Paul Jenkins - Evotions

Job and broken boxes

On my current chronological journey through the Bible, I find myself in Job. It is, I admit, one of my favorite books in the Bible. For me, it's a lot like watching Hannity and Colmes on Fox News - you know they're not going to agree but you watch them go back and forth saying the same things over and over again while their counterpart makes silly faces and shakes his head. Job is a constant point, counterpoint until the end of chapter 31 when Job is finally done talking and his friends are finally done talking to him. Then, just as we're catching our breath, in walks Elihu, full of anger and empty words. It is the reason he was angry that caught my attention. Look at it with me and see what I mean.

Evening, then Morning

Do you ever see something so many times that it starts to blend in with the surroundings? Perhaps you can relate more to watching the same re-runs on TV or the same DVD for the umpteenth time until your mind goes in neutral and the sigts and sounds become a blurry waste of time. Sometimes it is the familiar that holds jewels which can be lost in the common. Recently, I mined a jewel out of the common chapter of Genesis 1. First, though, some background.

Edison and Fire

A couple months back, our neighbors' house burned down. It was quite an event in our little neighborhood, and we felt terrible for them. They are a very nice couple who had a lfietime of memories and collectables in that house, but if you asked them about the events of that Saturday morning, they'll tell you that they got the most valuable things out of the hosue - themselves - before the fire took what was left. Today as I finished my morning run, I ran past the house that is being built to replace the one that was destroyed and I started thinking about fire and what good things can sometimes come of it. Currently, this couple is having the exact house built back. They tracked down the original owners of the house before them to get the original blueprints, and as far as I can tell, everything is an exact duplication of the old one. Well, everything except for one obvious difference: this new house won't have the wear and tear of the old one. It is new, it is fresh, and it is better.

Fixing the Dung Gate

Quite honestly, it doesn't take much to catch my attention. Holding my attention, though, is another matter. (I love the button that says "I have ADOS: Attention Deficit...Oooh! Shiny!") Anyway, it can be quite a curse when reading the Bible, especially when I'm trapped in a chapter like Nehemiah 3 which is basically just a summary about who rebuilt what part of the wall. It's long, repetitive, and, if I can say it without getting struck by lightning, somewhat boring. (Whew! Still here.)

Handling Pressure

I admit it. I'm captivated by the Olympics. Whether it's the Summer Games or the Winter Games, I find myself staying up too late watching some of the most obscure sporting competiions ever held. Fencing, badminton, judo and handball make for some great late-night viewing, especially when they're mixed in with the old favorites like basketball, gymnastics, swimming, and track and field events. What really makes me enjoy the Games (and for that matter, any sports played at their highest level) is the way the competitors handle the pressure that comes with the events. Broadcast announcers have been sure to explain the pressure that the athletes must certainly feel when they have trained for years in order to compete in a event that can be decided in hundreths of a second. And yet, when the athletes themselves are interviewed about how they handle that pressure, they typically respond with, "Oh, I just think of it as another day in the pool/on the track/in the stadium, etc." How do they not feel the pressure that the announcers tell us they should? I think I've got a simple answer: they know they can do it.

Being before Doing

Recently I read this verse when I should have been listening to something else that was happening at the time. Maybe it's ADD, maybe it isn't. I just know that when I heard the verse before this one being read, I couldn't stop reading after the person reading verse one did. Boy, am I glad I kept reading. Let me tell you what I learned. There's no doubt that one of the things we're really good at in Christianity is doing. We do all kinds of stuff, and we do it really well. We do mulitple church services each week. We do daily devotions. We do prayer meetings, small group meetings, committee and board meetings. We even do dishes after the meals at the meetings. We do so much, that it's no wonder many Christians seem tired and stressed. And that's why what I read was so powerful.

Leaving The Land of Second Chances

Over the years of my ministry as a youth pastor, I've spent my share of time in funerals. I've attended the services for people that I knew and people that I didn't. I've preached them, too, even the funeral of my brother. But the one I sat in yesterday almost brought me to my knees in anguish because eternity never felt more real to me than it did then.

The Power of Applause

An amazing thing happened this morning on our way to a normal day. Applause. You read that right. Spontaneous, wild clapping. I watched the power of applause change something and it was amazing. Let me fill you in. I've written before about our typical morning routine with our son, Will. I think it's safe to say that he's not a morning person. Most mornings one of us will stop by his room about every 2-3 minutes to make sure he's making the bed and getting dressed, and most mornings we'll find him almost asleep again in whatever current state he's in. Pants could be half on, but he's probably laying on the bed trying to catch a few more Zzzs. It can be, to say the least, frustrating.

Sweat Bees and armpits

I love this time of the year, mainly because I'm a real big transition guy. I love the transitional seasons because they aren't too hot or cold and there's always this "change is in the air" feeling (literally). Anyway, today has been exceptionally nice, and so after lunch Sydney and I stole a few moments in the hammock outside reading books and playing with the new kittens. If nothing had happened beyond that, it's pretty close to a perfect afternoon, well, except for the kittens because I'm not as big on cats as I am on transitional seasons. Thankfully, though, our time got even better, thanks to a sweat bee and the wonderful way the 5 year old mind works.

The hardest part about starting

You know those Type A people who are always setting goals and then completing them well ahead of schedule while multitasking the cleaning out of the garage and the reading of 2 novels simultaneously? I'm not that guy. I'm close to Type A, if you add the 2 Ds after it. In fact, the funny thing about my writing is that I love really long sentences which anybody reading who is also Type ADD would never even get through in one try. More than likely, you Type ADD people have already started this evotion over a couple of times, and you Type A people have finished reading it even before I finished writing it.

Running to bird poop

I hate running, and yet I run. Well, I don't know if that's right, because when I say that I run, it sounds like I have been running, amd currently running, and will continue to run well into the future. So, let me rephrase. I'm starting to run. Yep, that's better. The reason I'm starting to run is because I got this crazy idea that it would be fun to run a 5k. The problem with this plan is very simple: I hate running. So there will be no "fun" in the running of anything, whether it's a 5k or to my neighbor's yard as I chase their dogs away from the trees in my yard. So, how's a guy like me supposed to get anything positive out of verse like the one above?

The best Dad

The other night we actually sat down to watch a little bit of the new show, My Dad is Better Than Your Dad. A couple of kids and their dads compete in different challenges and eventually, only one pair is left, at which point the winning child screams, "My dad is better than your dad!" Of course, all the losing pairs sit in front of a camera and the kids tell why their dad is still the best dad even though they lost.

Walking into poles

I ran across this story in the news recently and have been intrigued with it for a few days now. Apparantly, a study done in the UK found that 1 out of every 10 people who walks while texting on their phones runs into a light pole. Of course, I'm hoping that the group that did the study (118 118 is actually the company name) will soon release on YouTube the video footage of the study. For some sick reason, I'm pretty sure that I could spend hours watching people walking into light poles.

Feeding piranhas

The other day Sydney came running into the kitchen holding up 2 slices of bacon. That alone caught my attention because I wasn't sure where she'd gotten the bacon and I was even more unsure of why I didn't have any. But, I digress. As I was looking at her, she asked me matter-of-factly if I knew how to feed a piranha. Now, I don't know what kinds of things happen to you during the course of a normal day, but being asked if I know how to feed piranhas by a five year-old standing in my kitchen holding 2 slices of bacon isn't one of those things. This was - even for my reality - WAY out of the norm.

Underdogs and Giants

Underdogs. America is fascinated with them, and Sunday night proved to be no different as a record number of people tuned in to watch David try to once again take down Goliath. At least that was the way the networks billed it, and they should have. They know that got more of us to watch. All of us can relate to underdogs, and very few of us can relate to giants.

The Blind and the Bench

In a word, "No." Of course, I can't just know that by sheer intellect alone. Oh, no! I had to go and prove it in front of about 150 students. I go every Monday morning to my children's school to lead a bit of praise and worship during their school assembly, and this morning I took Sydney with me. I'm carrying her as I walked toward the piano and I can see absolutely nothing, so I kind of gauged where I was by the length of the piano and once I had walked past it, I turned right to go behind it to play. Of course, I completely forgot about the bench that was in front of the piano and when my feet hit it, my legs stayed there and my upper body continued to go sit down.

The Year of the Pause

Confession time! I HATE JANUARY. I mean, I don't really have anything persoanly against the month necessarily, but it's more the whole "here we go again" feeling that unnerves me. Some people look at the new year with anticipation about what's going to happen next; others dread what might happen. I fall in the "do we have to start all over again?" category. I get a bit overwhelmed at the idea of repeating the cycle, and that's why I love this verse.

Lunch at the King's place

A few weeks back I picked Sydney up from pre-school (that's where she goes to play with Tessa, her "bestest bestest friend") and we went on a date. Now, there's not much better than having a date with your 5 year-old, but this one turned out to be pretty uncomfortable. Here's why... Sydney went ahead to the room where the playground was and I got our food and took it back a few minutes later. When I walked in, I noticed that there was already a mother and daughter there eating. Well, Sydney and I start eating, too, and it wasn't long until she was ready to go play. Off came the shoes and up the slide she went - the wrong way, of course!

"Eenie-meenie"-ing God's will

This morning Parker and Will were up at the breakfast table making quick work of two bowls of cereal and as they finished up, Sydney crawled up in her chair and got ready to eat. I asked her what kind of cereal she wanted and she said she wanted to do eenie-meenie to decide. When she was done, she had apparently picked the wrong one, because she looked up at me, smiled, and said she was going to do it again because she wanted the other kind (which was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the BEST cereal ever made, but that's beside the point). It took 2 more rounds before she figured out how to end on the right box, and then she was ready to pour and eat!

Running to serve

I was gone over the week-end ministering at our state's Youth Convention and, as a result, heard about this encounter second-hand. Too bad, too, because I would have laughed out loud if I'd have been there. Wendy had the children down at the Albemarle Christian Bookstore (a great place to shop, by the way) and Sydney was running up and down the aisle. Of course Wendy told her that she couldn't run in the store and it caught Sydney by surprise. She looked up at Wendy and said, "But Mommy. Running is my gift." It took some explaining by Wendy and Sydney's Aunt Laura to help her understand that some of the customers might not see her or might get knocked down if she kept running. I'm not sure if Sydney completely understood, but she's five. We, on the other hand, aren't, so we need to understand the principle she learned that day.

Chosen puppies

Early this morning, when she should have been asleep, Sydney was lying in her bed, eyes open, smiling. Of course, there's no way I could leave that alone and so I went in, sat on her bed, and started rubbing her head. While I'm running my fingers through her hair, she's petting the top of her newest stuffed animal, a white puppy that her cousin won for her at the SC State fair last week-end. She actually had been given a brown one, but changed her mind and asked the man at the game if she could have the white one instead. Like a man who had been around females for any length of time, he wisely said yes and switched them. Anyway, back to this morning.

Be visible

I'm sure you've seen them. They're at almost every street corner or traffic light in most large cities and have even made their way into smaller towns across the country. Back in the day, they'd stand there with a sign that said they'd work for food. Shoot, some of them even started getting honest about what they'd do with the money. The guy in our picture had some fun with the method of asking for help. But the bottom line is, they're all asking for money. But that's not my point, nor the point of the verse this week. The point is that a beggar saw somebody to ask for help. Let me explain...

The best offense is a good defense

Unless you never go online for anything other than shopping {shudder}, you've probably heard about how Mike Gundy, the football coach at Oklahoma State University, ripped into a local reporter during a postgame news conference (if you haven't, you can see the rant at YouTube). Heck, even if you have seen it, it wouldn't be a wasted 3 minutes and 20 seconds to see it again. I'll wait.

A fish out of water

Recently Parker and Will enjoyed their 2 week break from school and we loaded up the car and went fishing for a day. Parker, Will, Sydney and I had been talking about it for quite some time, and so we went expecting a great catch. What we got was one fish. 2 hours of fishing and one fish. Trust me, we were all pretty disappointed, but spending some time at the park and Burger King later washed all that away. It wasn't until later that night that I realized some of what Sydney remembered most from the trip.

Greatness and the Big King

Today is Sydney's 5th birthday. It's a day when the birthday girl gets to pick her meals, her favorite shows and also, according to her, where she sits in the backseat. It's kind of like a national holiday that's only observed in our home. Of course, you can observe it, too, especially if it gets you the day off from school or work. All in all, it's a good day for laughing, remembering and thinking about the stuff that Sydney brings to our lives: tons of kittens (all with very specific names like "Dark striped kitty" and "Light brown kitty"), funny faces, and every now and then a bit of theology.

The high price of sin

Okay, this verse is, admittedly, one of my favorites. Not so much because I love dogs (but they are better than cats), vomit, or fools, but because it is just such a visual verse. Believe me, throughout 20 years plus of ministry to teenagers, I have used this verse plenty (and usually with a messy game to go with it!!). Today, though, I saw something that reminded me of this verse again, and I think it's something you'll see, too.

God and Multiple Choice tests

Most of you probably are - or were - pretty good in school. Pop quizzes never freaked you out and you never broke out in a sweat during exams. My guess is that, for the most part, you handled the pressure well. I, on the other hand, did not. Book reports, projects that required me to get up in front of the class and speak, exams that I knew about weeks in advance - the whole educational process wasn't kind to me. It was, in a word, torture. About the only thing that may have made it less traumatic would have been if somehow the thinking part of education could have been done away with. You know, a school where every test is filled with no brainer questions like "What's on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" Ahhh, the dream school!

Hot Days and Jumbotrons

Nothing like a good 'ol encouraging verse to start the week, huh? I know the first part of this passage sounds terrible (cue the voiceover with the booming voice - ALL MEN WILL HATE YOU! HATE YOU! HATE YOU!), but remember that the best part of the verse - that part about being saved - is pointless without the first part (that's the part the voiceover guy did a minute ago). Let me see if what I experienced this past Saturday can clear up some of you confusion. Of course, if it doesn't, you may want to go with another cup of coffee or your energy drink of choice.

Getting my eyes pecked out

It's good to count the cost of something, or, as we say down here in the sunny South, to do some figgerun'! It wouldn't make much sense to start something if you couldn't finish it, or to do something without first being accutely aware of what it might cost you down the road. Leave it to my son, Parker, to drive this point home on the way to school this morning.

Stupid Kidnappers

Okay, so I've never been blackmailed. Perhaps if I was filthy rich someone might try. They could send me one of those ransom notes with the letters cut out of different magazines and demand that I pay them a lot of money by midnight of the next fifth Wednesday or else my secret would be made public. I guess it would probably help if I had a secret. Something like photographic evidence that I once dressed up like a girl. Oops, I guess that's not a secret anymore. Oh, well. You get the idea.

Hey! Listen up people!

That's funny. I was reading my devotions today and realized that God quoted me. Very strange. This phrase gets said a lot in our home when I'm talking to Parker and Will. See, they just turned nine and so they are getting dangerously close to that age when their ears will begin to filter out anything that sounds like a parent's voice. I know it's coming and so I'm trying to, as Barney Fife would say, "nip it in the bud."

My name's not Lou

Sometimes things just happen. We wake up one day and realize that something fundamental has changed and, even though we may work to set things straight, they are never the same. As Exhibit #1, I give you my name change. My parents named me Paul. Paul Edward Jenkins, to be exact. I have, in my storied career in youth ministry, gone by Paul, Pastor Paul, PP, Bishop Jenkins, Hey, You!, Dude, and, Uhhhhhh. In my house I have been known to hear Dad, Daddy, Daddy-O, and Honey. I may be called a lot of different things, but I have only one name and it isn't Lou.

Blah, blah, blah

As if I needed any reminders that understanding the Bible can be tough at times, I got one the other day from Will and Parker. I asked each one of them to go in their rooms and read one of the devotions from their kids' devotional and Parker went first. He came back out about 5 minutes later and I asked him what it was about. He told me everything, practically word for word, right down to the sidebar quote in the middle of the devotion! It was brilliant! It was amazing! It was, well, just what you'd expect from Parker. After all, this stuff comes pretty easily to him.

The Evils of Snow-hoarding

There are quite a few things that I love about the South - boiled peanuts, college football rivalries, the ability to make up words by really emphasizing the Southern drawl. Of course, there are also some things that I don't like about the South, too. I'm not a big fan of the heat and humidity, the Clemson Tigers, or the fact that we never really get any snow. Snow falls so rarely here that favorite TV shows are broken into in order to tell viewers in the central Carolinas that the mountain regions 3 hours away could be getting flurries. That, however, isn't the worst of it. It's the fact that people in our area will still go to the store to stockpile milk and bread in case that storm veers off course and dumps a trace of snow on us. Now, with that background you can surely understand why I don't like the folks up in Redfield, New York, right now.

Controlling the Bug Population

So I'm fixing the coffee this morning and pretty much minding my own business when Sydney - our 4 year old - welcomes me with this familiar morning greeting: "Daddy, we should be thankful for spiders, know why?" Hmmm. Can I get a cup of the ol Joe and get back to you on that one? "Know why? Know why?" she continued. "No, why?" The door was open and she took it. With all the pride a four year old can muster when she knows she's about to dispense the wisdom of the ages, she replied: "Because if we didn't have spiders, the whole world would be attacked by bugs."

Dirty Spoons and Einstein

Last night as I was emptying the last few items from the dishwasher, I picked up a couple of spoons, looked at the leftover food which hadn't been cleaned off the first time, and then put them back in the rack to be washed again. Thinking better of that plan, I pulled the spoons out, scraped the dried food off of them, and then put them back in for another washing.

A Shared Life

You know, we share a lot of stuff, don't we? Files, emails, viruses, colds, runny noses, well, you get the idea. In fact, I love to share so much that I've got a wireless router in our house that allows each of my computers to share the same printer and even share documents. My guess is that you go to school or work somewhere that has the same capabilities. But for all the things we share, am I the only one that feels like our world is even more disconnected and that somehow our "wireless networks" aren't functioning the way they were designed to? I think it's because we've forgotten to share the most common thing we all have - life.

Making the switch

I've always wanted to switch. I've always known that somehow it was necessary, but for so long I put it off because I was scared. Scared of change, of how my life might look if I did it, of the friends that I might lose if I actually made the switch. But, a hard drive failure, a couple of 48-hour marathon calls to Dell (ok, so it seemed that long!) and the lure of those crazy TV commercials finally pushed me over the edge and I did it. To the sound of the Hallelujah Chorus and glorious light that expanded as the box was opened, I finally went from darkness to light, from slave to freeman, from, well, PC to Mac. And along the way I found that it really is somewhat similar to salvation, only not the way you'd think. Let me explain...

Finding God somewhere...

Recently Wendy and I were locked in a pretty intense game of hide and seek with the boys and Sydney. It was one of those games where Wendy and I hid a little too well and they children took a LOOOONNNGGGGG time to find us. Long enough for us to catch a quick nap, balance the checkbook and fix our nails up real nice (What? You thought that was me??). Anyway, at some point they finally found Wendy and I assumed that they would soon find me. But no. They kind of wandered off and went back to what they were doing and left me hidden. That alone would make a great spiritual application about how we look - or don't look - for God, but there's a better observation than that.

Lessons learned while almost dying!

During our Summer Crave (one of the annual events we hold for youth at That Youth Thing), we spent Sunday afternoon rafting down the Ocoee River in Tennessee (that's a picture of some of the youth from Alum Spring Baptist Church in Culpeper, VA). I spent most of the time rafting and some of the time fighting for my life after taking a dive into the teeth of a fierce rapid (it wasn't that bad, but it sure sounds better that way!)

Wet towels and theology

Among the many things that I do in the summer - speak at camps, mow the grass, stay so busy for weeks at a time that I don't send out Evotions on a regular basis - I get to load up Parker, Will, and Sydney and take them swimming. I'm blessed because my children love the water and there's none of that standing on the side trying to convince them that the water is their friend or that the pool is really just a big bowl of Jell-O that they should jump into and eat (I'm not sure where that last one came from, so let's just agree to let it go, okay?). The boys play Navy Seals and Sydney washes and combs my hair. The toughest part of the whole thing is getting them OUT of the pool when it's time to go.

Getting to know the Australian Sea Wasp

Did you know that if you are stung by a Australian Sea Wasp you will die within 4 minutes? I didn't, and very few other people that I know do, either. But my son soon-to-be eight year-old son Will does. Not from experience, mind you, but from a book he read about dangerous creatures.

God doesn't play Battleship

It's been a tough afternoon. I've sunk an aircraft carrier, a battleship, a destroyer, and a cruiser all while trying to keep my son, parker, from destroying mine. I won - barely - but I was reminded again that Battleship is NOT how God reveals Himself to me or you or anyone else for that matter.

An Amazon-ing story!

There are a lot of things that I think are cool, but going to amazon.com, typing my name in, and seeing my book pop up is pretty high on the list. Yep, one month quicker than I thought, the book is here.