Old Friends / New Names

A good friend, Jim Wilhite, passed away last week. As is the case with visitations and funerals, you usually see folks that you have not seen for quite some time. While that is a topic for an extensive blog post, that is not the direction I'm headed with this post.

I was able to see a young man that was in our church here in Clear Lake as a pre-teen. Now he is a grown man and I feel old! As we visited I called him "Jimmy"; the name that I had always known him by. Realizing that no one probably ever called him that now, I apologized and ask him how he would like to be addressed, Jim or James or what.

He looked at me and with absolutely no inflection in his voice he said ...

"You may call me Officer McDermott!" 

My friend is a police officer and I will be kind in my reference to him! Good to see the McDermotts again, just sorry it had to be under these circumstances.

I Remain,
Pastor Steve