Consider One Another
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Consider One Another
Mike McCown: Seeing Clearly
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In this episode we sit down with one of our elders, Mike McCown, and explore the powerful imagery of Matthew 7. Through the lens of both faith and his profession, we talk about what it really means to see clearly. This conversation explores Scripture, a career as an optometrist, 40 years of marriage, and how we can support the vision and direction of our elders.
Consider one another is a podcast focused on each other. Thank you for tuning in to this podcast that is all about stirring up love and good works in one another. Welcome back to the Consider One Another podcast. Happy tax day. It is April 15th, and me and Mike are here to talk to you. Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. One of the first things I noticed about Mike was that he's really funny. He says funny things. Except when I try to be. He tries to be, and his humor landed with me right away. So we'll try to keep the jokes to a minimum today. So, Mike, let's start with scripture. I'm in Matthew 7. I'm gonna read Matthew 7, verses 1 through 5. We'll just read the scripture and then discuss any thoughts that jump out. Sound good? Sounds good. Matthew 7, judge not that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye? But do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye? And look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite. First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
SPEAKER_00Well, I see things in people's eyes all the time. They come in and say, I got I was grinding something, and then I got this thing in my eye, and they can't get it out, or I was wood using a weed whacker or whatever, and I didn't wear any glasses, and here I am. So I often am looking for a moat in somebody's eye, and so I think about this scripture as I'm looking through the microscope at their eye, going, Yeah, I wonder if they're they're seeing in my eye at this time, right? In this spiritual sense, I'm hoping that they're not seeing a big plank coming out. But uh but it is a regular occurrence that I have to look for those little tiny specks, and it's amazing to me how those little tiny specks can be so irritating and you know, people are coming in because this thing is bugging me, but in comparison to what this is talking about, those other people should be just no way they could miss this big log in their eye. But as humans, it seems that's what we do sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I don't think the spec is used as a point that it doesn't matter at all. Specs matter, right? To lots of people. The eye doctor will tell you, specs matter, that'll cause a lot of trouble. How much more then? Because I assume you've never seen an actual beam of wood.
SPEAKER_00Thankfully not. A tree branch, but uh you know, that poke the eye. Yeah, he didn't come in with it, but uh Right.
SPEAKER_01And that's what's so cool about Jesus' imagery. Jesus talks about the eye. The Bible talks about the eye a lot because of the imagery that Jesus wants us to get. And this is one that's very memorable. It's a funny thing to think about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00A plank and a beam of wood. Well, the other thing is right after that, verse 6, do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine. It's telling people think, well, it tells us not to judge, but the next verse Jesus tells us, don't give what's holy to the dogs. Don't you have to judge who the dogs are or who the swine is? Don't you have to make a decision of when I need to give those pearls or not? So it's obviously that people over-apply this one to this judging, don't judge me. And the Bible says don't judge. Right. And they're missing the entire part there of being able to look at your own life and see how am I applying God's word to my own life before I start going out and getting that speck out of other people's eyes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you said overapply, I might say misapply. Yeah. I think people misapply this. It's one of two verses people know from the Bible, John 3.16, and the one that says, you can't judge me. And this is not what it's saying. The next verse, the hogs and dogs passage, is saying, use discernment. You have to use discernment. However, like if you're really harsh with someone, just a rule of life, they're gonna be really harsh with you. I think God will be that way too. So let's forgive others as they forgive us. The same way I would want someone to discern in me if I'm headed toward a bad pathway, the same way a doctor would want to tell you if something is going wrong, that's a kind thing to do. Not judgmental, it's kind. Discernment is important. Let me launch into what we're talking about uh even more specifically in your work. Uh, how has working with people's physical sight shaped the way that you think about spiritual sight?
SPEAKER_00Well, I see so many people who don't know that they see bad, but but when they're then I sit them down and I show them that and they're going, well, I can't make it bigger, you know. I think that's a that's a spiritual thing. There's a lot of people walking around who don't know how bad their spiritual vision of life is, right? They just don't see it. And and yet they can see if they look in God's word, they can see how clear it can be. So I I see these things over and over again of people. Now, some people do know they they know walking in, I'm blind, I can't see much at all. And those people are like the folks that are looking for God, right? They know they're in a spiritual situation, that they're just it's tough for them, and they're looking for the answer. But but so many aren't. They're just kind of going through life in this with blinders on or with this blur in their view. So it's an interesting correlation that I see.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and we were talking before this, trying to remember all the different passages where this comes up. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man, and after the physical healing turns into a spiritual lesson, the Pharisees ask in verse 40 of John 9, are we blind also? It's meant to be a symbol of people who are seeking and want to see, or people who don't even know. And maybe this has happened in your practice, but I think about it with colors. Like, have there been people who are colorblind who don't know it?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, many of them actually that have come through. And and so they don't they most people who are colorblind actually see most colors, but certain shades of colors like red versus gray or green versus gray, they can't tell that there's that it's not green. Uh it's they think it looks the same as the gray things. And so they don't know that what they're missing there, because they've never seen it, and so they just kind of go past it in life, and uh until their socks don't match and everybody keeps telling them they picked the wrong colors in the crayon box, you know, that kind of stuff. But how would you know? Unless somebody points it out to you, unless you can see that that somebody else is saying no, these are different, you there's really no way for them. That's their normal in that case, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And a good jump to the application of why we need each other, why we need authority. If you're just living by yourself and never talking to anyone, let alone a doctor, you're not gonna know.
SPEAKER_00Or never consulting the Bible in those spiritual things. I mean, that's the one that's gonna let you know whether your standard of what this the right color of life is, that's where you've got to go to find it.
SPEAKER_01Standard, right. It's green, it's what I've always called green. Right. And then the doctor says, that's not actually green. If I just adopt a certain set of beliefs about the Bible and stick with them forever, then it's true to me and that must be true. No, we need to consult someone else. We could keep going on that, but switch just a little bit with me as we talk about your work and the people you've impacted. We we mentioned before how when a doctor points out something that's wrong, that's it's not judgment or being mean, it's actually being very kind. That's why we have doctors so they can see things that are meant to help us even more, things we couldn't see ourselves. So, has there been a time in your work when helping someone's vision was especially meaningful or impactful?
SPEAKER_00One of the times I remember we had a 14-year-old boy come in, and as we were doing our scans and pictures of the back of his eye, we noticed that his optic nerve in the back of his eye was swollen compared to his prior time in. And his mom happened to be a nurse at the hospital. She says, What are we gonna do with that? And I said, Well, we're gonna refer him over to neurology, and they'll probably do an MRI, and then we'll see. Turned out he had a brain tumor that was pushing back on his nerves in the back of the eye. And I saw the report that said, It still appears to be operable, and I went, Still? So it could have not been. So he got in and he got the surgery, and a couple of months later he came in with his mom and I said, Hey, can we take your pictures again now that you had the surgery? Two inches of stitches on top of his head, where they'd gone in to get the tumor, and his back his nerves were back to normal. And I said, So what got better after this? So I could tell people if you have this problem, you better get your eyes looked at, and we better he says, I I've never had any symptoms. The only reason I went in is because you showed me that my pictures look different. So if I hadn't come in, I would have never known until it was too late.
SPEAKER_01And what did he come in for?
SPEAKER_00Just for her regular checkup for his eyes to see if his glasses were the right power and his mom had set him up. So it was surprising to me if he hadn't come in and that still operable part might not have been there, how different his life would have been. But thankfully, he came in and and we were able to see the differences and they were able to do the treatment to get him fixed up.
SPEAKER_01Well, the applications just jump out, not to minimize the work itself, but the preacher's gonna preach. Like a lot of times we wait for something really serious to happen. And like if I've got a brain tumor, like something's gonna hurt. You would think I'll check it out then. But routine maintenance is probably the wrong word. Routine checkups is the only thing that what what could have happened? Just this brain tumor grows and grows.
SPEAKER_00If it grew too much, they wouldn't have been able to do the surgery because it would have impacted the other areas of his brain, and he probably wouldn't have survived the surgery. So it was small enough that they could go in and remove it without causing more damage. And he he worked fine. Uh, I mean his he didn't have any deficits at all afterwards. So thankfully.
SPEAKER_01So the lesson, go go get your eyes checked. Yeah, that's one of them. Go see Dr. Mike. Do the preventative maintenance, yes. Yes, preventative maintenance is important with our bodies. How much more so with our spiritual lines? We wait till it's too long, we wait till the addiction has taken root, until our faith has completely withered. Now the report says not still operable. Exactly. Right now you're still operable. Go go get checked out. Well, I think it's really cool the connections that are here. We could keep going on this. Maybe it deserves a whole sermon or class of just the eye and how interesting it is, just the creation of it. Can't be an accident.
SPEAKER_00I talked to patients sometime, I said there's they look at this little dot on their lens of their eye, and I call it the belly button of the lens because there's a blood vessel that goes from the back of the eye to this lens when you're in the womb. And about eight months into being made in the womb, the blood vessel gets a signal that says, Stop sending blood down here, disconnect, and get out of the way so you don't get in the way of your view. So I ask them, so how did a baby know before it's born that it needs to send this signal to stop getting blood down this blood vessel and get it removed out of the way so they can see before it's even born? How does evolution make sense with that? And I say, so maybe there was a you know a designer who built this scaffolding to build the lens, and then at the end of the time that the scaffolding was needed, he made sure that it was taken out. That to me makes a lot more sense than it just accidentally happened.
SPEAKER_01And this is you just what just talking to your patients? Yep, we're just having a conversation. Right, so that's that's Dr. Mike. And it's it's impactful. It's impactful when this person who's I mean, dedicated their life to people and the eye. That's what you've done. And you're saying this is design. I I never knew that, so I'm glad we talked about it. What what makes it stop? Like, like if it hadn't stopped, what there'd just be too much blood going there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there there it's I've actually seen one person who was born prematurely, and that blood vessel never got out of the way, and it kind of gets in the way, she doesn't get to 2020 vision because the thing never fully undeveloped, it never got out of the way, and her vision got it didn't do as well. So if that stays there, you don't see well. And so it's got to be there till it's till the lens is formed and then get out of the way. And not ever, you know, not everybody does that.
SPEAKER_01And at a pretty exact timing.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, at the right time, because if it doesn't, if it does too soon, then the lens never develops, and you don't have good vision there. If you do it too late, then it gets in the way. So very exactly from from the womb.
SPEAKER_01Like this is having to be just so precise, not a mistake, not an accident.
SPEAKER_00Not a mistake or accident.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So again, that could be a whole class too, a whole sermon. So much about the eye. Uh so go again, go get your eyes checked. Not a commercial, but go get your eyes checked. I think it's really cool that you you work with your wife, right? She does a lot of the work.
SPEAKER_00What does she do for Debbie started, she was an X-ray tech for a long time, and then when we ended up with more than one office, she started doing the bookkeeping for offices so she could stay home and be with our four kids at this do a job from home. So she ended up with two full-time jobs taking care of the kids and uh bookkeeping and doing our bookkeeping.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And and you guys just celebrated 40 years. Forty years wedded bliss. Wedded bliss, all bliss. Just the other day, me and my wife celebrated three years. So we're right behind you. We're right behind you. We'll give you a chance to give your advice. But for now, just give us the story. Uh as much time or as little time as you want. Just tell us the story of Mike and Debbie, how you two met, when you got married, uh, where you've lived in these 40 years. That's what we want to know.
SPEAKER_00One of my friends' best friends uh said when we were 14, he said, Hey, there's a new girl on the Tigers team. You ought to go check her out. So we walked down to the ballpark and uh and saw Debbie and met her for the first time down the road. On the Tigers. On the Tigers. Yes. I remember that. And then she ended up staying at a friend's house not too far from where we lived, and uh we we ran into each other from there, and then we went to high school that fall, and she had moved into the area, and our first class was in earth science, and her last name was Long, and mine's McCowan, so they put us next to each other. The teacher did in earth science class. So spent the first uh six months. Yeah, and the rest is history. She just succumbed to my uh jokes about earth science, you know, volcano jokes, anything that you know right.
SPEAKER_01Layups for a young Mike McCowan. Uh is this in Alaska? Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's where we grew up in Alaska, and uh so then we kind of started hanging out more in high school. Most of the sophomore through senior year, we were hanging out together, and then we came down to college and she went to Bellevue College to do her x-ray stuff, and I went to the University of Washington to start, I was gonna start in engineering, and then made a transition into optometry while I was there. And uh we got married then, our second year when I was down here for school. Second year in college, second year in college, yeah. Cool. Got married then and moved down to Oregon to go to optometry school. And then once we graduated, my folks had moved down from Alaska and her folks had moved down also to California from Alaska, and so all the grandparents were down here, and so we just and we'd had our first son by that time, so we decided not to go back to Alaska and ended up moving to Washington to take a job there.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Maybe the goal was to get back to Alaska before the parents moved?
SPEAKER_00That was that was what we'd always thought. I'd always thought is that we were moving back to Alaska. It was part of the the uh I'm now more years, way more years out of Alaska than in, but I still kind of think of myself as Alaska, and I don't know why.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's home, yeah. That transition to me is really interesting. It's the same country, it's all America, but it's also really far away and really different. Was that kind of a little bit of a culture shock for you guys?
SPEAKER_00It was huge, yeah. I was in high school and I was in sociology or geography class or something, and they were we were seeing East and West Pakistan or two parts of one country that were separated by the country of India. And I said to my teacher, this is crazy. How can one country be split by another and be able to work? And she says, Mike, what state do you live in? And I went, Oh, uh yeah, that's right. I guess it can work. But yeah, there were a lot of differences. I I when I got down to school, I I didn't know how to walk in a crowd. I kept saying, excuse me, and I couldn't get to class on time because I didn't know how to go through a big crowd to get to somewhere. I had to learn how to just never happened in Alaska. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's really funny. I grew up in Southern California. I'm used to crowds and just making your way. Not in Alaska. There's just not crowds, not at school. Okay, so Alaska comes down to Washington, down to Oregon, and we say, okay, let's stay here. You choose to stay in Washington. When you say Washington, is that where you guys have been this whole time?
SPEAKER_00So we started in Squim, which is uh about 50 miles north of here, and uh really, really enjoyed that. We thought we were gonna be because it was so close to what we thought of Alaska like with the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, and small town, and uh one of the IDOCs in Silverdale passed away unexpectedly, and they really needed somebody. And I had been the doc that I had started with in Squim had been having some health issues, but he got to feeling better, and so he didn't need any help, and they did in Silverdale. So I talked to the doc that was offering the job, and I said, So hey, I'm you know, I could come down and help if you needed it, and he's like, I don't know what we're gonna do. What are you talking about? And he goes, Well, you called the day after the other doc passed away. I thought you'd heard. And I said, Well, I've at least been more uh thoughtful about it. Careful. Yeah, but uh so it's just kind of providence that that we were able to start when they needed help, and and that's been 30 something years now, 36 years, I think.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so that's what kind of pivoted from Squim into this area, the Kittsap County area. Okay, and then 40 years of marriage. This is a hard question, but what advice? What advice do you have for us younger couples?
SPEAKER_00It really has to be communication. It's one of those things that I am terrible at in many situations, but I know that when you can talk about things before they happen, so that as a couple you can, you know, avoid some of the problems that are gonna come up in life. Because there's so many good things in marriage that you just, you know, with kids and life in general, but then there are gonna be problems, and the more you can trust each other and and have that conversation, and and Debbie's gonna listen to this and be laughing because she knows I'm terrible at it, but that really is the most important part from my point of view.
SPEAKER_01Okay, you can still give the advice, uh however you've learned the advice, you can still give it.
SPEAKER_00Many years of experience of doing it wrong, too.
SPEAKER_01Let me tell you, this is important. But talk before it happens. That's really good. Just like we're talking about with our spiritual lives or with our eyeballs themselves, we like to wait until there's a problem. I don't know why. Why wait for the pain? Why wait for the problem? Why wait for the communication issue? Talk, go see before it happens. I want to pivot and talk about this. This is another important one. Uh, but you are one of our two elders here, which we are so grateful for the work that you do. We know it's a lot, and we probably only know the surface of the work that you do. But tell us just about how long you've been an elder here, and maybe we'll focus on the positive side. What has been some of the most rewarding parts about being a shepherd of this flock?
SPEAKER_00And just before 2020, so it's it was like November of 2019, I was asked if I would serve and was uh installed as one of the elders, and uh and then 2020 hit. That's crazy time. If I would have known, I don't know if I would have necessarily accepted because that was a very difficult time for all people in churches to be told you can't go to church and you can't sing, and you and we had a whole bunch of different opinions on how we could best get through this, and it was a very, very challenging thing for people to go through. And and I guess what I learned from that is uh that idea of if we apply first, you know, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That kind of application gets people through those times, and we had lots and lots of that where people were uh you know, hey, this isn't my first choice, but I'll choose to do that to to keep the peace and to and to allow us to stay together. And uh, I know there was a lot of congregations in the country that didn't have that, they didn't stay together because of the challenges that were there, a lot of splits. Yeah, and so thankfully we we made it through that. And I guess what the most rewarding is to see that there are so many people out in this world who are trying to put God first in their life, and being able to try to help with that in any way that I can has been what I guess one of the most rewarding things. If people put God first, that love love God and love your neighbor as yourself, if they're doing that, then our lives are better, and and I can see people doing that, and that's that's been rewarding.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great answer. And I I cringe when you say COVID, like it feels like a bad word. Yes, agreed. And maybe it feels maybe it feels like unfortunate timing looking back, like man, this would have been better at the end of my career as an elder. Uh however, it'll be cool looking back and saying, hey, we handled that. That was probably some of the hardest times as far as American churches of Christ go, where you had all these different opinions, and that was right out the gate for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and looking back, there's things that that I wish I could have done differently within the eldership and within the church, and how we handled it as a church itself. There was things that looking back, I I would have encouraged people to maybe have a different view in some areas and things. And and yet trying to keep unity was so difficult because just so many different views of how to handle that. So challenging, but we got through it.
SPEAKER_01We got through it, and and here we are. And I do think about your marriage advice that of course applies here. Talk about things before they happen. If we get used to just talking about the football game because we're peaceful and unified here, then when sorry, COVID 26 comes, now we don't know how to have hard conversations because we're talking about the football game. If you only talk to your wife about the weather, it's gonna be really hard when something hard happens. Talk about the hard things before they happen. Hey, what are we gonna do? Am I gonna be dedicated to Matthew 22 and the big two loving God, loving others? Or is there something like COVID that could make me love myself more than others?
SPEAKER_00And the marriage is called raising children. Yeah. That's the uh that's the one that is so challenging to try to. Do as a as a team when things happen that you have different views on how best to handle that. So talking about that as much as you can ahead of time, kind of making a plan of if these things kind of happen, what can we do? How are we going to get through that? Whose advice are we going to take? What are we going to seek connected with that handling?
SPEAKER_01Right. Because right now we're three years married, no kids, and kind of feel like, hey, we can we can handle anything. This is great. Yeah, yeah. We just gotta take care of ourselves and we're pretty good at that. Now it happens when there's more people now, and more opinions, and more now it gets harder.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00More little souls running around is a different responsibility level, too.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes, one that needs preparation. Talk about it before it happens. I think that's great advice. This is another loaded question. Many people genuinely want to help and support the elders in the direction that they're going, but they're not always quite sure how. What are some practical ways members can support the work and the direction of the eldership?
SPEAKER_00Well, we talked briefly about the love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That concept of always looking out, not just for yourself, but for your neighbor, is to me one of the things that just makes my job so much easier. Because when people are doing that, there's so many things that go right. They're giving the rides and they're supporting their people who are lonely and needed, and uh they're teaching the classes and they're serving God in so many different ways that I am just here serving alongside of them. And so participation is really the key. And there's there's a lot of times in our lives where we get so busy with other things that being part of God's family kind of can get set to the side. But if people consciously say, I am going to give of my time to my family, to the family of God, then I think that's that's the best way, I think, for Christians to support the elders, but also to support their fellow Christians. That's the key.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and of course, in turn, it ends up supporting yourself. Same way you don't want to isolate your healthcare to just yourself because you have access to the internet. You you need other people. Other people are gonna help you and say, hey, you've got a plank in your eye. Other people are gonna be needed, and other people are going to need you. We talked about it on Sunday briefly, but if your boss didn't have any work for you on Monday, you'd be surprised. You'd be like, Why don't I have a job here? Don't be surprised when the elders have work for us to do. They want to be serving alongside us, but they also want us to be participating. So get in there and participate. Find what you can do, show up as a big one, and in that you're loving God and loving others. We've referenced it a couple times. Let's just go ahead and read that. It's Matthew 22. My preacher growing up called these the big two. Matthew 22 is the big two. You give these sections of Scripture a memorable name, you remember it. So Matthew 22, the big two. Jesus is answering this question. He says in verse 37, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. If you want to be supportive to the eldership, you're saying, do that. Yeah, do that.
SPEAKER_00That's the that's also Christ's view. You know, it's it's not just the old law, it's part of the new law as well. It's what he's trying to show us. If we spend our life doing this, he'll be able to say, Well done, good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_01Right. And on that hang, the law and the prophets. This whole Bible we're reading here, that's what it hangs on. Love God, love others. Before we get to the favorites, I think we've got just a second to talk about this. Your house, we won't talk about it being up for sale right now, but your house is home to a lot of people for Thanksgiving. And this was my first Thanksgiving up here in Washington. And my parents came up and we did Thanksgiving kind of with our family, and people would ask me, Are you going to the couch for Thanksgiving? And I was like, Oh no. And before I could give my explanation, people were just shocked. Like, what? I thought you I thought you were a member of this church. What do you mean? So many people go over there for Thanksgiving's. Tell me about how it started and what it's been like for however many years.
SPEAKER_00When we bought the house, we didn't need as big of a house really as you know, and and so we decided that we were gonna use this house to glorify God. We're gonna use it to invite people over and to help people who needed a place to stay, and that kind of thing. And so one of the ways we tried to do that was by offering uh the place to have a Thanksgiving for those uh who either didn't have a place to go or or were not able to fix their own or and a lot of people. Yeah, sometimes 50 to 60 people out there. We've had some good pictures with a whole bunch of people. Had one of the members of the church who was a uh uh working for security in the Navy, and he he kept trying to not be in the picture because he didn't want his photo on the internet, you know.
SPEAKER_01So we do that click. Wow, okay. I I saw one of those pictures, I guess, from this last year, just a full frame 40-50 folks. Someone told me, I think this is true. We're not working with paper plates or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Debbie Debbie went all out and she got types of china and uh goblets and things like that to make it more festive and fun. And it's a lot of effort and work, and she's packing it up right now because we are looking at selling the house. So she just put the goblets into storage today.
SPEAKER_01Oh, great. She's thinking, what was I thinking getting 50 goblets? But that's giving of your best. We don't have to just do paper plates, we can give people something really nice. That's a big deal. Uh we won't talk about if that was the last one or not. Uh but I'm sure it's a stressful time right now with uh the packing and the moving and it's exciting. It's exciting. We'll we'll leave it at that. Uh, but thank you for using that home as a blessing.
SPEAKER_00Right, and if anybody wants to come over and carry some beds, uh just give me a call.
SPEAKER_01Yes. If you have been a beneficiary of a McCowan Thanksgiving, you have to carry some beds. No, no, it's uh you get a cool view when you get to help Mike. How long were you in that house?
SPEAKER_00Uh 25 years. So far, 26 now, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But it served its purpose. You did the Thanksgivings, you did the four boys. Maybe it's time for a different place to live. Uh we'll we'll move on from there though. Let's close out with everyone's favorite section. It's the favorites section. Uh tell me, we'll start with this. Tell me your favorite verse in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00One of my favorites is uh John 1633. These things I have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world. And I can just hear Jesus say, I have overcome the world. And he's saying it in just and just boom when he's uh saying these things. It uh just uh it's one of my favorites for that reason, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Kind of triumphantly. And I notice you hedged and you said one of my favorite verses. It's already choose a very favorite, uh, but John 16, 33 is a good memory verse. Why do I have peace? Jesus has overcome the world. Want to share a favorite hymn too? Do you have one of those?
SPEAKER_00Um my mom loved to sing, and and she would when when the song would go out, she'd lean over. Oh, that's one of my favorites. And she, I think, had 472 favorites on my last count. But one of my favorites is sing and be happy. It's always one that's upbeat and uh focused on positive things of of God in our life. So right, kind of the the point of singing.
SPEAKER_01And you said your mom, you're saying she loves to sing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, she was she just she would have we'd be driving to a long trip and she'd make sure we had the songbooks in the car so we could be singing on the way to wherever we were driving to because she just loved to sing.
SPEAKER_01I love that. What? That's so awesome. Okay, it it's interesting to me just because something you're known for is smiling while song leading. Uh maybe that had some influence from your mom.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. She would uh I would be leading singing, I'd look down and she'd be smiling at me. And uh, yeah, that was uplifting.
SPEAKER_01I love that. We are having a song leading workshop coming up this weekend, and if I can put in my advice based on what Mike is saying, smile while you song lead. It's easy for me to get so into the music, the written music, and it'll kind of look like I'm doing math sometimes. I'm thinking so hard. Which I get, I get sometimes it's uncomfortable, it's kind of hard. But also, we're singing praises to God. Right.
SPEAKER_00It's not painful.
SPEAKER_01It's not it's not supposed to be painful. Yeah. That's why I have the workshop. We lead the songs right, we start them on the right note. It's not painful, it's kind of exciting. We should be happy about this, and and that shines, especially as we sing things like sing and be happy. I love thinking about your family with the songbooks in the car. You guys really did that? Yeah. Uh many times. Well, perhaps you're already hearing our famous doorbell ringing as people are coming in for Bible class at 6 47. So we're gonna wrap this up. Mike, thank you so much for your time and for the work you do as an elder, as a doctor, and uh just the example you are to us. Thank you for taking the time to be on this podcast. Enjoyed it. Thanks. Okay. The Bible tells us to consider one another in order to stir up love and good works in each other. So thank you for stirring up love and good works in me just by listening to this episode.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm I'm trusting your editing skills.