Walt News

As I get older, a key truth of life has become abundantly clear to me; love is necessary. Whether you are a Jesus follower, like me, or not, I hope this simple truth resonates with you at some level. But I'd like you to consider that, actually, love is the central ingredient to so many aspects of what we think of as a successful life. As a Christian, one of the key Bible passages is John 3:16 that tells briefly why Christianity exists. "For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." (NET). 

In the very first line is love. God loves us humans and he wants us to love him back. He wants us to love each other. In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul writes about love in depth. He explains what love is and what it is not. True, it's not a complete analysis of love, but it's a good passage to study carefully. He sums it up by saying (and you've likely heard this before), "But the greatest of these is love." (NET) Love is the greatest. It just simply is. But one of the attributes that Paul brings out, and I think really needs to be examined these days especially, is that love never fails. 

I was inspired by this video on YouTube by Rabbi Twerski: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcHtSjtNBY. I took his analogy about fish and I adapted it to something American teens might more readily identify with: pizza. You say you love pizza and then you cut it, you put in your mouth and you chew it, tearing it to little pieces, and it goes down into your body where it's digested and turned into poop. Is that how you treat people who you love? You don't love pizza - that's not true. You love how pizza tastes, how it's filling, and maybe how it's cheap and easy to make. You love what pizza does for you. You love yourself. Pizza love is not real love and yet so many people say that they love their family or friends or special friends, when really they just love what those people do ... or that person does ... for them. They love how they are made to feel, how they are made to laugh, or how they are made happy. That's not love for others. That's self love. 

Love is the sacrificial giving of yourself for another or others with no interested gain on your part. You give of your time, your money/stuff, or your personality to help that other person be better, safer, healthier, happier, etc. and you get nothing back. Many people go through their whole lives and never know this kind of love. Children grow up never learning to love their parents and then as parents they never truly love their children. People get married and divorced, shack up, have short lived "relationships" and "make love" but never really know how to love. How do I know? Because these loves fail. Love never fails. That's a kind of test right there. There is no such thing as falling out of love. Does your love grow cold, impatient, weary, selfish? It's not love. 

One of the things I want to do with this latest reboot of this site is to explore this idea of genuine love. I hope you'll come along for the journey. If you do, hit me up in the comments and let me know, please. 

Thanks,

Walt

Rev. Larry Allmon was a man of many careers. He was a pastor, a teacher, a school administrator, a Missions Director, a caretaker, an ESL teacher, and a gardener. But, his life-long trade skill was as a story-teller. Whenever Larry preached, or taught, or just "hung out" he would tell stories. And he was great at it. 

He was a loving husband to Margaret and father to my life-long friend Charlie, his brother and four sisters. He was friend to my parents and often dropped by to visit them. He was a friend to me and my wife, as well. I call him my spiritual mentor because he was the first pastor I remember, he was the one who baptized me as a child, he was the one who gave my wife and me pre-marital counsel, officiated at our wedding, and he lead us in weekly Bible study for several years. But, mostly, he taught me, by example, to love the Word of God and how to tell a story that captures the attention of your listeners. 

The first pastor I can remember is Larry. I remember him as kind and gentle. I remember being able to listen to him and understand him explain the Bible even as a 1st and 2nd grader. He had a way of keeping my attention and focus that few pastors or Bible teachers have - that remains true even later in my life. And Charlie was my best pal. We used to get in trouble running around the church together. We would slide under the pews and race around the hedges (killing the ivy). I loved going over to Charlie's house to play. 

The Allmon's moved to San Diego area where Larry became a school administrator of some sort with the school district down there. Charlie and I lost touch, but I always still referred to Charlie as "my best friend."

In 9th grade they moved back to town. Larry was to become the Director of Gospel Recordings (you can read about how that came about on The Gospel Recordings website). Charlie and I went to school together at Pacific Christian High School for four years and graduated together. Charlie had become cool and I had become a geek (in those days that was not a good thing). Charlie had cool friends and they formed a rock band mostly known as The Curlies. They let me hang around with them and play with the sound equipment (David Garcia referred to me as their "groupie") and eventually they became my friends, too. 

After High School Charlie went off to CalState Pomona and became a rocket scientist and I went to Moody to do ... well, I don't really know what I was thinking.  I was basically running from what God wanted me to do while pretending to obey. Anyway, that's not the point of this story.

After college, I was Charlie's best man when he married Lisa and Charlie mine when I married Becci. The band and my new friend Geoff were my groomsmen (Peter became a pastor in the San Diego area, and we still write from time-to-time and I lost touch with David and Fred). Larry gave us great pre-marital counsel (got us off to the right start) and officiated at the wedding. 

After we'd been married a while, we stopped going to the church we were attending for various reasons and Charlie invited us to join a Bible Study at Harvester Mission where Larry was a sort-of pastor (actually, I never really understood his role there) and lived on campus. We met with Larry and Margaret, Charlie and Lisa, and Keith and Denise Henry, friends of Charlie and Lisa from Hughes Aircraft. It was the best time in the Bible I had had to that point. Larry carefully and kindly put me in my place and helped me - more than anything else - to get a picture of myself for the spiritual snob I had always been. Of course, we also learned a lot about the Bible and I got to see a method of Bible teaching I've never seen anyone else use and I try to use to this day. It's an expositional-story telling style. You see, Larry knew the Bible so well that you could ask him anything and he knew right were to go in the Word to answer your question and pull it all together with explanations and a story or anecdote to illustrate. 

About the time that we were adopting the boys, about 10 years ago, Charlie and Lisa moved away, first to Huntsville, AL, and then to the Netherlands as part of Charlie's work. Soon after, Larry and Margaret moved also, first to Santa Cruz and then to China, and finally to Texas. 

The Allmon's made three stops back in the LA area over the years and it was great to get together with them again and see how they are doing and listen to Larry's stories. I noticed that Larry was walking with a cane and seemed to be struggling with his breathing a bit the last time he was here. Recently, over the last month or so, we got updates through my parents that his health was getting progressively worse. 

Today I got an email that he went home to see the Savior yesterday afternoon. So, farewell, my friend, my mentor, my brother-in-Christ. See you when I catch up. Looking forward to more stories.