Month: October 2025

Humble Beginnings

~ Paul Phillips ~ 1 Comment

It was ten years ago.  I remember it as if it were yesterday. 

I had taken one last trip back home with my siblings, returning with a U-Haul trailer full of memories—rife with laughter and tears.

From the treasure hoard I brought back, I shared an ancient photo with my friends.  The image showed five little urchins posing in front of a battered little trailer house.  I see a single tricycle to be shared between the five, along with a “swamp cooler” in front of the abode—the closest we ever came to having an air conditioner there in the tropical heat of the Rio Grande Valley.

When I shared the photo on social media, one friend who had grown up with me wrote words that felt like a slap in the face.  He was merely stating a fact and certainly didn’t intend the words to dredge up the feelings they did.

“Humble beginnings.”

I admit it, I’m easily distracted.  It doesn’t take much to stir up old memories and sometimes, the unpleasant feelings that can accompany them.

Did I say I remember it as if it were yesterday?  The strange thing is that the episode with the photo occurred ten years ago, but the pain (which I remember no less clearly) originated over six decades ago. 

Back then, an older boy, probably the ripe old age of 9, ridiculed 7-year-old me on the school bus, deriding me for being poor enough to have to live in that trailer house.

I remember blubbering that I didn’t live in the trailer anymore.  My parents had purchased the old house across the street just 6 months before that bus ride.

He didn’t believe me.  But when we arrived at the stop where my siblings and I were to alight, I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.  Dragging him toward the bus window, I crowed in triumph.

“Come here!  See!  That’s where I live!”

I don’t know why my mind holds onto some events and not to others.  Nor why those episodes pop into my head at the oddest of times.

We had a special service at our fellowship a day or two ago.  The kids led worship, both in English and Spanish.  Then the youth pastor spoke, his words being translated into Spanish as well.

I’ve told you before that I sometimes have trouble following the trail the preacher lays down in his sermon, haven’t I?  A thought arrests my brain, and I can’t really move past it.

I couldn’t help it.  The scripture for the young man’s sermon was from John 1, verses 35 to 39.  In the text, John the Baptist tells his followers again that Jesus, who is passing, is the Lamb of God.  

Two of them desert John and follow after Jesus.  When He saw them following Him, He asked them what they wanted.  They replied that they just wanted to see where He lived.

Jesus simply replies, “Come and see.”

Wait.  All they wanted was to see where He lived?  How odd!

But then I got to thinking.  John the Baptist lived in the desert.  He ate grasshoppers and wild honey.  Wore camel hair shirts.

I can just hear them when they get to the house where Jesus is staying.

“Wow!  This is better than that trailer house—I mean—desert cave, any day!  Let’s follow Him for a while.”

For a minute, I even thought I might have heard a strain or two of the theme song from The Jeffersons (a TV sitcom from the ’70s and ’80s).

“Movin’ on up, to the East Side…”  (You sang that in your head, didn’t you?)

He showed them where He lived!

But, I think there was more to it than that.  

Humble beginnings don’t preclude moving to better surroundings.  We were never intended to finish in the place in which we began.

It should be evident that I’m not talking about a physical location.  I know people who have lived at the same address all their lives.  I also know, beyond doubt, that they have grown and become different people from who they were at the outset.

The apostle, for whom I am named, reminded the folks in Philippi that their Redeemer would continue the work He had begun in them until they moved on to their permanent home. (Philippians 1:6)

He wants us to be content with what we have physically, but never with where we are spiritually.

The folks who followed Jesus while He walked the earth saw where He lived.  Not the place, but the Person.

The place He lived changed again and again.  The Person never did, walking constantly in grace and love.  And in service.

The pastor reminded us the other day (I did hear other things he said!) that Jesus still says, “Come and see.”

And we, growing into the people of grace, should be saying with Him, “Come and see.”

Saying it, not in pride and triumph, but in love and humility.  To all whose paths we cross, taking them by the sleeve and showing them.

Come and see.

Ven a ver.

 

“You are the only Bible some unbelievers will ever read.”
(John McArthur)

“He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
    out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
    and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing,
    a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
    They will put their trust in the Lord.”
(Psalm 40:2-3, NLT)

 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

 

Hope Still Keeps Its Promises

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment
Image by Aiamkay on Pixabay

I wrote recently that I was learning to play the piano again, implying by my words that I wasn’t completely certain the outcome would be successful.  The jury is still out on that question.

I have found some fodder for thought in the process, though.  Just tonight, as I sat at the still out-of-tune grand piano, I played a few notes of an old song I first heard in my teen years.  It wasn’t in any hymnal I ever sang from, but had been recorded a decade or two before then by a country singer of some renown.

The song is titled “Whispering Hope.”

I didn’t like the song so much.  In retrospect, I think I never really considered the message.

Who needed hope, especially the kind that whispered, when you had the dreams of youth?  I was going to live forever!

The future was bright, with no clouds to dim the sun.

There are clouds now.  And winter seems about to set in.  I know I’m not the only one who feels it—the darkness and the bitter, biting wind.

And yet, there is still a voice that whispers hope in my ears—every day.

Perhaps you’ve heard it.

Perhaps, you’re still waiting.

But there’s no need to wait.  If you belong to God, hope—bright hope—has always been His promise.

“Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”  (Romans 5:5, NKJV)

In the bright glare of the sunlight, hope will be our shade.

In the dim shadow of gathering night, hope lights the narrow path ahead.

In the frigid cold of the deepest winter, hope lends warmth to the despairing soul.

It’s a promise.

And, He keeps His promises.

Still.

 

“If in the dusk of the twilight,
Dim be the region afar,
Will not the deepening darkness
Brighten the glimmering star?
Then when the night is upon us,
Why should the heart sink away?
When the dark midnight is over,
Watch for the breaking of day.

Whispering Hope
O how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.”
(from Whispering Hope by Septimus Winner [1868])

 

“Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul 
And sings the tune without the words 
And never stops—at all.”
(from Hope is the Thing With Feathers, by Emily Dickinson)
© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

A Piano in the Path

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I’m thinking about learning to play the piano.

I’m told I won’t have much learning to do, since I once called myself a pianist.  It’s just like riding a bicycle, they say.  Or perhaps, as easy as falling off a log.

More likely, it’s a combination of the two and will be like falling off a bicycle.

I’ve done that before, thank you.  Repeating the experience isn’t on my bucket list.

But there’s a piano sitting next to my desk as I write this.  It calls my name a few times a day.

Some things are meant to be. Not that I wanted another piano in the house.  Or even that I thought I should play the piano again.

“Come and look at Dad’s piano,” the fellow said.  I used to have some expertise regarding these instruments, so I went.  After a surprising (to me) conversation about the old piano coming to our house to live, it actually happened.

A couple of weeks ago, the piano came to my late father-in-law’s old piano shop to stay.  In the very room where the white-haired old man rebuilt and repaired similar instruments, the ninety-five-year-old grand piano awaits a player—and before that, a minor repair or two.  I couldn’t help feeling, as I touched up the tuning on one of the bass notes earlier, that he would be proud of me.

The gentleman who passed on the ownership of the old piano to the Lovely Lady and me sat at his dining room table while I examined it on that day, a few weeks ago.  His mother and father bought the piano new a couple of years before he was born.  It has been his piano to play for all of his life.  But he and his dear wife have decided it’s time to live where they can have some extra help, so they are downsizing.

Downsizing.  It’s a strange word.  Many these days are choosing to do it simply because they don’t want to be burdened by so many belongings.

But others, like my old friend, are making the journey because, as our British cousins were once fond of saying, needs must.

Needs must.  A shortening of a quote from a fifteenth-century writing that said (in modern English), “Needs must when the devil drives.”

I like the shortened version of it better.  It certainly sounds better than the words I say when faced with an inevitable (and unwanted) option.

“It is what it is.”

He and his wife are dispersing their mementos of a long life shared.  They’re not shedding their memories, just the physical reminders of them.

It’s hard.  But more folks we know are doing similar things around us every day.

I’m happy to be the recipient of the old piano.  It has been a lifelong memory for my friend of his parents and his childhood.  For me, it will be a memento of him for as long as I sit down to play music on it.

I wrote recently of roads I remember.  This is not so much a road as a path I’m wandering these days.  The difference is that paths tend to meander a bit into the future in front of us.  And they’re not as well marked.

I can’t remember how many years ago it was—but I’m sure it was more than twenty—that this same friend told me my mother-in-law was teaching him to play the piano.  It wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.  She was teaching him to play the piano better.

In this house, the same house in which his old piano now resides, he was picking up the path again, the path to being a pianist.

I should mention that, over the last few years, some of my favorite music to listen to at the fellowship we attend has come from the hands of this particular old friend as he sat at the piano on the platform there.  He always laughs at me when I tell him that, as if he can’t believe it.  It’s still true.

I know, this is just more sappy stuff.  That doesn’t make it trivial or inconsequential.

The paths and the roads we walk today have been traveled by folks whose examples we would do well to emulate.  As I remember it, my friend was about my age, advanced in years as I already am, when he decided to learn more than he already knew about playing the piano.

So, I’m the perfect age to be learning to play the piano.  Again.

Paths to follow.  Who knows where they’ll lead?

Maybe you can think of one you need to walk down again, too. 

The old piano is calling my name.  I wonder if my neighbors will object too much to my answering the call at this hour of the night.

But no. 

Perhaps I’ll just practice during the daytime hours for the time being.

 

 

“May you live all the days of your life.”
(Jonathan Swift)

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
(Colossians 3:17, NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.

 

The Road

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t sit down to write anything profound tonight. I really need to head for bed soon.  The Lovely Lady says I do.  She thinks when I’m not feeling great, sleep is the cure.

But, for some reason, sleep doesn’t come easily these nights.  It could be the noises from my breathing and the periodic coughing bouts.  It could be the aches and pains that come with growing older.

Could be.

I think sometimes I just need to remember things, and nighttime is a good time to do that.

Tonight, for some reason, I remember roads.

I remember straight-as-an-arrow roads in the Rio Grande Valley that ran out in front of the old green 1957 Ford station wagon as far as my young eyes could see.  I was seven or eight then.

The future seemed as far away as that horizon did, and I was sure the road to that future was just as straight, too.

I remember roads that twisted and turned into the Sierra Nevada mountains above my grandparents’ house in the Central Valley of California.  Mostly, I watched them from the back seat of the 1971 Ford station wagon with fake, plastic woodgrain on the side.  I was fifteen.

The teen years didn’t feel all that happy, but I was sure the future was closer, like that next curve.  Then too, I just knew the road I was on wasn’t quite as straight and narrow as I had once thought.  And, as we climbed the steep mountains up to where the giant sequoias stood, it was clear there was danger along the way, bringing fear.  Side by side, fear grew along with awe at the astonishing beauty of the steep slopes and abrupt precipices.

At nineteen, I remember a highway that carried me out of Texas one winter’s night and into a future I couldn’t yet see.  I pulled over into the roadside park just across the state line in Oklahoma, and threw up beside the car.

The future was still up ahead, but that night, I wondered if it was too late to turn back to the safety of the past.

So many roads.  A road to a church.  A road where, at a stop sign, I leaned over and kissed the red-headed girl beside me for the first time, returning to that spot nearly a year later to put a ring on her finger.  A road to a hospital.  That one I’ve traveled more times than I care to remember.  And, lots of different roads across and under old bridges the Lovely Lady and I have searched out in our leisure.

But tonight, I’m really thinking about two specific roads in recent memory.

A couple of weeks ago, not so far from our town, the Lovely Lady and I stood on a dirt road out in the country, along with our adult children and their spouses, as well as their children.  The nice man pointed his camera, with its long lens, at us and recorded some memories.

We kicked up some dust, and the two-year-old grandson sat playing in the dirt and rocks to get his picture taken.  I wandered over to the barbed-wire fence and let the black angus mama cow lick my fingers, leaving slobber dripping from them.

I haven’t seen the photos yet, but they’ll only be the icing on the cake after the joy of being on that road with this particular group of people.

And then, there was the gathering last Sunday afternoon in the turnaround (educated folks call it a cul-de-sac, I think) of the little road we live on now.  Neighbors actually sat in chairs on the pavement around tables and shared our food, along with our friendship.

In the middle of the road, we broke bread and told our stories to each other, laughing and remembering the past.

Remembering the past; imagining the future.

Sappy stuff, isn’t it?

But somehow, I think we need more of the sappy today.  Our daily lives are inundated with bad news from every source possible.  And inexplicably, we’ve bought into the notion that we must digest and regurgitate as much of the bad news as possible, imposing our opinions on everyone who will stop to listen or read.

Can I say this?  Most of life is lived on backroads and dirt lanes, regardless of how much time we spend speeding down the limited-access highways.  Even in the big cities, most of the hours of one’s life are lived in relative solitude, surrounded by friends and family. And sometimes, alone.

Those familiar with my writing will know I’m a fan of Mr. Tolkien and will have read one or another of his “road poems” at the bottom of my essays in the past.  I think I won’t disappoint when one is included below.

Some roads are of vital importance to the direction of our lives.  The road we choose to walk in our faith is the most crucial.

“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”
(Matthew 7:13-14, NLT)

And often, we walk that road of faith together.   While the choice to walk it is made by each of us individually, company along the way is essential to our staying on the road.

We need each other as we travel.  Otherwise, how will we get up when we fall?

I’m grateful for the company on the road.  These folks are some of God’s best gifts, in my mind.

I think it may be time for sleep now.  She could actually be right, you know.  She’s been my company along the road for nearly five decades now.

Help, when we fall.

And someone to make us laugh once in a while.

Good gifts.

 

“Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.”
(from The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien)

“Remember the days of old;
    consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
    your elders, and they will explain to you.”
(Deuteronomy 32:7 NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2025. All Rights Reserved.