Breakfast at Kirby's

Monday is my usual day off. So I decided on Sunday to give my sister a call to see if she wanted to meet up for breakfast yesterday morning. She lives in Etters which is located just off I-83 about 2/3 of the way toward Harrisburg (from York). Our rendezvous spot was Kirby's, a small Irish restaurant in Manchester, owned by her daughter and son-in-law.

Nancy is the oldest of my siblings. She was the first of two girls. Twelve years after Nancy came along (and six years after my other sister was born), my twin brother and I were born. Then six years later, my little brother arrived. So I am number 4 of 5.

As my wife, my sister and I sat an reminisced over our eggs, toast and coffee (well I had coffee - I think they both had tea), we were transported back in time to 1966. That was the year Nancy got married. My twin brother and I (we were ten at the time) were involved in her wedding as acolytes. So we got dressed in these white robes (which at the time I thought made us look like sissies!) and had to come out just before the ceremony to light the altar candles. These candles were quite tall AND they were situated on an already tall altar. So even with the long tapers, it was difficult to reach the candles (at least for me, seeing I was a good four inches shorter than my brother). As we proceeded to light the candles (we were to light them "in sinc"), my next to last candle refused to light. Time after time as I would pull the taper away from the top of the candle ... the flame would go out. After a few failed attempts, my brother began muttering to me under his breath ... "What's wrong shorty, can't get it lit?" "Shrimp, Shrimp!" And I replied (through tightly clenched teeth), "Shut up or I'll punch you!" Fortunately I was finally able to get the candle lit and we exited from the front of the church. I told my sister that we were mere moments away from getting into an all out fist fight! Now that would have been a wedding memory NO one would have forgotten!

Strife among brothers is nothing new. Humanity was not on the planet very long at all before Cain murdered his bother Abel. And relational tension is not just limited to brothers. When two or three gather together, there is always the potential for conflict. One way to reduce the likelihood of conflict is to put into practice the Apostle Paul's admonition found in Philippians 2:3-4. There he writes,

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

If all of us humble ourselves and think of others as being more important than us - that will go a lllooonnnngggg way toward eliminating tension and promoting harmony in our relationships!

Thanks for stopping by . . .

pj