Skip to main content

Power of a Good Name


Power of a good name

  The voters of Sodaville elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, notwithstanding his criminal rap sheet showing robbery, eluding a police officer, felon in possession of a gun and other crimes. Most feel his electoral success came due to voters' confusing him with his father, a respected town elder. I’m afraid that good name won’t be of much value after the son gets thought with it.  
 In, 1 Peter 4:16 we are told, “but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. I wonder if sometimes Christ is the one that should be ashamed we carry his name. When we fight, complain, and bicker, when we cheat and lie and steal, when we gossip, scheme and degrade, do we not sully the good name given to us as followers of Christ? Let us seek to live up the name we have been given.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.