After a three month hiatus I am back. I am closer to finishing my long awaited book on dealing with adversity with humor and hope to complete it by this summer. Here is my thoughts to open the New Year.
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The older I get, I often feel as if life is like attending your wife’s class reunion. More people than you would ever care to meet, yet inside the vastness of the meeting place, you feel as if you’re an anvil in a punch bowl, you don’t fit in.

As you sit in the corner, you study the room. You see some individuals desperately trying to hold onto their youth. You see one guy with the comb over that looks like spaghetti on a basketball, the former beauty queen who still thinks she has it, and is so poured in and out of her dress she looks like a busted can of biscuits. Then you get the renegade who throughout the school years, according to your wife, was the epitome of wholesome. Now, the individual shows up to the reunion looking like the lead singer of Guns and Roses. What’s disturbing is he can’t wait to flaunt his new persona. “Look at me” his outfit screams.

Like watching an aquarium, you soon tire of the clown fish and the blowfish and find yourself asking, “Honey, can we go now?”

Every day Hollywood stars, singers and pop culture want us to emulate them. The outrageous is the norm and nothing is out of bounds. Like the class reunion, all I want to do is make a quick entrance say hi to a few people and retreat to someplace, anyplace, where the ridiculous doesn’t vie for my attention.

In church one day a young child heard the pastor say in his sermon, “You must live as a Christian in your home.” The mother noticing her son was more quiet than usual on the ride home asked what was wrong. The son with tears in his eyes said, “The Pastor said in his sermon that I was to live with Christians, but I want stay with you and dad.”

While the heroes and stars of the world continually ask us to look at them and be like them, I can’t help but think of someone else who says the same thing.

While Hollywood offers us illusions of greatness and beauty, God’s way of living promises us peace and rewards. Hollywood can keep its ruggedly handsome actors. My leading man feeds thousands from a tiny lunchbox, and can part oceans with one word. I am in awe that He still can place life into the lifeless and cure the incurable.

In 2014, I don’t want to be like anyone else but Him. I am also confident that the home He promised me, will make me feel like I fit in just fine. Trying to be just like Him, now that’s a resolution worth making.