Timothy's Thoughts

O ctober, that wonderful time of the year when people feel the need to post about how they’ve studied their Bible and come to the conclusion that they shouldn’t celebrate Halloween. I must not be studying my Bible enough or something, because I love Halloween. While there are thing about Halloween that I don’t think Christians should be involved in, the same can be said of Christmas. In fact, I believe I can make the case for Christmas being the most wicked of all holidays . There are plenty of things to love about Halloween. For one, it happens in fall. Not in winter when the cold air keeps you inside. Not in spring, when everything is covered in mud. Not in summer, when the sun burns you to a crisp. Halloween is at a magical time of the year. Halloween is the only holiday in which everyone goes and visits their neighbors. Think about that. There are preachers who stand in the pulpit every Sunday and say, “You should visit your neighbors.” Well, on Halloween, they do. Halloween remind...

H ave you ever noticed how many bicycles appear in car commercials? Here is an example: Of course, car commercials are fiction, often showing us cars doing things that we shouldn’t try doing with a car and would void our warranty if we did. But the goal of many car commercials is to sell this idea that, if you buy this particular car, life will be fun. You won’t have to mess with traffic. You’ll have three friends riding with you. You’ll be able to go places and do things that you couldn’t do without it. The image that sells that idea the most is…a bicycle. The fact is, the car they show you in the commercials doesn’t exist. I don’t mean because it is loaded with all the options, but because you won’t find a car to give you the feeling of excitement that they promise in the ads. Not in the city anyway. Sure, you can load up your car with a bunch of friends and drive through downtown, but instead of looking at the city lit up at night, you’re busy watching for pedestrians, or for the t...

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith. - Galatians 6:9-10 G alatians 6:9-10 is an interesting passage. It is translated as “let us not be weary in well doing,” but I don’t think that’s the way many people read it. Instead, they read it as, “let us not be weary of well doing.” Two little letters can make a world of difference. To be weary of well doing would mean we just don’t want to serve the Lord any more. We would rather go do other things, like go fishing, or attend a ball games, or whatever. But to be weary in well doing means that the well doing is what is wearing us out. During the past couple of weeks, I’ve experienced that. Our church website has been down and the hosting company couldn’t figure out how to fix the problem. They closed the trouble ticket without fixing the problem, so I decided the best thi...

P artly because I’ve grown bored with riding circles in my neighborhood and partly because I don’t like loading my bicycle into my truck so I can go for a ride, I’ve started looking for places I can go by hopping on bicycle and just going. It got me to thinking, what are some of the things in Fort Worth that it is better to do by bicycle than by car? Of course, there are plenty of things you can do on a bicycle, but many of those things could be more easily done by car. Who, for example, really wants to carry their groceries home with plastic bags hanging from the handlebars? What I’m interested in are those things that might give people reasons to oil the chain on a rusty old bike and air up the cracked rubber tires, because it’s that much better to do it by bike. Explore the Trinity River The Trinity River, with its branches and tributaries runs through the heart of Fort Worth. You can’t go from one side of the city to the other without crossing it at least once. You can see it by ca...

I heard on the news this morning that Toyota has the goal of getting out of the gas powered automobile business in favor of electric vehicles. This is hardly earth shattering, since the date they have set is 2050. But they have a desire to reduce emissions of their vehicles. That is an admirable goal, but when it comes to reducing emissions, bicycles are the gold standard. To put it in terms of miles per gallon of gas, a bicycle has a mileage rate of about 1150 MPG. And if we were to put it in terms of money, people who get rid of their cars and travel primarily by bicycle save about $10,000 per year. So, why don’t more people ride bicycles? Time As a person who loves to ride a bicycle, but has only ridden to work one time on a bicycle, I can say that one reason is the time required. It takes about thirty minutes for me to drive the fifteen miles to work. It would require about three times as much time for me to travel by bicycle. To reach work at my normal time, I would have to leave...