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Unexpected phone calls… we all get them. You’re at work and you get a call… Your dad has cancer and has only 12 months to live. You’re at work and you get a call… your wife has been in a bad car accident… come quick. You’re sitting on the couch watching TV and get a call from Ray Torno… Linda just collapsed and died.
We moved here in 1982 and Ray and Linda were already members here. We don’t miss services very often and neither do they. So for forty years we have seen them three times a week. When we moved here in 1982 and rented a house Linda took her kids and went over and cleaned the place up for us before we moved in. She didn’t even know us. So many little individual acts of kindnesses that when tallied together equal a heart bursting with love. We’ve attended all the funerals of dear and old friends with Ray and Linda. All the baby showers. All the wedding showers. All the picnics. All the social gatherings.
Linda taught our kids and grandkids. After class she would come up to us and brag on them and tell us how much she loved them and how special they were. She truly had a gift for teaching and rarely took a quarter off.
She and her work with the “kiddos” helped make Parkway special.
I was talking with Julie the other week and told her… you know… one of us is going to get sick and our health is going to fail and one of us is going to have take care and to bury the other. It almost seems to me that the easier part is on the one whose health fails compared to the one who has to watch the person he loves the most in the world decline and fade away.
I told her… I hope you don’t have to take care of me
e.
It’s a time to mourn and reflect and we need this time. Linda is in a far, far better place and my guess is that she’ll find all the kiddos up there and love them with all her heart. Rest in peace Linda… we miss and love you.
Thank God we won’t be getting any unexpected phone calls in Heaven.
Please pray and be there for my old friend Ray Torno
Most of us are familiar with the story that Nathan the Prophet spun to help David understand the severity of his sin.
In short, there was a rich man with many herds of sheep and a poor man with just one lamb. The rich man needed to prepare a meal for a visitor and took the poor man’s only ewe lamb and killed it and prepared a meal for his guest.
Nathan asks David what should be done. David replied that the rich man deserved to die but should be punished by giving the poor man four of his lambs.
Nathan said… you are the man.
Remember that David committed two grievous sins… he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband Uriah (one of the thirty mighty men) killed.
But wait the story only points at one sin… adultery with Bathsheba not the murder of Uriah… or does it?
The rich man with many sheep is David (he did have several wives). The poor man with one ewe lamb is Uriah the Hittite and the ewe lamb is Bathsheba.
Let me suggest that the ewe lamb is a double figure. The ewe lamb not only represents Bathsheba and the addition of her to David’s flock of wives but also represents Uriah because in Nathan’s tale the ewe lamb is killed and eaten… and so was Uriah the Hittite so David could have his wife.
Why didn’t Nathan just confront David and say you killed Uriah and had sex with his wife? Because the illustration in a story helped David understand the enormous magnitude of his sin and God’s enormous grace in forgiving him and not punishing him with taking his life… which he roundly deserved.
David never forgot his sin and probably remembered it every time he looked into the eyes of his wife Bathsheba. We should remember it too.
“As for you, son of man, your people are talking together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, saying to each other, ‘Come and hear the message that has come from the Lord.’
My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.
Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.” Ezekiel 33.
These are the words of Jehovah God speaking to his Prophet Ezekiel and secondarily spoken to us as well.
These words describe godly people who wear well the façade of godliness.
They may attend services well.
They may chastise others who do not attend well.
They may speak out in class.
They may shout out an Amen when the teacher/preacher makes a good point.
They may sing well with heart felt enthusiasm.
They may be willing to take a bullet for Jesus Christ.
All those things look good, but what good are they if…
They are unforgiving and unforgetting?
They talk bad about other people behind their backs?
They are easily offended?
They don’t sacrifice their own needs for the needs of others?
They are judgmental?
They are characterized by anger and inflammatory words?
They are not only willing to take a bullet for Jesus Christ but also willing to shoot a few others with bullets.
Let’s hope when the façade of righteousness is stripped off on the judgment day that God finds that we are righteous through and through.
Hear all of God’s words and devote yourselves to them 100%
“It is you priests who show contempt for my name. “But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’ “By offering defiled food on my altar. “But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’
By saying that the Lord ’s Table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong?
Malachi chapter one, demonstrates a principle of unacceptable sacrifice (or worship) to God. The Priests were not offering the best of their flocks for sacrifice but rather the worst. Oh yes, they were following the form of sacrifice but the substance of the sacrifice was improper.
So too sacrifice/worship today.
Prayer has been called the “sacrifice of our lips” Are our prayers more form or substance? Did we memorize a prayer when we were kids and still continue to offer that immature prayer to God on a regular basis or do our prayers reflect spiritual maturity and spiritual excellence?
Do we celebrate the Lord’s Supper in an obligatory way like making up our beds every morning or do we look forward to it as a time of reflection and a time when we can come together as a spiritual family to demonstrate the unity of love to our Holy Father?
Do we un-necessarily substitute our assembling with watching services on TV? Isn’t that a little like offering a one - eyed crippled lamb to God?
And in so many other areas.
As Christians let’s look at our flock and pick out the most excellent and very best lamb that we have to offer to God… he deserves no less and I’m not talking about sheep.
There were two prophets identified in the scriptures who shared similar experiences… they were both in boats in stormy weather and were sleeping through the storm while the other occupants feared for their lives.
Jonah, in the Old Testament, had been sent to the Gentiles to deliver a message from God. He hated those Gentiles so much that he tried to out run God and God sent the furious storm… through which Jonah slept. He eventually repented and delivered (unwillingly) God’s message to the Gentiles.
Jesus, in the New Testament, with his disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee when another furious storm struck. Jesus of course, like Jonah, was sleeping through it. Unlike Jonah at the behest of the disciples Jesus spoke a few words and extinguished the storm.
And then, like Jonah, Jesus went to a Gentile country to do battle with Satan and cast demons out of a man and into a herd of unclean hogs.
Of course Jesus was no ordinary Prophet… he was the Son of God and had the power to extinguish any kind of storm and carry his message of salvation to unclean Gentiles to make them clean and acceptable in the sight of God. And sent the unclean demons where they belonged… not in the temple of God but into unclean swine.
It can’t be by accident that Jonah and Jesus both endured literal stormy weather and I guess the message for us is clear… we can have great storms in our lives, usually caused by Satan, but with confidence and faith in Jesus Christ those storms can be quieted so that we can sail through life in calm seas and sunny skies.
Give faith a try and let him lift you out of the storm.
“At first you caught my eye,
And then you stole my heart.
I didn’t think I could
Love you more after that.
But now I realize
You have even become
A part of the person I am.
And my very finest qualities
Come from loving you.”
I saw these sentiments written on a card and I was struck by the profundity of their meaning.
The beginning of a relationship with all its expectations and in its naivete being satisfied with those early emotions and considering them to be complete and enough.
And then the progression to a more mature relationship and the surprise at what the “two becoming one flesh” really means. Things better understood by experience rather than the expression of mere words.
And then finally realizing that loving another person causes changes in our very own selves that we had no way of expecting. Changes that are awe inspiring. The transforming power of love.
What a blessing here on earth, but understand… the real blessing is being transformed into the very image of Jesus Christ. Becoming a part of him and realizing that our very finest qualities come from not only his loving us but also from our loving him.
That’s hard to understand in the very earliest days of becoming a Christian and I suppose that’s the way God meant for it to be so that we can wake up each day and reflect on where we’ve been and where we are and where we are going.
Praise God!
Julie pointed out something about me the other day. She said I like to make conversation with ordinary people like wait staff at a restaurant or workers that come to our house or bus drivers or cruise ship staff. I guess she’s right… who am I to argue with her, she knows me better than anyone else. Invariably though I will ask those kinds of folks this question… “Where do you go to church?” What I’m looking for are those who are not going anywhere or those who are not happy where they are going. Whereupon I have Julie give them a Parkway Church of Christ business card.
I’ve had some success with that. I had a waitress tell me that she had been struggling and thought I was sent from God. A guy came out the other day to do electrical work at our home and he said he and his young family would be attending. But who really knows how much success there has been? Sometimes you just can’t tell.
I am friends on Facebook with a concierge who worked at a hotel we stayed at in Italy. I’m also friends on FB with a young Filipino guy who worked on a cruise ship we were on. Also a Russian tour guide. Of course on Facebook I’m not ashamed of my faith and they see the religious articles I occasionally share.
Work at being friendly with everyone and don’t be afraid to ask the simple question… “where do you go to church?” Maybe just maybe you were sent from God to help someone discover their faith.
