DOWN HOME: All roads lead to you-know-where

Messengers to this year's Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting missed a grand opportunity to make a helpful motion.

In fact, they—OK, we—missed an opportunity to make any motion. A motion is a proposal that comes from the floor of a Baptist meeting, recommending the organization take some sort of action. As a journalist for more than three decades, I've covered, oh, a gazillion state and national meetings. This was the first time in my memory nobody offered a single motion.

If I had thought about it in time, I would have proposed Texas Baptists hold all their annual meetings somewhere along Interstate 35 or Interstate 37 south of Austin.

"Why is that?" you ask. "Is it because most Texans live along the I-35/I-45 corridor, thus providing better accessibility and higher attendance at the annual meetings? Is it because San Antonio (site of the 2013 BGCT annual meeting in July) sits at the confluence of I-35 and I-37 and is an extremely popular tourist destination and thus would lure more messengers to our gatherings? Or is it because the Interstate highway infrastructure enables more people to drive to the annual meetings, thus saving money?"

Good questions. But no, no and no.

It's really simple. My grandson, Ezra, lives in Buda (pronounced BYOO-duh), just off I-35, about 20 miles south of Austin. So, since I'm likely to drive a van with the Baptist Standard/CommonCall/FaithVillage booth to any annual meeting, all roads southbound lead to little Ezra's door.

This year, I drove a cargo van full of booth stuff to Corpus Christi. I could wonder how, of all the folks who work for our organization, I wind up being the one whose presence in the office is expendable enough to drive a truck. But I don't mind. I got to see Ezra. Twice, in fact.

He's a little more than 20 months old, and he lives four hours away from our home in Coppell. So, we don't play nearly often enough. But this fall, I spent time with him going and coming.

Because of Ezra's age and the distance between us, our reunions usually start slowly. He's an outgoing kid, but he needs time to warm up to his grandmama, Joanna, and me. But on the return trip, since we'd only been apart three days, he knew me right from the start.

We got on the floor and played basketball for a few minutes. Then it was time for lunch. I kept my clothes on and ate a smoked-chicken-salad wrap. He stripped down to his diaper and ate pasta with tomato sauce. When you're 20 months old, lunch is a whole-body experience. Within 13 seconds, Ezra turned saucy-red from his nose to his belly button. He loved lunch, and it showed.

He talked nonstop, although only about two of the words happened to be in a known language. But we laughed a lot, too. And I thanked God for a little guy who can stuff his mouth full of pasta and smile at the same time.