Summer Funning

Watching a lively thunderstorm roll in Saturday night with my family on the back porch (God's fireworks cancelling the puny ones by comparison planned that evening); drinking Miriam's homemade slush while playing games with the children; being drenched with sweat while doing battle with my sons and their friends in another driveway b-ball game; sitting with a friend eating the best, messiest burger in town where my daughter works; riding the waves on Lake Michigan...enjoying the sights, sounds and tastes of summer fun.

  
One annual summer event is the general meeting of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.  Held at nearby Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), it was a blessed week of seeing new, gifted pastors and students, hearing of [opening mission fields](https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meeting/bffa2e59/1660609), and enjoying fellowship with brothers all over the country and indeed around the world.  The campus of IWU is beautiful and the accommodations were wonderful, leaving the president of our own Geneva College to remark he was working hard to practice the tenth commandment.  In an attempt to lure us back  to Geneva next year, Geneva brought from Beaver Falls the famous [Oram's Donuts](http://www.orams.com/) for the delegates.  Never have I seen the men clear the room so fast at break time.  
  

Played my annual game of golf with Dave (sometimes we go twice) recently.  My second shot on hole 7 left me with a downhill lie on the bank of a large pond that surrounds the green.  Of course I envisioned a 9-iron shot arcing gracefully into the air and the ball stopping a few feet short of the hole.  Instead, my shot took off like a bullet straight at the water.  For a moment I thought "There's another lost ball."  Yet it _skipped _not only once, nor just twice, but three times on the pond's surface and landed on the other bank.  Maybe a hole-in-one would make me more happy.

  
My local herpetologist, Celia, meets me almost daily with either a request for another lizard ("Daddy, the Egyptian  Sand Gecko at the pet store is the world's smallest gecko and is sooo cute!") or with a new food collection method.  Lizards eat most bugs, but they go after flies like Synod delegates after Oram's donuts.  She discovered flies flock to watermelon rinds left in the alley, so she uses a plastic container and can catch 6-8 of them at a time.  Then she invites the rest of us to watch the lizards feast.  Kinda gross, I know, but so is watching those delegates eat donuts.  
  

Summer is for going to the library and checking out some  Wodehouse books, then sharing around here his descriptions of people with one another.  Like the man whose "head looked like it might have been carved from some durable form of  wood by someone who was taking a correspondence course in sculpture and had just reached his third lesson,"  or "he was only sixty-six inches tall, but most of those taking a look at him thought that was quite enough."

  
Have read and had discussions about preaching this summer, especially regarding the importance of focusing on one chief point.  I couldn't agree more.  However, there are wrong approaches to making your point, such as an unvaried, incessant repeating of it.  Take British politician Ed Milliband for example:  
  
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZtVm8wtyFI&feature=player_embedded]