When I’m flying somewhere, I pray for a boring flight.

The last thing I want at 30,000 feet is excitement, which would usually involve turbulence or storms, equipment malfunction or a passenger problem. None for me, thanks.

“Mom, I’m bored.”

Sound familiar? The harried mama will be tempted to do something to interrupt this state of affairs in the life of her child. Most of her choices, I venture to say, are not good ones and involve the television.

“Good, honey. I’m so glad you are bored. Now, sit here and enjoy it.”

No parent says such a thing. But it’s not a bad idea. There’s a lot to be said for boredom.

Boredom at home can be good.

As a bored five-year-old, I was pestering my mom and bugging my little sister. That’s when Lois Jane Kilgore McKeever did something for which I have been grateful ever since: she sat Carolyn and me down at the kitchen table, gave us pencil and paper, and told us to “Draw!”

I discovered that I love to draw. I’m now 71 years old and still drawing. Cartooning is not what my life is all about, I’m glad to report. But it’s one aspect of my life. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s an outlet for a lot of things, it’s a great way to bless people, entertain children, connect with strangers, and communication spiritual truths.

Boredom at church is another matter. Or is it?

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Be careful of those categories, Christian. Take the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” for instance.

Liberal is a bad, bad word these days, in politics as well as in religion in this country. But it has a noble tradition and needs to be salvaged. Conservative is the “in” word, at least in the portion of the world where I live. But the news about it is not all positive.

The scripture can throw some light on the matter of liberals and conservatives:

On another sabbath, He went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus (Luke 6:6-11).

There is no place in the work of the Lord for cowards and wimps. To follow the Lord Jesus means to take risks, to stay focused, to confront evildoers–no matter how highly placed–and to bless people, no matter the personal cost.

Sometimes in the Scriptures, I am struck by how the Lord’s most blistering messages were directed toward the religious. I’m religious. That tells me I must be very careful. There is something about religion that captures the very people it claims to liberate. Captures and binds and enslaves. It burdens down, wears away, and blinds the eyes.

We religious people must always be on our guard lest our faith turn us into professional nay-sayers, the kind of people who put doctrine ahead of obedience to the Lord, our convictions ahead of compassion, our way ahead of the Lord’s way.

I remember the first time I became aware that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were theological conservatives. I’m a theological conservative. It pained me to realize the most blistering sermon of Jesus–that would be Matthew 23–was directed toward the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were the greatest stumblingblock to Jesus’ ministry, instigators of the charges against Him, and collaborators with the scribes and Sanhedrin to have Him arrested and crucified and neutralized.

Those of us who call ourselves theological conservatives must be on constant patrol, alert to those forces that would turn us into enemies of the Savior, obstacles to the Spirit, pawns of the devil himself.

In no way do I claim to have the last word on this subject of theological liberalism and conservatism. I don’t even have the fourth or fifth word. What I do have, I hope you will agree, is the opening thought.

If being liberal means the liberty to live freely for Christ, cooperating with the Holy Spirit in whatever enterprise He is engaged in today, without first consulting the ruling elite to see what is kosher, then I am a liberal. If it means putting obedience ahead of my personal convictions, putting people above my stubborn prejudices, and putting the Lord above everything and everyone, then I hope to always be a liberal. Like Jesus.

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No one but God can do what God alone can do.

That little circular bit of reasoning is intended to say that when the Lord made you and me, He intentionally reserved a few parts of the puzzle for Himself. Nothing is complete until He enters the picture.

He formed you and me with an itch inside us which He alone can scratch. The idea was to boomerang us back to Him.

He installed a hunger inside our hearts which He alone can satisfy. The plan was to bond us with Him in a tight, permanent, and mutually satisfying relationship.

He left an emptiness within us which He alone can fill. The idea was to help us see how He alone is our life.

He made each of us with a need for which He alone is the supply, a question for which He only is the answer, a searching for which He is the Way.

Venturing into this world, you and I will try many things. Day by day, little by little, step by step, we discover that none of the things we encounter in life touch us very deeply. We amass wealth, but all it does is cling to our outsides like so much velcro; it cannot begin to speak to the hungers and needs and spaces of our inner self.

All our fame and notoriety simply draws attention to our emptiness and lostness; it does not come close to meeting a single need of our true self.

We gain possessions to fill the house and recognition for achievements to adorn the walls, but they do nothing to erase the darkness when we are alone, the gloom when we are quiet, the thirsts when we are honest.

God alone is what’s missing.

Our lives minus God are like castles which dot the European countryside: in place, ready, majestic even. But empty. No royalty anywhere to be found. The glory is gone, if it was ever present.

Manny Ramirez was in the news this morning. This ex-baseballer is in court for abusing his wife. Big, tough, macho outfielder who hit all those home runs for the Red Sox and a smattering of other teams afterwards–and he picks on his little wife. What’s wrong with this man?

What’s wrong is he is discovering that without God, no amount of fame or athletic accomplishments, money in the bank or cars in the driveway amount to anything. It’s just so much clutter until the heart is right.

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Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)

Yesterday morning, the phone call informed me of the death of Dr. Clarke Bozeman. This good man, nearly 90 years old, a deacon in the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi, and a veterinarian in that city for 50 years or more, had been in declining health for some time. His homegoing was not unexpected. The funeral will be a celebration of a life-well lived this Monday.

Two hours later, another call came from the same city (where we served as pastor from 1974-86). J. C. Perkins, longtime member of the First Baptist Church, prominent businessman, husband of Margaret Perkins who has headed the church’s library and media center for a generation or longer, had an accident while working with his boat at the lake. Alone and unable to summon help, he died there.

Two good men, two supportive and loving families. Two lives well-invested in service for God and mankind. A church and city filled with sadness today.

At moments like this, we find comfort in a hundred places: in remembering a thousand events and incidents, in notes and mementoes around the house or in the office, in the hugs and soft words of friends, and in the nearness of those we love most and best.

For disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing comforts like the assurances and promises of God’s word to His children.

Throughout this weekend, those two families will be opening God’s Word from time to time to claim anew His words to those who love Him. Friends who appear only for a few minutes of comfort will whisper scriptures which they have found most assuring.

“Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life.”

Tomorrow–Sunday, September 11, 2011–is the tenth anniversary of what shall ever be known in American history simply as Nine-Eleven. Pastors will be sharing their own stories of that fateful day as spiritual applications for their people.

I love to tell of Al Braca. This brother-in-the-Lord has been in Heaven for a decade now, but his example and inspiration linger.

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Once you have been clean–I mean really clean–you are never satisfied again with anything less.

If anyone cleanses himself….he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. (II Timothy 2:21).

Recently, at an outdoor event a church was staging for the community, I sat under a covering sketching anyone and everyone, people of all ages. At one point, something offensive hit me. A man with a body odor that indicated he had been weeks away from the bathtub approached to see what I was doing.

Later, I reflected on how rare that is. In the civilized circles I run in, we almost never encounter the unwashed and the odorific.

But we used to. In fact, it’s very possible I used to be among them. After all, I grew up on the farm and getting dirty and taking rare baths were part of the culture. More on that in a minute, however.

Sometimes when I am out west riding with the cowhands, moving a herd to the trailhead or fighting outlaws or just branding the dogies–I read Western novels a lot, in other words–something occurs to me: these people must have been filthy.

You almost never read in a Western novel of the main characters taking baths. If they do at all, it’s usually a swim in a creek or a formal bought-and-paid-for hot bath in town at the end of their journey.

They seem to wear the same clothes day after day and sleep in them at night.

Is it unfair to conclude that these people were dirty most of the time? Not only that, but I think we can assume it wasn’t just the dusty cowhands on the trail, but the townspeople also–the preacher, the schoolteacher, the sheriff, the merchants–who took rare baths.

The obvious question is: Weren’t they repulsed by the (ahem) fragrance the dirty bodies gave off?

Apparently not. When everyone smells the same way, no one notices.

Bill Glass asked a fellow at the Fort Worth stockyards once how he could stand the smell. He said, “What smell?”

We can get accustomed to anything.

Here’s the story of this (now) citified farmboy regarding baths, with a little application to the spiritual.

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