Dixon and Willoughby

Do you like your name? It used to be that a person’s name really meant something. Troy Brewer could be interpreted “city of trouble” since Troy is a famous ancient city and one definition of Brewer is a troublemaker. But you and I both know the real meaning of my last name and I don’t think it originally had to do with coffee. So, I guess you could also call me “Milwaukee”. That’s another city famous for Brewing.

Don’t panic, were sticking to a coffee theme. In fact I love coffee so much maybe one of my kids will call their first child Starbuck. That would be –no actually that wouldn’t be good at all. Star Buck Brewer.

Speaking of weird names for your kid, my el-primo iPhone has a news application and I was checking the wire last week. There was a picture of this knucklehead and his pregnant girlfriend posing in front of their love shack. The reason for the headline is because they had both agreed to sell the rights to their unborn boy's name to an Orlando radio station for a $100 gas card. Two disc jockeys plan to name the baby after themselves. When the baby is born this winter, he will be named Dixon and Willoughby Partin, with the "and" included. The mama, Samantha says at least her son will have an interesting story about how he got his name.

That’s what all of us want in life, isn’t it? An interesting story about how we got our name. Not a family. Not a role model, certainly not parents that make good decisions and do things for the benefit of their children. What it all comes down to is show and tell time on why you have a pathetically stupid name.

I know another interesting story he will have to tell. His mom and dad loved each other but not enough to be married and give this kid his daddy’s name. However, they thought it best to turn over this responsibility to a couple of guys on the radio because dad needed a tank of unleaded. Woop-T-swingin-doo is what I have to say about that.

Dixon and Willoughby plan to be at the hospital when the baby is born and will hand over the gas card when they see the official birth certificate. I bet dad is there long enough to get his card and 15 minutes of fame. Then he’ll burn up the highway to the nearest quick sack for another twenty dollars worth of lotto tickets.

Of course, Samantha’s daddy is sure proud of who his daughter hooked up with and her fantastic decision making paradigm. God bless her and Dixon and Willoughby. I’m not referring to the radio hosts but to the kid...oh it’s all a big mess. I wonder if he will refer to himself as ‘we’ instead of I.

First day of school: Dixon and Willoughby are you are here?

Some beautiful little first grader: “Yes, we are present ma’am.”

How stupid is that? People wonder why some guy is in a tower sniping innocent people with a hunting rifle and sometimes it’s because his parents were idiots. My friend Steve Jones says his wife teaches a child with the first name of Placenta. When they asked the mama why she would give her child such a name, she said, “Placenta is a hospital term”.

So is fecal matter but I wouldn’t give that name to a parrot. If you don’t understand the word, don’t tag your kid with the name. When I consider these same people are going to vote, it makes me want to go on a 40 day fast for our country.

Enough of my rant. Let me finish and say names are important. Identity is a really big deal. Nobody knows you and I better than our maker and nobody has a greater right to tell us who we are. Every time a human being has a personal encounter with this God, we come away with not only a new perspective of who He is, but who we are as well. He calls us royalty, he calls us family and he always calls us blessed. He also gives us the grace to live up to the good name He calls us.

And being found in appearance as a man, he (Jesus) humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. Philippians 2:8-9

Contact the Brewer @ www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Middle Aged Crazy!

There are several wrong things I used to think about people my age. I remember thinking when I hit 41, I would be old. I also thought in the year 2000 I would fly a hovercraft and shoot a ray gun. None of it was true. I had other silly thoughts like everybody felt grown up at 18 or maybe 21. I am for the first time in my life, just now, feeling like I am not a kid anymore. So it stood to silly reason I would feel old in my forties but it’s just not the case. There’s less smileage on the mileage and I’m aware of wear and tear, but I certainly don’t think I am old.

I have never been afraid of getting old. My thirties were much better than my twenties and I fully expect my forties to be much better than my thirties. There are big advantages to being my age, one of the greatest being; all four of my kids have jobs! Life for the Brewer is generally sweet.

One of the good things about being middle-aged is I find pleasure in much simpler things. For example, if I wear a belt, my belly button is a lot closer to where it’s supposed to be and that makes me happy.

The New Thirty

In the early eighties Jerry Lee Lewis came out with a song called Middle Aged Crazy. The lyrics described a man that fought off old age by trading everything in for a newer model. I vaguely remember a movie with the same title. I think it had Bruce Dern in it.

It seems to me, the anxieties many of us face at this age, especially for men, come from not having achieved certain dreams. The disappointment of being a lot poorer than you thought you would be and the realization of where you really are in life can cause any feller to shout a Homer Simpson “D’oh!’

Woulda-coulda-shoulda is a mantra chanted by people throughout the centuries and it doesn’t get you anything except a fresh bottle of Zanex. As Christians, God has a way of connecting us much more with our destiny than our history. That should be our priority. The need to achieve should motivate us and not be degraded to faster cars and younger women.

Better Hope Breakdown

I think it’s the will of God to turn general frustration into what I call Holy Ghost anticipation. With some help from the grace of God it can actually be healthy to be discontent with our current circumstances. The hope for better things is a really big deal.

But a thinking culture of self-pity will spin you off into dark places like a goldfish down the toilet. A date on the calendar should never justify those mindsets. A mental file full of times past should not justify our doubt and unbelief.

If our attention is more focused on what God has done and what God is still doing, instead of what we think God should of done or what God didn’t do, we will be people grateful, thankful and full of better hope. Middle aged “happy” you might say.

“As a man thinketh, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7

Contact The Brewer @www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Parts Unknown

1983 was not just a Jemi Hendrix song; it was also a year of our Lord that began on a Saturday. President Reagan called it the ‘Year of the Bible.’ It was the year Carrie Underwood the singer, was born and the year that Bear Bryant the football coach died.

It’s the year we said hello to the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and the year we said goodbye to the De Lorean motor company.

At the same time McDonalds was bringing us the Chicken McNugget we waved goodbye to NASA’s Pioneer Ten as it left our solar system for parts unknown

Parts is Parts

Now the Brewer worked at McDonalds in 1983. I cooked and cleaned underneath a giant Afro that was crammed under a McDonalds hat. I was sixteen years old spending my long days at Joshua High and my long nights working for the vision of Ray Kroc. It was a good place for me to work and my first real job outside of working on farms.

Every time we would fry up a new batch of chicken nuggets we would throw them out of the deep fryer while proudly proclaiming, “parts is parts.” I don’t know if you remember it or not, but Wendy’s came out with a commercial that year causing people to question the ingredients of our beloved pieces of bird.

It went something like this:

Announcer: Those nibits some hamburger places serve are actually processed chicken

Customer in line: Excuse me sir what is that meal I saw there?

McDonald employee: Chicken.

Customer: What’s Processed chicken?

McDonald's employee: Yeah that’s like when they take a lot of chicken and assemble their respected parts.

Customer: What parts?

McDonald's employee: “Different parts. Parts is parts”

Unknown Parts

Its not just fast food that has parts unknown. There are lots of things you can look at and not tell what it’s made of. A woman’s heart for example; now theirs there’s an unsearchable place! Geographically speaking I have been to places in Africa and in India that have yet to appear on a map. One time me and some friends of mine rented a river boat in Costa Rica and went to a village way out in the middle of nowhere for a food outreach. I don’t necessarily recoil at parts unknown; it’s just how God made me.

Parts is not parts when it comes to the map of our daily lives. We love the roads we have often traveled. We find security in things most familiar. It’s those unknown parts that we reject and try to steer away from because we don’t know how we will handle those places. We are not sure if we can hold ourselves together in parts unknown.

I find myself in places all the time where I’m not sure how to map it out. Spiritual places, emotional places, relational places. Places I don’t really want to be at in this stage of my life and places I’ve never been before. Parts unknown.

There is a verse from the Bible I hang on to reserved for unknown areas. It’s a promise from the Lord himself that offers me security when treading through those vulnerable places past the familiar and common.

“…and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Matthew 28:20

Jesus said this Himself and it’s the promise of His very presence. The newer translations say the ‘end of the age.’ So the promise is that if you are at the end of a season in your life or the end of an era or the end of your mapped out territory even at the end of your rope, what ever your problem is, it wont be that you are alone. Jesus is there and He’s hoping you will look for Him.

Contact The Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

TITANIC Thompson

A few weeks ago I wrote a story on the Titanic. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, I would like to shamelessly plug the Brewer’s website where you can go to our Blog and check the archives. It’s FreshFromTheBrewer.com. Today’s cup from this highly caffeinated Christian is about an all-together different Titanic. This Titanic wasn’t a boat but a person.

Odds are you never have heard of Titanic Thompson, who sailed through life as the greatest poker playing, golf gambling, horseshoe hustling, skeet shooting, womanizing, rake-hell, con man of all time. That doesn’t mean he didn’t leave his mark.

Titanic Thompson was America's most famous gambler, card cheat, and sharp dressed man for decades. His celebrity status was so great Houdini himself followed him trying to find his secrets to swindling people. Thompson was actually the model for Damon Runyon's character Sky Masterson in the Broadway play Guys and Dolls. Marlon Brando played his part in the movie.

It was only at Titanic’s insistence that the writer called his gambling lead man by another name. Titanic was already more famous than he wanted to be. So Runyon christened his romantic lead, "Sky Masterson," for the ‘master’ Titanic, whose ‘sky's the limit’ response was a sure thing whenever a bet was on the table.

His skills got him personally invited to a party by Al Capone and he had the guts to cheat Capone in a bet, which he did, and got away with it. He often played pool with Minnesota Fats. He was a professional golfer and actually good enough to shoot a 29 on the back nine at Fort Worth's Ridglea Country Club where he beat Byron Nelson by one stroke.

Always An Angle
He was the Arizona State trapshooting champion four consecutive years. He was a quick draw pistolear and somehow got away with at least five shootings and some say six in which all men were killed. It was said that he could throw a baseball from dead center field 400 feet to home plate without the aid of a bounce and he would challenge professional base ball player in throwing matches. One time, he challenged the horseshoe throwing world champion to a high stakes game and beat him out of $2000.

Titanic, who was naturally left-handed, played Golf just as well right-handed, and he would often hustle golfers by challenging them to a game where he would switch hands. But being good at golf was all about getting him into country clubs from coast to coast. Once inside, Titanic could always find rich men and take them for all they had in much more lucrative poker games. It paid a lot better than those tiny golf purses. This was way before Tiger Woods.

In 1972, Titanic as an old man, agreed to do a rare interview with Sports Illustrated. They offered to pay him a much-needed $5000 for the story. In the two weeks Bud Shrake spent with him putting it together, Titanic made a huge impression. Shrake wrote, "Ti's mind was so sharp that I am convinced if he was born in Princeton, N.J. instead of Nowhere, Ark. and went to an Ivy League college, he'd have spent his life giving advice to world leaders”.

As a ladies man, he could just as easily talk a woman into loving him as he could talk a man into a bet. There was something about him people thought they could tame. He counted on that underestimation and used it frequently. Titanic married 5 times and all of them teenagers. When he died at the age of 81, his last wife of 19 years was 37. This guy was something else.

One of his abandoned offspring, Tommy Thomas, caught up with him in San Antonio at the age of nineteen. 1964 was a good year for Tommy and he rolled up into the driveway in a shiny jaguar. Always hoping to someday impress his dad, he himself was quite an accomplished card shark.

Over the next several years they paired up and racked in millions from unsuspecting wannabes. I know all this not just because of the books I’ve read on Titanic Thompson but because Tommy Thomas, Titanic’s son, [SA1] is a friend of mine.

Today, Tommy is a Preacher and has a TV show called How to Beat the Odds. I’ve been on his show a couple times and know for a fact it airs all over the world. One time, my wife and I were visiting our orphanage in Uganda and Tommy’s show was airing and it just happened to be the show that I was on. It was a hoot to bring in the staff at the little hotel and all of us watched it together.

The one thing Tommy will tell you that he really wanted out of his dad was to hear the words, “I love you” In all those years, Titanic’s pride wouldn’t allow him to bless his boy with the affirmation he desperately needed. Finally, and literally the day before he died of a stroke, Ti Thompson put his arms around Tommy and said the magic words he had wanted to hear.

Unsinkable
What it always comes down to is whom you love and who loves you. For those of us that cling to Christianity, we know this to be true. Whatever exploits you’ve lived, good or bad, mean nothing the last few days in the old folks home. The only real legacy any of us have is a testimony of whom we have loved and who loved us.

Let it be said of the Brewer, that I loved God and God really loved this ol’ knucklehead. If that’s true (and I know it is) the love of God will outlast all of my history, no matter how titanic my sin may have been.

"And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Matthew 3:17

Contact The Brewer @ www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

TITANIC Dramatic

Futurama
Since I’m a Christian, I believe in the prophetic, which means I think God lets us know some things before they actually happen. Now just the mere mention of the word Prophet conjures images of mystic sages, supernatural thunder and Charlton Heston with a long grey beard.

That’s not really what I’m talking about. I think some of the most powerful ways the supernatural side of God is seen is so natural and casual that we tend to miss it altogether. I think God is naturally supernatural.

For instance did you know that there was a prophetic word that went out through a novel in the late 1800’s? I don’t know if the guy who wrote it knew it was but if you’ve got an eye to see, its all right there in bold print.

Morgan Robertson had penned a novel called “Futility” about the largest and grandest ocean liner of its time. It was considered to be unsinkable because she had multiple watertight compartments that could be sealed in case of an emergency. In his fictitious story the grandest ocean liner in the world sank after striking an iceberg and most passengers lost their lives because the liner did not carry enough lifeboats. The name of the ship was called “The Titan”

Fourteen years later on April 14^th, 1912 an ocean liner called the TITANIC struck an iceberg and sank to more than 13,000 feet. The huge majority of the passengers on this ship died in the icy waters without a lifeboat to accommodate them. This wasn’t a fictitious story but a real life sinking that took a lot of people down with it.

The publishing house of the book wanted to cash in on the amazing coincidence and republished the title as The Wreck of the Titan. Thousands bought that book thinking it was a true account of what had just happened but a closer examination would show it was actually a novel and was first published in 1898.

As my late grandfather would say, “How about them apples?”

Retro Reel
If you have heard that, you might not have heard this. A much lesser known but still incredible coincidence is that at the very moment the Titanic struck an iceberg, the film The Poseidon Adventure was being shown aboard the ship.

Now it’s a little hard to wrap your head around what a big deal this is but let me fill you in on how people thought about movies back then.

In 1912 movies were still brand new. You couldn’t download “Jumper” to your iphone like my bass man did last week. Movies were usually seen through crank devices called Kinescopes. Cutting edge technology was just allowing images to be projected onto a silver screen and the White Star ocean liner would debut this technology onto the Titanic.

Sparing no expense for luxury Titanic carried its own projector and rented several movies from a U.S. movie distributor. Now a problem they didn’t anticipate was that movies were mostly seen in Nicolodeans and was considered something akin to a bowling alley by the high class of the day.

To avoid offending the First Class passengers, movies were screened only in the Second Class dining saloon and not until after 11:00 P.M. By then, the orchestra would be finished with its evening concert for the First Class passengers and was free to provide music for the otherwise silent movie.

This movie, The Poseidon Adventure was an amazing 53 minutes long in a time when most movies were ten minutes. It was about a group of six passengers and crew members who struggle to stay alive after the ocean liner they were on was capsized by a tidal wave.

It’s the same movie that would be remade in 1972 and in 2005

This movie was actually being shown at 11:40 when Titanic hit the iceberg and the people in the theater were so into the movie they didn’t feel anything. After the viewing it was such a big hit that The Poseidon Adventure was immediately shown for a second time just after midnight.

By the time the second screening was finished after 1:00 A.M. a few hundred Second Class passengers filtered back out on deck and finally learned the Titanic was going down. Most of the lifeboats had already been sent off and nearly 170 2^nd class passengers were left behind to freeze to death in the cold Atlantic.

Here and Now

Do you get it? There were people so caught up in the drama of something that wasn’t real they actually failed to take action for what really was real. I have never been on the Titanic but I have been in that same boat.

May God help us to not get caught up in what’s not real so that we have enough strength to fight battles that are. If my ship is going down I want to know it. But it’s hard to be aware of what really does matter when you are so caught up into what doesn’t matter at all.

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light." Ephesians 5:8

Contact the Brewer @ www.freshfromthebrewer.com

The BIG Easy

This week is Father's Days and it's gotten me thinking about how grateful I am for my dad, my step dad and my grandfather.
In searching for some good fathers day stories for my Sunday sermon, I thought I would go to Snoops.com and make sure these stories were real. While looking around, I came across a few I had never heard of, and this one is one of my favorites.

Way up North and a long time ago, there was a no good opportunist the neighborhood called "Easy Eddie." He had run numbers in the rackets and eventually put himself through school to be an accountant. While there, he took an interest in counseling and found out he had a knack for twisting the law in the favor of his clients.

In the mid twenties, Easy Eddie starting cooking the books for a few shady people and before long he was hired by none other than Al Capone. Al Capone virtually owned the city of Chicago and his favor on Eddie's life opened up doors he had only dreamed of. Capone's money from fear, fraud, prostitution and bootlegged booze was poured over Eddie like the whiskey he peddled.

His skills with the law and legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time. He also went into several business ventures with Capone and through fraudulent enterprises cheated his way into living the life of the rich and the privileged.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well and had Eddie's whole family occupy a fenced-in mansion complete with live-in help that took up an entire city block of down town Chicago. While Eddie lived the high life - others were being murdered and lives were being ruined. It was something else.

In the midst of all that, Eddie was raising a family and his son was a jewel. Butch O'Hare was a little boy tough as nails, yet innocent. Eddie really loved that kid and wanted him to have the best of everything. He often wondered what kind of legacy he would pass down to his son.

Touchable
When Butch got old enough to ask questions about the source of his daddy's money so did the Federal Government. A man by the name of Elliot Ness was bound and determined to throw Capone under the jailhouse and he decided to use the teeth of the IRS to do it.

When approached and cornered by the Untouchables he was point blank asked if he had ever considered passing down a good name to Butch. After consideration, easy Eddie did something not easy at all. That month he told Butch and his wife that he was going to testify in court against none other than Scarface himself and that their lives would never be the same.

Eddie and his children got closer than ever before and Elliot Ness told young Butch that his daddy was "a good guy." He even came to see him graduate from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in the summer of 1937.

Butch had grown up to see his daddy make a stand and it had a profound effect on him. Several years later on November 8th, 1939 he also saw his Daddy pay a terrible price for it. Edward O`Hare was caught by Capone's henchmen and murdered a week before Capone was released from Alcatraz.

Alls Fair

The day after Pearl Harbor-December 7, 1941, the then-28- year-old Lt. O'Hare was pulled from the arms of his young bride and sent west to the shooting war in the Pacific.

About ten weeks after the "day of infamy," Lt. O'Hare was flying his single-engine Grumman F4F fighter in the area of the Gilbert Islands. At that crucial moment, only O'Hare and his wing mate were aloft. The rest of the Lexington's fighters were aboard the carrier refueling and reloading, when nine enemy bombers attacked the Lexington.

One at a time, Butch O'Hare flew at the heavily armed Japanese aircraft, and one at a time, he began killing them off. The airborne shootout that followed took place within sight of hundreds of Lexington crewmembers. O'Hare was being fired on with machine guns and cannons from all angles, but he "just kept moving," one report said.

For his inspiring exploits on that fatal day in February 1942, Lt. Edward H. (Butch) O'Hare was designated the U.S. Navy's first "Ace" of World War II. He was immediately promoted two grades to Lieutenant Commander.

President Roosevelt called Lt. O'Hare's outstanding performance, "One of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation." Years later, when Chicago's airport was renamed for Butch O'Hare, President Roosevelt's tribute was engraved on a plaque and included in an exhibit that stood for years in the International Terminal.

Butch O'Hare survived that battle but he didn't outlive the war. Somewhere he is buried at sea but his memorial is in Chicago O’Hare, known as the busiest airport in the world. So the next time you have to go through O'Hare think about the influence a daddy has when he leads by example and does the right thing. Even when it is not so easy.

"Honor your father and mother" which is the first commandment with a promise-
Ephesians 6:2

You can reach the Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Ugly Miracles

I think a lot of times people don’t recognize God because they think God only moves in beautiful ways. His hand can only be seen through pristine circumstances in sterile environments for most of us. We have learned this from going to churches that demonstrate God more as a surgeon that only works in complete silence and in a disinfected sanctuary. Sometimes we think God only moves in a church. Of course, that’s craziness.

I am here to tell you that some of the greatest miracles God is doing among us are just plain ugly. These confessions are of a highly caffeinated Christian that has never had the grace to be on the beautiful side of things. Born with a face made for radio and enough hair on my head to hide a small car, I have never won a trophy for GQ. The point is that God isn’t just in the beautiful things, sometimes God moves in a beautiful way in very ugly things.

Flip That House

When my wife and I were young she demanded we reproduce like jackrabbits. She wanted a house full of babies. I had seen babies and didn’t think it was such a good idea but Leanna had a vision for our home. So on vacation to Corpus Christi, we sat in the Water Street Oyster Bar discussing our options over lunch. I had fought a good fight for two years but her constant assault was wearing me down. So I pulled out a quarter and made her a deal. “If this is heads, you go off the pill today. If its tails we don’t have this conversation for a year.” Not stupid enough to agree but smart enough to win the bet she just said. “ Flip it.”

Nine months later I was in a torture session called “Lamaze Class.” Lamaze is an ancient French word that means, “You will never touch me again”. I listened while this teacher explained to us how beautiful the birthing experience was going to be. She also said that we could “coach” our wives and help her by developing a focal point. I knew she was crazy but to be honest I only heard bits and peaces. I was so distracted by the other husbands in the room. I thought, poor fools, how did you get suckered into all this? Then I would realize I was one of them. I was also distracted by the 50 or so outy belly buttons of all those pregnant women at once. It was Brewer hell.

What ever happened to the good old days when they would knock a woman out and she would wake up with a kid in her arms? The sixties and seventies are long gone. One encouraging thing I have noticed is that a lot of doctors will find any emergency reason to do a c-section and it tends to happen around 5:00 pm. This of course depends on if the patient has insurance and if it is chicken fried steak night at the doctor’s house.

One cold afternoon a few weeks later Leanna was having her c-section at 5:05 PM. They opened her up and out came the head of my oldest son. “My Goodness, he’s a twenty pounder!” I said. At birth, Benjamin had the hat size of a grown man. While they worked to clear his nostrils, I said “Hello Benjamin, welcome to Texas!” That baby boy opened his eyes and looked right at me. I had been singing and playing my guitar to his mama’s belly through the whole pregnancy and he was actually glad to see me.

With one good pull and some disturbing noises like pulling your boots out of the mud, Ben came all the way out. And to my shock, under that giant head dangled a little bity body. My first thought was that Leanna had committed adultery with the Jack in the Box man.

Over the next few moments everything went into a blur. No, I didn’t want to cut the cord. Please, I need some towels and some Armor-all for this little alien. I was seeing a side of Leanna I had never seen, the inside. Doctor, close her up. Nurse, I need an aspirin. Is all this normal? Can I lie down next to my wife?

And then as quickly as everything went blurry, everything became completely focused on the three of us. There we were, Leanna and I quietly talking to this little wonder and all three of us as close together as we could possibly be. The world went away. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

See, not only is the beauty of God in the obviously beautiful. Sometimes God shows up in even ugly things and in that, He is just as beautiful.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

Psalms 50:2

Visit the Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com