jason on a gurney, and I followed. The ambulance sped through the streets—as much as it could in downtown Paris.

After Jason was treated and x-rayed in the emergency room, a doctor who spoke English showed me the x-rays and said that Jason had a small skull fracture. He said that Jason would have to stay overnight in the hospital for observation in case there was swelling.

Jason was transported to a children’s ward. The hospital staff and I were trying to communicate with about a dozen French words and a lot of hand gestures. An aide came to Jason’s bed and started removing his clothes—including his underwear. As she started putting a disposable diaper on him, I told the aide in English, “He does not need a diaper. He is potty trained.” That went past her ears, and she continued putting the diaper on Jason. I stood up next to her and tugged at the diaper telling her with my hands that he did not need it. She rattled off something that went past my ears, and finally she said something that I did understand. She said the word pee-pee. What I finally figured out was that she was trying to tell me that Jason would not know how to let them know when he wanted to urinate, so he had to wear a diaper.

Exasperated with this “conversation,” I yelled out, “Madam, pee-pee is the same in any language.” And I added in French, “La meme chose!” (the same thing). She got the message and finally let me put his underwear back on him. 

The rest of the story—I was able to make a phone call from a telephone booth (yes, grandkids, there was such a thing!) to Cheryl to tell her what had happened and to get her to have someone meet the new workers arriving at the airport. I was also able to phone a colleague  in Paris to come to the hospital to help me communicate better with the caregivers.

Oh, and Jason’s head healed quickly.

But I will forever think of that incident when I see a McDo in France.

Mama Downs

Mama Downs was my mother’s mother. Mama Downs’ father was a frightful part Cherokee man who slept on animal skins. All his grandchildren, including my mother, were afraid of him as they said that he looked like a wild animal.

My mother’s father, who we called Papp, died at 56 years from liver disease caused by the consumption of his own homemade corn whiskey. All the neighbors including the county sheriff knew that Henry Downs distilled his own liquor, and no one ever reported him to the “revenuers” because he provided them with their own mason jars filled with the rotgut stuff—including the sheriff!

Papp died before my 5th birthday, so I barely knew him. I grew up spending a lot of time at Mama Downs’ house. My mother and her ten brothers and sisters grew up in that old house with basically two main rooms and an add-on small room on the back next to the dining area and kitchen.

The simple old house was covered with unpainted weather-beaten pine planks that Papp and his sons had sawed from pine trees that they cut down on the farm. It had no insulation, no indoor plumbing, no screens on windows or doors, a wood-fired stove, and it was heated by a fireplace in one room and a pot-bellied heater in the other. But I loved staying in this old house any time of the year.

Its roof was rusty old tin, but I loved playing “Annie Over” with one of my many cousins. I would throw a rubber ball over the roof and yell “Annie Over” and the cousin would have to catch it before it hit the ground. I loved pulling water from the well and filling the drinking water bucket with fresh water.

The cousins and I often played hide and seek, and there were so many great places to hide—in the barn, in the smokehouse full of smoked meat hanging from the rafters, in the storm cellar where potatoes and onions were stored, in the massive fenced-in garden, or under the house as it sat balanced on large rocks.

There were basically three gathering places at Mama Downs’ house—in the room with the fireplace where there were also two double feather beds, the front porch and the dining area where there was a long bench alongside the wall and wooden cane-bottom chairs around the rest of the table. There was enough room to get a dozen or more people around that table.

Mama Downs’ hair reached her waist, but people never saw the length of her hair as every morning before dawn, she would rise and brush out her hair and braid it and wrap the braids tightly around her head. Each night she would take her hair down and brush it out just before she climbed into bed.

She was a workhorse! Her energy was endless, and she never blinked an eye no matter how many people she had to feed. All the cousins’ favorite meal was fried chicken. Mama Downs would call a couple of the cousins to help her catch a couple of chickens that were running loose in the yard. She would grab the chicken by the neck and with a flick of the wrist she would swing the chicken around and wring its neck from its body. Sometimes the headless chicken body would continue to run around for a few seconds until it keeled over.

Next, she would throw the chickens into the boiling water of a huge black pot over a wood fire. After a couple of minutes, she would remove a chicken from the pot and pluck its feathers. After removing the unwanted parts of the chicken, she would bring it into the house where she would cut it into our favorite pieces—that included the pulley bone for those of you who know what I am talking about. The cousins would fight over this piece as we would quickly eat the meat from the bone so we could choose someone else to pull the bone and see who got the shortest piece.

So many more stories to tell about Mama Downs, but I will close with this one. When I was a freshman in college, Mama Downs sold her old house and 80 acres, and moved into town. She bought an ante-bellum two-story house in Carrollton, Mississippi. It was not in the best of shape, but it was far better than the old house on the farm.

A Hollywood movie company came to town to film one of William Faulkner’s classics. Mama Downs agreed to let them use her home in the movie because they were going to do extensive remodeling inside the house and paint the exterior of the two-story wood frame house. They transformed the front yard by adding a trellis with climbing rose bushes over the sidewalk and installing a white wood picket fence. The movie crew arrived to film “The Reivers” and transformed the little town of Carrollton into a 1905 setting.

All went well with the filming at Mama Downs’ house until she learned that they planned to film a “bedroom” scene in one of the upstairs bedrooms. That did not go over well with her, and she told the movie producers that there was no way that they were going to have any bedroom scenes in her house. The producers backed down and finished the bedroom scene in a Hollywood set.

She was a loving, hardworking, quiet, firm, straight-shooting woman who raised 11 of her own children and three grandchildren and put up with an alcoholic husband who died an early death and left her alone to provide for five kids who were still at home. Even with adversity she lived to be 86 years old. What a woman!

Uncle Junior

The first time I met Cheryl’s father, I was intimidated. He was not a giant, but he was 6’2” and about 220 pounds. Shaking hands with him was like putting your hand in a vise and spinning the handle to tighten it.

Her dad’s name was Maurice Franklin Keathley, Jr., and I was trying to figure out what I was going to call him. He was also a retired Lt. Colonel, but I definitely was not going to salute him.  I was thinking Mr. Keathley was just fine, and that’s how I started.

On the many subsequent trips with Cheryl back to Memphis, I met more of her extended family on her dad’s side. Mr. Keathley had three brothers, but only one of them had children when I met them. Those children were all girls and they called Maurice “Uncle Junior.” I did not think it would be good to call him Junior, so I stuck with Mr. Keathley for the first year of dating, and then I started calling him Maurice.

After a few trips home from college with Cheryl, I think Maurice figured that I was going to be around a while, so he invited me to play handball with him. I had never even heard of handball, much less played it. I tried to get out of it by saying that I did not have any equipment to play handball. He quickly responded that he would buy me some handball gloves at the Memphis Athletic Club. OK, now I did not have an excuse.

That first outing was brutal, trying to hit that tiny hard rubber ball hard enough to bounce off the wall of the court and then trying to get out of the way of the bullets that Maurice was hurling at me with his returns. I ran till my tongue was hanging out of my mouth while Maurice seemed to stand in one place as he expertly placed the ball in a position that made me gasp for air as I raced back and forth and all around the court.

I recall scoring less than 6 points in two games that day, but I survived. Well, later that day, my hands were so swollen I could not get my fingers to touch. I later found out that handball gloves came in different thicknesses of padding in the palm of the hand. Maurice had bought me the thinnest padding available. I am sure that he did not do this with the intention of me suffering with abnormally swollen hands, but he bought me gloves with the same padding that he used—with those massive hands.

On our next trip to Memphis, I was prepared as I had a pair of gloves with the most padding available. This time Maurice told me that Cheryl’s brother, Randy, would be playing with us. Oh great! Randy’s physique was a carbon copy of his dad’s, and he had equally massive hands. So we played cut-throat handball, and one could guess whose throat was going to be cut. They gave me a whipping on the court, but at least I did not suffer from the swelling and pain as much with the extra padded gloves.

After 15 months of dating, Cheryl and I were engaged, and I was spending more and more time in Memphis with her on the weekends and holidays. We played less handball as Maurice had trouble with his knees. He invited me to play golf with him. I had never played golf and did not own any clubs, but Maurice put together some clubs from his collection of clubs and I used one of his old bags. That was a good bonding time for us, and I have always been grateful to him for helping me appreciate golf. He even bought me a set of clubs after we were married.

By the time we were engaged, I was calling my future father-in-law Uncle Junior, and he seemed to like that, so I interchanged addressing him as Maurice and Uncle Junior.

When Jason was born, he called Maurice “Papaw.” So, Cheryl and I both would sometimes call him Papaw also.

Parkinson’s Disease ravaged his body in his early 70s, and until he was promoted to heaven, I intermittently called him Maurice, Uncle Junior, and Papaw.