Posted in church, Through the Bible Devotions, worship

Temple duties, worship jobs

Posted on by William Douthwaite

When King David handed the throne over to his son, Solomon, he organized all the Levites around future temple duties (1 Chronicles 23). Previously, the Levites had been busy transporting the tabernacle and furnishings from place to place in the wilderness.

David had thirty-eight thousand ready for temple duty. Eight thousand would serve as officials and judges. Four thousand would be gate keepers, and another four thousand would play instruments for worship.

Other duties included taking care of courtyards and rooms, purification of everything used only for worship in and around the temple, and mixing and baking the bread.

As worshipers, we don’t always think about all that has to be done in preparation for worship. Besides the musicians and pastor, lots of people work behind the scenes to make a Sunday morning happen:

  • Cleaning the sanctuary/bathrooms/front walk
  • Cutting the lawn, trimming shrubs and trees
  • Preparing worship folders, newsletters, and projections
  • Working the audio/visual for the service
  • Unlocking/locking the doors
  • Purchasing wine and bread for communion
  • Setting up/cleaning up communion
  • Setting up for baptisms
  • Assisting with distribution of communion
  • Setting up the altar with color for the season, linens, and candles
  • Setting out the flowers
  • Ushers
  • Greeters
  • At some churches, parking lot attendants and traffic direction
  • Counting and depositing offerings
  • Watching children in the nursery
  • Someone to turn on/off the lights
  • Someone to light/put out the candles

There are no doubt more jobs not mentioned here. I haven’t actually done the math, but I’ll bet it takes twenty people to make worship happen for every 100 in attendance. And every job is important.

Posted in rules

No diving!

Posted on by William Douthwaite

My eleven-year-old grandson saw this and laughed before I did. The sign prohibited diving at a six-inch deep splash pad! Yeah, we both laughed out loud.

We’ve brought young grandchildren to this splash ground area many times. In the heat of the summer, it’s a great place to let the kids run through spouts of water and stand under buckets about to dump water all over them.

Babies crawl through the spray, toddlers toddle through the water spouts, and pre-K kids run chase each other around sea creatures. But I never saw anyone attempting a dive, much less a jump into a few inches of water.

However, the zoo would not invest in such a sign had not some young person attempted to dive into the water. Had some parent absorbed in their phone let their one-year-old attempt a swan dive off the sea turtle? Were two-year-olds lining up to do flips off the octopus?

Having read the whole sign, I can’t help but wonder what is worse: diving, diarrhea, or animals in the splash grounds.

Posted in Travel, Through the Bible Devotions

Huddin Homestead Fun Farm

Posted on by William Douthwaite

On Saturday we and the whole Texas family headed out to the Huddin Homestead Fun Farm in Rockwall, TX, about half-an-hour east of Dallas. So many of the pumpkin patches had closed, so we were happy to find this farm.

I was skeptical. Sometimes we find little more than a bunch of overpriced pumpkins and gourds, some goats to pet, and a bounce house. I was pleasantly surprised. We saw everything from barnyard to exotic animals. We saw and fed goats, cows, camels, alpaca, sloths (they were sleeping), donkeys, coatimundi, capybara, chickens, quail, rabbits, Galapagos tortoises, parakeets, cockatiels, and lovebirds. The property was dotted with playgrounds and bouncehouses, food trucks and lemonade stands, gifts shops and a corn pit to play in.

The farm gave out free food pellets for the most of the animals. For a few bucks, you could buy a cup of lettuce leaves, cucumbers, and carrots for the camels, bunnies, tortoises, and coatimundis.

A train took the kids for a ride around a small circle of track. Not much, but they loved it.

And there were pumpkins and gourds if every shape, size, and color scattered around everywhere. Piles and piles over acres of land.

Here and there food trucks offered tacos, shaved ice, ice cream, coffee, and gourmet lemonades.

A steady stream of people came to spend part of a day. At $15 a head, the take should have been pretty good over the last month or so.

I can’t imagine the work involved in caring for all those animals. And I don’t even know how one purchases a sloth, capybara, or coatimundi. Hopefully they were rescues.

The variety of animals made this attraction a lot of fun!

Posted in shopping

Drone delivery takes off

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Zipline drone delivery for food, groceries, and medicine is alive and well in Rowlett, Texas.

We wanted to experience it live, so we had some pizza delivered from Blaze and watched the drone drop it down in my son’s backyard.

Walmart, Chipotle, Crumbl Cookies, Popeyes, Village Coffee, are Torta Shell Tanqueria are just a few of the many establishments who use this delivery method. Depending on the time of day you can get free delivery!

I didn’t realize how popular it was until I saw the green lights from drones lighting up the night sky. They were everywhere. It was pretty to watch at least a dozen in sight at any one moment.

I couldn’t help but wonder if there are ever collisions. But I know they’ve done extensive testing to get the airspace to do that.

Do they ever mess up and leave the food on a roof? Or in someone else’s backyard by mistake? I hope so. That sounds fun.

And what if you don’t get what you ordered? Will they come and take it back? I doubt it.

It’s only going to get more common. Amazon and Walmart are already doing it in many larger cities. That means it’s going to be everywhere.

Pretty soon, we’ll hardly notice it, we’ll expect it, and we’ll complain if we can’t get it!

Posted in God, Through the Bible Devotions

Morning glory

Posted on by William Douthwaite

In the opening chapter of Job, a good, God-fearing, blameless, upright man suffers the unthinkable loss of his camels, oxen, donkeys, sheep, servants all his children, and his health.

Satan, who has caused this devastation, is certain Job will curse God. Job’s wife thinks he should curse God and die.

However, twice we read that Job did not sin in what he said. He doesn’t charge God with any wrong doing (Job 1:22: 2:10). Instead he praises God.

So what do you think it means to curse God? Blame him? Question him? Complain about him? Say bad things about him? Call him names? Accuse him of wrongdoing? Challenge his sovereignty?

Do we think of any of those things as sin? The commandments are clear. The bad stuff includes idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, and lying. Upset with God’s performance? Seems minor in comparison.

Except that evaluating Gods performance is putting oneself above God. And that flies in the face of commandment #1: no other gods.

What if the only appropriate response to God is praise? Praise for who he is, who he has revealed himself to be, and his undisputed place as God.

Doesn’t sound complicated. Yet it’s the hardest thing for us to do. On a good day. Never mind a day like Job had.

Start early. Don’t wait to see how the day unfolds. Just praise the one who gave you the day. Morning glory.

Posted in dogs, Great Dane

Happy Birthday, Willow!

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Willow turned three years old today.

She started out as such a cute little girl, just a few pounds of puppy we brought home from Ocala. Now she is a 110 pounds of affection, watchdog, couch napper, and early morning walker.

  • She is eye-to-eye with me at the dinner table, unwilling to let any morsel go unlicked.
  • She sees the bunnies by the roadside in the dim morning light long before I do.
  • She hears low-flying airplanes and looks up to see what kind of bird it is.
  • She is not a water dog. Three drops of rain and she’s ready to come back into the house.
  • She lost a fight to a little black dog at the dog park. Stitches, cone, and a drain. And no more dog parks.
  • She answers to Scooby Doo, Marmaduke, and on occasion, Astro.
  • She sings for her supper. A very pleasant Great Dane song.
  • She can jump twenty-four inches straight up into the air.
  • When she’s happy, her wagging tail is a deadly weapon.
  • She is super-affectionate, with a kiss for everyone.

Happy Birthday, Willow!

Posted in Life

Life in the fast lane

Posted on by William Douthwaite

My semi-annual doctor’s appointment is the fast lane. From leaving my house to returning home: fifteen minutes.

I arrived five minutes before my appointment. Gave my name, they said, “You’re all set.” I sat in the empty waiting room for forty-five seconds before a friendly voice said, “William?”

I followed her into the first exam room. Stepped on the scale for my weight. Sensor on my finger captured my heart rate and O2 while she too my temperature. My blood pressure was good. In any pain today? Nope. Okay, the doc will be in soon. That took all of two minutes.

Sixty seconds later, a knock at the door. “Hey, thanks for coming in!” “Hi, doc, good to see you!”

His opening line is always, “So tell me everything.”

I could only reply that I had nothing to share. Feeling good. No issues I was aware of.

He did a quick run through of my bloodwork. Everything looks good.

I brought him up to date on all my recent vaccines: pneumonia, shingles, flu.

“Hey, I’ll see you in six months.”

He hands me a copy of my bloodtest results and an appointment card, and is out the door. I am back to my car in less than ten minutes.

Too fast? Too efficient? Maybe. I’m grateful that I’m healthy, and don’t have a lot of issues to deal with right now. Short doctor visits affirm that this is a great time to be alive.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Right person, right place, right time

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Suddenly, Esther suddenly finds herself queen in Persia. Her uncle, Mordecai, keeps his ear to the ground, and watches over her from a distance (Esther 1-2).

In that moment they have no idea what part they would play in the ongoing narrative of God’s plan of salvation for his people. That plan was in place before creation. That plan played out in the lives of Adam and Eve, Abraham, David, and so many others. “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

That plan could play out in our lives, too. I know it seems unlikely, but maybe I am a part of God’s plan to reach someone. Maybe you are. A co-worker. A grandchild. A close friend. You just never know. Your presence, your witness, your life may be the thing that sparks someone’s interest in Christ.

You might not ever know about it. You were the right person in the right place at the right time. You made all the difference in the world.

You never know.

Posted in pastor, Through the Bible Devotions

Getting ready to get down

Posted on by William Douthwaite

So I’m reading along, finishing up Nehemiah, and the narrative suddenly gets aggressive.

  • Nehemiah throws all of Tobiah’s stuff out of a room in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. Apparently, Eliashib the priest rented space out like a storage unit. No more of that (Nehemiah 13:7,8).
  • When he finds out that Levites and singers have all gone home because they weren’t being paid, he has “sharp words” for those in charge (13:11).
  • After Nehemiah shut down buying and selling on the Sabbath, he finds merchants camping outside the gates, waiting for the markets to open. He threatens to “lay hands on them” (13:21).
  • Once he finds out that men of Judah had married foreign women and hadn’t taught the children the language of Judah, he “rebuked them and called down curses on them…beat some of the men and pulled out their hair” (13:25).

I think every pastor dreams of Nehemiah moments:

  • Moments when he wants to just throw out a bunch of junk that has accumulated in the church. Old donated pianos no one plays and no one wants. Old books no one wanted to read that will take up shelf space in the rarely used church library. Food pantry donations way past expiration dates. Non-functioning computer monitors and printers that “the church might be able to use.” Throw it out!
  • Some people need sharp words. Like, “Stop it.” Or, “There are other places to worship.” Or even, “Put up or shut up.”
  • Fund raisers. Car washes. Raffles. Garage sales. Didn’t Jesus clear money changers out of the temple? How about not doing those things on a Sunday morning?
  • Physical violence? Sometimes actions speak louder than words. Punching and hair pulling? Maybe not. Pushing and shoving? Might get your point across.

One through three? Been there, done that. Number four? In my dreams. You know who you were.