The New Letter From God!

One day God decided he wanted to write a letter to all his children that were misbehaving and mistreating one another. He wanted to let them know they were jeopardizing their eternal home in heaven. So he asked one of his angels to go to earth and make a list of all those who needed to get the warning letter.

The angel was gone for a long time, and when he returned he was in very bad shape, bloodied and bruised and broken wings. He reported that the list was so long that perhaps it would be better to send a letter to those who were obedient and striving to love their neighbors. God agreed.

So he sent another angel to collect the names of those who should receive that letter. The angel was only gone for a short time and came back in good condition. He presented the list to God. God took it and wrote the letter, and do you know what it said?

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Who or What Inspires You?

There are lots of whats and whos that inspire me. To name a few:

Great Music inspires me. I have no musical talent whatsoever. (I once had a fella tell me, “not only can you not lead a song, you couldn’t knock it down and drag it!”). But hearing music inspires me and lifts me up. I could name a thousand examples, “How Great Thou Art”, the theme music from The Magnificent Seven, Unchained Melody, The Day the Music Died, Danny Boy, even Jesus Loves Me when sung by a little one.

Great books inspire me. Some of the most cherished would include, Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb, This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti, and on and on.

Great Effort inspires me. I love to watch great athletes, but only when they are pouring themselves out to excel. Maybe that is why I love and support Special Olympics.

Great conviction inspires me. I started to call that courage, but sometimes we think that the courageous are not afraid, but what inspires me is the one who will stand for his or her conviction in even when it seems to bring them into the lion’s den.

Creativeness inspires me. I love it when someone has a bright idea that makes everyone’s life better or more content.

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Where Would You Live If?

Did you ever fantasize about how you would spend the money if you inherited a fortune or won the lottery? Usually a fancy home is part of that fantasy for me. So when I found the website for Sovereign Buckhead in Atlanta, I found one of the places I would spend my windfall!

Sovereign’s Buckhead condos offer the exclusivity of being one of only 82 residents, all on floors 28 and above. There are no more than five residences on each floor, and the floor plans are determined by the position of the homes. The views are magnificent and the amenities that are indeed the things of which dreams are made!
My verbal descriptions can hardly do justice to the glamor of the castles in the sky. But you can check it out and see for yourself.

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Good vs. Evil

Over on Myspace, a group exercise for blogging this week, the topic is Good vs. Evil. Here is my entry.

I assume that almost everyone thinks of themselves as good people, that they do more good than bad things. Most of us can rationalize away the things in us that we condemn or disapprove of in others. And most of us have an idea of what evil is, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer & Adolf Hitler are representations! Two of those were mentioned in Tammy’s post. But we are not evil; at least, I am not!

However, if you read the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, you will find that in fact that there is none, good, no, not one. All have sinned and fallen short of God (chapter 3). The prophet Isaiah says that our sin separates us from God, that he turns his face from us because of the repulsive things we do. James tells us that if we are guilty of breaking one law, we are guilty of all. Because of his holiness God can have nothing to do with sin. But he is also merciful and has paid the price for our atonement. And there is no sinner so heinous that his or her sin cannot be removed by the gift of Jesus Christ.

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Child Safety

I read recently about a little boy who was killed when he pulled the big screen television in his home down on top of himself. I always cringe at such stories, knowing the heartache the parents must feel and guilt that some cheap child safety product was not in place to protect their innocent little one.

More than likely they had taken steps to baby proof their home and just had failed to think that the toddler could ever pull the tv over. They no doubt had installed outlet covers, baby gates and cabinet locks, but their baby is gone and the grief will always remain.

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Granny Thoughts

Tomorrow I will be conducting the funeral for Marceliene Burns, who has been my mother-in-law for the past 42 years.
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When it became apparent that Granny was not going to survive the latest ordeal, I wondered what I would say at the memorial service. Then I became afraid that perhaps I wouldn’t be the one asked to say anything. So I’m grateful that you have allowed me these few moments & I hope that I can represent Granny and each of you well. I decided on two points from Scripture that I wanted to make today. One of them is Matthew 10:42.

"And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."

If I’ve ever known a cup of cold water Christian, it was Marceliene Burns. She never set out to do some grand project or to make a big name for herself, but she always did the little things that needed to be done, or even that didn’t need to be done but that she wanted to do for someone, that fulfill the scripture so perfectly. I want to read to you some of the memories that I received from the family members over the last couple days that demonstrate what I’m trying to say about Granny.

When I sat down to jot some thoughts that I wanted to remember today, I remembered our first meeting in 1966. Over Christmas break I went to visit the girl I had met at college. I thought about hating her spaghetti sauce, but eating two plates anyway. And I recalled the phone call we made on our way to my parents’ home from our elopement. We decided to let Marcie know what we had done.

Of course I recalled her infectious laugh. I was easy to identify her in a crowd by that laugh. She even pulled a joke on my first born, her first grandchild two nighta before she passed away, despite being very weak. (The best mother-in-law joke I ever heard, Granny told me)

In the past eight or nine years, Granny had been able to get all of us together once a month for a Bible study at her house. It would be hard to overstate how important those family gatherings to study the Bible were to Granny. She wanted more than anything else for all of us to know the Bible and love the God of the Bible, to surrender our lives to God so that we will be able to spend eternity with her in heaven. Her husband, Chuck would sit and listen and hardly ever comment. Then came the day Chuck called and asked me to baptize him. (Days don't get much better than that one.)

And that's where the other passage that I wanted to share with you came to my mind. It's from Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. Both Granny and I could identify with that young man. In her early days, Granny made some decisions that were not in keeping with what she knew to be right, as did I. in my younger days. And we both came to understand how open armed our God is to receive us home when we repent. It was her gratitude for God's mercy and love that motivated her to be the great Christian lady she's been over the last several decades. And she knew it was never too late to respond to that loving God while you still have breath. It wasn't too late for Chuck in his 70s, and it's not too late for you today.

For several years after she retired, Granny spent much of her tie volunteering for the Host program, a reading/mentor program in the local middle school. There are no doubt thousands of other things that I could say today about the little ways that Granny touched our lives and influenced us for good. Maybe that's why President Bush 41 recognized her as one of his Thousand Points of Light.

When my kids were little, she took them to the Star Wars movies, and lately her younger son, Alan, and Granny had movie nights each week in these last months. Granny loved movies, the last one we got to see with her was Wall-E. She really enjoyed that outing, and no doubt it will make Wall-E be one of my favorite movies for a long time.

Like all of you, I received countless cups of cold water from the hand of Marceliene Burns. Maybe that's why last week in the hospital I realized what I wanted to say today about her, about how I would depict her, because the very last thing I got to do Marcie Burns, my favorite mother-in-law, was to give her a cup of cold water before I left the hospital.

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One Really Tough Week!

We have had better weeks! Last Saturday I got a call that a friend and fellow Christian had passed away. Then on Sunday morning we got word that another of our members had lost his battle with illness. Tuesday morning I received another call to announce that one of our shut-in members had passed away after several year of deteriorating health. I have prepared had three funerals this week.

Add to that information that on Monday afternoon that the doctors told my wife’s mother that they cannot do anything more to overcome a series of health problems for her. Her body is failing from leukemia, renal failure, pneumonia and a bladder infection. This afternoon she was moved to hospice care, where she will be made comfortable as she finishes her journey.

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