Yesterday was the first time in a long time the Redneck Gang got together for lunch. It was definitely needed and definitely a great time.

Started out with a road trip with the one and only (thank You, Lord!) Gary Lamb. When we were about two minutes from the place we were supposed to eat lunch, Tony called and said the place was closed down! Sure enough, there were letters on the door that said something about not being able to weather the current economic conditions and that the employees’ checks would be in the mail (yeah, right!) and other such stuff as that. One competitor had already capitalized on the situation by leaving a message to all former employees and customers about his restaurant right up the street.

Oh, lest I forget…we decided to go somewhere else for lunch, and decided to leave a note for the rest of the Redneck Gang. Now, Gary and Tony are gadget freaks, wired (and un-wired, as it may be!) to the max. Did they have anything to leave a note on? NOOOOOOO! But thanks to ol’ Luddite me and my trusty Day-Timer, we had real paper to leave a real note! Amazing!

(Need I remind you once more? I don’t need a PDA. I’ve got my Day-Timer, which requires no fancy writing, no batteries, etc. And besides, I’ve got my wife…who knows EVERYTHING and NEVER LETS ME FORGET!)

Anyway, to make a long story even longer and more boring, we finally made it to lunch, where we were joined by KenBob and Rob. Three Texas Burgers, one lunch pork chop, and one salmon Caesar salad later, we were stuffed, challenged, and encouraged. As usual with this bunch.

Thanks, guys, for doing what you always do best…being encouragers.

The last thing I read last night, just before succumbing to a NyQuil-induced slumber…

Even when we are paralyzed, Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?” In our frustration we might explain how we have longed for healing and health but have been incapable of obtaining it. We might express our pain that no one cared enough to help us get what we needed. Yet two things become clear: What we have been trying to access for our cure may not be what we really need, and Jesus won’t fix what we want to keep broken. Paralysis in our churches has resulted in atrophy. We have too often been looking in all the wrong places for our healing and restoration. It’s Jesus who gets us up on our feet and commands us to walk. But first we have to answer his question.

-Erwin McManus, An Unstoppable Force, p. 21

The Redneck list continues to grow over there in the giant List o’ Links! Brian Bowen is the “Redneck Missionary” in the Macon, Georgia area. Every now and then, when he’s not setting up somebody’s network, Brian gets to meet up with the rest of the Redneck Gang for a chili dawg. Most of the time though, he’s pretty busy raising a family and doing a great work with 20- and 30-somethings in Middle Georgia. You’ll love the banner on his blog, not to mention the great story about the kid and his sword! Check out Brian’s blog.

Now here’s where the twist comes in…

The other “new bloggin’ redneck” is Roger Blackmore, and he takes over the title of the Oldest Bloggin’ Redneck from yours truly. And he doesn’t even talk like us. He speaks English. No, really! English, as in British English. And get this…if we get together with him for lunch, and we want “meet in the middle” somewhere, we’ve gotta go somewhere probably on the North Carolina-Virginia border. See, Roger is a church planter and pastor in Long Island, New York! You’ll appreciate Roger’s wisdom and his take on things. Look for Roger over here.

Always – I mean always! – take the $100 credit when they offer it…after you’ve kept the receipt and proved you knew what you were talking about and they didn’t.

Always – I mean, always! – keep your receipt.

‘Nuf said.

For the first several months of this humble attempt at a Weblog’s existence, it was known by the title “Straddling the Gap.” It was so named because I thought it was cool, and because I was trying to find a toehold in the postmodern world, while I had one foot firmly planted in modernity.

I got kind of tired of that and thus, “Just Charlie” took its place.

Today, though, I’ve been thinking about that whole “gap” thing – a divide between what is and what could be, what is and what should be, and I’m giving a lot of thought about going back to “Straddling the Gap.”

This time, though, I’m not talking about the gap between the modern world and the postmodern. I’m talking about a gap that may be a larger and more imposing gap: the gap between knowing and doing.

See, I believe with all my heart that we know a whole lot more about what we should be doing – in our personal lives, our relationships, our churches, our work, our world – than what we actually do. We can talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it, most of us aren’t accomplishing even a little bit of what God has designed and empowered us to do.

It’s all a matter of getting to the work, the task at hand. I thought about this as I bought a couple of new books today. We’re looking for the magic bullet that will be THE KEY! to getting us from knowing to doing. The bad news is, there is no THE KEY! No magic bullet. No one tool that will move us along. It’s up to us to take the knowledge and tools we already have, and put them to effective use fulfilling the purpose of God for our lives.

That’s it! That’s the thing! Easy, huh?

Yep, real easy to identify it. Real tough to make it happen.

Here’s a deal you can’t afford to refuse: If you pray for me to get over the knowing-doing gap, I’ll do the same for you? Deal? Thanks!

Had AccuRadio’s Swingin’ Classics on while working. Heard these great lyrics from Carl Sigman and Bob Russell’s tune, “Crazy He Calls Me,” a great Billie Holiday classic…

The difficult I’ll do right now
The impossible will take a little while…

I just like the sentiment behind that little snippet. Don’t you?

EDIT: 5:17 PM…It just occurred to me that you’ll probably need to use Internet Explorer to listen to AccuRadio. Sorry, Firefoxers!

Let the reader understand…

This is what it looked like from our deck earlier today, via “The Boy’s” camera phone.

Actually, this picture doesn’t really do it justice! An almost perfect spring day in NW Georgia…amazing!

I submitted my 2004 tax returns at 10:48 p.m.! Close…real close! But in time! Back to real life now!