As a young man, teens into early adulthood, one tends to shy away from encouraging your friends with real and simple words of encouragement.  Instead, one says something like, “Sup man.”  “Nothin’, sup wit’ you?”  “Nutin, man.  ya know, stuff just happenin’”  “Cool.  Cool.”  And if this really intense conversation gets any deeper, it typically has to do with the Celtics or the hottie who just walked into that store.

I don’t remember the first time I started saying things  like “Thank you for being a great example in my life” or “I have to tell you that that act of service was nothing short of amazing” to other people face to face, but I do know that each time I do it, it gets less cheesy and less uncomfortable.  Not saying anything against thank you notes because I like them and I send them, but it takes guts and emotional risk to step outside of your comfort zone and say something absolutely nice and true to someone’s face.  I know, it shouldn’t and it seems weird to say it, but far too often we fear the reaction of others so we keep silent and talk about the weather.  This is especially true for guys.

Is it true for you?

Today we tear trailers down at Fellowship Church.  Trailers that have been around for a lot of years, have a certain amount of nostalgia associated with them, and currently house scores of little furry creatures that, for years, have caused much headache on our property.

We would like to have built first, a children’s facility or a new sanctuary, but before we did that, the trailers had to come down.  Years of use, abuse, decay, and becoming the habitat for skunks, raccoons, and ground hogs have left the trailers unusable for us, so before we put another building up, and continue to improve our facilities, we had to ask ourselves, “What has to go?”  I think before we said, “What do we need to do?”, we needed to say, “What needs to go?”

This was a must in terms of our  future maturity.

Sometimes Bruno barks.  I’m not sure at what, but I hear it.  he barks.

Bruno’s our dog, and he’s a good one, but sometimes, out of nowhere, he just spastically starts to bark and howl.  Maybe it’s a butterfly, or maybe it’s a squirrel, but for whatever reason, makes loud noises that I wish came out when people were around.You see, Bruno never barks when people come to the door or when someone’s walking around our property, only at what I perceive as little, unimportant things.

I should teach him when to bark and when to sit quietly and to just be amazed at the little flying creatures that God created from a caterpillar crawling on a tree.  Barking at little unimportant things becomes annoying to others as they are trying to live out their lives.  Barking at little unimportant things makes Bruno a nuisance.  And barking at little unimportant things means he might one day ignore something more important because he’s so focused on that which is unimportant.

Hmmm.