My Cup Runneth Over (Musings of an Unspecialized Generalist)

The following is very similar to a sermon-teaching that I recently delivered at First Presbyterian Church of Plainwell.             Time! Benefactor or dictator? Enemy or champion? Friend or foe? How do you view the ever-moving hands on the clock of time, even if silently, clicking away? Thoreau said that time was but a stream he went “afishing in.” Solomon viewed time as something pre-ordained. There is a time for everything, birth, death, and all of life’s events in between. What’s your reaction to that? One person might say, “Yes, and I didn’t have anything to say in any of it--that’s fate.” Another might say, “Yes, and even though I didn’t choose when to be born or to die, I believe there is a good and sovereign God behind time; even though I don’t alway   understand His timing, I know that it is ultimately good.” Generally, which attitude reflects yours? Yes, of course, you know where I am going wit...

Going to funerals usually has a contemplitivising effect on me; I come away thinking of my own last time at church. (That’s where I want my final rite of passage held.) On Saturday I did the Words of Comfort and Hope  for my cousin Rudy Leutzinger at South Bend, Indiana. He was only a little more than an year younger I am, but he was a Christ-follower. I came away with a sense of great privilege. My thanks go to Donna and Bill, Rudy’s wife and son, for asking me to minister in that way. I have done funerals for three of my cousins, Ralph Leutzinger, John Douglas Beukema, and now Rudy; and it has been an honor.   When my generation of the Leutzingers was complete, cousin John was born in 1965, there were 36 of us. (We had lost Connie Lou and gained Jim Larnard.) I was fourth to be born; there are now 26 of us with Rudy's passing. I did not love a course in statistics that I had to take for my Master's, but I remember enough to realize that the fourth to be born out of 36...