There’s an old colloquial saying in Thailand that has become something of a joke. Makes for a great t-shirt, too. When foreigners would travel to the Land of Smiles, and ask if this whatever was the same as the whatever where they came from, or the whatever from another part of the country or town, the standard reply was, “Same same, but different.”
Why do they have the same two kinds of markets sitting right next to each other? Same same, but different.
Are the people on the southern coast the same as the people in Chiang Mai or Bangkok? Same same, but different.
Do the cooks turn out that Thai cuisine they way their grandmothers did it? Same same, but different.
Today those who deal with the realities of change in this, the only nation in Asia never colonized, face great challenges and great opportunities. And yet, they hold on to a culture that is the friendliest form of fierce independence I have ever met. Same same, but different. [click to continue…]
Have a dream? A vision of what could be, if only…? Do you have a vision of something greater to come, which you passionately long for? This past Saturday night, on what was as much a holiday weekend in Thailand as it was in the U.S., a visionary, passionate Christian leader taught me a priceless lesson about how God brings vision to reality. Here’s how I described it, straight out of my journal.
Saturday night Dui and his wife Gift invited us to join them for what he called a home Bible study. Pastor Preecha and Nit joined us as well. When the van came to pick us up, it was already loaded with an army of others – Dui’s father and stepmother, brother and sister-in-law, and a couple of kids. As we made our way, we stopped at a roadside chicken roaster’s stand, where a woman had five cooked chickens on a rotissarie. Gift picked the best looking one, the middle one, and the lady whacked it off and gave it to her. That, Dui said, was going to be our dinner. [click to continue…]
Behind the home my dad grew up in, and lives in today, my grandfather built a smokehouse around 78 years ago. Every winter, when the weather got extremely cold, my grandparents, my dad and his siblings, and their farm hands would kill 10-12 hogs – 3-4 at a time. I’ll spare you the details (you can thank me later).
My grandmother’s job was to smoke the meat. After the meat had been salted down for 21 days, she would take it out, dip it into warm water to get the salt out of it, then hang it in the smokehouse on poles. She would smoke the meat really slowly for two weeks, keeping the green wood barely smoldering. She wouldn’t let the fire blaze up or have any heat to it. She kept it going just enough to cure the meat and give it that good smoked flavor.
Here’s how she described life with the smokehouse: [click to continue…]
Randy is the president of a major water pump business located in Fort Worth, Texas. A few months ago he was on a Southwest Airlines flight and struck up a conversation with the lady sitting next to him. She was on her way home from a DFW visit to her daughter. A wedding shower trip, she said. As the conversation progressed, the lady somehow got to talking about her daughters and their love for the Atlanta Braves. For their sixteenth birthday, the one thing the twins wanted was to fly to Atlanta for a game. Then when the Braves were coming to Arlington a couple of years ago, it happened to be just before one of the girls’ wedding, so that didn’t work out.
And wouldn’t you know it? Here they were, an hour flight away, and again, they were here during the week of a the second twin’s wedding and the only dates they could go were taken up with wedding stuff.
Well, let’s just see, says Randy, as he pulls out a Baseball magazine and flips to the Rangers’ schedule. Actually, there was a way, and there was a day. Oh, and I have six season tickets to the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington, says he. He offered them as a wedding present.
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We welcomed you into the world today after a lot of prayer and waiting, filled with joy and anticipation. You didn’t disappoint! Other little girls have been and will be born. Other grandchildren will surely grace our family. But you will always be our first. And your arrival will always be a memorable moment in our lives.
On this day, May 12, 2008, it’s a crazy world. But I guess people would probably have said that on the day I was born 49 years ago, too. It’s an election year in America. Here in Lubbock, our mayor just lost a reelection bid two days ago. Soon the Democratic party will choose between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama for their nominee for president. Either one will represent an unprecedented step in American politics. Republicans already have their candidate – John McCain. An earthquake hit China today. American soldiers are fighting in Iraq in an unpopular war.
We worry about the world you are inheriting. But we don’t fear as those who have no hope. We know in whom our (and your) hope lies.
For a short time, I get to be your pastor. That’s really cool. But I’ll always get to be your grandfather. And that’s even more cool.
Your parents are wonderful people. [click to continue…]
Winnie the Pooh died last week.
Not the “chubby little cub all stuffed with fluff” – lest I start a bad rumor.
This Winnie was a member of our household for the last sixteen years. The shih tzu has offspring scattered from Georgia to West Texas. She lived in seven different houses and outlived two hamsters, three cats, and two other dogs. What times she wasn’t a yapping fool, she was a good dog. And we’d been anticipating that she didn’t have long to live… for the last three years or so.
In our family two beliefs have always converged. Belief #1: Pets are good things. They teach us a lot about unconditional love, trust, and care. Plus, they’re (usually) a lot of fun.
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Covenant Lakeside Hospital is under construction. Hey, it’s a hospital – nothing unusual about that. But down the hall and around the corner from what is normally the main entrance, there is an interesting sign. In big, bold, red letters on a yellow background, the Pastoral Care office trumpets, “TEMPORARY PRAYER ROOM.”
People pass this on stripped-down concrete floors, and the word “temporary” is routinely used with “under construction.” So nobody questions what the sign means. This is the place to go until the normal prayer room is available again.
But my twisted brain being what it is, when I saw it last week, it stuck me as kind of funny. [click to continue…]