Palm Valley | Behind the Curtain

Last Saturday night, there was a mass shooting in Round Rock. Those words don’t even belong in the same sentence. Mass shooting. Round Rock. It just sounds wrong. 

This is not a big urban center. This is our home. This is where our kids go to school. This is where we go to the park, go swimming, and have festivals to celebrate our diversity and the beauty and wonder of our city. It’s where we go for the 4th of July fireworks…and, in days gone by, for the cardboard boat regatta.

Mass shooting. Round Rock. The words just don’t go together. Two dead. Fourteen hospitalized. 

Mass shooting. The words are jarring. 

We don’t know all the details. We don’t even know if the shooter was from Round Rock. 

But now there is a tear in the fabric of our city. It will be mended because, well, this is Round Rock…but there will be a scar. 

Not too long ago, I got my bicycle overhauled but something didn't feel right, and once in a while the chain came clean off! It wasn't until recently that I had it figured out; that I found the actual problem. Turns out one of the links was bent.

So why do I tell you this? Well, it's like a lot of life. Often all it takes is one person to pull things off course, to keep things from working as smoothly as they might. So today let's stop and ask ourselves, “Am I a bent link in a chain?”

A mother and her toddler daughter went to visit a friend. When they arrived, the two mothers greeted each other with hugs, and they set the little girl down next to the little boy who had been playing with a toy duck.

The little girl immediately grabbed the duck and said, “My duck!”

As you can imagine, that didn't go over very well with the little boy.

I won't go into the details of the duck being snatched back and forth or the ensuing tears that flowed, but I will say that the little girl kept repeating, “My duck! My duck!”

We all want what we don't have. A part of us will always be crying out, “My duck!”

How often do we misinterpret what other people say?

Or how often do we assume we have the whole picture when we only have a part?

We all do that though. We all jump to conclusions; we think we have the whole story when we only have part of it…and then, in our minds, we fill in what we think the rest of the story might be.

Have you ever done something that seemed right at the moment, but when you had a moment to think about it, you realized that it might not have been the best course of action?

How often do we act without thinking? How often do we make rapid, uninformed choices, and how often do we react instead of thinking things through? We all react to situations, sometimes without thinking or taking the long view.

Many years ago when I was a camp cook, I had a helper. After working together for a few weeks and watching him gain confidence, I decided to delegate some work.

I told him that we would be feeding the 400 kids at the camp tuna noodle casserole. He assured me that he had it well in hand, but when I returned, each one was like a tuna noodle brick!

Here's what I learned: first don't assume anything. Don't assume that somebody knows what you know unless you check with them beforehand.

Second, communication is key. Unless we listen to each other, ask questions to clarify, or check to see if we have gotten it correct, we can't guarantee that actual communication has taken place.

Every week, I set aside time to have lunch with and pray with two colleagues. The other day we met, and one of the busboys came up to greet us — we've gotten to know him a little bit over the past year.

When I asked him how we could pray for him that day, he said, “Just pray that God hears my thanksgiving and my praises. I don't want anything. I don't need anything. I just want to thank God.”

He went on, “I thank God that I woke up today! I didn’t just wake up; I woke up, and I was not in jail!”

Sometimes it's easy to forget all those things we take for granted, and we all have so much to be thankful for if we only stop and realize it.

Recently, I had an opportunity to be in California with my family. On our way back to the San Francisco airport, I saw a sign that cracked me up. It said, “Yolo bypass.”

The reason that the sign got my attention is the acronym Y.O.L.O. Yolo stands for “You only live once.”

As people of the way, as followers of Christ, we have a Yolo bypass. We can bypass the idea that you only live once because we know that there's more than the life that we're living here on earth right now.