Sterling Griggs

I'm kind of a neat freak, or at least I used to be before I had kids. There are still some things that I routinely keep in order for fear of losing my sanity. For instance, the towels have to be folded a certain way and then placed in the closet with the most recently washed in the back, kind of like rotating stock at a grocery store. You're probably thinking that I'm a little OCD with stuff like that but hey, it helps keep me sane when things are in order, especially when there is such regular chaos in my house. Order in life is a good things. A judge in a courtroom will bang his gavel and summon the bailiff when things start to get out of hand. A referee throws a flag or calls a foul when the game gets too rough. Police are routinely called to break up get togethers that have swelled beyond what is safe. And the apostle Paul steps in when the church needs a dose of "law and order." In 1 Corinthians 14 , Paul continues his teaching on spiritual gifts, spec...

Check out this article that I read about in my local paper this morning : People leave some interesting things behind in a storage building. Just ask the Maiden police, who say this is one of the strangest cases they have ever seen. The owner of a storage building auctioned off abandoned items, and among them was a smoker. The man who bought the smoker opened it up and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg. Police determined that the leg went from the foot to about 2-3 inches above the knee. Investigators traced the smoker back to the original owners of the storage unit and contacted the mother and son. The mother explained that her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg after the surgery. The mother said that her son plans to drive to Maiden to reclaim his amputated leg. Hey, at least the guy came back to claim it!

My wife and I spent some time in the ER at WFU Baptist Medical Center last night with our middle child Reynolds. Earlier in the evening I was checking my email on the computer while the kids were in the living room catching that one last cartoon before bed. Out of nowhere I heard this sickening thud, which I knew was the sound of a head hitting something hard. Not knowing which child it was, I instinctively ran to the accident scene. Before I arrived I heard crying and recognized the voice. Not that I want one of my children to be hurt more or less than the others, but I was relieved that it was not the cry of our 15-month-old because it would have probably been worse if it was. When I got there, Reynolds was holding her head and getting her money's worth in tears. She was wearing her silky pajamas pants and they caused her to slide backwards off a stool with her head hitting the corner of the fireplace hearth. Ouch! I comforted her and held her and felt the growing lump on ...

Have you ever seen the commercials where diet products claim to be just as good as the original product? For instance, the Dr. Pepper commercials where the claim is made that Diet Dr. Pepper tastes just as good as regular Dr. Pepper or the Coca Cola One commercials that make the same claim about Coca Cola One and regular Coke. I've tasted both Diet Dr. Pepper and Coca Cola One and I can say with certainty that they don't taste like the real thing. In fact, nothing with the term "diet" in it's name is ever going to taste as good as the original "undiet" version. I feel that I am pretty good at spotting the real thing from the imitation. The same goes with Christian music. There is a place in my heart for the old hymns and there always will be, but I really like good music that rocks. I can remember listening to Resurrection Band back in the early 1980's and thinking that these guys were awesome. That just made me all the more hungry for more m...

I went to get new tires on my car the other week and as I sat in the waiting area two women came in together and sat near me. Judging by the way they talked I could tell that they were good friends and held many of the same interests. One of them spotted a box on a counter and went over to check it out. Inside were free booklets about various NASCAR drivers. The woman who spotted the box picked through a couple of booklets until she found one on Jeff Gordon. I thought she was going to fall out right there when she got her hands on it. She eagerly raced through the pages until she found something that she just couldn’t hide inside any longer: Jeff Gordon’s birth date. She proudly told her friend when it was and she even repeated it several times over, apparently so that she wouldn’t forget that most important date in history. Now I’m not knocking on NASCAR or on Jeff Gordon, but I just couldn’t figure out why his birth date was so important to this woman. I’m pre...

We have a book in our house about Strawberry Shortcake called "The Sweet Treats Carnival". In the book, Strawberry and her friends (Ginger, Huck, Angel Cake, Blueberry Muffin, Rainbow Sherbet, and Orange Blossom) hold a carnival of games with each winner of the games getting a yummy sweet treat as a prize. Throughout the story all of Strawberry's friends win at least one game except for Blueberry, who becomes very sad (and almost bitter) in the end because she hasn't won anything. Of course, Strawberry and her friends surround her with love and share their prizes with her and everything ends happily. I read this book to my daughter Reynolds last night (at least for the 30th time) and she really seemed concerned about Blueberry. Why wasn't she winning anything? Well, this morning, Reynolds grabbed the book and began reading to our son Deacon, who can't understand a word she was saying but was still interested because it is a scratch-n-sniff book. It didn...