Blues legend B. B. King is best known for his trademark song, “The Thrill is Gone,” written in 1951 by Rick Darnell and Roy Hawkins. The song begins:

“The thrill is gone,
The thrill is gone away.”

While some folks live for “the thrill of the moment,” is this the best orientation for our lives? What happens when the thrill is gone?

We are experiencing pandemonium here at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church this week (you are not going to believe this; just as I wrote those words a child set off our fire alarm and the entire building evacuated in mere minutes) with Vacation Bible School. Our theme this year is “Panda-mania” and with the hundreds of children plus servant-volunteers in our building “mania” is a good description for all the frenetic activity going on. However, it is also a reminder that Jesus said, “Let the children come to me!”

Many of you readers know that I am a very big fan of the game of baseball; especially college baseball. Last weekend I was watching the “Super Regionals” with great interest because someone I know was coaching one of the teams trying to qualify for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. The resiliency of his team reminded me that one should never give in.

The members of my family are big baseball fans and sometimes baseball terminology creeps into our everyday conversations. Several years ago our teen age son became eligible to get his driver’s license. He was not particularly motivated about studying for the test, so it took him more than one attempt to get the document that nearly every teenager covets. As his mother, on one occasion, waited for him he got into the car and announced, “swing and a miss!”

The Memorial Day holiday weekend is fast upon us. As I sat at the kitchen table this morning, drinking my first cup of coffee, I was perusing the newspaper grocery store circulars when I saw something that caught my eye. It was a call to remembrance as a reflection of our national unity. Can a one-minute moment of reflection really make us one?

There are those cataclysmic moments in our lives when we truly realize the words of the poet, “Time stands still for no man (person).” We look into the mirrors of our souls and silently, or not so silently, think/scream, “I’m getting old.” One of those demarcating events is fast approaching for me next week, on May 24th, when Robert Allen Zimmerman, perhaps better known as Bob Dylan, turns 70 years old. Seventy; there is no way Bob Dylan can be that old because I am still a young-middle aged man! Yeah, right. But the truth of the matter is that Mr. Dylan has seemingly captured the secret of staying forever young.