This has become a popular parlor game and a best-selling theme for all kinds of books–places to go, things to do, foods to eat, scenes to see, before you leave this world, or “kick the bucket.” That’s what gave it the name “bucket list.” Hollywood made a movie about this a few years ago.

Today was evidently a morning of slow news because one of the television shows ran a feature on beer, “50 brews on our bucket list.” “Oh great,” I thought. “Just what some beer-guzzling couch-potato needs, an excuse to indulge himself even more.”

So, let’s try to do the right thing here and come up with some positive, non-alcoholic deeds which every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ should do before departing this earthly sod.

Everyone will have his/her own list. This is mine, with a little help from some Facebook friends whom I’ve asked for contributions. Since we’re going for 50 things to do, we’ll break this article down into several manageable segments.

Putting them in any kind of order would be impossible since I don’t know what we’ll end up with. So, just because one item is low on the list and another is high says nothing about their relative importance.

You’re invited to click on “comments” at the end and give us items on your bucket list…places to go, experiences to have, things to see or taste or hear, before the Lord sends His angels for you.

50. Visit the Holy Land.

Margaret and I went to Israel once, over 20 years ago, and found it life-changing as well as ministry-altering. Honestly, I probably would not have gone then had it not been a 10th anniversary gift from the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. For months after returning, I ran a low-grade fever just thinking of where we had been and the sights we had seen. I’d turn a page and there would be a photo of Jerusalem or the Sea of Galille and my eyes would tear up. It had that kind of effect on me.

So, go. Traveling to the Middle East is as safe right now as it has ever been, and you’re not getting any younger. I’m thrilled to see the occasional seminary program that allows young preachers and missionaries to visit Israel as a part of their education. Wish I’d gone when I was 25. But on the other hand, I got far more out of it by going when I was 44. Best solution: go twice.

Oh, and send your preacher. Even if he’s reluctant to go.

49. Win someone to Jesus.

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Recently, as my son Neil and I were returning to New Orleans from visiting my mom in north Alabama, I said, “Let’s try to make church at Eutaw. That’s where Grandpa Henderson grew up.”

We called ahead and found out that their Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., ideal for us. We walked in at a quarter till, and took our seats.

We had a drive of some 7 hours that day, but I had told Neil, “If anyone other than the pastor invites us to lunch, we’ll say ‘no.’ But if he does, I’d like to do it.”

Anyone who knows me knows my love for pastors. I’m always glad to meet a brother laboring in the Lord’s work.

Not that we knew anyone at that church. But I figured that my son had distant relatives in the congregation, for one thing, and for the other, I know small-town Southern hospitality.

We ate with the pastor that day. Rick Williams assured us his wife had made a great lasagna and salad, and that she and her mother and their adult daughter would not be there, that they were attending some function at a nearby town immediately after church. She had even suggested that he invite us to lunch.

Hospitality. It’s a great concept, particularly if you are away from home and on the road.

In the old days, hospitality was an essential of life. In a time when and in countries where few hotels and restaurants existed, you depended on the kindness of strangers.

Pastor Adrian Rogers was speaking for a week of services in a church I pastored. At one point, he said, “Joe, do you ever get up to Memphis?” I said, “Once in a while.” He said, “Well, my friend, when you come to Memphis, don’t ever worry about a place to stay or a place to eat.”

Long pause.

“We have some of the finest restaurants and hotels you’ve ever seen.”

Great line. Not what I was expecting.

He was just making a funny, but the joke makes a good point: with the hospitality industry (that’s what it’s actually called) occupying such a prominent position in the economic life of this country, we’re no longer dependent on people opening their homes to strangers as in the old days.

That’s good. And yet we’ve lost something.

God said to Israel, “An alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

In the New Testament, the word translated “hospitality” is “philoxenia,” literally “love of strangers.”

Our English word “hospitality” is uncomfortably close to “hospital” for good reason: they go back to the same parent, the Latin “hospitalis,” originally a place of rest and entertainment. Other offspring of this parent are “host,” the one extending this welcome treatment, and “hostage,” which formerly meant entertainment. “Hospice” and “hostels” retain some of the original meaning of the Latin word.

Missionaries tell us the concept of hospitality is alive and well in many countries of the world, and constitutes a vital element in their ministry.

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Have you ever learned a lesson early in life, promptly proceeded to forget it, and then had it driven home to you years later?

Here’s what happened this weekend….

I was preaching at the Delacroix-Hope Baptist Church downriver from New Orleans in the community known as St. Bernard in the parish of the same name. Before Katrina, nearly 5 years ago, this church was actually located on Delacroix Island, a fishing village. The hurricane ruined the community and the church building disappeared. So, when the people regathered, they started meeting in a little Presbyterian church that was eventually donated to them. Their pastor for the past ten years or so, James “Boogie” Melerine, a native of the island community, has just retired and they’ve asked me to preach last Sunday and next.

There might have been sixty people in attendance. When the children left for their own service just prior to the sermon–I always hate that; they’re my favorite group!–I was left with 35 or 40 adults. The song service was fine, but nothing indicated this was going to be an unusual hour for all of us.

Then we came to the time of the public invitation.

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They came to Jesus with two things on their minds. They sincerely wanted to know how He would answer their question; if in the process they could trip Him up, so much the better.

“Lord, which is the Greatest Commandment?”

Jesus replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.” He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse known, loved, and memorized by every faithful Jew.

“Good answer,” the questioner said, and began walking away.

“And the second one is a lot like it,” Jesus called after him.

Second one? Did anyone hear us asking the Lord what was the second greatest commandment? I didn’t, did you?

What’s going on here?

As the man turned back to the Lord, Jesus said, “The second commandment is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” A far less familiar verse taken from Leviticus 19:18.

With this word, the Lord Jesus sent a message down through the centuries to His people of every generation: God will not allow us to turn the Christian faith into a vertical, me-and-Jesus-only kind of thing.

My relationship with Jesus Christ provides salvation. My relationship with other people proves my salvation.

Vertical, horizontal. The sign of the cross, the perfect symbol of the Christian faith.

The dual relationship which Jesus commands is taught all through Scripture.

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The more I work with people, minister in churches, and observe the Christian community, the more convinced I am that unity is the rarest bird on the planet.

Disunity is the norm.

Unity is the plan of the Lord for His people, the essential to getting anything important done, and the last prayer on Jesus’ lips in the Upper Room.

I once created a furor in a deacons meeting with the revolutionary suggestion that after they voted to put a matter before the congregation, all the deacons should support it, no matter how they voted earlier. For some, you would have thought I was suggesting they give up their citizenship.

“I am an American citizen. I have my rights. And one of those rights is to speak up and voice my convictions.” I can hear him now.

“You’re asking us to compromise? Never.”

I tried to explain, “We’re not talking about your rights; we’re talking about your responsibility as leaders of this church. There has to be a reason you’re trying to hash these matters out in here before taking it to the church.”

The day we began electing mature deacons the church began to have unity.

Leaders are to desire and pray for and model and protect the unity of the church.

Paul said to the Ephesian leaders, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).

We have to work for it. Unity within a body of a hundred people is not normal or natural, must be sought for, and can be a fleeting thing. Unity is fragile.

In a class of seminary students, I wrote on the board one word: “Different.”

I said, “You would think that a congregation made up of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ would automatically be of one mind. Instead, conflict seems to be the norm. The main reason seems to be that the people in the pews are all so different.”

“My question for you is: how are they different?” I began writing as they suggested ways in which the church members differ from one another.

Different sexes, generations, races, ages, views, experiences, theology, politics, background, education, socio-economic levels, likes, dislikes, goals, preferences, tastes, intellects, Bible knowledge, holiness, prejudices, fears, appearances, height, weight, body chemistry, values.

We could have done that all day.

Unity in a congregation of Christians is a miracle as surely as any healing or resurrection of the dead.

Unity among a people so diverse has to be a God thing.

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There are those who are said to be “filled with faith,” but I’m not one of them. I’m guessing you’re not either.

In Scripture, Stephen is given this accolade in Acts 6:5, as was Barnabas in Acts 11:24. If anyone else qualified, I can’t find them this morning.

Most of us are mixtures of faith and something else. Like the fellow who admitted to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

For some of us, the blend is faith and unbelief.

For others, it’s faith and ignorance which co-exist and battle for supremacy in our minds and hearts.

Then there’s faith and doubt, which is a tad different from unbelief. Unbelief is negative whereas doubt can be a healthy expression of a reasonable mind that requires just a little more evidence.

Faith and fear appear to be opposites that occupy space in the minds and hearts of some of us at the same time. Jesus said to one group, “Why did you fear? Where is your faith?”

Faith and sight is another set of odd companions. Faith covers what we cannot see but which we believe, while sight has to do with knowledge from what we see and can verify. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrestled with questions of God in his lifetime. Someone asked his wife, “Doesn’t he want to believe?” She answered, “No. Carl wants to know.” (See Romans 8:24.)

Faith and presumption are a twosome forming a bad marriage in some. Faith hears the promises of God and goes forward; presumption goes where the Lord never sent, claims what He never instructed, and expects what He never promised. Pity the preacher who can’t distinguish the two; pity more the people who sit under his ministry.

And then there are some of us, Lord help us, who are a confusing blend of faith mixed with unbelief, ignorance, doubt, fear, sight and presumption.

Sometimes that’s me. I suspect it was my dad.

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Fred Harvey was a name almost every American knew in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This son of Britain had come to America and made his mark in the food industry. Working with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, he built a chain of restaurants across the great Southwest which became legendary for their insistance on quality and their devotion to the customer.

In his book, “Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West,” Stephen Fried says Harvey originated the first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of newsstands, and of bookstores–“in fact, the first national chain of anything–in America.”

You may be familiar with the Judy Garland movie on the Harvey Girls, another innovation of Fred Harvey’s. He recruited single young women in the East, then sent them to work in his restaurants from Kansas City to California. In doing so, he inadvertently provided wives for countless westerners and helped to populate a great segment of the USA.

All of this is just so we can relate one story from the book.

Once, in the short period before women took over the serving duties for his restaurants, Harvey was fielding a complaint from one of his “eating house stewards” about a particularly demanding customer.

“There’s no pleasing that man,” said the steward. “He’s nothing but an out and out crank!”

Harvey responded, “Well, of course he’s a crank! It’s our business to please cranks. Anyone can please a gentleman.”

Pleasing cranks.

Anyone can please a gentleman.

It’s our business.

Why did that line sound familiar to me, I wondered as I read past that little story. I know. It sounds so much like the Lord Jesus.

Think of it.

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The doctor’s office called last week. It’s time for my annual checkup. But before the visit with the physician, I was instructed to drop in on the lab in the hospital next Monday for a “blood workup.”

I’ve done it before and know the routine.

So, tomorrow morning, I’ll skip breakfast and the usual two cups of Community Coffee and head down to Ochsner’s Foundation Hospital first thing. It’s a short drive and a quick procedure. They’ll push up my sleeve, insert a needle into a vein, and drain off a few samples of my blood in vials. The lady will slap a band-aid on the wound and send me on my way. I will have been there for a total of 10 minutes, max.

Two weeks later, Dr. Robert Miles will tell me all about myself. What my cholesterol level is, both good and bad, and whether the thyroid stuff I take needs to be adjusted in strength, and numerous other details which escape me now. (Hey, I’m a preacher, not a medical person.)

Fascinating how they can take a sip of one’s blood and learn a hundred things about us.

Actually, it’s not so odd. You and I live by that principle, that we can learn a lot about a subject by a small sample.

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They called the other day and invited me to speak in chapel at a local Christian high school. I was delighted and told them what I usually do.

They said, “That’s fine. But another time. This time, we need something else.”

What I often do in high school assemblies, I told her, was to set my easel up on the gym floor and get two or three students out of the audience and caricature them. Then, for the piece de resistance, stand the principal before them and sketch him/her. After that, give them my 10 or 15 minute talk on lessons learned from a lifetime of drawing people on the subject of self-image, self-acceptance, and faith in the Lord who made us.

She said, “That sounds great. And we’d like to have you back to do that sometime. But we need something else from you this time.”

“One of our students is dying,” she said. “And it has shaken the entire student body. We need you to minister to us.”

The next day the student went to Heaven.

Today is Friday, the chapel service is Tuesday morning.

Get that? This Sunday is Palm Sunday, the next Sunday is Easter, and in between we’re going to have a service to talk about death and life.

And hope. That’s what this is all about. It’s certainly what Easter is all about.

“We have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3).

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It’s come as a surprise to me that the 27th chapter of Proverbs has become a favorite in that vast book filled with maxims, truths, and adages. So much of that chapter is about friendship.

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy….. Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend…. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother far away…. He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, it will be reckoned a curse to him…. Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another….”

As they said to George Bailey, “No man with many friends is poor.” Or something to that effect.

The person who can boast many friends is rich indeed. According to Facebook, my list of friends now approaches 1,800. Even if that were true–it refers to the sum total of people I’m connected to in that vast network–there’s no way anyone could have that many “good” friends.

That list–the special, “to die for,” friends–is tiny, for all of us.

For reasons I cannot fathom, lately I’ve found myself pondering those people, those men (and for me, they’re all men, mostly my contemporaries) who occupy a strategic spot in my mind, memory, and appreciation.

And I think I’ve identified a key element of that kind of close friendship. See what you think and consider whether it’s the case in your own intimate relationships. (I use the word “intimate” in its best and highest connotation.)

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