Along the way there’s been some heavy feeding and some light snacking. From “half-off”, deceptive gospels and ‘death-to-self’ esays to Maxine cartoons. Whatever floats your boat.

The following posts overwhelmingly take the prize of the most-read that I have put out there. It is fitting that the travesty of abortion occupies a prominent place among the rest. Feel free to visit them again, or discover them, as the case may be.

Thank you for reading. As long as the Lord gives me ability, I will continue down these sheep-paths with you. Keep coming back. Your bleats keep me company.

The Least Of These
An Apologetic Against Abortion
Sunday’s Comin’!
Quick Intro and “100 (plus) Things…”
An Easter Invitation–If You Dare!
Extravagant Love
He’s Looking At You, Kid
The Fellowship of the Unashamed

• Rachel Held Evans’ treatment of salvation as more than a ‘sweet-by-and-by’ reality gets much-deserved kudos.
• Thank you, Trevin Wax, for your frankness and compassionate touches in addressing N.T. Wright on Rob Bell and the Reality of Hell. If there’s anything more hideous than universalism, it has to be the ones who flirt with it by skirting the Words of Jesus or ignoring them altogether.
• Donald Miller reminds us that “forgiveness is a pleasurable experience” and that “it feels much better than anger or hate” in his insightful, “Want To Be Happy? Forgive Your Enemies“
• Pastors, before you display the colors this Sunday, read Kevin DeYoung’s cautionary article, “Thinking Theologically About Memorial Day”; it could have gone a bit further but I appreciate his admonition to “remember” our first and true citizenship
• On a more practical front, I like Justin Taylor’s (Between Two Worlds) piece that fosters a more intentional discipline to reading

We all have some extra reading time this weekend, so enjoy!

I went and done it now…

I plum forgot to renew my primary domain (pasturescott.com) and now have to wait about 3 months for it to be in play again…

But all is not lost.

Sniff, sniff…

(I’m trying to be brave in the face of ‘losing’ a long-time web-friend)

You see in the “http” box way at the top of your screen? Yeah, above “file” and “edit” and view”…that’s it…

That’ll be my “new” website address…

‘Scuse me for a moment, won’t you?

*retching and dry-heaving*

Just change your web-finder t-t, t-to, to…

pasturescott.wordpress.com

Until further notice.

And if any of you grab my preferred DOTCOM when it’s released back into the pool…

Well, you’ll make me cry. And you won’t like it when I cry.

Seems like I’ve been here before…

(Note January 17th’s post from earlier this year)

…which means we’ve been here together…

…which means: “Lucy! You’ve got some ‘splaining’ to do!”

ELEVEN posts all year?  Eleven?!?  That hardly qualifies as blogging, mind you.  So, where ya been…? 

First off, let me give you a list of ten things I’ve NOT been doing:

• sitting still (sitting, yes, but not still)
• running a special ops mission in Myanmar
• filming as Stallone’s stunt double in Rocky XVII (not yet anyway)
• throwing back a few with Joe the Plumber
• solving the issue of global warming and why it’s snowing in London and cold in Florida today
• stewarding over the bailout and what monies go to who (whom?) and how much
• genetically reengineering broccoli to taste like cookie dough
• losing weight (I’m pretending cookie dough is really broccoli in disguise)
• thinking the media is NOT actually slanted in Obama’s favor
• blogging (of course you knew that already)

I’m okay.  In fact, all is quite well.  I just needed a long sabbatical from this but it has never been far from my heart.  I miss my community.  Darla, your comments are touching.  Thanks for persistently rapping on the door until your knuckles are probably bleeding by now.  We’ve never met, but I imagine you to be a friend that’s true, faithful, and who everyone wishes they had.  God bless you, dear one!

And to all my other readers out there (Jerald, Covenant Bride, Godsgal, et al) who have made this website the best read blog in the history of the universe, just know I “think” I’m ready to start posting again.  I think.  Don’t hold me to it.  ‘Cause, well, we’ve been here before. Then again, you never know.

Oh, who am I kidding? All of you have probably gotten tired of knocking, finding nobody home and gone on with your lives.

See ya next year!

Creative minds, front and center!

I found this idea on another blog and thought it might be worth a shot here.  Here’s how it goes: I will offer a leading line for a story and I would like my readers to add a maximum of FOUR words to the line.  You can come back as often as you want, just make sure you refresh the page before you leave a comment so as not to step on anyone else who might be posting. 

Oh, and NOTHING DIRTY (I’ll delete, so help me)…

Well, and away we go!

Here’s the story-starter:

“Late last night I had the most uneasy feeling…”

(remember, comment in four words or less) 

I feel I owe you this:

To you, my Green P@stures community, you’ll notice there have been limited–if any–postings for the past couple of months.  I have to confess to you that I have absolutely and puzzlingly lost any and all zeal, passion and inspiration for writing, but I have every hope in Christ that this present malady is not permanent.

I may post again from time to time, but I do believe there are some things the Lord is speaking
into my life that are taking some time to take root.  So, I offer this simple post just to say: please offer me this grace to check in from time to time as well as to remember me in
your prayers.

All is well (and getting better all the time!).

Where ya been?

The keyword of my life lately has been ‘connect’.  That, and the woeful lack thereof, as the case may be.  As you are well aware, little is heard from Green Pastures or Sound Bites these days except the plaintive whistling through the hollow reaches of cybersphere and the occasional tumbleweed meandering across your monitor along with the amaranthine chirping of techno-crickets. 

I have been beset by mind-cramps, faithful reader, and those incessant mental charley horses have caused me to seize up and rub it out until it goes away.

My Outlook Express has decided to join the mournful processional by going feet-up for the past two weeks.  So help me, if I have to look at another ugly window popping up telling me my server has not connected for the past 60 seconds and would I like to wait another 60 seconds, I may be shopping for yet another laptop as this one will be sporting a nice clean 20-gauge grin in its kisser. 

No telling how many emails I have idling out there which has given me the uneasy sensation of having my tether ripped free from the mother ship and being slowly drawn far out into collapsing darkness and utter cold.  Nooooooo!   

All this has me looking for a soccer ball with which I might strike up a friendship and wondering how I’d look in a long, scruffy beard.

Now I find out that my internet browser is giving me the cold shoulder, sharing the news that it has encountered a problem and must shut down and asking me to forgive it for any inconvenience.  Again and again.  For the past twenty-four hours.  You are most definitely not forgiven, Firefox.

All my bookmarks, all those saved articles, every designated folder.  Gone.  Kablooey.  Kaput.  With a resigned sigh, I regrettably slump back toward my old nemesis, IE7, and pray it will accept me back into its good graces.  Great.  Just great. 

Welcome, old friend. 

Where have you been?

(grinning fiendishly) We knew you’d be back…

Lest you think all in my life has been on disconnect, I need to tell you about a connection that I made recently that trumps all these bloopers rolled into one.  This past weekend I spent twenty-four hours with my son who has been away at a school for troubled youth for nearly six months.  I haven’t said much about it, and won’t, except to say that our prayers for a jubilee over his life seem to have a strong hearing in Heaven and the recent shifts in the atmosphere tell us that a very significant corner has been turned.

Will it last?  Not sure.  There may be setbacks and hard miles yet to come, but we have assurance that whatever it is that God wanted to get out of him in this chapter of his young life, He seems to have done just that.

Our life with Graham has consisted of a weekly ten minute phone call and a handful of short visits.  It’ll tear your heart out like nothing else when you take your monthly visit and when time’s up, to watch your only child disappear slowly behind the front door of an austere barrack-like building and you drive away, leaving him there, facing a fourteen hour drive home.  And all you want to do is call it all off, that this can’t be right, that we can make it work, but knowing every agonizing minute that the battle for his soul requires such sacrifice.

So be it, Lord.  Get Your glory in this…

I came within an eyelash of not making July’s visit and, boy, am I glad I listened to God.

Thursday morning, Douglasville, GA. 
I lay in bed, sensing the Lord was telling me I needed to go.  How can I, Lord?  The drive alone will put me back into Shepherd for more skin surgeries.  Go.  But, Lord, gas is so high.  Go.  But there’s a special speaker at church this Sunday and I’ll need to introduce him.  Go, go, go!

It took some convincing of Sandy to let me do it by myself but we agreed it was right, however I’d need to ask a special favor of the school.  I reached for the phone and dialed the all-familiar number.

“So, Mr. Mitchell, are you coming?”

“Yes I am, but I need to ask a huge favor…”

Thursday morning, SAME EXACT TIME, Northeast USA. 
Graham was bummed because he’d been told his parents would likely not be able to make it for the upcoming visitation.  He asked to stay in his room and fast through lunch, crying out to God for a miracle.  Please, God, let my parents come and see what you’re doing in my life.  Make a way, Lord.

Early that afternoon, a knock on the door startled his praying.  A head popped inside informing Graham that he was needed in the counselor’s office.  He was met there by his primary counselor and given the news that not only was his Dad coming for the weekend but they were giving special dispensation to have Graham spend the night in the hotel just so he could take care of his disabled father.

I cannot tell you all that transpired in those twenty-four hours but suffice to say what I hoped from them and what he hoped were not only realized but nitrogen-boosted beyond our expectations.  Around 1 a.m. and back at the room finally, Graham pulled out his guitar and asked if he could play a song that has become his testimony.  I said yes, of course, and found myself praying that the Lord would give temporary deafness to anyone behind those thin walls wanting to get a good night’s sleep.

There is a God who loves me
Who wraps me in His arms
And that is the place where I’m changed
And that’s where I belong

Take me to that place, Lord
To that secret place where
I can be with You
You can make me like You
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in Your arms

I’d been up for over twenty-four hours; in fact, I’d only had two hours’ sleep in the previous 40, but there was no fading on my part.  Miraculously, I was wide-awake still and glad I had not missed this.  And, wonder of wonders when my son looked at me with those bright, shame-free, tear-washed innocent eyes and said, “thanks, Dad, for sending me up here.”

What set your spouse apart and made you choose him or her?

Most of my readers know by now I am in a wheelchair so it is easy for me to say when I was dating Sandy twenty-five years ago, I loved how I felt when she walked beside me. Simply stated, I never felt like I was disabled when I was with her. Still don’t. I loved how Sandy would walk beside me and carry on a conversation as though I too was walking. It was so strange. With others, I still felt like the chair was glaringly obvious. With her, at the risk of sounding sappy, I could quickly forget there was any hardware between us. And that has never changed.

What type of music should someone play for you if his goal is to drive you insane?

Oh, this is a good question! (And some of you think you know what I’m gonna say) Though I like all types, I’d rather have bamboo shoots slid beneath my fingernails than hear the headbanging music of the hardest rock out there. To hear a guy growling into a mike, yelling unintelligible words with no discernible melody is, to me, the seventh circle of hell.

Would you rather watch sports at the stadium, or at home in the recliner? (Or never, unless your only other option is to have your toenails pulled out one by one?)

Hands down, the recliner. Can you say ‘remote control’? No crowds, foods that I actually like as close as my kitchen or on a TV tray with no lines and not costing me the equivalent of the GNP of Lithuania…of course, I’d hit the mute button if Tim McCarver or Marv Albert were broadcasting.

If you could choose any person to mentor you, living or dead, famous or not, who would that be and why?

I’ll go with Joe. You know, “I Am Joe’s (whatever)” in Reader’s Digest? I don’t know who Joe is, but it takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like that.

And on a serious note, I would have LOVED to be one of the Twelve, mentored first-hand, up close and personal, by Christ.

M & M’s: plain, peanut, almond, crispy, or peanut butter?

PEANUT!!!!!!

And now I’d like to have JT, Byron, Richard, Timbob and Caleb kindly answer these questions and link back to me. Remember, answer the questions, then come up with five new questions that you will send on to five of your blogging buddies. Simple.

Here you go, fellas:

1. What teacher has had the most influence in your life? Why?

2. If you could write the “Great American Novel” what would the first line be?

3. Which job would you prefer: the guy holding the ‘slow down’ sign in a work zone, a ring announcer at a world championship boxing match, or the person serving sample snacks at a Sam’s or grocery store?

4. If you have just awakened from a coma, who would you like to see first and why?

5. If you could get a do-over in high school, what would you change?

• This one really caught me by surprise: my Sandy is now a prolific fan of country music. This pains me to no end as I just have never been able to get it. Let’s just say I’m open (last word spoken carefully and drawn out). One of her girlfriends (may she find ants in her fruit loops tomorrow) plugged her into that nonsense and now she romances me with the phrase, “I’d like to check you for ticks.” I dunno, I think that’s a good thing? Seems the old girl and I are living the famous Donnie and Marie duet.

• Jerald tells me my blog is R-rated according to mingle2.com. Seems I’ve used some no-no words like “dead”, “pain”, “kill” and “bomb” in some of my posts. Sorry folks, I’ll clean it up. This just kills me! (Doh!)

• Studies show if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about 30% less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor—seems it takes a cat about eight floors to realize what is happening and to adjust and right itself
• In every episode of Seinfeld, you can spot a Superman figure or picture
• The chess term “checkmate” is derived from the Persian Shah Mat which means ‘the king is dead’
• To my horror, I recently discovered a blog featuring the smuttiest of porn news had linked to one of my posts (800 Pacos, June 19th)…evidently the lines “Believe me, you are being lied to. That bottle sitting by your bedside. That strange woman you are bedding. Or want to. That next fix you are dying for. The invitation you received to that wild party. Even your vain philosophy. The code you live by: I’m the Captain of My Soul. The estrangement from your family. The penthouse, the pearls, the pools. The porn, the booze” got its attention, perhaps to mock me? Who knows, mebbe it’ll turn out to be a good thing and someone will find deliverance through a pagan medium. And, no, I will not tell you the site.
• Silly thing, I know, but I did just learn that “Big Ben” is named for the bell in the tower, not the clock
• A duck’s quack doesn’t echo and nobody knows why
• Bert and Ernie, renowned pals on Sesame Street, were both named for It’s A Wonderful Life characters: Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver
• The phrase “rule of thumb” comes from an old English law that says you cannot beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb
• The plane in which Buddy Holly died was called “American Pie”, hence, the title of Don McLean’s famous song

I’ve got a ‘blonde’ joke for you.

Before I regale you with side-splitting humor, let me give you a little background. While in Florida, I visited one of my favorite church fellowships, the Calvary Chapel of St. Pete. The message was, as I’ve previously found, refreshing, poignant and heartfelt. As was the worship. The cool thing I experienced was some fellowship I enjoyed with a gentleman minutes before the service began. He took such an interest in me, my background and the fact I was a visiting pastor. About a minute before, he said, “Oh man, I gotta get up there” and nodded to the platform. Well, I knew he wasn’t the pastor because I remembered him, so I asked, “Are you on the worship team?” He smiled and said sheepishly, “Yeah, I guess you can say that. I’ve led worship here for twenty years.”

Thirty seconds later, Bob Corry was on the stage with two other men, leading us in acoustic worship that was water to my parched soul. So cool.

Anyhoo, Danny Hodges, the man I do remember as pastor, got up to speak, expositing from the gospels on the teaching ministry of our Savior. Nestled within the exposition this man launched into a blonde joke that took quite a risk but, frankly, he pulled off.

Seems a blind guy walks into a bar. He tells the barkeep he wanted to tell a blonde joke.

“I’ll have you know, sir,” the bartender said, “that I am blonde and could toss you out of here with no problem. I’ll also have you know the guy sitting next to you is a weightlifter and benchpresses several hundred pounds. He’s also blonde. And over your shoulder is a blonde guy who weighs over three hundred pounds and works as a bouncer. You still want to tell your blonde joke?”

The blind guy smiles and says, “Not if I have to explain it three times.”

The crowd roared and, last time I checked, the man is still pastor there.

I know what you’re thinking: Hurry up, Scott, and get inspired. This stuff is rubbish.