Today is my dad's birthday. 73. He's not here, but in Farnburg, South Carolina. I said he'd be praying for the session here this morning.

And so when I woke up this morning, my priority today

was to text pop.

And then on the way to school, taking the kids

to call pop, let the kids say, happy birthday to Grandpa.

And the reason it relates to priority

is that fathers in particular

teach their children priorities.

So many said things, so many unsaid things.

One of the priorities I saw in my dad as a kid, as a teenager, he's not a pastor.

He was a dentist for 43 years and is now retired.

I would come down in the morning from my bedroom morning after morning after morning and the light was already on in pop study and he was reading the Bible before he went into the

dental office and he made clear in the life of our family that the church was a priority.

We were there every Sunday without negotiation and we were there on Sunday nights and we were there on Wednesday nights.

How many churches still do Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night?

He taught us the priority of the church.

And that word priority refers to precedents in time or in rank.

A priority is the thing regarded as more important than another or than others.

Interestingly, if you use the Google Books Ingram

where you can search how often words have appeared,

I think goes back to 1800. Now it's not exact. The

results aren't necessarily reliable, but it can be interesting to see the

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