"What’s inside of you?"

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Our family did what millions of other families across this fair nation do about this time every year—we carved a pumpkin. Our pumpkin wasn’t just any pumpkin though. It was the pumpkin that we accidentally grew and thought was a watermelon until it turned orange.

I cut the top out of the pumpkin and then it was time for one of us to scoop out the inside. No one wanted to do it. “It’s nasty,” said one of our daughters. “It’s slimy,” said the other. And you know it kinda is. Nobody wanted to do the dirty work of scooping out the pumpkin. So my wife and I did it, knowing that if we didn’t, the smell would be unbearable.

I guess we’re all kinda like our daughters were about scooping out the pumpkin when it comes to scooping out our spirits. There’s all kinds of slimy stuff we don’t want to touch inside of most of us—hatred, greed, anger, jealousy. But God comes along and says, “I’ll do it” because God knows our lives would be unbearable without the scooping.

So smile like a jack-a-lantern today and let God scoop you clean as you make a life.

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"Do you understand and forgive?"

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Recently I was talking with a World War II veteran. He served in the European theater, in Germany, during the final days of Hitler’s retreat. He told me about walking down dirt roads and seeing German bodies lying in ditches and fields. He told me how some of his fellow soldiers kicked and spat on those German bodies.

He also told me how his fellow soldiers kicked and spat on German prisoners being escorted to camps. They called the Germans names and beat them.

But this veteran told me that when he looked at the German bodies lying in fields and ditches, and when he walked by the German prisoners going to camps, that he didn’t see “Germans”; he didn’t see “the enemy,” but instead he saw young men his own age who left behind wives and families to follow orders to shoot to kill; young men just like himself. My friend, in the midst of the horrors we call war, understood and forgave.

Do you understand and forgive?

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"When’s your birthday?"

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Today is my birthday. Don’t ask how old I am because it’s one of those “zero” birthdays…unless you’ll settle for my standard answer: “Old enough to know better, and still too young to care.”

Yea, I’ve noticed some changes as I’ve gotten older, but I get to choose how I deal with those changes. My attitude is a choice I make that either helps or hurts me as I celebrate a birthday each year.

I had a friend who was nearing 100 years old. She got more and more excited with each passing year as she neared 100. By the time she was 99, she was organizing her 100th birthday party, telling her daughter what to do and how to do it, and confiding in me that she wasn’t sure her daughter was making arrangements properly.

We were talking one day and she said something about “an old lady” down the hall having physical challenges. I asked how old the “old lady” was.

“Well,” my friend said, “I think she’s about 85.”

Celebrate your life and your age with me today and let’s listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

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"Change comes to everyone, doesn’t it?"

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The seasons have definitely changed. While our southern U.S. listeners are watching the leaves change colors, our Minnesota to Alaska listeners already have snow on the ground. Change is in the air…

…and with all of this change comes some grief, some missing of what was. Take lightning bugs, for instance. I miss the lightning bugs. The cooler weather means their summer dusk light shows are over. Their greenish-yellow taillights won’t be popping on and off in the backyard any more. The kids won’t be running around with jars and hole-punched lids trying to catch a bunch of them to look at under the covers at night.

Any time change comes to us, there’s something we’ll miss, someone we’ll grieve. But like the lightning bugs, that something or someone usually comes back around at some point, in another season. So keep looking for it, keep watching for him or her, and know God has made life for living in seasons, as you listen to your life so you can make a life, not just a living.

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