Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
six
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| Sam and his bale cake blowing out the candles (he's much into lighting candles with matches) The cake is compliments of Grandma and Grandpa, complete with orange bale strings and toasted coconut. |
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| Sam in his younger years... |
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| Sam with the strange snack I made him to take to school. |
Saturday, January 7, 2012
bullying
Not too long ago, I heard about some Congresswoman who was drafting legislation concerning bullying. That's awfully noble, but, in my opinion, is a bit like Miss America standing on a platform of world peace: that sounds so nice but really, how do you expect to curb a problem that has been festering since Adam and Eve's children.
Yesterday we prayed at our mom's Friday morning prayer group for a kid who is being bullied on his short walk home from school. Really it was a prayer of thanks to a God who brings solutions because it wasn't a legislator in St. Paul or Washington who stepped up to help. Not even the city police or the principal of one of the schools. It was his four or five classmates who decided to walk with him from school to his destination each day. I don't know how they came up with the idea. He hasn't been a part of their class until this year and he is a rather awkward fifth grade child. But in this small school where Jesus is taught, apparently something they heard sunk in. No legislation was passed. No item appeared for discussion by the adults on the school board. No, a bunch of 11 and 12-year olds put feet to an idea. And apparently, the problem (old classmates responsible for the bullying) has receded.
Oh, how many, many times I talk, talk, talk about the ills of some problem, but take no action. Lesson taken from some elementary kids.
And as for that bullying legislation: real change isn't going to come from legislation, it comes from hearts changed by a Saviour who launched a most remarkable rescue mission to save wretches like us. By becoming less. By stepping down, not up. By loving by example and not just with words.
This is really a heart issue.
Yesterday we prayed at our mom's Friday morning prayer group for a kid who is being bullied on his short walk home from school. Really it was a prayer of thanks to a God who brings solutions because it wasn't a legislator in St. Paul or Washington who stepped up to help. Not even the city police or the principal of one of the schools. It was his four or five classmates who decided to walk with him from school to his destination each day. I don't know how they came up with the idea. He hasn't been a part of their class until this year and he is a rather awkward fifth grade child. But in this small school where Jesus is taught, apparently something they heard sunk in. No legislation was passed. No item appeared for discussion by the adults on the school board. No, a bunch of 11 and 12-year olds put feet to an idea. And apparently, the problem (old classmates responsible for the bullying) has receded.
Oh, how many, many times I talk, talk, talk about the ills of some problem, but take no action. Lesson taken from some elementary kids.
And as for that bullying legislation: real change isn't going to come from legislation, it comes from hearts changed by a Saviour who launched a most remarkable rescue mission to save wretches like us. By becoming less. By stepping down, not up. By loving by example and not just with words.
This is really a heart issue.
from Oswald on repentance
The greatest work in the world is the work of Christ's reconciliation of mankind with God. Sin put each one of us at enmity with God and God at enmity with us.
We have too often forgotten God's hatred of sin. The consequence is that our sense of salvation becomes merely a sentient we presume that God, being love, will forgive any sinner at any tie. But if we teach that people are saved by "simply looking to Jesus", we are quite mistaken - unless we understand what the Bible means by looking to Jesus. If we declare that "there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved," all well and good; but if by that we mean looking to Jesus as a representation of God, if we are "lost in wonder, love, and praise" as we meditate upon that fact, and if we accept that sense of wonder as a sign of our salvation - then we are deceived.
Beware of any teaching that says "loving Jesus" means that your soul is saved. This simply is not true, either in Scripture or in the common experience of life. There are scores of en and women who love Jesus, but who loathe the doctrine of forgiveness of sins by the shed blood of Jesus. (from Devotions for a Deeper Life: A Daily Devotional by Oswald Chambers, p. 10-11)
Monday, January 2, 2012
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