Month: September 2023

On Friday, July 14, a family in our church said goodbye to their son who lost his fearless battle with colorectal cancer. Not only was he a son, but a brother, husband, father, nephew, cousin, and friend.

Sixty days later, the same family announced that their son’s father has been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

Sorry, but announcements like that make me wonder God if you are really in touch with what is going on down on planet Earth.

Friday, September 8, a massive earthquake struck Morocco. To date, media outlets have reported 2,946 deaths from the 6.8 earth shaker.

Two days later on Sunday, September 10, torrential flooding hit the country of Libya. A week later, the government announced that 11,300 people have died from the flooding.

The cancer diagnosis, earthquake, and flood form questions for me God—why do I continue to pray, why do I read the Bible, why do I keep prayer lists, why do I read a devotion everyday, why do I go to church?

I do not know the answers to my questions, but I sense that I’m not alone in my thinking.

Psalm 86 verse six states: “Hear my prayer, Lord;
    listen to my cry for mercy.”

That cry for mercy is heard from people around the world.

God, I’m sorry to tell you this, but a family who lost a son to cancer in July doesn’t find your mercy in the same cancer diagnosis for the father in September.

Psalm 33 verse twenty reads: “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.”

Where is your shield, your hope, and help for this family, the people of Morocco, and the people of Libya?

Yes, God, I know you are tired of my whining.

Yes, I know I am on a slippery slope in confronting you with these human questions.

I know in a blink a bolt of your lightning can send me to the devil.

But, God here is what you really need to understand, other good people, with good hearts have the same God fearing questions in their souls.

Fortunately for them, those good people and their good hearts are much wiser and not as loony as me. After all these years of writing, you know, I will ask.

And yet, they are quietly asking too.

They like me want to know—are you still in the game, do you still have your touch?

Is your shield too worn, weary, and overwhelmed?

Has your stock of mercy become an empty shelf?

Are your angels flying on fumes?

Yes, I know life is an imperfect journey with struggles on its path.

But maybe, this is the most persistent struggle in life— trying to understand the why in the cancer diagnosis, the earthquake, and the flood.

Even though we’re struggling to understand, and some days we feel like we are hanging by our fingernails, I’m still hanging on to Psalm 62 verse five: “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.”

Scripture: John 14:27

In June, I turn 70. Unless I was sick, I don’t ever recall missing a meal or not having food.

My parents always provided for my sister and me.

Similarly, my wife and I have been able to feed our family.

But, that isn’t always the case for people in our neighborhoods.

We continue to spend billions exploring space, building extravagant skyscrapers, and paying professional athletes millions, and yet, we are unable to ensure that people have food to eat on a daily basis.

John 14, verse 27 states: “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

At this very moment, someone in our neighborhood has a troubled heart wrapped in fear because this individual has no sustainable access to food.

You, me, we, us need to take action to find the means to ease that troubled heart wrapped in fear.

There are multiple opportunities all around us to make a difference in the life of a person who is experiencing food insecurity.

Making that difference can be found in our hearts.

It is recognizing how we have been blessed by turning our good fortune into support.

That might be buying essential items for a food pantry, volunteering for a nonprofit in a food desert, or finding the courage to advocate for the voiceless when food is an issue.

There are many things in this world that can trouble a heart, but not having access to food shouldn’t be one of them.

Father of us all, we thank you for our blessings related to food, and we pray that you will guide and strengthen our hearts to help the people in our communities who are in need of food. Amen

Bill Pike
Richmond, Virginia

Note from author: On September 13, I was honored to have this devotional published in Hunger Action Month for the Society of St. Andrew.

On September 1, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) announced the conference was expanding by taking in two teams from the collapsing Pacific Athletic Conference, the PAC -12, and one from the American Athletic Conference.

ACC Commissioner, Jim Phillips, his staff, college presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors in the conference who voted to expand must be proud of their work. The original ACC that was founded in 1953 with eight teams will now be an eighteen team league.

Geographically, this latest move shows how boneheaded the thinking has become by conference and university leaders. The new members—California, Southern Methodist University(SMU), and Stanford are nowhere near the new Atlantic Coast Conference headquarters in Charlotte.

Lookout Charlotte with these new members, Commissioner Jim Phillips will probably start lobbying to move the headquarters to a more central Midwest location like Chicago. After all Chicago has two major airports as opposed to one in Charlotte. An airport with more flight connections to larger cities was cited as one of the reasons the conference moved its offices from Greensboro.

My guess is the only people who are truly happy about this expansion are the travel agents who work to schedule airline flights for these teams. Their eyes must be spinning with dollar signs.

And speaking of money, this expansion is not about common sense or loyalty. This conference survival move is all about money—nothing else.

Several media outlets reported that former political heavy hitters were involved in the lobbying for Stanford and SMU.

America’s 43rd President, George W. Bush, lobbied on behalf of SMU, and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, pushed for Stanford.

If Mr. Bush and Miss Rice can strongly advocate for two universities to be admitted into an athletic conference, what keeps them from speaking out about the current state of their Republican Party? Do they care more about college athletics than the condition of America?

From “sea to shining sea” America is fraught with challenges.

I wonder how vehemently college presidents in the ACC fight to sustain research in their schools where students and professors are working to find cures for cancer, housing shortages, food deserts, and under served communities?

How much of the predicted revenue gains from this expansion deal actually trickle back into classrooms and research labs? If these revenue gains only serve to enhance and balance the financial books of athletic departments, then the ACC presidents who voted in favor of the expansion should be ashamed.

If Commissioner Phillips and his clever team so desperately wanted to expand the conference, did they think about trading Notre Dame, Syracuse, and Boston College for the return of two founding ACC members South Carolina and Maryland, and attempting to lure Vanderbilt from the South Eastern Conference?

Geographically, those teams are a better fit. Oops, I forgot, this expansion is only about money, not making travel less cumbersome for student athletes and less expensive for the conference.

Growing up in Burlington, North Carolina, I remember my parents grocery shopping at the A&P. That was the short name for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. I hope leaders for the ACC don’t consider changing the name of the conference to the A&P-18.

According to the Wall Street Journal at one time, A&P was an American icon. For years, both the ACC and the PAC-12 were icons in American college athletics with their teams excelling and winning championships. In 2010 and 2015, the once mighty A&P filed for bankruptcy. If this latest ACC expansion fails in its projected revenue gains could the conference falter like the A&P?

When I was a kid, ACC basketball and football captured me. I loved listening to the play by play on a transistor radio or watching a televised game on a Saturday afternoon. Those were moments etched in my old heart forever in a less complicated world.

Today, the fear of missing out makes the impatient hearts of commissioners, presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors think differently about money.

Why trust your common sense when money drives your thinking?

Maybe Agatha Christie said it best: “Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.”

This moronic money move has confirmed my lack of trust in the ACC leaders.

This time of year, I can feel a tension, a stress returning to my old bones. My soul knows another school year is starting. For thirty one years, I was part of going back to school as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal.

No matter where I served, I was nervous, worried on that first day. I attribute those feelings to wanting the first day to be a good start for everyone.

Through the media, we hear stories about students, parents, teachers, superintendents, school boards, and the educational agendas of politicians. However, we rarely hear about the essential personnel in every school system who work behind the scenes.

Yes, teachers are the critical ingredient for every student’s success. But, any teacher, superintendent, or school board member with an ounce of common sense will tell you—the school system employees who work behind the scenes are the heart and soul of the system.

When schools shutdown for summer break, men and women who are responsible for the daily care of the building start preparing for the first day of school. Floor work, detailed cleaning, and moving furniture are nonstop.

Staff in the school office are busy closing out the previous school year, getting ready for a financial audit, and ensuring they are ready to assist new families in registering their students.

Over at the school board office curriculum specialist and their support staffs have been tracking the arrival of instructional materials and fine tuning staff development workshops.

Facilities management personnel carefully monitor small and large construction projects. They understand the importance of completing projects before students return.

In human resources, pupil transportation, and technology the intake of antacids is on the uptick.

Human resource specialist are working to find bus drivers, nurses, family advocates, and an AP Calculus teacher.

For personnel in Pupil Transportation and Technology, their nerves are the most frazzled. In these departments, they deal with the loss of human patience and temperament when technology fails or they are short of bus drivers for the first day of school.

Approaching the first day of school, perhaps the most frazzled nerves are reserved for the parent with a kindergarten student and a rookie kindergarten teacher.

Like drinking from a fire hose is how some rookie teachers describe their quest to absorb advice on starting a new school year.

It is a similar experience for a kindergarten parent. The parent carefully reviews all the information provided by the school. Both the teacher and the parent want that first day to be perfect.

Unfortunately, for some kindergarten students, finding perfection on that first day will be challenging. By the end of the first week, a kindergarten teacher has learned who is starting the year behind.

If we want our kindergarten students not to start the school year behind, then we must realize the first gasp for air taken by that student at birth and each subsequent breath leads to the first day of kindergarten.

A March 2023 article in Mid-South Literacy reviews The Relationship Between Incarceration and Low Literacy. In the article, a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation—Warning Confirmed cites factors that impact learning proficiency. Here are three:

Readiness for school in terms of the child’s health, language development, social-emotional skills, and participation in high quality early care and learning programs.

Family oriented stressors such as family mobility, hunger, housing insecurity, and toxic stress.

Quality of teaching the child experiences in home, community, and school settings.

If we want our kindergarten students not to start the school year behind, then we must address these concerns that have been lurking behind the scenes for too long in our communities.
We know how critical the school employees are who are working behind the scenes everyday. School systems can’t survive without their support.

Correspondingly, we have important behind the scenes work to do for students before entering kindergarten. Readiness for school, eliminating family stressors, and improving the quality of Pre-K learning experiences are critical needs for every student in Virginia.

If we continue to neglect, avoid, or disregard the formative years prior to a student entering kindergarten, then we can expect more challenges for our public schools and eventually our communities.

Thomas Edison once stated: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

At the start of this new school year, my old bones hope that superintendents, school boards, and our politicians can agree to put on their “overalls” to do the required hard work and not miss an opportunity to prevent kindergarten students from starting the first day of school behind.

Author’s note: If you have worked in public education or know someone who currently works in our public schools, please share this post.

Back on Tuesday, August 8, I felt like the world was piling up on me.

I arrived at Trinity early to open the building and to drop off my old back pack.

Next, I made the short drive to the Mobil station on Forest Avenue to leave my wife’s car for an oil change.

The station wasn’t open yet, so I put the car keys in an envelope and slid them into the mail slot in the door.

From there, I started my walk back home.

As I walked, my brain swirled.

At Trinity, the church where I work, a motor on an interior HVAC unit had clunked out from a recent power failure. I knew replacing it would be expensive.

Back on June 27, I turned seventy. For some reason, I’ve thought about that birthday more than the others I have experienced.

I’ve always had good health, but over the last few days my eye doctor, urologist, and dermatologist had some words of caution for me.

As I started walking up the hill on Stuart Hall Road, I noticed an empty, plastic water bottle along the side of the road.

Uncharacteristically, I walked by it.

But, a few steps later, my conscience turned me around to pick up the bottle to recycle.

When I arrived at our house, I walked down the driveway to where we keep our trash cans and recycling bin. That’s when I looked up and saw in the backdrop of our neighbor’s yard a stunning rainbow.

From where I was standing, there were no raindrops. However, to the west dark clouds must have been dropping a rain shower. The rising sun in the east was cast at the perfect angle to form the graceful rainbow.

At that moment, I thought about God’s timing.

If I had not been nudged to turn around to pick up that discarded water bottle, I would have never seen this rainbow.

Was God attempting to signal me with the rainbow?

Had God or an alert angel been eavesdropping on the spinning self-talk in my old brain?

I’m not sure, but when I saw that rainbow, despite my whining woes, I did feel a smidgen of relief.

Yes, the HVAC repair was expensive.

My eye doctor and urologist have a plan for further assessment.

The dermatologist successfully removed the basal cell on the back of my lower left leg.

And God when you least expect it sends a rainbow to remind rapidly aging old fools like me that he is still around.

And maybe, that’s why on some days these three words from 1 Thessalonians chapter five verse seventeen stumble into what’s left of my crumbling mind: “pray without ceasing.”

Don’t cease your prayers.

Some days, your prayer might be a person’s silent rainbow.