Ecclesiastes 12:10

    In  Matthew 13:34 we read, “ All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable ”. The parable, a short story with a spiritual message, was the favored teaching method of Jesus. Even today, those who might not know much scripture probably know the gist of several parable.   Why?   If we look at the next verse, we are directed to Psalm 78. This psalm speak about making sure the next generation knows about what God has done. It tells of famous bible ‘stories. By these tales, they would grow and figure out how God works and how it relates to them.    That’s why we need to make sure our kids know those Bible stories. The examples, the trials, the up and downs, they help shape and guide us. Not only that but they stick with us.  If you want to remember something you create a story, as you travel down that path it reminds you of the lesson along the way.  These tales are not just ta...

  Sometimes you see information for a restaurant or event that uses the phrase ‘kid friendly. Basically, it tells you that the place will accommodate children or at least won’t try to run them off.   Not all places will do that. I remember reading an article about studios adding offensive content to films to receive an ‘R’ rating. They did this for films geared to adult audiences to ensure kids wouldn’t be allowed. Kids' presence was seen as a turn-off for the target audience.   Not everyone is willing to put with the kids.   How about the church?   I have to admit I have seen some places that don’t hang a sign saying “stay away” but nevertheless the message is there. Children are seen as a nuisance and a distraction. They don’t like the noise they create or the messes they make. The idea is the adults are the audience and children are just  a distraction.  But Jesus would disagree.  In Luke 18:15-16 we read; “ And they were bri...

  Josiah's reign is unusual as the King of Judah is as it interrupts Judah's slide to destruction with its all-time best king. Taking the throne at age eight, he began to seek the Lord from a young age (2 nd Chronicles 34:3). He clears the land of idols, restores the worship practices found in the Book of the Law, and sets the Temple in order. Where did this devotion to God come from?   Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from his father Amon. He was an evil king that was deposed by his own servants. His grandfather Manasseh another boy-king broke as bad as one could get, the idolatry and child sacrifice that Josiah would eliminate in his reign were started by Manasseh.   If it wasn’t from his fathers, it might have been from His mother Jedidah. We know little about her but her name, it however might be a clue. Her name means “beloved of the Lord”. It is the feminine version of the name that God gave to Solomon in 2 nd Samuel 12:24-25. The name was to show he was love...

  The preacher gets a different view of the church on Sunday mornings. The crowd’s looking at you but you get to see the crowd. On occasion, you see a mother struggling to try to corral little ones. You can almost see in her face the thought “ What am I even trying to do here ?”   Let me tell you a story.   In college, I worked at a little mom and pop lunch counter. We’d also do catering. We didn’t have a large crew so my boss always pushed us to do lots of prep work before the crowds came at mealtime. Bring up the stock, make the tea, cut up the veggies, move everything you might to your station beforehand. Why? She said, “Work harder now so you don’t have to work so hard when it gets even more hectic .”   Any parent that has sat through a sermon and couldn’t tell you anything that was said, might be tempted to think it isn’t worth it to be at the assembly. But the work you do now makes the work less when it gets even more hectic. That early trai...

  Samuel had watched as the sons of Eli defiled the sacrifice of the Lord. He was around to know how Eli warned, scolded and begged with his boys to straighten up. He also knew how they had ignored Eli.   Samuel was the one thru whom God proclaimed the end of Eli families’ reign as priests since Eli had not heeded God’s earlier warning and disciplined his sons. He knew of the fate Eli, a man broken when he heard his son’s death and the loss of the ark.   Samuel had seen what happens when a man serving the Lord forgets to instill that in his offspring. When he doesn’t bring up his children ‘ in the discipline and instruction of the Lord’ .  Yet, he went and did it himself And it came about when Samuel was old that he appointed his sons judges over Israel….. His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice. 1 Samuel 8:1,3  How could the one who had seen it happen and knew...

  J.C. and Rollie Hall ran into a problem during the 1917 holiday season: Business had been too good.   At their Kansas City, Missouri shop they ran out of the white, red, and green tissue papers that were the era’s standard gift dressing.  Poking around the shop, Rollie realized they still had a stack of fancy French paper meant for lining envelopes. On a lark, he placed the lining paper in a showcase and priced it at 10 cents a sheet. The paper sold out instantly.   The next year, the Hall brothers pressed their luck, offering the fancy paper again during the holiday season.  Again, it flew off shelves.  By 1919, the brothers had decided to print their own special paper for concealing presents, and the gift wrap business was born. Today, wrapping paper is a $3.2 billion industry, and you can still buy it by the roll at the Halls’ store, Hallmark. [i]   You can hardly imagine today a gift today not wrapped up in something fan...

  All my life, I have heard that a sin is a sin is a sin.  That basically all sin is the same.  Now technical speaking that isn’t quite accurate. All sin bears the same punishment (Romans 6:23). We can’t afford to pay for any sin.  It doesn’t matter what sin we commit, when we break one law of God we stand condemned. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. James 2:10     That doesn’t mean however that all sin is the same.  Sins vary by consequences, scope and judgement.  Jesus himself said that there are greater sins (John 19:11). While any sin will bring you into judgment there are some sins that are weightier than others.   Considering this, what would you think is a worse sin? Murder? Homosexuality? Sexual Immorality? Unbelief? All these sins we see are condemned to a high degree in Scripture but I want you to consider one passage of scripture where we are told a sin co...

    I've yet to meet the parent, myself included, that didn’t have a blind spot when it came to their little ones.  We think they are the most special perfect things that ever walked the planet.  Go to any little league game, kindergarten graduation or school recital and ask whose kid is the talented one is and everyone will raise their hands.  The only way the kid might make a catch is if the ball bounces off his head into his glove, but their parents will still see an all-star.  We love them too much for anything less.    So then, parents tend to go overboard when it comes to their children. We decorate our walls with pictures of them, brag about them to anyone who will (and some who won't) listen and are willing to do anything for them.  Sacrifice time, money, self, and all reason for them.  That’s what good parent do .  To ask a loving good parent to give up their kids would ludicrous.   But that's exactly what ...

  Why do we hurt the ones we love?  Maybe we just don't realize what we are doing.  I think you can see that in the story of Joseph.  Jacob had several sons but his favorite was Joseph (Genesis 37:3).  He spoiled the boy with unique gifts.  Joseph got preferential treatment.  Even as the younger child he had status over his older brothers.  When God revealed the boy would rise to the top of the family, Jacob beamed.    But his brothers brooded.    You see all the “special” treatment Joseph received caused his brothers to hate him. They hated he tattled on them. They hated his dreams. They hated he thought he was better than them. They hated him so much that when they had the chance they almost killed him and they did sell him off as a slave.  That’s a lot of hate.    I don’t believe Joseph was a bad person in all this but let’s be honest, I’m sure he didn’t help the situation.  I think Jos...

    According to modern thinking it is a wonder that any of us survived childhood.  We rode our bikes without helmets.  We climbed on metal monkey bars over unpadded hard ground.  We somehow didn't electrocute ourselves with uncovered outlets.  We rode in cars without car seats.  We went to every house in town to “Trick or Treat”.  We spent the afternoon in fields and empty lots without any adults in sight.  We played sports without proper safety equipment and without any organized leagues and official rulebooks.  Sometimes we even talked to strangers. How did anyone survive!    Today, it seems that safety is a top priority for parents.  We will go to extreme lengths to make sure our children are protected.  We pad all the corners, childproof all the caps and read all the warning labels.  We love our child and want to protect them.  The thought of allowing anything, even the smallest and most unlikely ...

Monday Morning Scattershooting  while wondering if Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living, what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?     I happen to like comic books.  And yes from time to time I have been known to slip a comic book quote in my lessons.  So don’t think too low of me when I tell you one of my principals of ministry comes from Batman.  When Batman is asked to be part of the Justice League he agrees on one condition, “Gotham comes first”.  Now being that the Justice League deals with worldwide crisis and Gotham is in the world so one could argue that he could be doing things with the Justice League all the time and still be taking care of Gotham, but that isn't what he meant.     “Gotham comes 1 st ” means that his primary role is Gotham’s protector and he won’t let other thing keep him from that role no matter how important.  I try to keep a “Gotham comes 1 ...

           Willie Nelson had two hits that didn't go well together.   Mama’s Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys and My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.  Don’t get me wrong, I like cowboys but if you don’t want your kids to be like someone, they shouldn't have them as heroes .           Willie isn't the only person to get that mixed up.  It seems today we make heroes of people we wouldn't want to be like. We idolize people because they make a lot of tackles, run fast, look cool in movies or can hit that high note.  Never mind their numerous arrests, that they have had several children by different women, their drug addiction or that their clothing passed immodesty a long time ago.   Shouldn't the people we emulate be more than wonder trick ponies?  Is that all we strive to be?         ...

  Swiss researchers arrived at a fascinating conclusion about the impact of mothers' vs . fathers' church attendance on the future religious observance of their children .  The detailed survey indicated that if the father attended church regularly, and the mother was non-practicing, then 44% of their children became regular church-goers .   But if the mother attended regularly, and the father was non-practicing, then only 2% of their children became regular church attenders .   Even when the father was an irregular attender and the mother non-practicing, a full 25% of their children became regular attenders, while if a mother was a regular attender and the father irregular, only 3% of the children became regular attenders .     In short, if a father does not attend church, it won't matter how dedicated the mother is in her observance, only one child in 50 will become a regular attender .  But if a father is even somewhat observant, th...

         If you come to the building early enough on Monday (you have to be early, things get cleaned up around here pretty fast.) you will notice that there are most always little handprints on the front door.  The young ones are not tall enough to reach the push bar, and leave behind the marks.  You may think that they are a stain but I come to understand that those smudges are prints of a living church.           Children at times may seem like a hindrance to worship. They fidget, they fuss, they might make a mess.  You may think that baby’s cry is an annoyance but it really is the heartbeat of the church.  Without those cries, a church is beginning to die.  Show me a church with no sounds of children, no marks of little hands and I will show you a church that will soon be fighting for it’s very life. In those children are the faith of the future, the love of the pres...

   The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to eighteen and came up with $160,140 for a middle-income family. Talk about sticker shock.    But $160,140 isn’t so bad if you break it down.  It translates into $8, 896.66 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week.  That’s a mere $24.44 a day.  Just over a dollar an hour. What a bargain!      For most folks, the precious gift of a child is worth more than any amount of money. It does, however, make us realize how precious of a resource our children are.  A lot of money,  time and energy go into the raising of a child. All we invest in them can be wasted if we neglect their spiritual training. A child may want for nothing physically, but still can be starving if not given spiritual food. In Ephesians  6:4 we are told.. “do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”    A parent’...