Tom's Message: "Better than Stop, Drop, and Roll" (from September 22, 2023)
Hey, everyone!
Ain’t it awesome out??
A bright blue autumn day (tomorrow, officially!)…
Trees are starting to turn just a little!…
Those falls smells are in the air!…
Well…
Actually, they aren’t. Not as much as they used to be when I was a kid!
When I was little, one of the smells of the season that I remember most, especially at fall football games was…
cigar smoke!
Right?! Remember that, older folks?
Remember Neyland Stadium with the band blaring (back then it was “Down the Field” and not “Rocky Top”) and several of your stadium neighbors puffing away on their Arturo Fuentes?
Sigh….I miss that smell.
Another yearly fall smell was when you raked up all the leaves and made a gigantic pile of them, took several steps back, began running to get some speed, and leapt onto “Leaf Mountain”! Over and over!
Until someone landed on it.
You know what I mean.
Back then people didn’t carry dog poop around in plastic bags and the whole world was a dog’s bathroom. Inevitably, it too would be raked into the leaf pile and after the third, fourth or fifth jump…”PIUHHHHHH!! GROSS!! TOMMY JUMPED IN DOG-DO!!!”
It wasn’t one of my favorite fall smells but it was one of them!
And there was the annual smell of the burning of the leaves! I remember fall Saturdays when the air on Maple Lane was filled with the sound of John Ward, the “Voice of the Vols” coming out of every open window as he called the game, and the air was also filled with smoke from the piles of leaves everyone was burning.
Once my brother and I were goofing off with a leaf pile on fire and he flicked something on me that caught “Tommy on fire”! I had my football shoulder pads on, which was good. I took off running, which was bad. (We didn't know "Stop! Drop! And roll!") And my dad ran out and smacked it out! Which initially seemed bad but turned out to be good!
I heard someone speaking to a crowd recently and he asked this, “If when you were a kid and you burst into flames, what would you do?”
“STOP, DROP, AND ROLL!” they all yelled.
“How many of you ever burst into flames as a kid?”
No one had.
But they would have known what to do if they had!
Because they had a plan!
Sometimes I struggle with thinking that even though I’m trying to serve Jesus, there might be moments when I say something that wasn’t the best, or unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings in a Sunday message, or make a mistake that I didn’t mean to, but now I might not be able the “clean it up”!
“Oh, gosh! Did I do something stupid?? Did I just say something dumb??”
If I find I’m doing this kind of thing a lot…
worrying I’m making mistakes I wish I hadn’t…
mistakes I didn't mean to make...
and anxious that it might not turn out so good…
I’ve decided to get an easy-to-remember plan!
It’s not “Stop! Drop! And roll!”
or “if the leaves are three, let it be!”
My plan is “Before! Beside! Behind!”
It comes from Psalm 23.
The Lord is my Shepherd. I’m a sheep! I don’t have to know how to do everything! And if I get into a situation where the possibility of not knowing exactly what to say or do presents itself, He’s my Shepherd! He goes BEFORE me! He led me there!
And in verse 4 it says, “tho’ I walk thru a dark valley, YOU are with me!”
I’m not alone trying to figure this out! Jesus is BESIDE me!”
And verse 6 says, “Goodness and mercy (really, Love!) follow me all the days of my life!
My Shepherd BEFORE me! He led me here!
Jesus BESIDE me! He hasn’t left me alone to figure this out!
Goodness, mercy and love BEHIND me!
If I did make a mistake trying to do my best for Him, He’ll fix it and clean it up!
“BEFORE! BESIDE! BEHIND!”
In some ways it’s better than “Stop, Drop, and Roll”
‘Cause I probably won’t burst into flames today.
But I may very well say something dumb!