Walk With The (Sean) Wise

I've spent most of my life pretty well sheltered from personal loss.  While I had my fair share of mourning with others who had lost loved ones, I hadn't dealt with a lot of the passing away of anyone who was close to me.  That all changed within the past five months, in which time I lost not only one close friend, but five Salvation Army officers who had a tremendous impact on my life. While I did spend some time in mourning over each of them, it wasn't until the most recent Promotion to Glory that this thought came into my mind - "I don't want to live in a world without Steve in it."  What struck me as strange about that thought was that Steve wasn't any more or less a part of my life than the other four, but for a few reasons, his passing affected me more than the others. My friends Dorothy, George, Bob, and Irene were all in what's expected to be the later stages of life and had dealt for many years with several forms of illness.  Steve, howeve...

Now Peter, with Spirit like flame, Said, "Brothers, please let me explain - These men aren't drunk with wine; The clock's barely struck nine!" Then Joel's prophecy he made plain. - Acts 2:14-21

I've spent this week at music camp, stretching my horizons. I co-directed the top choir successfully, after never directing a solid musical group before. I joined the praise band elective and played bass guitar, an instrument I had very little experience with. I've loved my time here, seeing how much these kids have developed in maturity, attitude, and musicianship in just eight days. This has been a good week, but because of the length of the days, it has been tiring as well. I didn't quite realize how tired I was until the top band was playing in the concert tonight. They played a piece that contained the melody, "Days of Elijah," a song that I'm very familiar with. So, like any good singing bandsman would do, I decided to sing the words over the melody. I had the great majority of the song down perfectly until I got to the last line of the chorus. These are the words that came out of my mouth: "And out of Brian's hill salvation comes!" So,...