Category: devotional

This afternoon I watched a small flock of sparrows trying, without success, to get food out of our birdfeeder. It is one of those feeders with a door that closes if too much weight is on the perch.  Sometimes it keeps the squirrels out but not usually.  They are smart enough to eventually thwart it.  The birds were flocking onto the perch thus making too much weight and thus closing the door.  No one could eat because too many were trying to eat.  This would be a good illustration regarding too many people eating off the government.  But that would be getting into politics so I will not go there.  Instead we can use the sparrows to talk about the disastrous effects of selfishness.
 
At first I wanted to excuse the sparrows because they were ignorant and did not know any better but people do.  However, on second thought most people don’t understand. When we live in a “me first, me first” culture, some end up with too much and some end up with too little.  Oops, that is also getting into politics.  
 
Let’s try this.  The key to happiness is service.  The more we do for others the happier our lives.  This is a major construct of Christianity.  Jesus did not call us to be rulers of others but to care for others.  This results in the abundant life that He promised us in John 10:10.  If someone is sitting home alone feeling neglected the solution is getting involved with others.  This can happen in a family, in a church, in a civic club or in a hospital doing volunteer work.  The idea is to get the focus off of self and unto others.
 
If only I could have gotten the sparrows to understand.

Just two weeks ago if asked what kind of squirrels do you have in your neighborhood I would have responded, “Gray and red.”  I had no idea that we had flying squirrels.  It seems they are nocturnal and since I am diurnal I had no knowledge of these big eyed creatures.  But for the past two weeks one has taken up residence at night at our bird feeder.
 
I am delighted to learn something new about my own backyard but at the same time I am a bit chagrinned regarding my ignorance. It has been a good experience for me.  It reminds me of how little I really know.  Occasionally someone will phone me asking a Bible question.  When I was much younger I would pontificate answers with great authority.  However, as the years have passed by, I have become aware of the vastness of Scripture and my very minuscule knowledge.  Also, some of what I thought was so I now know isn’t or wasn’t so.
 
The smartest time in my life was when I graduated from high school.  It has been an intellectual downhill journey ever since.   I have discovered that the more education one obtains the more aware they become of how much there is to learn and how little we know and how little time there is to learn more. Once I heard someone bragging about her education and wondered if she got her degree from a Cracker Jack box.
 
If you would enjoy the treat of being humbled, just spend a few evenings on a clear night enjoying the two thousand plus individual stars we can see with our unaided eye.  If that were all there was we would be overwhelmed.  But there is so much more, much more, much more, much more to learn.

There she sat, calmly looking at us through the glass door of our woodstove.  She did not seem upset and obviously had no idea of her precarious situation.  She was a sparrow that had come down the stovepipe into our family room.  The odds on her finding her way back up the pipe and out to freedom seemed very minimal.  My wife rescued her and set her free.  The last we saw her was on a branch of a Japanese maple.
 
We live in a world rife with weapons designed to kill millions.  There are groups who think they will be doing God a great service if they can use them.  How they can think this is beyond my comprehension. Obviously their Allah is not the same God as our loving heavenly Father.  The reason is while they think Jesus was a prophet they do not see Him as a duplicate character of our Father.   Jesus did say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”
 
While I do not want to spread fear and upset the tranquility of our lives, it would be Pollyannaish to ignore reality.  No, we should not be having our children jump under their school desks like some of us did in the 60’s.  But neither should we be thinking something horrible is impossible.  We don’t want to be like a sparrow calmly sitting in a stove.  Eternity is a topic worthy of our consideration and Jesus is the one and only hope for a world almost out of control.
 
We must also remember that Jesus offers us peace.  He did say, “Peace I leave with you. . . . Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid.”   

Are you as irritated as I when the phone rings and you get up out of your easy chair, rush across the room, only to listen to a recorded message telling you that you have been called in response to an inquiry you made?  You know you never made any such inquiry.
 
In the mornings when I record the day’s devotional on our 800 line* I sometimes discover on the messages left behind that one of those machines called our machine.  In order for it to send its message it first has to listen to ours.  Only then can it leave its message.  I am amused at the idea of the machines talking to each other.  I wish their machine would as a result of listening to our machine repent.  If so then it would stop calling you and me.  A hundred years from now, if Jesus has not yet returned, we can send our personal robot to church in our self driving cars to listen to the robot the pastor sent.  Upon returning home our robot can deliver to us a word for word recitation of the morning sermon.
 
Sometimes I get the feeling that even though we are in church in the flesh that the same routines and the same prayers are not much different from robots.  If we have a friend to friend relationship with God I doubt if saying the same thing over and over really works.  Imagine an evening out with friends where you said the very same things with the very same words that you said the week before and the week before that. Jesus did say to us in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

I’m finishing up a most interesting biography of the Wright brothers and I am very impressed with the extraordinary amount of work and risk of life itself that went into their amazing feat, which had defied so many others who had tried.   Many biographies are real snoozers while this one is a page turner.
 
I imagine that most of us think a biography of our lives would be very interesting, while an unfortunate few might think otherwise about themselves.  All of us are authors.  Each of us, even though we never put pen to paper, are busy authoring an autobiography.  We are a walking collection of experiences and memories, good and bad.
 
The joy of writing an autobiography is our power of choice as to which stories about ourselves we wish to remember or share.  I know some people seem to think because they have given their lives to God that they are no longer in charge.  They think they have stopped writing an autobiography and that God is writing a biography for them.  So often they speak of some decision they have made and they say God told them to do such and such.  What is nice about this is they have ceased to be responsible for what they do.  However it turns out, they can blame God.  If it is a good outcome they rejoice and are thankful.  If the results are not so good they say God is trying to teach them something.

I believe God gave us a mind and the freedom to use that mind. I believe each of us is writing an autobiography. God is not the author of our lives but He is an excellent writing coach.

Something caught my eye today while reading I Kings.  In chapter 7 we find the specs for the construction of Solomon’s magnificent temple.  When we get to verses 23 ff. we find the details for the giant laver in the courtyard.  Verse 23 reads as follows, “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.”  Obviously the writer of Kings (We are not sure who that was.) wasn’t a mathematician or was into rounding off numbers.  I am not a mathematician so if I am wrong on this will a real mathematician please correct me.  If the laver was a perfect circle and I am sure it was, then the laver was either 31.4 cubits around and 10 cubits across or it was 30 cubits around and 9.55414  cubits across not 10.
 
Before someone gets sweaty about the Bible not being perfectly accurate please let me point out the function of Scripture.  It is not and was not intended to be a scientific or mathematical record of God’s dealings with His people.  The Books of I and II Kings and other books were historical records of God’s interactions with Israel.  In them we find stories of His guiding and often His frustration with humans.   In II Timothy 3 Paul said this about Scripture.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
 
The Bible is all about Jesus and grace and redemption and love and forgiveness and character building and nobility and hope and unselfishness.  It was never intended to be a math or science book.

Oh, she was an ugly little girl.  She was probably six-years-old and very ugly.  There was nothing wrong with her hair and nothing wrong with her eyes and cheeks.  Her nose was a nice normal nose. But she was an ugly little girl because of her mouth.  We were in an ice cream store when she came in with her grandfather.  He bought her a nice cup of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream and cherries.  As he handed it to her she decided she wanted sprinkles. But it was already paid for and he tried to explain.  Oh, dear.  I’m so glad you were not there to have to witness what happened next.  This was when she turned ugly.  Out of her mouth came a series of “I want.”  Next she was lying on the floor screaming that she wanted sprinkles.  Oh, she was an ugly little girl.
 
Strange isn’t it how selfishness makes us ugly.  Ugliness happens when we only think about ourselves.  Divas are not beautiful.  They only think they are.  I have never met anyone who wanted to be ugly.  People spend billions on cosmetics and stylish clothes trying to be appealing when all they need is a smile and a kindness extended to another.
 
There is a wonderful song in the musical Annie.  The words go like this.  “Check out ourselves ‘cause you know you’re never fully dressed without a smile!  Your clothes may be Chanel, Gucci your shoes crocodile, But baby you’re never fully dressed without a smile.” 
 
If only that ugly little girl had smiled and said, “Thank you grandpa for the ice cream,” she would have been so beautiful.  Alas, hopefully she will learn.

In the beginning of the twentieth century one in every four trees on the Appalachian Mountains was an American Chestnut tree.  Historical records here in Leominster, Massachusetts record seeing the mountain range here in Leominster being white in the springtime when the chestnut trees were in bloom.  Today there are only young chestnut trees which grow to about five feet and then they die from the blight that wiped out literally billions of trees in the first half of the twentieth century.  There is one mature left in New Hampshire and small groves in Michigan, Wisconsin and California.
 
This afternoon during a walk in the forest I stopped by one of the five footers, soon to die, and rued its coming death.  It will never reach its potential.  It is like us.  Man was created with endless potential and then the blight came.  Now we get only so smart and then we die.  In this life we never will reach what we could be.  God needs to use the old army recruiting slogan “Be all that you can be” as an appeal to accept the gift of Jesus’ grace.  It is only by living forever that we will be all that we can be. But wait, if we live forever and continue to develop forever then we will never be all that we can be, because tomorrow will bring new opportunities and new experiences.
 
Is there something you wish you could do?  Have you ever longed to play the piano, organ or some other instrument and never had the time to learn?   What about golf?  Sure you will slice and hook in heaven.  It isn’t a sin.
 
Accept the gift.  Be all you can be.

According to today’s Associated Press report, “Dozens of bills opposed by Gov. Paul LePage have become law because he misinterpreted the Maine Constitution and didn’t veto the measures in time, the state’s highest court said Thursday.”  And so we add another chapter to human history the results of what was either misunderstanding or procrastination.
 
Genesis 7:16 tells us after the animals and Noah’s family were loaded “the Lord shut them up.”  The Lord in His kindness to Noah did not give him access to opening the door so Noah didn’t have to say “No” to the latecomers.  The Lord had been very patient, 120 years patient, with the masses.  Finally, the day came when it was too late.  Just as the law said to Gov. LePage, “It’s too late” God said to the masses, “It’s too late.”
 
About halfway through a semester I can predict with about 75% accuracy which student will not have their term paper done on time.  There are certain personality types that are late for most things including not being on time for class each evening.  Last weekend while I was preaching three people arrived for church when I was two minutes from my conclusion.  I wanted to stop and do Porky Pig’s famous, “That’s all folks.”  I restrained myself.
 
God is still patient and loving.  But don’t misunderstand that to mean it is never too late.  Peter wrote, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 

I have a set of books called “Harvard Classics – The Five Foot Shelf of Books.”   It is a collection of the greatest literature of the world.  It comes with a daily reading guide that suggests reading selections for the day.   I have all 51 books but my volume #7 does not match the set.  My set is blue and my volume #7 is brown.   Am I being anal because this bothers me?  On Amazon.com I can get a matching #7 for a very reasonable price of less than ten dollars including shipping.  My problem is why?  I already have #7.  The only reason I would purchase this is because of some mental quirk.  When I look at the set it is not perfect. This is ridiculous.  I need to see a shrink.
 
However, there is much to be said in favor of perfection.  In Hebrews 2 Paul tells us that because Jesus was perfect He is now able to be our high priest and save us by His grace. “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
 
I have known sincere, serious Christians who have been miserable because they were trying so hard to be perfect because they believed it was the only way to be saved.  However, the Gospel is very clear about our salvation.  It is a gift.  Accept it and live and then together with the Holy Spirit’s help, out of gratitude, strive to be like Jesus.  Enjoy the teamwork.