Late on the afternoon of Friday, August 21, 2026, long time Trinity member, Ken Hart, showed up at church.
Ken arrived with his leaf blower. The crepe myrtles in the Bicentennial Garden drop their pretty pink blossoms on the brick paver sidewalk.
Those blossoms track into the building. This is especially true after a passing summer thunderstorm.
When I saw Ken on Sunday morning, I thanked him for his work.
I also told him that the sidewalk was covered again this morning with those pretty pink blossoms.
Somedays, sidewalks go sideways.
Early on that same Sunday morning, I used a couple of brooms to clear the sidewalk again. As I was sweeping those pink blossoms, I looked down into the pile where I saw a motionless butterfly.
I picked it up and placed it on the top of one of the brick columns. The butterfly was a monarch. Stunning in its color, its patterns were perfectly designed and sequenced, a flawless example of an angel on earth.
I felt bad for the butterfly. I thought back to all of the times Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” had been read to our children before bedtime.
Somedays, life goes sideways for butterflies.
Out on Patterson Avenue, Virginia Route 6, where Normandy Drive empties on to Patterson there is a water line leak. Water has been bubbling for over two weeks now.
That bubbling created a large pot hole. The pot hole was large enough to be a hindrance for drivers. Despite shutting that travel lane down, and using orange traffic cones and gravel as a band-aid repair, none of that has kept right front tires from slamming into the hole.
One morning, I watched a county school bus make a very awkward turn on to the open lane on Patterson. I don’t think the bus driver enjoyed making that turn.
Somedays, life goes sideways for water lines.
This week, thousands of miles from Richmond, Virginia, life went sideways in Nepal. I have never seen such immediate and catastrophic flood destruction. There was no blink. Didn’t matter if you were a human being or a man made structure, you were gone.
Somedays, life can unexpectedly go sideways.
A few weeks ago, life went sideways for our new senior pastor, and her husband, who is also a pastor. He was diagnosed with a very rare, but dangerous oral cancer. His second round of surgery was yesterday.
Cancer always makes life go sideways.
Somewhere in America there is a small business owner who is feverishly attempting to figure out how to make payroll for this week. The business owner understands loyalty and sacrifice. Deep inside, the owner wonders how much longer loyalty and sacrifice will last.
Making payroll makes life go sideways.
My sister and I always remember August 31, 1992 and September 1, 2002. Those were the days when we lost our parents.
Losing a loved one makes life go sideways.
Up in heaven, I wonder if life goes sideways for God and Jesus?
My guess is life goes sideways every day in heaven.
Twenty-four seven, there is no down time. There is always a crisis.
For people like me, who try to be good, who try to understand and apply the teachings in the Bible to my daily living, my belief in what I have held on to for all these years can go sideways too.
I want to know why life goes sideways?
Yes, this is a reoccuring whining theme for me.
But, the truth be told, this is a reoccuring, whining question for you too. You want to know why life goes sideways.
Quite honestly, God and Jesus are tired of me and my why.
And all my whys are grounded in the New Testament of the Bible—the miracles. Why was sight restored to someone? Why were demons cast out of a young man? Why were lepers cured? Why did a judge finally cave in and rule in favor of the woman who had consistently pestered him? Why, why, why, why, why?
Every August, I keep an eye on a gardenia shrub. The gardenia is located on the west side of our home. It is in a narrow border beside our trash cans and recycling container.
That gardenia blooms in the late spring. Sometimes in August, the gardenia surprises me with a few fragrant singular blooms.
This August, the gardenia didn’t disappoint me. I caught a whiff of its fragrance when taking out some recycling. I searched the shrub and found the single white bloom buried among waxy green leaves.
That gardenia always circles me back to my parents. They had prolific green thumbs. For this gardenia, its roots are linked back to my parent’s yard. It’s blooming in August always makes me think of our mother and father.
There have been years, when life had gone sideways for the gardenia. Challenging winters with coatings of ice and harsh northwest winds have on several occasions burned its green foliage.
Despite the bitter winter, the gardenia finds a way to persevere.
When life went sideways for our parents, I think their perseverance came from their faith.
Clearly, there is no stopping of life going sideways.
Perhaps when sideways arrives, I need to think more deeply about this quote from Helen Keller: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
Instead of me constantly whining why about sideways, I need to commit to help those who are still here with the “overcoming it.”
It will be difficult for me to overcome my whining why.
But, I’m going to work on it.
How about you?
might be baloney 