G-Poppers … March 16th, 2018

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(3613)

 

G-Pop knows that nearly everybody is acquainted with the process–going out to dinner.

First, arriving at the restaurant, having the greeter seat you. And then the server comes by and sets the whole evening in motion by asking the question, “Can I get your order?”

Of course, if you are a veteran of the cuisine, you know there is an order. First comes the drink, then the salad, entree, dessert, concluding with the check and tip. Candidly, the management doesn’t like it when you get it out of order. Matter of fact, you could be corrected.

Likewise, G-Pop has realized there is an order to this journey. Perhaps we should have learned it by now but there’s so much confusion–and there are too many people who want to get dessert before their salad. So we get confused.

Just as a restaurant visit is “drink, salad, entrée, dessert and then check,” in our time on Earth, we have to discover the correct order for: me, God, people, science and animals.

Simply placing one of these pieces in the wrong position can send us awry. And by awry, G-Pop means a bewilderment which settles into our souls because something doesn’t seem right.

What should come first? There are dangers.

If you start off with God you become too religious. That soon makes you intolerant of people and sometimes even grumpy about including science in the family at all.

Those who begin the order with science often find it necessary to negate a Creator, and over the years may grow weary with people, ending up giving the bulk of their charity to animal rights organizations.

Should we begin with people? That can be a real mouse trap–especially when people act like rats.

How about if we just negate the whole mess and dedicate our lives to animals? They may be cute but they are still beasts, because they bite–sometimes when you least expect it.

So just as a journey to your local bistro is an adventure requiring some basic understanding, being a quality human being certainly means you need to be able to answer the question, “Can I take your order?”

What is your order? G-Pop is curious.

When considering “me” (yourself), God, people, science (Mother Nature) and animals, what sequence works for you?

The choices you make and the order they’re in determine the abundance of your heart–and therefore control your speech and interaction with others.

G-Pop would love to hear from some of his children on this subject. Rather than rattling on about it this week, he’ll wait and see what people have to say.

So in closing, from G-Pop: Can I take your order, please?

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Good News and Better News … May 2nd, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(2922)

Our clothes get dirty.

When this happens, we check our GPS and head off toward a local laundromat.

It is always an adventure–we certainly encounter some intriguing human beings.

Jan met a woman who was frail, lying on a bench, who told her that she had spent the night in a hospital ward, taking chemotherapy. She explained that she needed to eat something but was not really hungry.

Jan pressed the point and offered to buy her a meal. The lady described in detail a certain entrée just down the road at Bojangles that she might be able to choke down–mentioning that she would want the selection with extra hot sauce.

So Jan and I trekked to Bojangles to procure the treat.

Why? Did we do it because we thought the woman was in need of nourishment? Were we convinced that this little action of mercy was a way to convey love and affection to this frail child of God?

Absolutely not. We did it for us. For after all, to do anything else makes you feel like crap.

Let’s understand something–people who are lost are horrible.

That’s why they’re lost. They’re not “partly good and partly bad.” They aren’t following five of the Ten Commandments. They are often selfish, liars and wiling to do almost anything to get their way.

The truth is, you have a choice in life: you can work or you can con. If you don’t want to work, you’ll probably end up conning.

Anyway, back to the story: we brought the chicken, gave it to the lady and left her alone to enjoy her delicacy. A few minutes later she was gone. (I asked Jan to do a sketch of her just so we would have the memory. See below.)

We have to remember what the purpose is for hope, faith and love.

We’re not hoping the world becomes a better place, that our faith will produce miracles, or love will change the planet.

Hope, faith and love abide. That’s what the Good Book says. They abide because they really don’t solve problems–they just prevent us from becoming part of the mess.

Hope gives me the confidence to get up every morning thinking I can actually accomplish my mission.

Faith embraces me with the belief that I am not alone–what I do and say matters.

And love is my doorway to escape hate because hate sucks.

When I went to the church on Sunday morning–Konnoak Hills United Methodist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina–this was fresh on my mind.

Such beautiful people with wonderful stories, who are constantly being bombarded with the concept that the world is changing at a breakneck pace, so they’d better grab onto the caboose or be left at the station.

Hogwash.

Right now in our country, “crazy” thinks it is the boss. It’s time for us to rise up and share the good news:

• Shouting is loud, not smart.
• Popular is advertised, not quality.
• Anger is mean, not strong.
• Cynical is frustrated, not clever.
• And atheism is the absence of hope, not evidence of intellect.

I gave my faith, hope and love to the folks yesterday morning at Konnoak Hills. That’s the good news.

The better news is that I hope they’re smart enough to realize that the lost we are trying to reach can never be virtuous enough to please us.

It’s up to us to bring the heart, soul and patience to the matter.

 

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Good Lord… August 21, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

(1982)

Of the two choices provided I do not like either.

It happens to me sometimes.

I’ll go to a dinner and they’ll offer me baked chicken or chef salad, and I run pictures through my mind of the two entrees, and realize that I’m not particularly in the mood for either one.

Yet we live in a society emphatic that we follow a pre-packaged thinking which has been stuffed in a box just for us, rather than allowing individual tastes and ideas to come to the forefront–to see how they would actually fly.

I bring this up because tonight I head off to Lord of Life Lutheran in Portage, Michigan.

I like the name, even though I’ve never been comfortable with the word “lord.” It harkens images of King Arthur and the knights or very religious inclinations towards servitude rather than companionship. But that’s just me being picky.

I am greatly blessed by the fact that it’s Lord of LIFE and not the other two options which are more prevalent in our society: Lord of the Bored and Lord of the Horde.

Sometimes it feels like I’m being pressured to be either religious or to be an atheist. I can join the ranks of those who file in and perch themselves in a pew and snooze through a worship service or I can accept the agenda of a mob that has no sense of history or personal responsibility, but careens down a superhighway at 90 miles per hour, unable to see through the fog.

What makes matters worse is that the bored and the horde are at war, accusing each other of alienation and crimping freedom of expression.

Here’s what I think:

• Don’t talk to me about rights until you’ve dealt with some wrongs.
• And don’t preach against the wrongs when you’re not prepared to give your fellow-humans equal rights.

As you can see, this often causes me to be stuck in the middle between the Lord of the Bored and the Lord of the Horde.

So imagine my delight–tonight I get to go to Lord of Life–what Jesus described as abundant, non-condemning, willing to be creative and having a great sense of good cheer.

Is that what I will find tonight? I’m not sure. But since they’ve encased themselves within this delightful name, I will exhort them to live up to their own standard.

Sometimes the choices are not sufficient to the needs of my heart.

I have no intention of being bored–and I will not join the horde of stupidity simply because they offer an open bar.

Lord of Life — yes, my dear friends, that’s for me.

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Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event