One of Pam’s tax clients is a young mother who immigrated from South America. She married an American guy, and they have two kids. Nice family. They are among Pam’s tax clients, and came for an appointment one afternoon this week.

Earlier that day, this woman had become an American citizen. She was beaming, so proud. Puts things in perspective, for those of us who tend to take our American citizenship for granted.

This morning we sang the hymn “Stand Up for Jesus.” That hymn takes me back to the summer after my freshman year of high school and to a 76-year-old Aussie named Gordon Hooker. Hooker taught piano at Biola University, and played piano at the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles. He also taught me.

I took 3.5 years of traditional piano lessons in Pennsylvania, but when we moved to Arizona, I went two years without a piano teacher. Well, actually there was Mrs. Van L, from whom I took lessons for six weeks. She started me on the Blue Danube Waltz, and each week, because I would misplay something, she reassigned it. Finally, on the last week, I played it flawlessly. When I finished, she said, “Let’s do it one more week, just in case you ever need to play it for a recital.” I never went back.

Dad was taking courses at Pepperdine and Biola that summer, renting a converted garage from a Biola professor, whose name I remember as Mrs. McGahey. Something like that. Dad wanted me to take up lessons again, and inquired about it with Mrs. McGahey, who steered him to Gordon Hooker. And so, I ended up flying to LA for two weeks.

Hooker was amazing. I had four lessons from him over those two weeks. He started me on “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” teaching me to incorporate his chording style. He threw some theory at me, stuff which no doubt stuck with college students but didn’t work well with me. But somehow, he got his style through to me. I would practice up to eight hours a day; as soon as I sat down at Mrs. McGahey’s piano, my back would ache.

I got “What a Friend” down, and then we worked on “Stand Up for Jesus,” which used his style in a very different manner. There was a third song, which might have been “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” but I’m not sure. Mainly, I recall the other two songs.

Two weeks, four lessons. And nearly everything I play is based on what Gordon Hooker taught me. Playing with a band, I go away from chording most of the time, but when I need a full sound, I pull out Hooker’s techniques and let ‘er rip.

That’s what I did today, with “Stand Up for Jesus.” Thanks, Dr. Hooker, for your patience with a high schooler. And thanks, Dad, for not giving up on making a pianist out of me. Playing the piano gives me more joy than anything else I do in church.

I always assumed that stores and restaurants just pocketed the money when gift cards went unused. You know, like that $5 Starbucks card you got for Christmas but misplaced, probably amidst a bunch of wrapping paper. It’s estimated that of the nearly $100 billion in plastic gift cards issued in 2007 (half of it in November and December), nearly $8 billion will go unused.

But a Businessweek article told what happens in half of the states: unused gift cards are subject to unclaimed-property laws. Shoulda known the government would want a cut. The state must wait 2-5 years to collect, but they’re patient.

I’ve got an Applebees gift card in my wallet. Started at $25, and I’ve got $1.67 left. If I lose that card, it’s just unclaimed property, and in a few years, Applebees will need to write the State of Indiana a check for at least part of that $1.67. Interesting.

The worship team, as a special, did the song “Get Together,” from the 1960s, as a way to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. While the band played, a series of photos from King’s life and from the civil rights movement appeared on the screen behind us. Last night, as I searched the internet for appropriate photos, I came across several of King’s speeches, and I was impressed with what I read.

One sermon is called “Loving Your Enemies.” King preached it in 1957 at a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala. It’s quite a sermon. He quotes the verses from Matthew 5: “Ye have heard that it has been said, “Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Then he says the following:‚Ä®

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

What would happen if we actually lived by this? If we took it as seriously as King took it? What are the implications for us Manifest Destiny Americans? “Jesus wasn’t playing,” King said. And we know from Jesus’ life that he, indeed, lived by this–as did King. So for us to take this seriously, what does it require of us as a nation, and as citizens of the world’s dominant nation?

Yesterday I skipped church to play in the Highland Table Tennis Tournament. Highland is just a few miles from the Illinois border, in the greater Chicago area. They had about 30 tables set up in a fieldhouse.

My rating in the US Table Tennis Association is 984. I’m actually a 1250 or 1300 player, but you can only increase your rating by beating higher-rated players in sanctioned tournaments. This was my third tournament. My goal yesterday was to knock off at least one high-rated person and get my rating, at least, over 1000. And I failed.

Came close, though. I went down to the wire with a 1300+ player and a 1250 player. We play three out of five games (11-point games). Both matches ended up going five games, and we were tied at 10 in the final game. And in both, I lost. So close.

In the end, I lost all five of my matches against higher-rated players, and one my only match against a lower-rated player (a junior-aged Asian boy, my last match of the day, whom I beat up on without conscience). My rating will stay the same. Bummer. Hopefully that can change in May at the big South Bend tournament.