Pepperdine Report

I mentioned yesterday in the sermon some of our travel travails on our trip—lost luggage coming and going, 2 canceled flights, Lynn booked on the wrong plane, and arriving 5 hours or so late on both trips. Of course, they ended up putting Lynn in first class both trips. She was with singer Ciara and her entourage on the flight from LA to Atlanta while I was back in steerage on the very back row (the one where the seat doesn’t recline) on another plane. For some reason, she was a lot happier with the mix-up than I was!

What I didn’t mention yesterday was that the lectures were fantastic. Jerry Rushford did his usual spectacular job (his 25^th year running the lectures). Some of the highlights (in no particular order)—the Wednesday keynote sermons (11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.) by John York and Harold Shank (best same day keynotes in awhile), hearing Rubel Shelly teaching on divorce-and-remarriage (hearing Rubel speak on anything is always a treat for me, even when on a simple little subject like this one), the evening songfest lead by Ken Young and Hallal (we got there 45 minutes early each night to get the very front row seats), David Fleer’s imaginative (and that is UNDERSELLING it) sermon on Jeremiah 31 (wow!), Don McLaughlin’s class on “The Restoration of Passion,” and Randy Harris speaking on whatever it was that Randy Harris spoke on.

Lynn and I spent the 3 days before the lectures started in Pismo Beach (actually, we were down the coast at Avila Beach this year). Just being together with absolutely nothing to do was the most important and needful part of the trip. The transition of complete-leisure at the beach to a regimented begin at 6:30 a.m. (breakfast) and end at 10:00 p.m. (late-night) schedule is jarring. Both are great! The countdown timer on my Google homepage now says 355 days until Pepperdine!