The boat has not been out of its slip much this year. The weather, of course, gets some of the blame, and low water, but that’s not the whole story. For most of the spring, Lake Eufaula actually has had plenty of water, although one must remain watchful and keep the speed down.

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are a few questions that I've gotten during my years of ministry and via email for this column.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign plans to strike at the heart of the Republican base by attempting to woo Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics to his side.

Once when I was young and love had broken my heart for the first time, I thought I would never recover from the agony resulting when the bliss had been sucker-punched and sent packing.

My thoughts turned to fear and courage on Fathers Day as I held my 6-year-old daughter, Kristen, in her room in Children’s Hospital at Scottish Rites in Atlanta.

For Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the stars certainly seem aligned.

Seventy percent of Americans consider the economy in a recession. Two-thirds consider the war in Iraq a bad idea. A new Gallup Poll shows Obama leading presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain 46 to 44 percent. And the ratings for “American Idol” fell 10 percent. Given all this, plus a swooning, pro-Obama media, what’s a Republican to do?

The event snuck up on me. Quietly, without fanfare, the 25th anniversary of my family’s relocation to and ministry in Fayette and Coweta counties arrived. There was no announcement, no fanfare, no parade, no banners, no balloons or streamers. It came and it went like a Georgia snowfall.

In these hazy, 90-degree Georgia days, with gas prices soaring and smog hovering, the guilt trip that global warming proponents are selling is easy to buy. And with industry and academia seeing the green in being “green,” it’s even to tougher for ordinary Georgians to resist the strengthening tendrils of government mission creep on the subject.

If you’re going to promise “new politics,” it would probably be wise to eschew the same old Beltway cronies and insiders who have served presidential nominees of yore.

Words not to remember in November 2008.

1. Wow — it’s Historic Election time!

Well, maybe, but also maybe not. The media always like to jump the gun on this “historic” stuff. We only learn what’s actually historic in looking back.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Arlen Specter, at age 78 suffering from cancer, was feeling miserable Monday following chemotherapy the previous Friday. But believing the best antidote was hard work, Specter took the Senate floor with a speech different in kind from the partisan oratory now customary in the chamber.

Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats’ nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates.

Listening to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeat stories they claim to have been told by the poor and the unemployed, who are unable to pay for food and medicine and feel miserable about it, is enough to make one think we are living in a Third World dictatorship and not the United States of America. But victimhood and a “can’t do” spirit is what the Democratic Party has mostly been about since the Great Depression.

Does any of this sound familiar? A Democratic presidential nomination is essentially taken away from a candidate because of a fight over delegates’ credentials at a national nominating convention.

Let’s do a thought experiment asking whether Americans are for or against slavery.

You might say, “What are you talking about, Williams? We fought a war that cost over 600,000 lives to end slavery!”

The congregation of Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church in Peachtree City is dealing with joy and sorrow as their senior pastor, the Rev. John Martin Weber, 62, retires from 34 years of service to the community, both through the church and through Peachtree City’s fire and police departments as chaplain. He is believed to have the longest tenure among clergy in Peachtree City.

Stress experts will tell you that there are two kinds of stress: eustress and distress. Eustress is the good stress that motivates us to get tasks underway and completed. Distress is bad stress that occurs when stressors pile up and become too much to bear.

Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober — if not grim — assessment of where we are.

It would behoove all you men to thoroughly understand one thing: we women normally conduct our romances by committee.

The lights flashed on at Candi’s house. They were eyes peering into the darkness of the outside world. Yellow spilled out onto the front lawn and illuminated the green grass and a thick grove of trees, but that wasn’t all. Among the shadows of the pines, seven wide-eyed teenagers stood frozen like deer caught in headlights – and I was one of them.

“I intend to proudly vote for Obama,” said a caller to a National Public Radio show, “because I want to show the world what America is all about — that a person of color can become president of the United States.”

In the 1980s I became very active politically. I joined a party, supported candidates, attended party meetings, served as a delegate — and also learned how bitter politics can get, even at the local level.

What assumptions do congressmen make about the American people? Do they assume that we’re dumb or ill-informed about the energy problems we are experiencing?

Frankly, some American with minimal regard for political correctness should consider chasing the so-and-so down the street, cracking an instrument of encouragement associated with Indiana Jones, crying: “Outta here, you bum! And don’t come back!”

It is amazing how seriously the media are taking Senator Barack Obama’s latest statement about the latest racist rant from the pulpit of the church he has attended for 20 years. But neither that statement nor the apology for his rant by Father Michael Pfleger really matters, one way or the other. Nor does Senator Obama’s belated resignation from that church.

A self-identified African-American caller to a Washington, D.C., radio station characterized the recent anti-Hillary Clinton outburst by the white liberal Chicago priest, Michael Pfleger, as a “minstrel show.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In Scott McClellan’s purported tell-all memoir of his trials as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, he virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s role leaking to me Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA employee. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair, in keeping with the overall tenor of “What Happened.”

It was the biggest night of the young presidential candidate’s campaign. In the South Dakota primary, he had trounced that state’s native son, the sitting vice president, while in California he had just defeated the Minnesota senator who, one week earlier in Oregon, had inflicted his first-ever election defeat.

We frequently brag about the quality of life in Fayette County. Most residents live here because of good schools, the low crime rate, excellent youth sports programs, reasonable taxes and well-managed local governments. There are other factors that influence quality of life, and the presence of excellent programs in the performing and visual arts is of paramount importance.

A friend and I were just talking about this. Talking about how so many people want to write a book.