Thought I’d sit a minute on this wet evening to share a story from my childhood that came flooding back as I prepare a sermon for Sunday. 
I’d seen something the other day. May have been on Facebook or some movie or show. I don’t know where it was. Might be my Old-Timers kicking in. Anyway, it was a young person probably in their twenties, in a conversation with a much older person.
Well, you could tell that this younger person was making an attempt at dazzling the older with their brilliance. I thought, “Man, if only I could go back to twenty-two. Back to a time when I was at the peak of my intelligence or at least, I thought I was. Now I get that some folks turn fifty and their best days were high school. But I would hope that to be more the exception than the rule.
Knew it all. Arrogant and cocky, telling it how it was to people who had already gone to places I hadn’t even been to yet. Thinking I had arrived. I hadn’t even took off yet.
Here’s my story. I had reached the ripe old age of about ten years old. We lived about five hours from Danville so visiting wasn’t very frequent as I remember. Every Sunday though, Mama would take my sister and me to a payphone, (Y’all remember them?), to make a collect call to my grandparents. I can still hear grandma accepting that call. 
Anyhow, we eventually came in for a visit. Grandpa took me with him to get a haircut at a little barber shop that was there where Hudson Welding is on Westover Drive. I remember he was telling his friends who that boy with him was and how proud he was of that boy. That is until he started to talk about our weekly call. 
He was telling “the boys” how much it cost him to accept those calls. Now this was around 1975. Well, as I remember, I overheard the conversation and piped in with an, “Ain’t so. Cost ten cents.” He said it wasn’t. I said it was. He said it wasn’t. I said it was…are you getting the picture? 
Woo! That set him off. I can still hear him telling my grandma about that boy disputing his word. Thinking back on it, I probably embarrassed him. Kind of hurt his pride. When I was a boy, men were men…that’s all I’ll say about that. I know now that it wasn’t worth talking about. Not only did I not know it all, I didn’t know the half of it. Taught me a lesson though. 
The sign at our church says, “Peace is found in ignoring what doesn’t matter.” The Bible says in 2 Timothy 2 that preachers are to, “Remind your people of these great facts, and command them in the name of the Lord not to argue over unimportant things. Such arguments are confusing and useless and even harmful.”
Arguing and disputing issues of no value can only serve to cause a divide between friends, husbands and wives, moms and daughters, and fathers and sons. Better to just keep it real. Learn and understand rather than argue about. Don’t say it if it don’t need saying. The book of Ephesians tells us not to use bad words. Say only what is good and helpful to those you are talking to. Say things that will bless them.
How much better off would we be if we could do that?
-Pastor Butch