Valerie Loughrige, the first person you meet when you walk into our offices, told me a story that inspired me.

When Val worked at a call center for a credit card company taking inbound calls from people who dial the number on the back of the card. One day she took a call regarding a “found card.” Apparently someone had completed a transaction at the San Francisco airport gift shop and left their card behind.

Val looked at this persons credit card history and saw that they had charged a flight to Eastern Asia—that flight was why they were at the airport. She then checked the flight schedule and saw that the flight hadn’t left yet. She then contacted the airport and asked them to connect her with the gate. They did. The gate agent then paged the flier who got on the phone with Val so she could tell him that he’d left his credit card behind at the gift shop.

It turns out that this was THE credit card this flier used for everything, and was the only way he had to pay his expenses once he arrived at his destination. Imagine the pain that Val saved this man by going the extra mile to serve him. It would have been easier for her to have just disabled the credit card (and protect her employer, the card issuer), but Val understood that she really wasn’t there for the card issuer. Her greater purpose was to help her company serve its customers, the card users. Her noble service came to light when the card member wrote a letter to the employer thanking Val for saving his trip.

The funny part of the story is that the whole time Val was concerned she’d get in trouble for making an outgoing phone call—remember, she was on the inbound call desk. She was TAKING calls and wasn’t authorized to be MAKING calls. But she understood the bigger truth of making a difference in the world. Val didn’t get any awards (well, besides a $10 starbucks certificate–WoooWhooo!) or ticker tape parades, but she bought perpetual good will for her company from one of its clients, all because she went the extra mile.

Way to go Val. I’m proud you are on my team. You’re a Linchpin!

Now that we’ve made our way back into a church where the Bible is reliably taught, I’ve been thinking about how we can get the girls to become more familiar with their Bibles. They don’t see any need to carry their Bible with them to church. After all, the church provides pew Bibles and the scripture is often projected on the screen, so why bother?

They do have a point. And it got me to thinking about the larger point of how in an effort to be friendly and convenient for people I was one of the early adopters in the “Put the words on the screen so everybody can see them movement.” But I was wrong. I enabled people to grow weak and fail to exercise an important muscle. There are some things people need to do for themselves, and finding their way through their Bible is one of them.

Now, to my credit, we also sold Bibles at the back of the auditorium for $2 each (Hardcovered) and those were the “official” Bibles we used on Sunday morning so that everyone could find the page number. When I called out a scripture reference I would always tell people what page it was on in order to help them find it. I’m OK with that. But I’m not OK with “Its on the big screen, so working in your own copy of the scripture is not necessary.”

Everyone who identifies as a follower of Christ should be growing in their ability to find their way around the Bible. The only way you’ll ever find your way around the scripture is—to find your way around the scripture; that is to use your preferred copy of the scripture to navigate to the books and through the verses to find the passage the pastor is referencing. So, you need to carry a Bible to church and work your way through it. Sunday morning is good preparation for private work on your own.

So, sorry Mad and Syd. You don’t get to travel light. Carry the Book with you, and when the pastor calls out the passage open it up, find it, and read and study along. Someday you’ll be glad Dad insisted. And to anybody I failed to help along in their development because I gave them too much of a crutch in putting the words up on the screen, I’m sorry. (Blame my buddy Mitch Moser. He bought the character generator like the TV stations used way before anyone had ever heard of Powerpoint.)

The Bible is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path and I will hide its words in my heart that I may not sin against God.

A guy goes up during the alter call at a revival meeting and asks for prayer for his hearing.

The preacher puts his hands on the man’s ears and begins to pray. When he’s done he says “Now, how’s your hearing?”

“I don’t know,” the man replies. “It’s not until next Tuesday.”