D.S. al Coda: Go to the Sign of the Cross, Then proceed to the End

I was striking up a spiritual conversation with a man in the mall Monday with thte Singing Churchmen in Cleveland,and I began asking him of his musical interests.   He was a Believer and the B3 player at his church.    I asked him if he just picked it up on his own or did he ever take lessons and he said he took lessons when he was young but didn't like it and didn't like his teacher.   My wife is a piano teacher and has about 40 students, and I told him how I have observed through the years that virtually all of Julie's piano students want to play the piano.    But not all of them want to LEARN to play the piano.   They think that just because they take piano lessons from Julie and carry the label of being a piano student that somehow they will just become pianists.   Not all the students count the cost of what it takes to become a piano player.   There is something they must do everyday - it is called practice!   I think the same thing may be said of Christians who d

  “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.”  1 Peter 3:1  This past weekend I reconnected with my childhood once again when the SC Baptist Singing Churchmen sang at Crestview Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio.  My childhood from ages 3 to 14 covered 1960-1971 with friends who hold a very special place in my heart to this day.  But the experience is the closest thing to time travel I can imagine.  My formative years were bottled up for storage when my family moved away from Dayton to West Columbia, SC when as I was 14 years old.   So, all of those memories and feelings connected with Dayton were just frozen in time for me and very capsulated in my brain.  The people that were very much a part of my life were suddenly gone and new people, places and experiences took their place.  I have only returned to Dayton for brief, yet intense visits three times since 1971: In 1985 when I took my youth choir from Virginia to sing, in 2006 for the church’s 50 th Anniversary Sunday, and now in