Let’s talk about – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Give the gift of improbability

December 15, 2025

Once again, the Missouri Lottery is running commercials with the tag line of “Give the gift of possibility.” Keep in mind that I would rather have the money you spend on this. Read the disclaimer on the ticket telling what the odds are. If you give me the few dollars you would spend, I will put it in my IRA, and in a few years, it will be worth something.

I like to remind players of the lottery that this is a self-imposed tax. I was happy when you voted for this many years ago. I am also pleased each time you approve a gambling issue on the Missouri ballot. It never costs me anything and may keep the legislators from increasing my taxes.

I have purchased lottery tickets when the prizes have increased to multiple millions of dollars. I believe God blesses me. He has given us prizes in drawings. I’ve never won if I had to pay for the chance to win. There is a difference between what is possible and what is probable.

Your probability of winning these games is in the millions to one. You are more likely to be hit by lightning or by a satellite falling out of orbit. If you want to give me a gift, then give me the money. Once, I was in a family gift exchange where our suggested limit was ten dollars. I received a gift that I knew had only cost one dollar. I felt cheated. At least at the end of the day, I had something.

When the receiver scratches off a losing card, they are not the only losers. You have lost the respect and possibly even the friendship of not just the person you gave it to. You may also offend everyone who hears what your present was.

I know that some of the scratcher’s cards cost more than a few dollars. I’ve been told that ten- and twenty-dollar tickets are given as gifts frequently. That makes it ten or twenty times as bad because you gave the money that you could have given to me to the government.

May I suggest that you burn that bill and put the ashes in an envelope with a note stating that before you burned it what it would have been worth. I think I will start making some gifts like this and keeping them with me, and when I open a gift with a lottery ticket in it, I will hand them my gift. When they thank me, I will return the sentiment.

I have participated in gag gift exchanges before. If you haven’t, the idea is to give something humorous or of little to no value. This would be a perfect time to give lottery tickets or envelopes with burned paper and a note that tells them you burned a one-hundred-dollar bill. These will both bring a laugh, rather than a groan.

Christmas is the Ekklesia

December 13, 2025

God gave me this for you this Christmas. I am not a poet. He gave David and others the songs they sing. This is the one He gave me for you.

Christmas is not just one day.

It should be in me every day.

How can I do that?

Can I put You in my heart?

Will I keep You from the start

of each day?

It is the gathering together,

The Ekklesia,

Is the gift that Jesus gave me.

Not for one day. For all my life.

Where do you gather to touch others’ lives?

Your church is where I return,

As often as I can.

They know me as the Savior does.

They love me because

You tell them that is who You are.

Christmas is not Santa,

Or a tree, or lights.

It is your Church.

Christmas means Santa

December 6, 2025

I have been researching the mythology of Christmas for years. When we had our first child, I told my wife that I did not want to perpetuate the falsehoods about Saint Nicholas. My thinking was that if we intentionally told them lies, they would not believe in God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. She disagreed with me, and guess what? We did it her way.

We repeat the stories that we have heard. Nicholas made and delivered toys to the local children in his village. His parents’ wealth enabled him to do this. Often, he left the gifts outside the doors of their homes. The British have Father Christmas, that is the personification of love. He was more focused on adults than children when the legends began.

When the story of Santa Claus came to the United States, Father Christmas was changed. The name came from the Dutch Sinterklaas, and in Pennsylvania, we got the name Kris Kringle in the 1800s. Because of the melting pot of our culture, we have a varied tradition of celebrations this time of year.

You may have Hanukkah, Kwanza, Saturnalia, or other holy days that are part of your traditions. That is what freedom of religion in our Constitution guarantees. As Burger King says, have it your way.

Christmas music and movies are things I have discussed in previous columns. I don’t care what holidays you want to celebrate. The way you serve others on your high holy days is your business. Human sacrifices and property destruction are some of the areas where I think the line needs to be drawn.

Years ago, one of my seventh and eighth boys told me that he and a friend had bashed pumpkins on Halloween. I asked how he would have felt if young men like him had destroyed his decorations when he was younger. He looked like he understood what I meant.

Another student showed me the hood ornament that he had broken off a car the day before. I asked him if he knew how much it would cost to replace it. Of course, he did not know. I informed him of what I had been told by a friend that it cost him to replace one, and he seemed surprised. My point to him was that it was a joke. He would not want to cause that expense for his parents.

We make fun of how others worship, play, sing, or do just about anything. Not everyone who does these things intends to hurt others. They may just not think it through thoroughly. The historical St. Nicholas attempted to improve the lives of children and their families.

I hope that you try to be a good Saint Nick all year round. Finding ways to serve others is appropriate at any time of the year. He is not a mythical figure. He was a real man who tried to make a difference. Let us all see if we can be more like he was.

Prelude to a civil war

December 2, 2025

John Nickle from Facebook

This is what the prelude to a civil war looks like:

With its southern-dominated Democratic majority, the Senate approved the admission of Kansas as a slave state on March 23, 1858. In the House, the administration could count on at least half of the northern Democrats, as in 1854. But this time, that was not enough to win the battle.

“Battle” was not too strong a word for events in the House. On one occasion during an all-night session, Republican Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania walked over to the Democratic side to confer with a few northern Democrats. Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina shouted at him: “Go back to your side of the House, you Black Republican puppy!”

Replying with a sneering remark about slave drivers, Grow grappled with Keitt and knocked him down. Congressmen from both sides rushed into the melee. “There were some fifty middle-aged and elderly gentlemen pitching into each other like so many Tipperary savages,” wrote a reporter describing this 2:00 a.m. free-for-all, “most of them incapable, from want of wind and muscle, of doing each other any serious harm.”

But Alexander Stephens believed that “if any weapons had been on hand, it would probably have been a bloody one. All things here are tending my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot and will not last long.”

My point of view:

This is history. It is politics at its worst. It is how division of thinking can be allowed to become outright violence, even among what are considered normally civilized people. These are the reasons the South seceded from the Union. Don’t say that this will not happen today.

This is exactly the type of split that has been happening in Congress over the argument about closing and then reopening the Federal Government. Are you smart enough to see that the separation into political parties just adds fuel to this type of blaze? When we take sides without weighing the pros and cons of an argument, we fail to have the opportunity for compromise.

Compromise is what businesses and governments are built on. Agreeing to disagree and get on with what needs to be done is what made companies grow and America great. America will not be great if our representatives cannot solve their own differences.

We are only as great as our weakest link, and at this moment, it seems to be our elected officials. When we vote next August and November, we need to ensure that the candidates we support can set aside petty partisan differences and get their jobs done. I believe the only way to do this is to elect non-partisan candidates.

Men are dogs

November 24, 2025

Have you heard of the book, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?” In his book, John Gray uses this phrase to denote that males and females are from different cultures. Sometimes I think that we take the whole opposite sex theme a little too far. I believe this is what causes some to decide that they were born the wrong sex.

I’m not going to write the book “Men are dogs and women are cats,” but this column will be part of the chapter by that name in my book “Douloi Marriage.” What I mean by this is that they are very different, even though they can cohabit the same space.

Cindy and I have had cats and dogs in our house together over the years. We all know the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs.” There is also the weather report “raining cats and dogs.” Dogs and cats are two of the most popular domesticated pets.

Right now, Essa, the cat, is asleep on Cindy’s lap, and Biscuit, the dog, is relaxing next to them on the couch. I am on my laptop on the other end. One big happy family. Dog and cat, man and woman, are getting along quite well.

How are these four different? Dogs are often raised gently with humans and get used to being trained and loved. Cats can be as well. Our dog is like this. Our cat came from the Humane Society and was a rescue that did not like people or our dog.

Several months of living with us have changed this. This is where I want to compare her adjustment to what needs to be done in a marriage. We gave her the space and time that she needed. For a couple of months, she hid most of the day. She came out to eat and went to the box.

Let’s relate this to how communication in a marriage should work. When we first marry, we come from different cultures and environments. We each have fears and expectations. I was raised in a two-parent home. We had our share of problems, but we overcame them. Cindy was from a single-parent home.

She also had never met her father or had a father figure, other than her oldest brother, around the house. She had no idea how a wife should react to her husband. I knew to duck when the wife threw dishes. That was something my mom had done.

Cindy did not cook. I did. I also had been trained by my mom to do laundry, clean house, and many other womanly chores. Cindy learned all these things and how to mow and work on remodeling jobs. She paints with a roller better than I, and I get to cut in around the ceilings.

The point I am trying to make is that you find each other’s strengths. Do not even look at the weaknesses. Find ways to work together. Do what you are good at and teach them if they wish to learn. Husbands and wives do not expect the other one to do what they do not wish to do. Share those chores together.

A, B, Cs of Medicare

November 10, 2025

I’ve been on Medicare for six years now and have gone through the annual enrollment period many times. If you have listened to the commercials that are aimed at, we Baby Boomers, as we reach sixty-five, you know that everyone gets parts A and B automatically. You’d have to live without broadcast television not to have heard this.

My first couple of years were good with a company that seemed perfect for my Cox Hospital care and their doctors. Then Cox was able to formulate their own Medicare insurance plans, and my insurer no longer covered my established providers. Thanks Cox.

I had considered another insurance, but they did not have my doctors in their network, and I did not want to start over again. Aetna looked to be the best for my needs, and I kept them this year. Since January one procedure after another has been listed out of network even though my established clinics were accepted.

I’ve tried all year to have tests and procedures performed at approved facilities by in network providers only to be billed out of network charges. Aetna owns CVS Pharmacies, and they constantly want me to use them even though they refuse to give us the service that they should.

My wife and I are using a local Medicare approved representative to help us determine the best insurer for our specific needs. These include the medications we take, and doctors we want to be treated by. I’ll let you know how this works out.

We are hesitant to call any of the companies that advertise or send us propaganda in the mail or online because we all know that these companies may work for certain insurance or pharmaceutical companies and may have biases to their clients.

By the way, you might want to check out all the current legal actions against any insurers you may be considering because some of the major companies are being sued by current or former clients for refusing to cover services for some that they cover for others. I won’t mention those names to you because there may be some more, I have not heard about. We will be checking the ones recommended to us for these problems. I’ve looked up the current actions now and know my present company is having problems.

Good luck to all of you on Medicare or approaching that age and use all the resources provided by Medicare.gov and watch out for those that have other websites listed. They may be legitimate or not. There are reports of Medicare scams.

Living history

November 6, 2025

When you have three or four decades under your belt, you start to notice what history is for your children and later your grandchildren are things that you remember firsthand. Mom and Dad knew about World War II as actual events that they experienced both here in the Springfield, Missouri area and for Dad also in the South Pacific with the Navy. As Christians, our lives are lived by what we learn from history in the Bible, but also from life as it is experienced.

In 1972, on September 17th, a freshman at Southwest Missouri State University experienced a historical event that did not seem like such at the time. The CBS TV series MASH premiered. This program portrayed events that were historical in a dramatic and comedic way for those, like Mom and Dad, who had lived through the period, and their children who had not.

An interesting thing about MASH is that it lasted eight years longer than the war it portrayed. Since it was only once a week, that fact was never noticed. In the reruns today it is much more noticeable. At the time, the MASH series finale was an epic event. In 1972 when the first episode aired, nobody knew what to expect. The original movie was alright, but the series surpassed it.

In July of 1969, we watched the moon landing and the walk. I was six when the first astronaut took his ride and followed the other five on the Mercury ships. Then the Gemini crafts were launched. Apollo was next, and the catastrophe of Apollo One catching fire and killing Roger Chafee, Ed White, and Gus Grissom seemed to delay or stop that.

It delayed the launches, but it did not end them. In 1967, the first manned Apollo mission was called Apollo 7. Eight took three men around the moon and nine stayed in Earth orbit to test the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). Ten went back to orbit the moon and tested the docking of the lander in moon orbit. The first landing possibility was Eleven.

This is not mentioned by most commentators, but Neal Armstrong could have aborted the LEM setting down. During those last few moments before setting down on the surface as the commander, he had to make the decision whether he should attempt to risk the mission with a failed landing. The fuel in the LEM was at the point he had to abort or land. That is what makes a legendary pilot.

You may be asking, “How does he know these things?” I was a space nut through the sixties and the seventies. If it was published about NASA or the Astronauts, I read it. I was in front of the TV for every launch and live broadcast with Uncle Walter. You do not know Uncle Walter? Walter Cronkite was the CBS news anchor for most of my life. We only received NBC and CBS until the early 1970s.

Despite not having the internet, cell phones, satellite TV, or all the miracles of this age, we lived history. We witnessed all these things unfold before our eyes through the miracle of television, and we had real cats and dogs, without having to watch YouTube videos to see what was happening in our world.

We also watched in horror as the twin towers in New York City crashed to the ground, and our president had the guts to send troops to find the mastermind of that attack. In spite of all of that tragedy, he never once invaded American cities to make himself look good. He actually did something constructive without shutting down our government..

The minus

October 27, 2025

Everywhere I look everything seems to be adding a plus. Me-TV+, Hallmark+, and savings plus are just a few of them. This is supposed to show you that something has been added that was not there before. It is better than what has previously been available.

Our society is always wanting the next big thing. New, better, best is what we are always craving. Faster, easier, and quicker are all things that we look for. It occurs to me that what we really need is what we once had. My 1966 Chevy was the best car I ever drove.

Why? It wasn’t just what it had; it was what it did not have. It did not have all the gizmos and gadgets that we need today. All it had was power and the ability to take me where I needed to go fast. It was also the first car I drove that had seat belts. That was the epitome’ of safety for the time.

Maybe what we need most is not more but less. Take away what is not good for us and continue to be what we knew was good. Missouri passed a law that allows sports gambling. We also approved abortion and labor changes that our state officials want to overturn. They think we need more of what they want and less of what we want.

Walk back with me to the things that our grandparents believed in. Mine knew there was a God and that Jesus was His son and that the Holy Spirit could take up residence in our lives. About fifty years ago, I decided to accept that this was true. I’ve lived my life the way the spirit has instructed me as well as I have been able to.

I have had setbacks, but most of my life has been better than I ever imagined. I am not one of those that goes overboard and eliminates modern conveniences from my life. My wife and I have smart phones that link to our car that we drive so that we do not violate current Missouri law.

I like our two air-fryers, microwave oven, and laptop computers. Our house also has a fireplace, skylight, and a landline. We have security on our Wi-Fi, phones, computers, and tablets to prevent hacking. There are so many new things that we do not have. We do not have the systems that we can just talk to and play music or make phone calls.

I enjoy my smart phone because it allows me to read a book anytime I have a few minutes to spare. I also have an audiobook app that I use to increase my ability to read more. Reading is one thing that I do not want less of. Adding people to your life is a plus. Adding things is a minus.

When was the last time you added a new friend? I like to talk to people. Some people don’t do that as easily as I do. Take a chance and talk to someone new. You may find out that you are the kind of person who people want to talk to.

Stupidity

October 25, 2025

“I’m impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.” “I’m afraid my people haven’t. I am very sorry. I wish it were otherwise.” This is a conversation from the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” released in 1951.

These lines were given by Klaatu, the visitor from outer space, and a representative of the U.S. President who was trying to determine the reason for his arrival on Earth. An otherworldly organization wants to warn all earthlings of their emanate destruction.

The producers of this movie were trying to demonstrate some points about our society at the time. This quotation is indicative of what many thought of the Cold War at that time. If you have not seen this version of this classic, find it on any of the streaming services and view it.

I know you may not remember this movie because it came out before we were born. A few of you may have seen it in the theaters in the early fifties. Most of us only know of it from DVDs, videos, or even VHS tapes.

My first recollection of it was in the early 60s, on NBC Movie of the Week aired on Saturday nights. Mom and Dad were out that night, and my brothers and I watched it after our oldest brother put our younger sister to bed. It began at 8:00 pm at her bedtime.

Another interesting clip from this movie has the visitor from space, who is calling himself Carpenter, being interviewed by a radio reporter. The newscaster asks him, “I suppose you’re just as scared as the rest of us?” “In a different way, perhaps. I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.”

It is here that the reporter decides to move on to someone else. Start a conversation that others do not wish to have, and they always walk or run away. It is a human reaction. We are either afraid to learn new things or worried that we are being talked down to.

How do you feel when a friend tries to point out a flaw in your personality or actions? My reaction is usually a defensive strike or fleeing. We always want to be correct and often refuse to hear that we are not. Especially if you are a politician.

The story of this film is about the lives of humans, and especially Americans. We react with violence at the least provocation, and it is shown on the news every day, even today. Society is not better than it was in the 1950s. We have more toys and time to waste on them, but no more patience and understanding for each other.

The newest version of this film alters the story to make it work with the 2008 view of what it might mean if Earth reaches a technological ability that would endanger other lives in our universe. I hope you realize that this is fiction.

The real worry for all of us is each other. You never know who might be out to destroy you. Keep reading my columns, and I will explain more about how to protect yourself in this dangerous world full of stupidity.

Who made you a disciple?

October 22, 2025

In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus tells His disciples to go into all the world and make disciples and teach those converts everything they have been taught by Him. Someone led you to Jesus. It may have been your parents, grandparents, pastor, friends, or others. A pastor friend of mine accepted Christ after watching a Billy Graham sermon on TV.

After this salvation experience, he was discipled by friends and family. When I met him, we were both in college as ministerial students. Others encouraged both of us to accept our calls to the ministry. After graduation, we went our separate ways. I cannot remember his name, but I know he has discipled many others as I have.

Consider your story. Identify the important people who have led your walk. My father was a licensed minister before I was born. We were raised in church and encouraged to accept Christ at an early age. My brothers and I remained at our home church after our parents and sisters began going to another.

This body was instrumental in my accepting my call to full-time gospel ministry. Sunday School teachers, pastors, friends, and family all discipled me for the next ten years until I graduated from college.

I worked with the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board as a summer missionary while still in college and learned a great deal from that experience and the people I worked with for ten weeks. I have used many of the things I picked up that summer throughout my life.

The point I want to make in this column is that we all need help learning how to follow our Lord. Your job as a believer is to assist your brothers and sisters in Christ. Others are there for you. That is the idea of service that Jesus taught His disciples.

We all should think of the folks that we are familiar with and how we can guide them into a deeper relationship with our savior. Prayer, Bible study, and fellowship are all methods that can be utilized.

Jesus said, “As you go, make disciples, teaching them everything you know, immersing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Educate them in what Holy Spirit teaches you. I hope this column is a small help to you as you grow.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Category: Let’s talk about