Stoplight Games

If you have ever commuted, you know how boredom can get the better of you. When we lived in Arizona, I drove from a city on the west side to central Phoenix and back. Much of the ride was a straight rode with multiple stoplights. When you travel during rush hour, there is little time to get bored. You are busy dodging Louie Lane Changers, Speed Demons, and grandma on her way to knitting circle. (She’s way early so she’s in no real hurry.) But if I was returning later in the evening when the traffic was light, I had a game to help pass the time.

I actually learned it from my grandfather. When I was in junior high & high school I would often go bowling with him. He was on two different senior league teams and enjoyed having me along as he practiced and showed me some of his tricks. I did not grow up in a huge town, but the bowling alley was clear out on the other side of town. One big long 4 lane road with lots of stoplights. He loved trying to get all the way there without having to stop at a light. Now you might think it would lead to running lights or slowing down traffic, but there were rules to help keep people safe and traffic flowing. I’m not sure who made up the rules, but never the less, there are rules.

• No running red lights. That was an automatic disqualification.
• You cannot impede the flow of traffic by going really slow
• As long as your wheels are turning, you haven’t stopped.
• Stop signs stop the run so you have to choose your route wisely. (Hint: find ones with right-hand “yield” signs.)
• The only prize it the satisfaction of a job well done

I only got all the way home – from the first stop to my drive way once. Once in seven years. And no trophy. But it did keep me from yelling out the window at people. I often wonder, when I see people slowing down way early for stop lights. Are the just conserving gas? Are they trying to keep that life-time warranty on their brake pads? Or are they playing my grandpa’s stoplight game? Ya, it’s weird enough I’m never gonna ask. But I still wonder… 

At Our House, We Call That Lying…

 

My summer gig at the local state park is a great job. I get much needed exercise, lots of natural wonder, and enjoyable interactions with the public. That is probably the most fun part. Sometimes too fun. Although most of our time is spent educating, sometimes we just like to have fun, often at another’s expense. My trail buddy has a knack for teasing children. “Make sure you stay on the beach area. We keep the alligators down river beyond the bend. ” It’s 4:45. If you are going to float the river again, you’d better hurry. We turn the river off at 5:00 PM.” And the never gets old, “Did you see the elephant at the end of the trail?”

Now to be honest, no one really believes it for long. I mean, who would let people swim in a river with alligators around the bend? One time it backfired. My friend’s grandkids were out hiking the trails one afternoon and he mentioned the elephant. Then he said he was just kidding. His 7-year-old granddaughter look him straight in the eyes and said, “Pop-Pop, at our house, we call that lying.” Most people don't put kidding in the lying department since it is really just a form of joking. The kids at school call it pranking. Joking or pranking is usually not intended to deceive, just to get a reaction. The truth is made clear shortly afterward. Well, at least it should be.

Lying is something different. It is an intent to deceive. It is often used to cover up the real truth, either because it's damaging or embarrassing. We don’t even have to speak to deceive. I have students who, when they get called out, say “What?”. We both know what, but it is an intentional distractor, like pointing at something else and saying “Look at that”. We can tell only part of the truth. If we leave out important facts to shade the event away from what really happen, we are still practicing deception. Then there is the bold-faced lie, the no holds barred, denial of wrong doing. We can go all the way down to what people call “a little white lie”.

The Bible is pretty clear, It is one of the ten commandments. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Exodus 20:12 We are supposed to tell the truth, even when it might not be convenient for us. Honest builds a bridge of trust in a relationship; Lying builds a wall between others. It can be so easy to tell just one little white lie, but it usually leads to a web of lies to cover the very first one. Frankly, I'm with Honest Abe. I don't have a good enough memory to be a good liar. It wouldn't pay off anyway. Remember: What you sow, you reap. 

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. – Both often attributed to Mark Twain.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. – Abraham Lincoln

Until Next Time!

 

Fog

 

Six o’clock in the morning, It’s still dark and I’m driving to my Saturday shift at the local State Park. Today the fog looks to be the worst it has been this winter. This is the kind of fog where you are half waiting to see monstrous beasts or ghostly creatures jump out in front of you. While there are no creatures, there are people about, mostly the homeless on bicycles or pushing carts or strollers filled with their belongings. This is normally not unusual, but a lone cyclist suddenly  appearing out of the mist becomes almost surreal. As I drive down a long stretch of highway straining to see the intersection stop lights, I notice something. About half of us are slowing down, carefully crossing the intersections, mindful of everything going on around us. The other half are mindlessly cruising by like it’s a bright, sunny, summer day. It’s no wonder that one of the major freeways running through the central valley has had major 10 and 60 car pile ups in dense fog just within the last two weeks.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I get into fog like this, I try to do three things.

•  Slow down and be vigilant.
•  Keep the lights on the low beam setting to see the area right in front of me.
• Keep my eyes in the road lines.

Do you ever find yourself surrounded by the “fog”? I don’t mean the weather kind of fog, or even brain fog, but the kind where you are not able to see very far ahead because everything is muddled around you. It may be an impending move, a job transfer, or some other life-changing event where everything is in flux, but more importantly out of your control. It might be helpful to use the same steps as in real fog.

•  Slow down and be vigilant. – Step back and take things slower. Be deliberate with decisions and pay attention to detail. It will help you to make wiser decisions.

•  Keep the lights on the low beam setting to see the area right in front of you. Quit stressing about all the “what ifs”. Do what is needed today. Take each day as it comes and do your best.

•  Keep your eyes in the road lines. Ok, here’s where I get spiritual. (Hey, you knew it was coming.) Follow the things you know that you are supposed to do. Don’t compromise - Don’t take short cuts. Do things the right way, like you know you should. Pray over every situation and follow God’s principles. ( I would say follow your heart, but you know that can sometimes get you in trouble.)

I hope this helps. Drive safe, both on the road and in life!

What Do You Work For?

Have you ever done something for someone that you really put a lot of work into, and then it just didn’t seem appreciated? You plan, work, and do your best. They said thank you, but they didn’t get excited about your effort like you thought they should. You walk away feeling “unappreciated” and unfulfilled. You might even nurse these “hurt” feelings to the point where you become mopey and sullen. And still no one knows why or anything about it.

But what really caused the problem in the first place? It is usually stems from a mixture of miscommunication and unreal expectations. Maybe they appreciated it more than you think but they just didn’t share that sentiment with you. Maybe you are such good friends that they sometimes take it for granted that you understand how they feel. If you asked, you might find that they really appreciated your gesture. Yet even if they didn’t, you need to ask yourself why you did whatever you did in the first place. Realistically, if you do things just for peoples praise or gratitude, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

So how can we avoid putting ourselves in these predicaments? Yes I said putting ourselves. In most cases it starts with us.

1. Communicate – this includes listening as well as talking. Many times we may think someone wants a certain event to happen, but if we just asked, we would find they may think differently. If your disappointed, talk to them about it. Good communication solves many issues.

2. Refocus – When you do something good, work first as you are working to the Lord. Sure you can do things for others, but really we sound do things regardless of being noticed or rewarded. If we are working for the Lord, our best will never be disappointing or unseen.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Colossians 3:23-24 ESV

Never stop doing good. Just be sure you are doing it for the right reason. 

Things That Don’t Exist but We Still Name: A Vacuum

 

The vacuum. It’s that little area of nothing once we pump out all the air. We can measure it as a drop in air pressure, but like the other things we have visited, it’s a name for something that is essentially, nothing. The idea of a vacuum has been controversial since Aristotle’s days. To be clear, I mean the actual “lack of matter” vacuum. (This is not to to be confused with the commonly used short name of the vacuum cleaner, a vacuum.) Oxford defines a vacuum as a space entirely devoid of matter. Aristotle was quoted as saying “Nature abhors a vacuum”. This thinking was agreeable to the religious leaders because they said, Since God is everywhere, it made sense. Torricelli was proposing that a vacuum was devoid of matter. This idea did bothered most the church leaders at the time, but Torricelli did his best to walk carefully around them instead of challenging them, unlike his mentor Galileo. Galileo had just dropped the bomb of “the Earth was not the center of the universe because it orbits the Sun and used it to challenge the Church’s authority. Torricelli did end up in hot water at times, but it usually wasn’t about his science.

Torricelli’s experiment used a glass tube filled with mercury inverted in another pool of mercury. When inverted, the weight of the mercury was pulled down by gravity and created an empty space at the top. It was the first attempt at showing air pressure or the “principle of the barometer” . He didn’t really do much else with it, although he did make some important advancements in calculus. Later, Blaise Pascal would do more experiments at different levels, ocean, mountains, and in between, to help advance the use of the barometer.

Yet another piece of nothingness that impacts our lives on a daily basis, even though it doesn’t exit. You don’t even have to understand it, just let it do its work.

Here is a short video to help explain the science.

Things that Don’t Exist but We Still Name: Holes

 

This week I thought I would continue the investigation into things we name that don’t exist. I this installment we investigate holes. Oxford Dictionary defines a hole as a hollow place in a solid body or surface. Holes are virtually everywhere. We see them in walls and ceilings. We often get holes in out roads. While I am aggravated when I put a hole in my jeans, others buy their jeans with ready-made holes fresh from the factory. Holes can be figurative, like “a hole in my heart” or “there’s a hole in your argument”. They are all around us, staring at us, mocking us, daring us to fill them. And we do. No one like a pothole in the road. We patch the tiny holes in our walls before we paint. We fill in holes in our yards. Take just 5 minutes and count every hole you see. The result will be surprising.

And yet, they really exist of NOTHING. The whole idea of a hole is that something is missing. We have named another nothing.

Oddly enough, life would be terrible without them. Try sewing on a button with no holes. Our houses would be unusable without entry holes. We wouldn’t have sports like basketball, golf or corn hole without them. Even our bodies have necessary holes. Imagine breathing without nose or mouth holes. Seems like a large problem. Our ear canals are holes. Without them we would be almost totally deaf. We use them for drains and the inside of pipes. It’s what makes our bread airy and light. And donuts? What would they be without the hole? Yes, a roll.

We were created with a virtual hole in our souls. Mankind has spent billions of dollars and countless hours searching for something to fill it. Yet it is a God shaped hole. Money, things, friends, or activities may fill it temporarily, but in the end, it’s still meant for God to fill. Blaise Pascal has been quoted as saying “There is a God–shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”  Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end". Now that’s one hole I’m glad to have.  The real question is, is HE in You?

 

Things that Don’t Exist but We Still Name: Shadows

Humans are interesting creatures.  We want to make sense of the world around us. We want to fell in Control. Ones of the strange things we do is naming things that don’t really exist. One of these is the shadow.

Shadows play a huge part in our daily life. They follow us around. They can help us tell time. They grow and shrink throughout the day. We use them to add dimension and depth to pictures and art.  The exit in our movies and our mythology. Most interestingly of all, we often fear them.

Shadows are mysterious. They represent the unknown. They are the hiding place of villains, monsters, and evil of all kinds. Do you remember, as a child, that closet in your room that would always create shadows that would inevitably turn into monsters? Oh come on. It wasn’t just me. According to Google AI, The global children's night light business (a segment of the broader night light market) is estimated to be worth approximately USD 1.5 billion annually as of 2024, and is projected to grow to USD 2.8 billion by 2031. That’s some serious night lighting! And Why? Because on a dark and stormy night, our imagination can turn them into almost anything.

Yet scientifically, a shadow is not really a thing. It has no substance, no merit on its own. It may, at times, hide nefarious things, but on its own it is nothing. Shadow is merely the absence of light. Shine a light on a shadow, and it disappears. A shadow cast on your hand or arm is imperceptible. You might notice a change in heat in sunlight, but that again is the lack of sunlight not the effect of shadow.

The Bible calls death a shadow. Psalm 23:4 says, Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  The King James Version says the “shadow of death”. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung has been quoted as saying, The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. We see this in the fight between good and evil. Where the light of God shines, the forces of evil work the hardest. Praise God, darkness itself cannot hurt us, because God is always with us. Remember what the scripture says? God is light, and in Him is no darkness. John 1:5

Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light. Leonardo da Vinci

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. Walt Whitman

Go, and live in the Light!

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 5:7 NIV