“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” says the flustered Wizard of Oz, as he tries to hide his whiz-bang technology. But to no avail. The truth of his trickery is revealed. I thought of that scene this past week as we watch another showman try to keep the curtain closed. According to L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz series, the wizard had been a traveling carnival magician. Speaking as a former amateur magician, no entertainer wants curious eyes looking behind the curtain. The puzzlement, or awe of the effect, is the point. The wizard had created an illusionary world of fear and subjugation. Smoke, mirrors, and great big projections created multiple distractions in Oz. It was a curious little dog named Toto that revealed it all. 

We live in an age where private acts and unguarded moments will live on forever. See the video of the CEO and his mistress on the Kiss Cam at the Coldplay Concert? When nearly everyone in the world has a camera-telephone in their pocket, anyone can become a news reporter or private eye.  Things once spoken or written for a specific audience are now saved on computers in the cloud, even after they have been deleted. The lines between privacy and security have become blurred. 

Jesus once reminded His followers: What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight (Luke 12:1-4). So how then should we live? Jesus is encouraging us to be people of integrity, honesty and truthfulness. He warns us not to become deceivers. My great-grandmother used to say: Be sure your sins will find you out.  Things got better in Oz when the curtain was opened, and the wizard faced the world humbled and flawed.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Check your curtain. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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One of our pastors in my youth was a heavy man who admitted he was big even as a boy. Whenever he was preaching and got close to Galatians 6:7, he would tell the same story. Being able to tell the same story repeatedly as if it were the first time, is an artform passed from generation to generation, and not just to preachers. He would recount being assigned one hot muggy day to plant seven rows of corn in the backyard garden. The rows were already tilled. He was given a small bag of seed corn and a dowel stick of a precise length. The assignment was to poke a hole in the soil, place one seed in it, lay the stick down and poke a hole with the other end. To hear him tell it, he thought he would die after a few seeds. He was sweating, he was dirty, his knees hurt, and his back was beginning to ache. By the time he got to the top of the fourth row, he was done. He sat leaning on the fence when he had an idea. He would plant the first 3 or 4 seeds at the front of the remaining rows and bury the rest of the seeds in the back. His parents were so proud of him. He was so proud of himself for getting away with it.

It only took a couple of weeks for his deception to be discovered. The gardener always tends the details—looking for bugs and weeds and mischief. His father noticed the empty rows behind the tender shoots of corn. It was a mystery. Were there rabbits or birds raiding the garden? Eventually he saw the clump beginning to sprout by the fence. Reaping what you sow always means a day of reckoning has arrived. A better approach is to just be honest from the start.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Truth will prevail. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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This week marks the culmination of our partnership with our sister congregation, Iglesias Monte Los Olivos, The Mount Olive Church. What began as a group of believers seeking a church home has become a vibrant congregation with significant influence in our community. I am reflecting today on the impact our congregations have had on each other over these 25 years. They faithfully undergirded us with much prayer and hard work. They invested tens of thousands of dollars along with us into the facilities and outreach of our neighborhood. They have been very good co-laborers together in Christ.

A band of about 25 people, including children, gathered in our Fellowship Hall to organize as Departamento Salem. Their first Sunday with us was April 8, 2000, Palm Sunday. Ariel Benitz was chosen as their leader. We organized English classes (ESL), provided leadership training opportunities, and ordained their pastors and deacons to ministry and service. They steadily grew in numbers, eventually taxing the capacity of our Fellowship Hall. In 2010 they sought out a location of their own. They found and purchased an old church near Pine and N. Harvard. By 2013, they had outgrown that facility, and we invited everyone back to Braden Park. Lately we have been working toward transferring our church property to them, but recently the congregation felt compelled to purchase a church at 147 S. Sheridan Ave, about a mile east of us. This Sunday, June 29, we send them forth with our prayers and blessings. Pastor Francisco Gaona, who has been a friend and ministry partner to me, and the dedicated congregation will spread the Gospel light, expanding the Word of Christ deeper into our community. We are seeking God’s direction in new ministry partnerships and discipleship opportunities. Join with us in the discussions and the opportunities that are emerging before us.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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This is adapted from 2011: We never had the talk. You know, the “What we would do if he died” discussion about our bird. It might have helped. So here it is, a few days after our cockatiel Dini has died. We are still discussing funeral arrangements, looking for a proper burial site and asking about the right kind of headstone. Dini had been a part of the family for a very long time. We knew he was getting old, but we had never discussed these kinds of things. On Thursday he suffered an apparent stroke, affecting the left side of his body. He died on Saturday, May 7, as I was holding and comforting him in my hands. It was a bittersweet time. And yes, he was the very same bird that I set loose in church one Sunday morning in 1981. He became the object lesson of the longest running children’s sermon ever. (You can relive that story under the title Dini Goes to Church from October 2023.)

Dini was present for every meal in our kitchen since the day he was hatched, September 7, 1979. His cage had been by the kitchen table where he saw and heard everything. He always sang every time I came home. When we returned from a recent trip to Texas, he sang as loudly and vigorously as ever to the point Dorothy and I both commented on it. But we knew that old age was catching up with him. I guess we did not want to think that he would really die. He would lose his balance while sleeping and fall from his perch or be suddenly startled and fall from his perch. He would always climb his way back up, but he took to spending more and more time on the cage floor resting. He lived a remarkable 31 years and 8 months. We miss him. I just wish we had talked through this final part earlier. We included the family in the discussions. We settled on a resting place in the flowerbed just outside our kitchen door. We secured and had engraved a black granite brick, which reads:

Dini

9/7/1979 – 5/7/2011

He was a very good bird

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Talk the talk. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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One clear sign of a recession is that it will be harder to pinch pennies in the coming months. The Mint will stop making the penny when the one-cent blanks run out sometime in early 2026.  The last order for blank pennies to stamp has already been shipped. Apparently, it costs 3.69 cents to make each penny. Fun Fact: it presently costs 13.78 cents to make a nickel, 5.76 cents to make a dime, and 14.68 cents to make a quarter. I suspect the nickel may not be long for this world, unless they find a cheaper metal that cannot be easily counterfeited. The Federal Reserve 2022 Report estimated that $14 billion—about 60% of all coins in circulation—are kept in jars. The Wall Street Journal indicates that businesses will likely round up or down to the nearest nickel, but state and local governments are going to need to enact legislation when it comes to sales taxes such as the price of a gallon of gas at the pump, or a candy bar. And what about the penny loafer? It won’t be the same.

Hobbyists collecting pennies will increase. Grandchildren will inherit these collections with the hope that one day, maybe, they will be worth something. Banks will begin to take pennies out of circulation and the Treasury will seek to reclaim the metals. Cashless transactions will be first to round up (not down) quickly. If you can’t count on a penny anymore, what can you count on? 

A couple of days before his crucifixion, Jesus answered a question and later shared an observation about the place of money in our daily lives. To the anti-tax crowd, Jesus asked for a coin; to the religious crowd, Jesus pointed to a widow who understood gratitude to God. The Almighty Dollar, Gold Bar, or Crypto Currency is a petty little god. Choose wisely.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. A penny for your thoughts. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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