1. “Why do I keep coming to these conventions?” someone said in my hearing. The person next to him started enumerating the reasons. Business of the denomination, information from our agencies, that sort of thing. But I kept the question in my mind. After all, the first such meeting I attended was 40 years ago, and that was in Mississippi. Later, it was North Carolina, then Louisiana. There is indeed a sameness to them, and tons of good reasons for attending. However….

Monday evening as I was leaving the convention center, I bumped into a good friend who had just flown into Alexandria from Texas where he had been in an important meeting. He was bringing me up to speed when a second friend walked up. “I started not to interrupt,” he laughed, “until I saw who you were with!” We stood there for 5 minutes chatting, then decided to seek some coffee. The Holiday Inn had just closed their restaurant, someone said there was a cafe down the street and we took off walking. Six or ten blocks later–after doubling back on another street–we found it. The Diamond Grill was just the place.

We sat there for an hour, having dessert and coffee and catching up on each other’s lives. And I thought, “This is it for me. This is the reason I come to these things. The fellowship. I need this like a dying man needs his next breath.”

2. Here’s an idea for a sermon.

The front page of Tuesday’s USA Today told of a strange occurrence in the lives of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her husband John, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and lives in a Phoenix facility for such sufferers. This sad disease erodes portions of the brain having to do with memory and recognition, resulting in the patient often not knowing the persons who love them the most. However, one aspect of their lives that does not go away is the need for relationships. Which explains why….

John O’Connor has fallen in love with another patient at the facility. He no longer remembers his wife, and, according to their son Scott, is acting like a teenager in love. The family no doubt has mixed emotions, although publicly they confess to relief that he is comfortable and happy.

Now, we all know people who profess to a love for the Lord, but who have fallen in love with the world. They no longer remember the Lord and their pew sits empty on Sunday mornings. No prayers of any significance rise from their homes and their Bibles gather dust from neglect. Oh, they are in love all right, but not with the Lord. Their football team, their favorite sport, their hobby, some particular person, a television program, a job, some bad habit, some unhealthy addiction–they are hooked as surely as any heroin user was ever ensnared.

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” That’s I John 2:15.

Some have left their first love. That’s Revelation 2:4.

Forgetting is a problem and not just for Alzheimer’s patients. “He who lacks these qualities (diligence, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love) is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.” That’s II Peter 1:9

There is a spiritual version of Alzheimer’s attacking a lot of our church members and thus responsible for the weakness in the Lord’s church.

3. The front of Wednesday’s Times-Picayune announces, “People still moving into New Orleans.” According to GCR Associates–that’s our friend Mike Flores’ organization–the pre-Katrina population for Orleans Parish proper (i.e., the city limits of New Orleans and excluding the metro area) was 454,863. Then, July 1, 2006, the population was 223,388. By October 1, 2006, it had inched up to 242,626. July 1 of 2007, the population was 273,598. The latest figure–October 1, 2007–was 288,057, or 63 percent of its pre-Katrina numbers.

That figures out to about 5,000 new residents each month. The article points out that certain areas such as Gentilly, Lakeview, and New Orleans East are lagging behind the rest of the city in the increase in population. GCR uses utility hookups to gauge the number of homes and from that, they multiply a certain number to estimate the population totals.

4. “Every idle word” is the way our Lord put it in Matthew 12:36. He warned that we would give account in judgement for every detail, even the off-handed utterances that “don’t really matter.” (Ask any politician or public figure who got in trouble or was fired for such off-the-record comments. They matter, and may say more about the person than their well-thought-out public statements.)

I’m finding out about these ‘idle words.’ In recent days, we’ve had emails from people who were searching for things and the internet sent them to my blogs where they unearthed something written months or even years earlier.

One last week said he was looking for Mayberry’s Aunt Bee Taylor on the internet and found where I had mentioned my visit to Siler City, NC, some 20 years ago and my attempts to visit her. He told of his similar experiences and we’ve chatted back and forth.

Another had discovered a line I used about people who will not give in to others. “Two automobiles met on a one-way bridge. The driver of the first leaned out and shouted, ‘I never back up for fools.’ The driver of the other threw his car into reverse and called out, ‘I always do.'”

The inquirer had run across a variation of that 20 or 30 years ago and wondered if I had heard it. I hadn’t.

I suppose I knew that the internet has its ways of keeping track of everything we post on blogs, but the details of its record-keeping and the extent of its searching are mind-boggling.

If man can do that with computers, we may rest assured that the Lord has His own ways of retrieving “every idle word” we speak in this life. Scary thought.

5. Ken Taylor, pastor of the merged Elysian Fields Avenue and Gentilly Baptist Church, writes in a report to friends and supporters: This week, we had visitors from the First Baptist Church of Euless, Texas. A lighting manufacturer had sent a truckload of lamps to give out to residents returning to our community. When people started exiting their gutted out church carrying lamps, neighbors noticed and began to call one another and began to show up. “Pretty soon the street was clogged with vehicles lined up for their turn with the lamps.”

Ken says, “This is a good picture of the way the gospel should be spread. May the Light shine in hearts all around our city.”

Ken told of the Euless folks building and painting a fence around the church playground, not–he pointed out–to keep kids out, but as a safety precaution. The job finished, the nearly empty spray paint cans were deposited in a trash can. Soon some neighborhood boys, ages 7, 12, and 14, who had been helping at the church on another project, discovered the cans. “You know what happened next,” Ken writes.

Soon these boys were spray-painting the front of the church gym (where they meet for worship). Some of the volunteers spotted them and surrounded them before they had done too much damage. They handed the boys some wire brushes and water and saw that they scrubbed off their handiwork. Someone called the pastor’s home and Ken came to see about the situation and deal with the boys. “Where do you live?” he asked. The oldest boy stonewalled, but the middle one told.

“The oldest boy was bitter and angry,” Ken writes. “It was obvious that his problems began long before this incident.” At the home, Ken discovered the family has just been back in the community for two months, and the older boy is facing a disciplinary hearing at school. Ken assured them all they wanted to do was minister to them. They talked and prayed together. Now, he’s asking for prayer for Jamil, Jamal, and Gary.

Ken concludes, “It is amazing what a can of spray paint can do. It can make a fence look great and it can open a home to ministry. May the Light overcome the darkness so many are trapped in.”

6. Ken and Glennes Brassfield are Oklahomans from Moore who frequently come to New Orleans to share the gospel of Christ. In a note to us this week, he reported that he met with volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky on the sites where they were working. He invited those who wished to accompany him and Glennes on soulwinning visits. Several took him up on it and saw a number of people come to Christ. Ken and Glennes themselves report having led 37 people to Christ by the end of the week.

This was by far the best response they have had, he says.

“Part of the reason we were able to see so many decisions was because we had driven by the Salvation Army building where we saw lots of people in line outside. We found that they represented families waiting to fill out applications for Christmas gifts for their children. We asked permission from those in charge to visit and talk with them. They gave us permission, so we shared the gospel there on two different days. Twenty-one people accepted Christ as their Savior. We gave information on all the decisions to the NOAH office as well as the associational office for followup by local pastors and churches.”

See how blessed we are down here, with such friends.

7. I’ve never hated death so much.

Some friends of mine were agonizing in prayer for a new-born child of their loved ones and I joined their prayer chain. The child was being ministered to in a pediatric intensive care facility in a distant city, and the emails were flashing around the country connecting their large network of prayer supporters. Today I received word that the child had died. The parents issued a brave, courageous statement of victory in Christ, and how I admire them for that. But I grieved for them.

You would think that the grief of having lost my 95-year-old father last week and theirs in losing their infant baby would be poles apart. But it’s not. It’s losing someone you love and it hurts like. Well, like hell is how it hurts. Literally.

I don’t know of one good thing to say about death. I hate it. I hate the idea of my own death and I will hate yours. I do not know of a single good thing to say about this monster. It helps me to know that my Lord hated death even more than we do. He broke up every funeral procession He came to by raising the dead.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for not trying to put a smiley face on this monster. Thank you for driving a stake through its heart on Calvary.

Scripture calls death an enemy and who can doubt that. It rips relationships asunder and decimates homes and tears the hearts out of children of all ages. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” we read in I Corinthians 15:26. Death has been defeated, but not yet destroyed.

Like a bee still flying around after losing its stinger, it’s still frightening people but cannot do them any real damage.

Toward the end of that 15th chapter of I Corinthians, the Apostle Paul literally gives a “take that, death!” taunt to this enemy: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” And then, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

The difficult thing is we just have to take the victory part on faith. Scripture makes it plain that this is so, although all we see is our loved one disappearing over the horizon and not returning. We have our Lord’s word on it, a promise backed up by His death on Calvary and His miraculous resurrection from the grave. I believe it with my head, but my heart still hurts.

Someone asked, “When are you going to quit talking about death so much?” The preacher said, “Just as soon as people quit dying.”

Hasten that day, Father. In some 45 years of pastoring and preaching, I’ve probably done a thousand funerals, and I hope I don’t ever have to do another one.

Enough already.