Sterling Griggs

Orlando, FL, in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 12, 2016. 50 men and women dead in a club, all shot by the same gunman, and many more wounded. That information alone is enough to crush one's spirit. It did mine. Who goes out and senselessly guns down men and women like that in cold blood? When I heard the news and the massive amount of lives lost, it hit me to the core and I grieved and continue to grieve for those affected by this senseless act of violence. Oh how I wish that we could all see it that way, as a senseless act of violence committed by a man whose intention was nothing short of evil. Yet we are not allowed to see it that way, not in our politically correct world. By the way, whose idea was it to put the words "political" and "correct" together in the first place? Talk about an oxymoron! The victims were at a gay bar. They were all gay, thus it's a hate crime against the gay community. The shooter was a radical Islamist. H...

By now you've heard and read all about the Stanford University student Brock Turner - who happened to be an accomplished swimmer - who raped an unconscious woman after a party behind a trash dumpster early last year. If you haven't, then I'm sure what I just typed sickened your stomach just a little. I hate to add to your discomfort, but his trial just ended and the judge sentenced him to only 6 months in jail because he believed that a prison sentence "would have a severe impact on him." Only 6 months for raping and abusing an unconscious young woman who had no way of defending herself. Wow. I do no not want to dive into the details of this case because they are disturbing to recall and they are out there for anyone to see with just a little research. You can also find what Brock's father said to the court, almost excusing the actions of his son and quite possibly suggesting that our justice system was depriving him of having the fun life that he's wor...

Political correctness. Just uttering those words can elicit a visceral response in so many people. Depending on what your personal worldview is will determine how you define that term. Basically, if what you say, do, or believe does not line up with "the other side's" point of view, then you are politically incorrect. By that definition, we are all guilty. Before you read any further, I need to let you know something: This is NOT a post about political correctness, politics, or anything that has happened in the news recently. I try really hard to limit my commentaries on those things because social media is a powder keg for so many issues. Plus, whenever you or I put our thoughts out there, there really are no buffers of protection or explanation to truly make it worthwhile. But this IS a post about people, people like you and me and how we've been made to believe that what we have either done in our past or the things we are currently involved in today are worthy of ...

As soon as the words left my lips, I knew that what I had uttered was not true. I was trying to make a point about what it meant to be responsible for our own actions, but what came out didn't exactly match up with the truth I was trying to convey. What I had said was along the lines of, "God only helps those who can help themselves," and I'm sure that I had crossed far more egregious lines with my words before in a more private setting, but this time I was far from being in a one-on-one conversation with a patient friend. I was preaching a message from the Bible in front of the people of my church. Now let me set the stage a little bit better for you. At the time that I spoke these poorly chosen words, I was in my young 20's and serving as a youth director at a small church on the outskirts of an even smaller town. It was my first solo church gig. The pastor there was a really awesome guy who, in the few months that we served together, took me under his wing a...

Back in the early 1980's a movie came out by the name of If You Could See What I Hear . I remember watching it as a teenager on cable (yes, we had cable in the 1980's) and, although it wasn't all that great of a movie (my apologies to Marc Singer, the lead actor, who went on to achieve cinema greatness in the movies Beastmaster and Beastmaster II ), there was a certain scene from the movie that has stuck with me these many years later. If You Could See What I Hear recounts the story of a blind musician by the name of Tom Sullivan who does everything in his power to live a normal life in spite of his handicap. Active in the dating scene, Sullivan meets and falls in love with a woman with whom he is obviously smitten. During one scene in the movie, while he is being playful with her, she blurts out a fairly blunt question for him: Tom, how did you know that I was black? Stunned by her question, Tom, who is white, delivers a perfect response to her: I guess I...

The other night I took my son to watch my alma mater, Wake Forest University, take on a local college team in an exhibition fundraiser soccer game. If you know anything about me at all, then you know that can be pretty passionate about Wake Forest sports, no matter what sport it is or how good or bad of a season they may be having. And yes, I even celebrate when the field hockey team gets a big win. As I got settled in to watch the game with a few friends of mine, my son and his buddies went off to kick the soccer ball around with a whole bunch of other kids whose parents dragged them along to watch a game they could care less to see. Us "big kids" were discussing all sorts of issues, including the cost of tuition at Wake Forest University. I asked one of my friends who graduated a few years after I did how much tuition was now and, before he could answer, the two ladies sitting on the bleachers a few rows in front of us turned around and, in unison exclaimed, "Too mu...

As 2015 rapidly approaches, there are many who are furiously planning how they want their lives to be improved in the coming year. There will be commitments for exercise and weight loss; striving for more discipline at work or in the classroom; setting goals for productivity; or just wanting less stress and more free time. Whatever your aim for 2015 is, I am on your side! I just wish that January 1 came with a magic tonic to help all of us achieve these lofty goals that we set for ourselves. But alas, there is nothing mystical or special about the first day of the year when it comes to the changes you believe that you need to make in your life, other it being a marker for you to begin with. Truth be told, I stopped making New Years' resolutions a long time ago for a couple of reasons. First, I was terrible at keeping them, but second and more important, if I knew that I needed to make life changes in the first place, then it would be pretty pitiful for me to wait until the fir...

The town that I live in, Southport, is a sleepy little movie set kind of town nestled on the coast of North Carolina. In fact, they regularly film movies and TV shows here (most recent being Safe Haven and parts of the Under the Dome TV series). As a result, for many months out of the year my town becomes a glorified tourist trap complete with gawking visitors and snail-going-uphill-backward-slow kind of drivers. We have come to affectionately call this the Southport Crawl. It can be annoying but we've learned to live with it. Normally by now traffic crawls at a decently faster pace so that when I have to get from point A to point B it doesn't take me nearly as long. Yet I was not surprised when on my way home today from picking my two daughters up from middle school, traffic had slowed to an obnoxiously slow crawl. 5 MPH. No joke. There were a few cars in front of me, but I could easily see the culprit - a little red pickup truck with its right turn blinker apparently s...