The excitement quotient

(Let me ask the help of everyone who reads this. Please invite any First Responder–those who helped New Orleans during and just after the hurricane–to our appreciation event scheduled for Saturday, April 8, at the New Orleans Arena from 10 to 4 pm. Call Cherry Blackwell at 504 451-9333 for more information. Last Saturday at Tall Timbers, I met two men who flew helicopters during those critical days in New Orleans, and neither had heard of this event. We want them all to know and to come.)

Sunday morning at Luling’s First Baptist Church, a deacon delivered a mini-sermon just before leading in prayer. He said, “We’re all excited about LSU getting into the Final Four.” A chorus of amen’s rose up. “But it bothers me that I am much more excited about my basketball team winning than I am about the Lord Jesus Christ loving me. And that makes me ashamed.”

I appreciated what he said, and later handed him the following note: “If the Lord loved us as infrequently as LSU gets into the Final Four (every 20 years or so) on those rare occasions when He did, we’d be plenty excited.”

The problem is it’s hard to stay excited about a constant. Inherit a million dollars and you are ecstatic for a few weeks. Eventually, you come down to earth. No one who has been a millionaire for years goes around in a state of euphoria. The most beautiful girl in town agrees to marry you, and you’re on cloud nine. But a year or ten years into the marriage, you’re back to normal. Let a young pastor get called to the biggest church in the state and he is overwhelmed by God’s goodness. A year later, he is overworked and overwrought with the expectations placed on him. Life has returned to normal. No one can live on a mountain of excitement.

Fortunately, the Lord has not asked euphoria or even excitement from us. Just faithfulness and steadfastness. Those who measure a worship service by its emotional highs are missing the mark. As the old preacher used to say, “It’s not how high you jump that impresses God but how straight you walk after you hit the ground.”


Oak Park Baptist Church has asked one of their own, a First Responder of an unusual kind, to speak next Sunday morning in the April 2 service. Colonel Patricia Prechter is the highest ranking nurse in the Louisiana National Guard, and was called to active duty two days prior to Katrina. She became the ranking officer at the Superdome in charge of the medical detachment and remained there until it evacuated nine days after the storm. Col. Prechter, the Dean of the Nursing Division at Holy Cross College in New Orleans, is a member of Oak Park along with her husband Joe and son Joey. In a news release, the church says, “Her story…will be told from the combined perspectives of a compassionate Christian, a registered nurse, and a professional soldier who has served for over 28 years in various deployments including service in a MASH unit in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.” The service begins at 10:30 am. Oak Park is located at the corner of Kabel and General Meyer in the Algiers section of New Orleans.

A group calling itself www.restorewetlands.com is running full-page ads (in green ink of all things) to ask, “Do you know what Louisiana needs?” The answer is: “Help from New Mexico!” The two senators from that state–Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman–are leaders of the Senate Energy Committee, a group that carries the major responsibility for restoring the depleted wetlands which comprise the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Interestingly, the ad does not ask anyone to contact these two senators, but instead to get word to the residents of New Mexico that we need them to bring pressure upon their elected leaders to help us. By going to the website, one receives sample letters and is told how to contact New Mexicans.

A little more information on the matter, reported here previously, about how many locals carried flood insurance. The editorial in Monday’s paper reads, “Members of Congress lectured us for our supposed recklessness, fueled by testimony from people like Cato Institute Chairman William Niskanen who said that most New Orleans property owners didn’t carry flood insurance. That’s the fable, but the facts are quite different.

“Despite our easy-going ways, when it comes to flood insurance, there’s not a more formic place. Two out of three New Orleanians who lived in single-family homes were covered by flood insurance when Katrina hit–67 percent compared to a national rate of 5 percent.

“And a majority of the single-family homes in Louisiana that were damaged by the storm–64.4 percent–also were covered. Jefferson Parish has the highest market-penetration of the top 100 flood insurance markets in the country, and Orleans and St. Bernard parishes also rank in the top 10….The same can’t be said of the rest of the nation. Most people who live in other flood-prone areas aren’t insured, and 86 percent of California residents don’t carry earthquake insurance.

“Blaming Louisiana for a failure of character is wrong and conveniently diverts attention from the real failure–of the flood protection system built by the federal government.”

(I looked up ‘formic.’ It refers to the ways of the ant. Hard-working, presumably.)

The “Lady Tigers” of LSU have just earned their way into the Final Four basketball championship for next weekend. Which means the men’s and the women’s teams have both achieved this elite status. Women’s coach Pokey Chatman said, “The people down here could use something to lift their spirits. We think this will help a little.”

Freddie Arnold from our office is in Cullman, Alabama, speaking in various churches as part of an “On Missions Celebration” this week. That’s one county east of my beloved Winston County. That’s pretty exciting to me.