Saturday, December 16, 2017

Remembering this tonight, for some reason



Back on December 19, 2006, my dad and I went to the Ohio State House, where I provided the opening prayer for that day's session of the Ohio House of Representatives. I was invited to provide the prayer by Representative Joe Uecker, who beat me and three other candidates when we ran for the House two years earlier.

It was an honor for Joe to ask me to provide the prayer and it was meaningful for me for two big reasons.

One is that I formerly worked for the House. I supervised the 85 college-age pages there. I got a birds-eye view of the legislative process and was impressed.

It was fun to be back in the chamber, which I had visited many times as a boy. Back then, I walked around the State House, soaking up the history and imagining one day that I would serve as an elected official.

That never happened, of course. God put another call on my life and I've come to regret having run for office while serving as a pastor. But the Ohio State House is my favorite of all the state capitol buildings I've been to through the years.

The other reason this visit was so meaningful is that my Dad was with me. Dad had never been to the State House before, although he's a lifelong Ohioan and became a full-time resident of Columbus in 1954. But it was, as always, just great being with Dad. After the session, my dear friend Tom joined us for lunch.

It was a nice day.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]


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