Root beer, ice cream and a go-to guy!

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
—1 Thessalonians 5:10-11

It was 82 degrees outside and it was only 9:30…at night. The humidity made you feel like a wet blanket but it was the summer solstice—June 21, the first day of summer. Summers in Tampa have a certain reputation that intimidates folk like me who have yet to experience the joy of August’s full embrace. I am however intrigued when my new friends here just grin as they say, "This is your first summer isn’t it?"!

To make the start of summer special, the hospital's Employees' Activities Committee (EAC) planned root beer floats for everyone. I served so well during the afternoon shift that I got to take a big cart around to the units that evening.

You have no idea how much joy a guy with an ice-cream/soda cart can bring to hard working associates! But it was much more than the floats!

100 years old on Father’s Day

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
—Exodus 20:12

Have you ever picked out a birthday card for someone who was going to be 100 years old?

For obvious reasons, there aren’t many of them, but Cathy and I found one this weekend. Once we had the card, we took it to the checkout counter, and the lady said, "You must being going to Louie’s party!"

"How did you know?" we asked.

"He is in here each day visiting and laughing with all of us. We just love him."

I met Louie later that day and although small and stooped in stature, he was bigger than life.

You gotta get in the water

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
—Matthew 7:7-8

Have you ever lost something of real value? Paycheck, wallet, car title, birth certificate, wedding license, wedding ring? Do you remember the sense of dread that overwhelmed you? The frantic desire to look everywhere? The frustration of discovering it was nowhere to be found? Or the overwhelming joy of finding the lost?

I tease my wife by saying that I never lose my stuff. Instead of thinking things are lost; I choose to always know where my stuff is. Such as knowing that the car keys are in the house … I just can’t put my hands on them!

One day at the dock I fell and hit the railing that stripped my wedding ring from my finger. Up in the air it went and when it came down it was 20 feet away in 26 feet of dark murky water. It all happened in slow motion. As I lay on the dock transfixed by the growing ring of ripples left where my ring entered the harbor murk I realized then if I was to find it that I must make it "bigger." So I grabbed a screw driver and tied on a length of line and tossed it to the center of the ring of ripples hoping that if I could find the screw driver, I could also find my ring.

My ring wasn’t lost…I knew exactly where it was…the bottom of the harbor. I just couldn’t put my hands on it.

You talkin’ to me?!

Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.
—1 Samuel 3:9

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"

So goes the line made famous by Robert De Niro in the movie Taxi Driver. However it isn’t just a line in a movie. No this is a fundamental question of life and any who live it… Who is talking to me? Of all the voices you hear in the course of a day who is really TALKING to YOU?

You go about your day doing your best to help those in your charge, to lead the best you can and make the best decisions possible all the while building the folk up and treating them as you would wish to be treated. Your focus is on them. You set aside the matters of your own heart in order to be present and do your best for them. Yet sometimes in the midst of your caring, serving, meeting, or working, they say something that seems to connect, to go to the heart of the matter you had been holding in for so long yet they knew nothing about it at all.