Christ Animated

Kellye is the untiring leader of the weekly children's messages on Sunday mornings at our church. Others help occasionally, but this elementary school teacher is the main one, I guess you'd say. Just about every Sunday, whether it's Kellye or another leader, the children say things that I find hilarious, even if not everyone else does. This morning's topic was thanking God for our country, since it's the weekend prior to Independence Day. Kellye: I love birthdays, don't you? Kids: Yes!!!! Kellye: What do you put on a birthday cake? Kid A: Ice cream! Kellye: Well, yes, but what else do you put on a cake? Kid B: Candles! Kellye: That's right. See the fireworks on the screen? Those are like America's candles. Kid C: Wha---? Kellye: Is that sky in the picture bright or dark? Kids: Dark! Kellye: So where is the light coming from? Kids: From the fireworks! Kellye: As followers of Jesus, where does our light come from? Kid A...

Today as we waited in a checkout line in Walmart, along with quite a few other people, a middle-aged man barged through the lines with his buggy (that's a shopping cart for any non-Southerners) to a previously-unopened register while a manager opened the register and began to check him out while another manager stood nearby. He yelled at the managers and told them he wasn't going to do their job for them by checking himself out at the self-check registers and that he was busy and had places to be! He just wanted to get his stuff and check out and go! I'm sorry … don't the rest of us waiting patiently in line want to do that also? No one knew who the guy was. He was not “important” except in his own mind. I don't know how self-centered you have to be to act like the entire world is there simply for you and to make you happy, but this guy lived there. Except he wasn't. Happy, that is. He was angry, stressed and … well, a jerk. A little girl around a...

We were in our local American-style "Mexican" fast food establishment recently late at night to grab something to eat after a long day at work. The place was Taco Bell, what my ex-grandmother-in-law once called "that new Mexican restaurant." After placing our order and sitting down with our food, I began to really pay attention. The woman who took our order was pleasant and polite. The young woman who handed me our tray of food wore a big, genuine smile and was even more pleasant and polite. I watched a team of nine employees move effortlessly around and beside each other in near silence as they moved through the tightly-spaced food service area preparing food, refilling food stations, taking drive-through orders and counter orders and getting those orders out to the right customers with as short a wait as possible. Added to the large number of people in the kitchen were a young man talking with the manager and two servicemen working on what appeared to be an el...