Lyle's Blog

As I write this it is a quiet Sunday morning in Sonoma California. We’ve spent a couple days with old friends. Old friends are precious people. These are my wife’s old friends and through privilege of our marriage they are my friends too. The internet and that many times abused media called Facebook allows you to make contact with people you knew long ago. Sharing on the internet is one thing. Being invited into a friends home is a whole different thing. So we share our experiences, our common understanding of life lived, and some appreciation for making it intact this far. We have accepted the end result of our lives. What choice do we have? In reality we always did things our own way and that at times was a problem. What we friends have in common are the same frailties, but we joy in how much we are blest. Yesterday’s gone, tomorrow is not really in our hands, but today is the day we can give grace to each other, maybe lean on one another just a little, to let us know it’s OK; we are made of the same clay. So I am thankful for the grace and kindness of our wonderful old friends. It’s been a long sometimes tough road but we’ve made it this far and it is so sweet to have a hug at the end stretch of this trail we call life. So my hats are off to all of our friends and I so appreciate their hospitality. Thanks so much for your kindness to us.

Grace. Something we talk about but do we really offer as much as we could. We all have limits on how much we’re willing to give it seems. On the cross Christ asked the Father to forgive men because they didn’t really know and understand what they were doing. They were torturing and killing the creator of the universe. In their insane hatred they were mocking, whipping and crucifying God. It’s the same for us as followers of Christ. People do some unthinkable things. It’s down right wickedness. Lots of people suffer terrible abuse. But when we accept Christ as our savior we become His children. Jesus said “if the world hates me, it will hate you”. Some Christians suffer unthinkable things. And like Christ we must ask God to forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing. On the cross they crucified God’s son. When people persecute us they don’t know what they are doing. If they knew who we were, those thoughts wouldn’t cross their minds. We are brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. God loves us. We are the “bride” of Jesus Christ. When we are persecuted it’s the same as persecuting Christ. We must ask God to forgive them. The world doesn’t believe in God or His son. People are not privy to eternal truth. It’s only when a person accepts Christ that the Holy Spirit begins filling them with truth and grace. So we are to give grace, that being undeserved and sometimes unwanted favor. Those that hate are lost in sin and unable to understand that they offend God and fall short of His glory. It’s up to us to show them the love of God and give them grace. Invite them to renew their mind and begin the journey that leads to life eternal. God so loved the world He gave grace; do we?

You never know when it’s too late. I’ve been gone three years from Spokane although I have made a trip back each year. There are just a few people I was able to see or should I say took the time to see. Time changes things fast. It’s only taken a couple phone calls to realize that if I want to see the people I care about, I’d better do it. If there is something I want to tell them, this trip is the time. One is rehabbing at home after a month in the hospital, another is dying of cancer, and that’s just two phone calls. I’m sure everyone isn’t in dire straights but it’s getting to that time in life when second chances aren’t always possible. This is just a reminder that today is the day you’ve been given. Don’t put off seeing those people you care about. Go ahead, make that call. Take the time to call and visit that one who needs to hear your voice. My pastor once said “you can pretend to care but you can’t pretend to be there”.

I was having coffee in a cafe on Petaluma Boulevard whilst my wife met with some old friends at Starbucks. There were two women chatting at the next table and I wasn’t paying them any mind. As I was leaving I heard the one say that a Hispanic couple were moving in next door and thank God because Sebastopol is to frikken’ white. Here was an old white woman (part of the hippie-slob generation) deploring her race being too dominant in the population of her town of Sebastopol. It is true that there are eighty eight percent white in her town. I know with all the laws against housing discrimination that the only thing keeping the town so white is probably that Hispanics really don’t desire to live there. Like all of California, Sebastopol is as liberal as any place else and maybe if this old lady spoke up some of those crackers would put their houses up for sale and make sure a non-whitey bought it. Furthermore if she herself were to move out or out of pure decency commit suicide, then there would be at least one less of those nasty white people to mar the landscape. As one looks around California you notice it’s run down and town after town reflects a population that can’t shake its hippie past and just hangs on to ideas that were birthed in drugs. We went by my wife’s old school. Unkempt, weeds two feet high, just third world looking. This is what you get when a bunch of Woodstock worshiping fools grow up and run everything. Nothings important, only the hair-brained thoughts of idiots are of any value. I’ll be back in Arizona next Saturday night and that’s not to soon

My son and I were at the park a couple days ago and we noticed person after person with there eyes fixed on their smart phones and it became apparent they were all involved in the Pokémon craze. I’m already irritated by people always staring at a little screen instead of participating in life, but here was the next stage in the creation of mind-numbed idiots. The little thing they hold in their hand is now programming them to be further addicted to control. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse; what more can I say? This is the hokey pokey and we all know, that’s what it’s all about.