Ecclesiastes 12:10

  A report by Dr. William Martin to the American Medical Association in 1913 didn’t pull any punches. In his assessment of public-school children in New York, he found forty pupils he described ‘as the worst in the school’ and eighteen of which being ‘so stupid they were in ungraded classes.’ He also noted that ‘eleven were so stupid that it required three terms to do the work of one term’.  Not the most polite or hopeful message.   So, what was so wrong with the ‘delinquent’ children? It turns out the all needed glasses.   We can be quick to judge a person thinking we know what is wrong with them. We quickly relegate their foibles as character flaws and dismiss them with derision. But it may be what we think of as malice may just be a misunderstanding.   That is why we must be careful of rash judgment of others, especially in the public forum. Instead of jumping on the attack we need to make sure we are understanding and trying to be understood. Others may not...

     The Los Angeles Dodgers spent some money in the last off-season. The team committed to more than $1 billion in future salaries, signing superstar Shohei Ohtani to a ten-year contract that will ultimately pay him $700 million. They also came to terms with pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325 million pact. And they signed outfield Andrew Toles to a deal worth, almost certainly, $0.   You might think that means that don’t value Toles but you would be wrong.   Toles started playing for the Dodgers in 2016 and was pretty good for them. But in the next several years his play dropped off till by 2019 he was playing for the team at all.  It wasn’t injury or decline but a disease that ended his playing days. Toles was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The disorder left him unable to play and even care for himself. This burden of his care was left to his father and it was clear that Toles was going to have a hard time paying for the tre...

    When surveyed, seventy-seven percent of Americans think the nation's morality is heading downhill. Almost a third of respondents said that moral decline was a result of people not reading the Bible, eighty-eight percent of them own a Bible, eighty percent think it is sacred and sixty-one percent wished they read their Bible more.   Yet only twenty-six percent of Americans said they read their Bible on a regular basis (four or more times a week). Of those who do say they read their Bible the majority, fifty-seven percent, only do so four times a year or less.   It isn’t a matter of knowing what we need or having the ability or resources to do it, it is the doing it that seems to be the problem.   We can see what happens to a society that suffers from a lack of knowledge of God’s word (Hosea 4:6).  If we know the world needs it, do we think we don’t? God’s word is a vaccine against the diseases of immorality, a guard watching over our heav...

  Most folks go to school for the first time around age 5. Some may start earlier, some a little later but no one started as late as Kimani Maruge.    Kimani was a Kenyan whose childhood was interrupted by war. He had grown up as a soldier and survived. Many years later, the Kenyan government wanted to improve the nation's abysmal literacy rate, only 75-80% of adults could read. So, they announced that all children would be entitled to a free primary school education. The law, however, did not set an age limit for enrollment.   So, at age 84, Margue went to kindergarten. He didn’t do it alone, two of his grandchildren enrolled as well. His act was rebuffed at first but he became not only a great student but a great role model for the students.   Why was he willing to do this? He told reporters, “I wanted to learn to read the Bible and to count.” His bravery inspired other elderly to do the same. One ninety-year-old named Priscilla Sitenei went back to school for...

  There is a lot of stuff that divides us. We root for different teams, look a politics through different lenses, and have different ideas on what makes a good sandwich.  We come from different backgrounds, have different amounts of money in the bank, and have different skin tones. We may speak different languages, have different cultural norms, have different types of jobs, go to different bathrooms, and just plain see things differently.   Yet the one thing we all have in common is we need to be saved from our sins and we all only have one person that can do that Jesus Christ.   When Jude set down to write his epistle, he desired to talk about “our common salvation” but circumstances dictated he addressed those that were dividing the faith. I understand his frustration. So many times, we preach and teach on the errors and distortions we forget about the great gift that unites us.  Our faith should bring us together. The “common faith” we share (Titus 1:4)...