Pastor Rob’s Ponderings

I experienced a first last week.  While going to this site to post a comment, I discovered someone had hacked into the site and posted a nasty looking character along with a black screen so no one could see the postings or respond to them.  When someone asked how I felt about being hacked, I was not as surprised as I think the questionaire expected me to be.  I was more thankful for the fact that I have a terrific computer person who can fix anything and everything on my computer.

The “violation” or “sense of invasion” was superceded by the confidence I have in the person that takes care of me.  Is there a sermon illustration in there some place?

September 13th, 2008

     “Choking” or falling apart at key points is sometimes referred to in my family as a “tradition.” My older brother played in a Regional Championship Basketball game and scored far below his season average (If we had won, it would have been the first time in 10 years, our high school would have made it to State). My younger brother was tied for lead in the State Golf Championships and only had to shoot his season average the next day to win, but ended up in 10th place.
      My experience happened at the State Oral Interpretation Contest. I was the first freshman in the history of our high school to make it to this level. I got up to the stage feeling confident but didn’t end up that way when I forgot half my speech. I made it through trying to fool the judges by pretending that all was fine but they gave me a “strange” look when I ended early in a speech they knew well (Clarence Darrow’s “Defense of Leopold and Loeb”).
     I don’t know if my youngest brother could join our little group, but I’m sure he would point to a competition or two which wasn’t up to par.
     A person can really start to feel bad when you move to a community and see Championship Banners hanging from the rafters in the gymnasium and you realize the banners are 10 years or older. You really can feel bad when the basketball teams win one or two games a year.
      I once asked our track coach what “kept him going” when nothing went right during a season and all the athletes he coached were nice kids but mediocre talent at best. He said, “Every once in awhile you see someone do something unexpected and it rekindles the flame.”
     Our local football team lost their home opener by 40+ points; they won the next game but not by much.
Finally, last night they beat a much bigger school in a very close game in which not many people expected us to win. It was the other school’s homecoming and we were “the sacrificial lamb” on the altar of 100 years of football for this other school. And there were a few times during the game, it looked like we were “cooked.” But our young men held them at the end and won the game! We were on “Cloud 9″ all the way home.
     Sure, the previous town I was in won several State Wrestling Championships; they even won the State Football Title while I lived there.
     But the game last night “rekindled the fire.” Who knows, the family tradition might be changing from “choking” to be a “lucky charm!”

September 11th, 2008

     I’m sitting here in the office with my window open listening to traffic going by on Hwy. 37 and the high school band practicing down the block on the football field.
     This past Monday I was returning home from Rapid City cutting across South Dakota on Hwy. 14 approaching Pierre smelling the scent of freshly cut wheat.
     Tomorrow night I’m going to be sitting at a high school football game on a chilly Friday evening followed the next morning by cheering on our local high school cross country team as they run across a nearby golf course.
     My previous bishop, Michael Coyner, has become well-known in United Methodist circles for his tales called “Life in the Dakotas” re-tellling his experiences as a bishop in rural and remote North and South Dakota. My current bishop writes devotionals which do not come close to Bishop Coyner’s writings.
In the movie, “Miracle,” about the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team victory in Lake Placid, the credits honor the memory of Herb Brooks who coached the team by saying, “Coach Brooks died shortly after principle photopgraphy. He never saw the movie. He lived it!”
     There is something about “living” in South Dakota which cannot quite be described. I know others who love where they live as well in various parts of the country. But as I described to a friend recently, “Driving toward Pierre on Monday was hauntingly beautiful.”
     Our football team could lose by 40 points on Friday and our Cross Country could have no one finish above 25th place. Movies and books have been written in and about South Dakota. But this is where I live and I don’t mind it at all.