On a recent flight to Indiana, I was only half-listening to the safety orientation, that is until the flight attendant said a word that made me pay closer attention. The word itself was not provocative, it was her pronunciation that captured my attention. “To tigh-en your seatbelt belt,” she informed, “simply pull on the strap.” Tigh-en? What happened to the “T”?

I am writing this from my father-in-law’s living room in rural Indiana here to celebrate his 106th birthday. I marvel at the grace of God in granting him a long life. Our perspective on aging is a curious thing. As children, we proudly marked our years in fractions, proclaiming, “I’m 4 ½ years old!”

Last week, I was pondering the expression, “work out.” I wasn’t actually working out, just pondering the expression; pondering doesn’t make you sweat. “Work out” is a curious expression. If someone says to you, “I worked out this morning,” you assume they exercised. People follow a “workout regimen,” a plan to get in shape.

I occasionally have a troubling dream of the kind students have during a school year. You know the kind, in your dream you arrive at school late and learn that you missed an important exam, or you were to give a presentation that day in class.

I follow a Florida-based jazz guitarist on Facebook. I learned about him through my online search for other guitarists who play an archtop guitar made by a little-known luthier. This guitarist has one, and we corresponded briefly about our love for these guitars. Since then, I have enjoyed the video postings of his solo performances in small clubs.

I have now joined the growing ranks of people whose Facebook account has been hacked. One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I received a notification from Facebook that my paid ad was now approved and running. I had posted a paid ad for COMPASS Church where I am pastor, but that ad had been running for several days.

Occasionally in life, we have watershed moments, some life-defining occurrence that suddenly sends our life or our perspective on life in a different direction. I have had several watershed moments in my life, and the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 1:21 reminded me of one of them.

The little girl’s face wrinkled up with incredulity and mild horror. “You drink sink water?!” she gasped. My wife was drawing water from the tap at the kitchen sink, “Yes, don’t you?” “No!” the girl replied as if being asked if she drank from a toilet bowl.

My wife and I have a few reality TV series that we like to watch. Over a year, we binge-watched the cooking show “MasterChef Australia” relying heavily on closed captioning to comprehend the Aussie accent.

In three decades of preaching and writing, I have had a growing appreciation for how often it is the smallest words that make the biggest difference. Dwarfed by their larger companions, they seem insignificant, but they are not.