In his 1999 biography of Alastair Cooke, the Brit-turned-Yank who helped to interpret the USA for several generations of British, author Nick Clarke tells how Cooke’s father, a lay Methodist preacher, helped to found a mission for the down and out in a suburb of Manchester. The mission was built…

“…for deadbeats, drunks and derelicts, which acted as a shelter for runaways and battered wives, as well as carrying out

voluntary work amongst the very poor. Only as an old man did Samuel Cooke reveal the full seaminess of life at the Mission,

blushing as he related to his son tales of roaring drunks and whores, and children abandoned outside pubs. In Cooke’s

recollection, ‘my father never tried to convert them. They could be the foulest human beings alive, but they wouldn’t be

turned away.’ “

I confess to being puzzled by this tribute Alastair Cooke raised to his father. Samuel Cooke obviously was a man of compassion, spending his life and energy helping the needy, regardless how society treated them. The son had good reason to be proud of such a father. But learning that his “father never tried to convert them” leaves me with unanswered questions. What does Cooke mean by that? Did he see conversion as brain-washing, scalp-counting, or arm-twisting? Why does trying to convert the down and out strike Cooke as disreputable? And why does he laud his father for never attempting it?

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It surely was the ultimate irony.

It all started when the church built a new house for Marian’s family. Marian worked in the church kitchen, and her daughter Brenda did custodial work in the offices and educational building. Marian’s husband, whom they all called “Mr. Bill,” was disabled, so when their small house burned to the ground, everyone was concerned. That’s why one Sunday morning when the men of the congregation were having their monthly breakfast and someone suggested they pray for Marian and Mr. Bill’s situation, they began talking and soon decided to just build them a new house. No sense praying about something they could do something about. Within a few weeks, they had taken up $10,000 throughout the church to buy the materials. These were generous, kind-hearted people.

The project took about three months, and afterward, the women of the church furnished the house. At the dedication, they all felt pretty good about themselves, and well they should.

What happened next took the wind out of their sails. The associate pastor fired Marian from her job. “Well, she just wasn’t doing her work,” he must have explained to a hundred people, one at a time. “It looks like she felt like a privileged person the way we had done all these things for her and Mr. Bill, and we just couldn’t get anything out of her.”

After that, no one ever again talked about “the wonderful time we had putting up a new house for Mr. Bill and Miss Marian,” since she was now out looking for a job and basically embarrassing them all by her neediness.

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Ken and Barbie first, and now Jennifer and Brad have called off their marriage. At least, Mr. and Mrs. Potato-Head are still together.

The post-breakup experts have taken over the cable outlets informing us that Brad wanted a baby and Jen wanted a career, that their movie-making jobs have often separated them for months at a time, and that the pressure of celebrity-hood was just too much. It’s an old story, one we have not heard for the last time. Part of it we understand.

What I do not comprehend are the statements from their publicist that Brad and Jennifer still hold each other in high esteem and will continue to enjoy a wonderful friendship together. For most of us, that should be enough to make them continue working at the marriage.

The other day I was thinking about how marriages break down, and remembered an old book gathering dust on my shelf. “Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight Eisenhower” by Kay Summersby answered a question that celebrity-hounds were asking during the Second World War: was General Eisenhower in love with the British lady assigned to him as his personal driver? Were the rumors correct about them? Did Ike try to leave Mamie for Kay?

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Charlie showed up for work that day out of uniform, if you could call it that. He and a half-dozen men were a well-drilling team, a difficult job that is always dirty and eventually turns muddy. Charlie had plans after he got off work, and since he would not have time to return home, he had come dressed for his date. So, while the other men were grappling with pipes and drills and generators and muck, Charlie stood back and did what he could while protecting his white shirt, pressed trousers, and silk tie. The men were aware of what he was doing, but no one said anything for a while. Then, up in the morning, one of the men decided to solve what he saw as “Charlie’s problem.” He walked over to a 5 gallon bucket of mud and slush, picked it up, and dumped the contents all over Charlie. “Charlie, my friend,” he said, “as my pastor likes to say, ‘A man can work better after he’s been baptized!'”

I thought of Charlie today when something came up about people who think of themselves as genuine Christians and still have problems with minor matters such as giving and tithing and stewardship and generosity. It’s a matter of first being “baptized,” that is, going under in total submersion of our live and possessions to the Lord Jesus.

People who have never given their all to the Lord will always be having turf wars with the Holy Spirit. “This is mine, that is yours, I’ll give you this, but I want to keep that.” It’s a miserable way to live the Christian life and certainly not what the Lord had in mind.

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Okay, here’s my story.

A year ago, during my regular semi-annual checkup, my dentist said, “What is this whitish stuff under your tongue?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, who checks under his tongue. Even looking in the mirror, all I could see was a glistening, somewhat like saliva, and aren’t we supposed to have saliva there. “You’re seeing things, Doc,” I said. “We’ll keep an eye on it,” he said.

Six months later. “It’s a little more pronounced,” he said. He had to remind me what he was talking about.

A few weeks ago, even I could see it. Again, it was just a silvery film, surely nothing to be concerned about. The dentist prescribed an antifungal mouthwash, thinking it could be a yeast infection. When it did not respond, he sent me to an oral surgeon.

The doctor put me to sleep and sliced off a sliver of the offending flesh. For a week, I carried around a swollen tongue and drank only juices before it began to return to normal. Then, Margaret and I went in for the pathology report.

Carcinoma in-situ. Squamous cells. In other words, cancer. The kind that usually smokers and drinkers get.

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In going through some bookcases the other night, tossing out and giving away things someone else might have a use for and clearing up space for the treasured books now in stacks across the carpet, I ran across a little wireless notebook from years ago containing several treasures I had jotted down. The local cajun culture would call this a “potpourri,” meaning a collection of odds and ends. See if you can use anything here.

The word “wallop” comes from a British general by that name who served Queen Elizabeth I in a reprisal raid on France. He and his men destroyed 29 French villages. On his return to England, he was hailed for “walloping” the French, and people have been walloping one another ever since.

Here’s a poem for the flu season–

“I sneezed a sneeze into the air;

It fell to earth I know not where.

But hard and froze were the looks of those

Into whose vicinity I snoze.”

(Quoted from but not written by Bennett Cerf)

The word “balderdash” actually refers to a silly mixture of liquids such as ale and milk.

Throughout the gospels, when we are told that Jesus was “moved with compassion,” the Greek word is the fascinating “splanknizomai.” It’s a verb derived from the noun “splangchna” meaning intestines, bowels, entrails. To the people of that culture, the strongest emotions came from–where else?–the gut.

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If a fellow doesn’t know the difference between a symbol and the reality it represents, he could find himself in a lot of trouble.

He might, for example, consume a photograph of a steak and expect to work a full shift on its nourishment.

He could pay fifty thousand dollars for the emblem of a Mercedes and still have no way to get to work the next morning.

He could pay a lot of money to a degree mill and announce to the world that he has advanced degrees and still be functionally illiterate.

He could spend all his money on an expensive wedding ring, forcing him to take extra work to pay it off, and end up neglecting his wife and losing his marriage.

She might go to heroic lengths to improve the appearance of her face and body, but without the slightest thought to the content of her character or the quality of her life.

A school could pour all its money into its sports teams and abandon the purpose for which it exists in the first place.

A church could spend a small fortune on its appearance and public image under the mistaken impression that what the community thinks of them has much to do with anything.

A community could let the homeless fill their parks and the poor rot in their projects while pouring needed millions into new stadiums to keep team owners from relocating to cities even more foolish than they.

Preachers could rally their members to boycot businesses where the employees wish customers “Happy holidays,” instead of the more spiritually correct, “Merry Christmas.”

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Our church has done it three times now.

The first time, about five years ago, a representative of Franklin Graham’s Boone, North Carolina ministry called, looking for a church in metro New Orleans to host a family from Bosnia coming to a local hospital to have the baby operated on. He said, “I’ve called all over and, frankly, I’ve been surprised that no one is interested. They all say they’ll have to get back with me and no one has.” I said, “Stop calling. You’ve called the right church.”

It took a dozen or more families for us to host the mother, her baby, and the woman interpreter for a solid 6 weeks or more. In addition to providing two bedrooms in a home, there were meals to prepare, and daily transportation to and from the hospital, some dozen miles away. Church members gave money, some drove their car, and many brought meals. Two families opened their homes, a month in one and several weeks in the other. The baby had his heart surgery and they all went back home, carrying happy memories of American hospitality and Christian love.

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A few mornings ago, I was about to check out of a motel in Alexandria and drive across town for an early breakfast meeting. Carrying my bag to the car in the parking lot, I was struck by one of the most glorious sunrises I’ve seen in years. Against a backdrop of indigo, the purples streaked across the morning sky, leaving bumps of orange and peach in their wake.

I turned around and went inside the lobby and called out to a dozen sleepy guests hovering over morning coffee with faces buried in the USA Todays, “Hey, everyone–come outside and see the most wonderful sunrise!” To their credit, most did. Two minutes later, it was forever gone.

I think it was Tony Campolo who says he tried for a long time to get his teenage daughter to get up and come out and watch the sunrise with him. She said, “Dad, if God had intended us to watch the sunrise, he’d have scheduled it at a decent hour.”

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