When I was a 25-year-old pastor I had better answers to the questions of life than I do now. When I took my first church at 23, I knew I didn’t know anything about almost everything. By the time two years had passed, I had all the answers.

It was 40 years ago, Friday, Feb. 13, 1970, that I arrived at Parris Island, South Carolina at “zero dark-thirty” a.m. I’d like to say that I was motivated to enlist by intense patriotism during a time of war, but the simple truth is less honorable.

Recently, someone suggested that I was a racist. The charge came, of course, from someone I do not know, who disagreed with something I said in an article, and who sent a comment to the newspaper anonymously.

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a fellow pastor in another town and we were discussing the terrible situation in Haiti. He was saying that his church was going to be receiving an offering and investigating what they could do to offer assistance.

I am a self-described independent voter who tends to lean toward conservatism. If this were the 1960s, I would be a John F. Kennedy liberal. JFK promoted civil rights, women’s rights, a hand up for the disadvantaged, educational programs that would improve the lot of motivated youth who yearned for success, inspiration to achieve, and the opportunity to serve one’s country and community — this type of liberalism I could buy.

It’s my birthday. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I share the same birthday, though not the same year of birth. My cousin John Honeycutt, four years younger than I, also shares the same birth date. On Jan. 15, I hit the big five-nine. I can no longer deceive myself into thinking that I am still a kid.

When I was in New York during the fall, a few of us from the South were talking Southeastern Conference football. One of the local guys said, “You guys from down South sure talk a lot about college football.”

“No one has ever seen God,” we read in John 1:18 (RSV). Artists, poets, and authors, of course, have attempted to portray Him. Michelangelo portrayed him as both ancient and strong. Jonathan Edwards portrayed him as full of wrath in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” Bette Midler sang about an indifferent God who is watching “from a distance.” Painters portray God in their own image, making him brown, black, white, yellow, or red. Some imagine his hair is blond, white, or some other shade.

I had unpacked the manger display that a family in the church lends to us each year and was setting it up on a table in the church foyer.

There can be, if one looks hard enough, something positive even in the most difficult of circumstances. Take, for example, this current economic downturn.

A few weeks ago, a phenomenon occurred at our church that demanded notice. I was in Chicago at the time but word came to me that the water at the church was purple.

I was 8 years old, almost 9, and an only child when my mother informed me that I was about to have a little brother or sister.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting with family in northeastern Tennessee. Out to dinner with my brother and his wife, we were joined by their 7-year-old granddaughter, Annie.

What does Santa Claus look like? He may just look like a United States Marine. In 1947, according to the national Toys for Tots website, when Major Bill Hendricks, USMCR, and a group of Marine Reservists in Los Angeles collected and distributed 5,000 toys to needy children, Toys for Tots was born. The idea came from Bill’s wife, Diane.

When I was a young pastor, 24 or 25 years old, my denominational supervisor offered me a book on theology by Karl Barth. I declined his gift and said that I didn’t need it.

Some would say that it not surprising that the United States Marine Corps was born in a bar — a tavern, actually. On Nov. 10, 1775, the Continental Congress formed the Continental Marines. Captain Samuel Nicholas was commissioned as the first officer in the Corps on Nov. 28, 1775, and set up the first recruiting post in a tavern.

In some parts of the Church world, the “saints” are those men and women whose lives are so exemplary and in whom such love and grace was manifest that, after their death, they were declared to be “saints,” worthy of veneration and imitation.

The October 2009 edition of Healthy Cells magazine featured an interesting article on sexual addiction. Nashville resident David Kyle Foster, a minister of my acquaintance who deals with a plethora of “sexual brokenness issues,” has stated that, on any given Sunday, seated in a 16-person pew are 12 people who are having issues with some form of sexual dysfunction or brokenness.

Worse, perhaps, than the terrible sound made by fingernails on a blackboard is the sound of a child screaming. Of course, parents don’t view the sound the way that bystanders do.

“So where are you from?” the lady asked as she was cleaning my hotel room in Florida.

“I’m from near Atlanta,” I responded. “And where are you from?” I inquired.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I dated a young lady named Pam. She and I were attending a youth party sponsored by my Methodist church and, at some time during the evening, I wandered over to the piano and began playing, “Louie, Louie,” the only song then, or now, that I could play.

Bishop Rick Painter, rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Phoenix, Ariz., was recently arrested and twice convicted of a crime. His offense? What was it that would prompt law enforcement officials and the judicial system to focus on the 68-year-old bishop of a cathedral?

Like most people growing up in America, when I thought of a cathedral, that which came to mind were those magnificent structures scattered around Europe that were constructed somewhere in the Middle Ages. If the building is huge and ornate, I reasoned, it must be a cathedral.

One of the great strengths of Americans is that we have historically been able to put the past behind us and move forward.

“War is hell,” said General William T. Sherman in 1864. The politicians speak of the honor of war and the poets speak of its glory but the soldiers and the victims know the real truth… war is hell.

In 1996, Christ the King Church began in my living room. Within a few weeks we had outgrown the space (it doesn’t take very many people to outgrow a living room).

In England, the Charity Tribunal, a judicial body, has ruled that Catholic Care, the adoption agency for the Diocese of Leeds, must cooperate with homosexual couples who wish to adopt children, according to a news item in The Catholic World Reporter. The agency now faces a terrible choice.

I was put on trial last week. I didn’t even know that I had committed an offense but there I was facing a judge with a prosecutor and defender on either side of me.

Last month when I was flying home from another state, my flight was canceled. The cause, I was told, was the weather. There were no other flights out that day so I had to retrieve my car from the rental agency and find a place to stay for the night. Since I had an appointment I really needed to keep the next day, I reported to the airport at 0430 (4:30 a.m., half an hour before the Marines wake up at Parris Island) in order to catch the first flight of the day.

Once in a great while, I get the sense that time is running out. For example, on Sunday and Monday of this week, I was in three churches in three cities in Georgia and Tennessee ministering, teaching, answering questions, visiting, serving Holy Communion, and, of course, traveling.