Author: David Tyra

The Sense of time passing faster only increases the older you get. An aging actor was once asked by an interviewer, “What’s it like to get old?” He replied, “you eat breakfast every half hour.” When I first heard that, I thought he meant that he ate a lot. Then I realized he meant that it seems like morning comes every thirty minutes. I’m beginning to experience that now. Apparently, when you’re “over the hill,” you pick up speed.

I love the Book of Psalms, and Psalm 139 is one of my favorites. I’m especially drawn to verse 16. The King James Version renders it this way:

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

The first phrase refers to our growth in the womb. The Hebrew word for substance was used to refer to “the body”. Unperfect means “unformed” or “unfinished”. The idea is that God was watching over you from the very beginning of your existence, even before your birth.

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Bob Dylan wrote a song called Man Gave Names to All the Animals. I first heard it sung by bluegrass mandolin player Tim Rice. (I like Bob Dylan’s songs, but only if somebody else sings them.) The song is witty and very tongue-in-cheek. Here’s a verse: “Saw an animal on the side of a hill…Eatin’ grass ‘till he had his fill…Saw the milk come out but he didn’t know how…‘Ahhh, I think I’ll call him a cow.’” I love the song; it’s so much fun. And it’s actually even Biblical, in its own way, ending with this ominous incomplete verse: “He saw an animal as smooth as glass…Slithering his way through the grass…Saw him disappear by a tree near a lake…” And the verse leaves you hanging, with that image of the Tempter in the Garden of Eden.

When I was a teenager I heard my pastor reference this Bible story of Adam naming the animals. He said, “Boy, Adam must have been smart! Have you seen those names? I can’t even pronounce some of them!” And I remember thinking, “Surely he doesn’t really think Adam gave animals their Latin genus and species names! Surely he’s making a joke!” But I wasn’t entirely sure. I still don’t know if he was joking or not.

Sometimes jokes are made about those who love animals. Certainly, people can be over-balanced in their attitude towards animals. The Bible is clear that, out of all God’s physical creatures, only human beings are made in the image of God. It’s a mistake to value animals on the same level as human beings.

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When I was in college it was an exciting time. It seemed like most everything in my life was up in the air. I had way more questions than I had answers, like: Would I get married? Who would I marry? (I had some thoughts about that, but I really wanted to hear from God.) What kind of a husband would I be? Would we have children? How many children would we have? What kind of a father would I be? Where would I go after I graduated? What part of the country would I live in? What kind of ministry would I have? Would I be an associate pastor first, or go right into a senior pastor position? Would I serve on a church staff, or be a solo pastor? And, on a deeper, more fearful level: Would I be a success? Would I be able to provide for my wife and children? Would my family be disappointed in me? Would God be disappointed in me? Would I be disappointed in myself?

I’d spent my teenage years as a prodigal son living on the edges of “the far country.” My parents made me tow the line for the most part, but I drifted away from God. I was making my own decisions, planning my own life, and taking my own path. And it all ended up with my life in the ditch in a big way. I wrecked the most important relationships with the most important people in my life, wasted some really good opportunities, and started to become someone that nobody really wanted to be around. I mean it when I say that, without Jesus, nobody would like me.

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I have a small leather 3-ring binder that I use for my sermon notes. I got it some years ago from supply store. It isn’t really a notebook. It’s actually an old address book, meant to hold pages with five or six names and addresses per page. These days you can hardly find address books like this anymore. Everybody(including me) keeps all their names and addresses on their contact list in their smartphones.

But I’d seen Billy Graham preach with his Bible and a full-size 3 ring notebook, and I thought, “Now why can’t I do that?” I’d begun preaching from more extensive notes, and eventually adopted a full manuscript format- something I thought I’d never do. I write out my sermons on half sheets of paper, 8 ½ x 5 ½ inches, and the more pages I wrote, the more a notebook made sense.

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There’s a short poem about money I heard a long time ago that I’ve never forgotten. Here it is:

Money talks; that’s no lie.
I heard it once; it said “Goodbye!”

But let me reword it a bit, like this:

Time flies; that’s no lie.
I heard it once; it said “Goodbye!”

Actually, I don’t think time says “Goodbye” at all. It just rushes by without so much as a “See you later!” It really is astonishing how fast it goes.

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About 1982 my family and I moved to Coal City, Indiana and I reconnected with a friend of mine I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. His name was Richard, and he was a musician, too. I was playing strictly acoustic guitar in those days, and he loaned me one of his amplifiers and an electronic effects unit for guitar. (For you guitar geeks out there, it was an Ibanez rackmount unit with compressor, overdrive, chorus, flanger and phaser.) All of this opened up a whole new world of wonderful sounds to explore.

Even more significantly, he loaned me an album of contemporary Christian music. It was an LP (I know, I’m an old guy) recorded by Dion, of “Dion and the Belmonts” fame. Dion had some top-40 hits in the sixties and seventies with songs like “Runaround Sue” and “Abraham, Martin and John.” But later Dion became a Christian and began to record Christian music. His music was a revelation to me. He sang the Gospel, clear and true, but in his own style, with guitar, bass, drums, and a Hammond B-3 organ. It was fantastic.

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John Maxwell was and is a Wesleyan minister who has pastored several churches in Indiana, Ohio, California and Florida. He has written many books on the subject of leadership, and held conferences on leadership all over the country. He has written and said many good and helpful things on leadership, but as far as I’m concerned, the best and most helpful thing he ever said was in an interview with Dr. James Dobson back in the mid-nineties.

Dr. Dobson’s organization, Focus On The Family, had begun issuing a series of cassette tapes specifically aimed at pastors. Each tape contained an interview with various people on some aspects of ministry. During the course of the interview with John Maxwell, Maxwell said this: “Leadership is influence.” That’s a direct quote,and it was an epiphany to me. I have long since given away that cassette tape to another minister…and if I still had it, I’m not sure I have a working tape machine to play it on anymore. But what he said on that tape has stuck with me.

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My earliest church memories are of me standing beside my grandmother during the congregational singing. She would always hold the hymnal down so I could see the words, and point with her finger to what line we were singing. I would listen to her singing harmony with the melody line of the hymn. To this day I love to sing harmony with others, and I believe that goes back to my grandma in church.

One of the first songs I remember singing in church is Give me Oil in My Lamp…or as it is more properly known, Sing Hosanna. (As a child, I always wondered who Hosanna was, and why she wouldn’t sing?) This may actually have been the song that my grandmother was singing in my memory. To this day I still love that song. For some reason whenever we’d sing it in church, I’d always imagine an Old West-style covered wagon coming down the center aisle, driven by a grizzled old man, saying, “Come on, Hosanna! Sing!” (I guess that’s how I imagined the children of Israel traveled through the desert…probably because of all the episodes of Gunsmoke and Wagon Train my folks watched on television…black-and-white television, that is. Yes, I’m an old guy.)

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