Sterling Griggs

Driving uphill in a car with manual transmission is one of the most difficult and challenging experiences I have ever had. I vividly remember the first time I was asked to drive a vehicle with a stick shift. It was after I graduated from college and I was enjoying a "year off" before entering seminary. A gentleman from my church invited me to join his home remodeling company and so I spent a year being apprenticed in the ways of roofing, carpentry, and other forms of construction. Up until that time in my life I had driven nothing but cars with automatic transmissions. Stick shift cars were not even on my radar. My boss owned a small dump truck that was a three speed and we regularly filled it up with construction trash that needed to be taken to the city dump. We all had our roles to play on the work sites and driving to the dump was not one of my assigned duties. Until the day my boss threw me the keys. The dump truck was full - really full - and we needed to empty it s...

Right now I am not a huge fan of people. Let me explain. I noticed this past Saturday that the gas can for fueling my lawn mower was missing from my garage. Maybe I loaned it to a neighbor, I thought, but none of my neighbors had it. Oh well, I'll just get a new one. Then last night I noticed that my weed eater was also missing from my garage. And not just my weed eater but also the chain saw attachment that I had used all of 45 minutes since I got it last month. I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty ticked off when I realized that someone stole from my garage. You see, we leave our garage door open most of the time when we are home. It's where we let the dog in and out and it's where we come and go (the front door is for salesmen and people who don't know us well). If we aren't home, we close the garage door and we close it at night. If our garage door is open that means that we are home. So for someone to come into my garage and take things that belong to me while...

You've all heard it. The excuse sounds that same no matter who says it. "I would go to church, but there are too many hypocrites there." Too many hypocrites. Is that to say if there were far less hypocrites according to the norm then these people would be more than happy to give church a try? Hypocrisy. Yes, there are hypocrites in church. And there are hypocrites in the grocery store, at the mall, in the post office, at school, working out at the gym, even in your favorite restaurant. Indeed, the entire world is full of hypocrites, those who say one thing yet do another. Let's say your order a taco and ask for no cheese, yet the waitress brings you one with cheese anyway. Does this mean you no longer will ever eat a taco again? More than likely you will send it back to have it done right or you will just scrape the cheese off again. It's going to take more than a waitress telling you one thing but delivering another to keep you from eating Mexican food. But ...