JULY 2016 EDITION

Last Friday night, after dining with friends at a restaurant on the Marietta Square, we decided to walk around the Square. In Marietta, there is a park in the middle of town known as the Square. It has the traditional bandstand, a gazebo and a large fountain in the center. It is usually filled with people on the weekend nights, much like the piazzas in Italy with its wonderful old town flavor to it. Once a month, in the summer, they have concerts. The city closes all but one road around the Square and people gather with their decorated picnic tables and dance the night away. There are literally thousands of people in attendance!

On this particular evening there was no concert, only a young lady performing some sort of dance routine with a number of hula hoops to recorded music in front of the bandstand and, in another area of the park, a young musician playing a guitar.

As we drew nearer the park, we noticed something very unusual. It looked like a scene from the T.V. show, The Walking Dead”! There were scores of people walking slowly around the park, their heads were down and their eyes completely focused on something they were holding in their hands.. I would say, out of the hundreds of people on the Square that night, 75% of them were engrossed in this activity. It was almost frightening. They were truly like Zombies. As we came close to one couple, we found that they were looking at their smartphones. It dawned on me what all these people were doing. They were playing “POKEMON GO” Coincidentally, while having lunch on the Square a couple of days before with one of the staff of Young Life , who works with the Wyld Life Middle School Program in Atlanta, he related that he and four of his middle school friends had come to the Square. They spent two hours playing “POKEMON GO” and said there were nine locations around Marietta where you could play!

Here’s the thing. I still have no concept of how to play POKEMON GO. We did stop three young men who were playing asking them to explain the game. The only thing I could ascertain is that they were chasing some character that was represented as moving on an actual real-time Google map of that location on their phones. It is now my understanding that this is a huge phenomenon. It seems that the success of the game is based on the old notion of the “thrill of the chase”

I wonder…. What are the things you and I might be chasing after? Is it wealth, success, popularity, peace, acceptance, recognition, possessions, power, love, approval, or beauty, to name a few? Where can these things be found? Which ones are important?

 Oh, I have chased most everything I just mentioned but when it all comes down to it, many of the things I considered important in my early years became “chasing after the wind” to quote from Ecclesiastes. It is my contention, however, that the really important things, the things with lasting value, can only be found through a relationship with Jesus Christ. At least, this has been my experience in my seventy years of life. Have you grown tired of “chasing after the wind”? Let’s talk.

MINISTRY NEWS:

 On the same Friday night I mentioned above, I experienced a real sense of joy when, by what I believe was a divine appointment. While in the park, I “ran into” a former Young Life friend, who had been involved with Young Life at Marietta High School as both a student, then later, after graduating from Princeton, as a volunteer leader. It had been almost 30 years since we had seen each other! He is now living in Jakarta, Indonesia, working with the World Bank and is married with kids. He has had some involvement with Young Life there. The fun part of our connection was that he was only in Marietta for another few hours before he returned to Jakarta to prepare for a move to Kuala Lampur in Malaysia. He shared that he had just that day looked at a Bible I had given him as a student. We promised to keep in touch and prayed together right there on the Square. What a joy to see someone I had the privilege of ministering to in high school going on with Christ!

 I had a chance to go to the Young Life camp, Sharptop Cove, in Jasper, Georgia, for a day, to visit several of the staff from the Southeast Region, who were on a month-long assignment there. What a joy to see over 500 high school kids have the time of their lives for a week. I marveled at them as they enjoyed an evening of an old time 19th century county fair, complete with square dancing, lemonade, popcorn and cotton candy booths, throwing pie in their leaders faces, soaking their leaders with water guns, and singing such old favorites as “I’ve Been Workin On The Railroad” and “Oh, My Darlin’ Clementine” and the likes at the top of their voices. They were dressed in period costumes, which they created. For a time, they were kids without pretense, just being kids!

I continue to minister to the staff of Young Life in the Southeast Region both with in-person visits and social media.

 Our Friday Morning Men’s Group continues to meet as it has for twenty-one years.

I continue to meet individually with men for counsel and encouragement.

 I am so very grateful for you making it possible to minister by your prayer, encouragement and financial support.