Tim Boyd's Blog

Possibly my favorite video on the internet is the eharmony /cat loving/crying lady.  It's here .  Seriously - you should watch it. It's funny because it's so ridiculous.  That's pretty much how I felt at the end of our second service Sunday. First of all, I'm not a crier.  True I will cry, sometimes, during commercials, every time I see Titanic, and then at breakfast with my kids.  However, NO ONE SEES IT!  It's those little emotional cries that don't come to the surface.  That's how I like it.  No need to explain it and no need to slow the day down. Sunday, I sobbed...on the stage...at the end of the service.  I do this for a living (not the crying part).  I preach funerals without crying.  I am a fairly emotionally stable dude.  But I balled. Here's why. For the first time in my life I feel like I felt just a moment of what some people have felt their entire lives. I have never been in a position in life where I d...

One of the nicest people to ever live was a preacher.  That makes me so happy because my profession has taken some hits over the years.  Did you know some of the following things about Mr. Rogers?  ( These items were featured on CNN and researched by mental floss.) The sweaters. Every one of the cardigans he wore on the show had been hand-knit by his mother. He made thieves think twice. According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town.  Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, "If we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it." He watched his figure to the pound. In covering Rogers' daily routine (waking up at 5 a.m.; praying for a few...

In January my wife started talking about doing a " Daniel fast ."  It's based on the scripture from Daniel 1:3-16, where Daniel and his friends eat only veggies and stay away from the king's table with it's fine food and fancy wine.  Basically you can eat fruit, veggies, nuts, and some grains.  You can't have sugar, anything processed, meat, animal product, anything with flavor or taste, or any CAFFEINE! I said, "I'm in."  So we started two weeks ago and we have one week left. The first couple of days were pretty terrible.  I'm not a terrible eater to begin with, but this was HARD.  My digestive system was not ready for the influx of fruit and vegetables.  But worse than any of that was the lack of caffeine.  I have been addicted to caffeine for longer than I've been married.  I didn't drink much soda before and I limited my coffee to just two cups each morning.  However, for this fast I had to cut it out completely.  Each morni...

There was a little town that had been decimated by some recent storms.  The people in this town were tough.  Years ago they had been through a storm that leveled there town and they had stayed and rebuilt.  Then another storm came even more powerful than the last one.  Some people moved out of the town and went to somewhere safer.  But these people decided that they weren’t going anywhere.  Maybe they were too stubborn to go, maybe they liked it too much there, or maybe they were just plain crazy.  Don’t know. This latest storm tore through the center of town and knocked down buildings.  It looked like a bomb had gone off.  The school was leveled, the bank, the post office, and many of the homes were destroyed.  So the people of the town decided that they were going to rebuild once again.  They didn’t have the money to just buy all new stuff.  So it was decided that every week they would meet together and bring with them o...

Galatians 5:25, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  If you and I were reading this scripture together I would probably ask you what you think that meant.  Then you would probably answer something like “well we should be walking with the Spirit.”  I would agree and compliment you on your wonderful answer.  I think both of us would have, somewhat, missed the point of this phrase.  To keep in step with someone could signify a walk, but it also is the phrase you would use in dancing to keep up with your partner.  “in step” seems to signify, not a walk, but a dance  To be fully alive is to join God on the great dance floor of life. Many of the greatest Christian thinkers throughout history have stated that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit (the three that make up the one God) are in a constant dance with eachother.  The concept is called the Perichoresis.  It’s from two greek words meaning “to dance among.”...

I read this in the greatest collection of sermons I've read.   The Collected Sermons of Fred Craddock . "I'm borrowing the phrase "don't fit in" from my first student church.  It was up in East Tennessee.  I worked there in the summers as a seminarian and it was about twenty miles from Oak Ridge.  Oak Ridge had gotten into place.  The atomic energy thing was booming and folk were coming and constructing that little town into a city.  Folk were coming from everywhere.  Hard-hat types, in tents and trailers and little temporary huts and all kinds of leantos.  They covered those beautiful hills with temporary quarters, wash hanging out on the fences and little kids crying through the muddy places where all these things were parked. My little church, an aristocratic little church, white frame building, beautiful little church was near by.  It was a nice church, wonderful people.  I called the board together and said, "We need to reach ou...

I love Brennan Manning .  I am re-reading The Ragamuffin Gospel .  I have forgotten how incredible his book is.  It really is a must read.  Here is a short section that got me today: "A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms.  As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking around, her attention flitting from one thing to another, or just settling down to sleep.  Essentially the child is choosing to be with her father, confident of the love, the care, the security that is hers in those arms.  Our prayer is much like that.  We settle down in our Father's arms, in his loving hands.  Our mind, our thoughts, our imagination may flit about here and there; we might even fall asleep; but essentially we are choosing for this time to remain intimately with our Father, giving ourselves to him, receiving his love and care, letting him enjoy u...