As a general rule, I like things that have themes to them.  However, life is often theme-less.  Things happen to us everyday which are not connected and make no sense.  That is the way today’s blog is.  Below are three hopefully interesting, yet completely unrelated notes on my life since Sunday.   

            1.  Where there is smoke, there is . . . smoke?

            Today I was at a local bank doing business for our church and we all realized that outside the building, in the grocery store parking lot there was what appeared to be a car on fire.  Dark smoke was billowing out of the automobile.  At first we thought it might be an engine fire but we learned that it was not.  Someone, apparently, was smoking a cigarette and dropped it and in so doing caused the seat to catch on fire.  I don’t think anyone was hurt, although I am not certain of it.  It looked like EMT’s and Fire and Rescue showed up quickly.

            For the whole rest of the day I couldn’t stop thinking—man, that car was smokin’. 

            2.  And the winner is . . .

            Tonight I watched the BCS Championship game and discovered that the winner is; the field.  Did anybody else out there see that players on both teams had an incredibly difficult time running, stopping, cutting, and planting their feet into the supposedly wonderful sod?  Auburn won the game by scoring 22 points to Oregon’s 19, but I can tell you the field scored far more than 22 points which means the field won. 

            The Bible teaches us that from dirt we came and to dirt we shall return.  Dirt always wins.

            3.  Udderly ridiculous

            Sunday I was very sick and did not feel very well at all.  I was barely alive and much less ready to preach.  Nevertheless, duty calls.  Apparently while preaching I said something stupid.  I was trying to make a point about maturation, and in the context of a calf I used the word “steer” and then said it would grow to be a dairy cow.  Now, I’m a good Texas boy and know better.  A steer is a castrated bull.  One person pointed this out to me playfully.  Another person wrote me a nasty self-righteous anonymous note; not that I’m bitter. 

            I don’t know what bothers me more—that I made a verbal mistake on something I know, or that someone was so preoccupied with it that they missed the actual point, or that the whole thing is kind of a blur to me.  That’s the last time I take Nyquil before I preach.  At any rate, the fact that I uttered that a steer has udders is udderly ridiculous.*

*Yes, I know it should be utterly, but it is a play on word sounds.