My 500 Words

It was late and and I was tired. The lecture had droned on and I had missed several key points. I wasn’t going to be much help to my assigned search and rescue team. I wasn’t excited about signing up for the CERT training but since I had been assigned to oversee the recruitment and I had the responsibility to open up the building and secure it when the training was done, I decided that it made as much sense to participate in the training and be in a better position to help in the event of a real emergency. My workday had been busy with intense cases almost all day long. I had dealt with enough emotional tragedy during the day that the thought of working through staged responses to a natural disaster was more than I wanted, so I simply zoned out. After the lecture we finally divided into teams and were instructed to conduct a complete search of one section of the building where they had set it up like an earthquake disaster. We entered the first room as a team and began our searc...

Because I make goals throughout the year I am not a fan of new year resolutions. My experience suggests that I require a confluence of circumstances to create an atmosphere where I find sufficient motivation to make a real change in my behavior. I have yet to experience such a phenomenon of intense inspiration for improvement from the turning of a calendar page; especially in the middle of winter. Something about the cold temperatures and the shortened days leaves me much less desirous of doing anything new. But recent events have encouraged me to simply be more kind. But such a general goal can be impossible to measure so I have divided it into a few categories. How is my heart? Am I more prideful or humble? I know the answer to that question and need to do better. I pledge that from this day forward I will find one moment in every day when I am consciously aware of wanting to do something for myself and instead I will strive to help another. While I know this is a simple step, I ...

Centuries ago some distant relative of mine traveled over land and sea for the chance to fight in the name of Christianity. As he embarked on that quest his heart pounded with pride and his spirit swelled with hope that his battles would deal a mortal blow all enemies of God. Battles defined by the very essence of a fight between all that was good and all that was evil. He would have fought under the emblem of the Jerusalem cross. Could there be anything more sacred, anything more worthwhile, than defending his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He would have been told of severe, brutal and barbaric persecutions of his brothers in the gospel, his fellow Christian by savage Turks. He would believe that those who had been labeled infidels had usurped holy land that had been divinely granted to those of the faith of Christ. He would have been taught that the call to do battle was obedience to the very command of Christ himself. Throughout time, acts of individual brutality, national op...

I have been in about five or six accidents in my life. Two of them were my fault. Fortunately, in both of those the significant property damage occurred to my car. In the first accident, the car did not belong to me, but in the second accident it did. I also remember that both drivers were so kind and forgave me on the spot. I was worried, however, that I’d see a big jump in the premium of my auto insurance but it never came. Perhaps the total repair cost was small enough that it didn’t put me in the more at risk population of insured drivers. Since I don’t know their algorithms I can only guess about why the insurance company didn’t raise my rates. I will admit to being very pleasantly surprised when my new premium came and it was within a dollar of the cost before the accident. I can attest that I am a fan of insurance and the peace of mind it brings by knowing that if a collission occurs, there is a source of funding to compensate for the expenses that are sure to follow. W...

It seems like we have been together for centuries. When we met, I felt like the emotions we were to discover were as endless as the universe. The connections that we formed surpassed the greatest powers of all the earth. I traveled across the ocean just to find a place that was so rich and so full of promise that I believed that our union could never end. But somewhere along the line, we went wrong. The relationship became all about you. You said you loved me but you never did anything just for me. You loved me because of everything that I could give to you. But is it not true that God Himself has declared that we are equal?  One is not to be below the other nor the forced servant of a master, no matter how noble that master may be. We are both endowed by God with certain rights, to live and to be free as we seek for happiness. I traveled far but my heart remained loyal to you. I served you and I have given all that I can give. Yet if I were to give any more I feel that not onl...

I’m really not sure what I should do because I feel like I’m being followed. Just yesterday somebody asked me about the symphony concert I had been to just two nights earlier. They weren’t even at the concert, but somehow they were able to know where I had been, who I was with and what I had been listening to. If this was an isolated incident I wouldn’t worry, but this stuff seems to be happening all the time. In the last couple of years I had taken a whole bunch of pictures at two different family reunions and some trips that we had been on as a family. I had been busy so I hadn’t moved the photos to my external drives. But before they were lost I took some time at the end of last week and over the weekend to update the photos and move them into some electronic albums. Suddenly, people I didn’t even know were talking about these pictures that I had taken. Pictures that portrayed me, my family and the places we had traveled. You can imagine my surprise that by simply putting t...

Some of these children really know how to sing. It had been a couple of years since I had the chance to fill in for the Primary children’s music director. I think the music leader would ask me to lead because my wife was playing the piano at the time. It must have seemed logical to let the husband and wife team work together whenever she was away. For me, it was always fun to substitute when my wife was playing because I knew how well she could adapt; right on the spot. I also didn't even have to remember the song list because, as the pianist, she knew all of the songs, their page numbers and she would always help me get ready. Now that a few years have gone by, my wife no longer plays the piano for the children, she leads them in the music. Since I don’t play the piano, the chance to fill in never came along, because whenever the music leader was out of town, so was I. On the Sunday before Christmas, my wife decided she wanted to attend a different congregation to hear a sp...