There are many people that I read of in the Bible, who I think I would like very much; I wonder what they must look like, what their homes must have been like, who their families were.  So many details are left unknown for us as we read of those who lived in the various days of the text we are given.  Isn’t it interesting how well we know them, though very few details of their lives are made known to us?

In Galatians 6:1-5, Paul states: 

“Brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you also won’t be tempted. Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone, and not compare himself with someone else. For each person will have to carry his own load.”

I was recently told that the message of the Bible was not meant for the modern world.

As a teacher, I hear parents asking their children all sorts of questions…

Do you have your lunch? Did you do your homework? What were you thinking?

As a mother, I’ve asked all of those questions myself.

The questions of the day to day are just that…daily reminders, endearments, or reprimands.

It was a snowy winter day when I stumbled across a post on social media. A friend and sister from long ago posted a picture of a sonogram and above it were the words, “I’m so crafty, I made a baby!” I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you my first thought was not a nice one. And when I realized my heart was being ugly, I tried to figure out why this seemingly sweet and exciting post was so hard for me. Was I jealous? My husband, Dan, and I had our two little bolts of light whom we loved and adored more than we ever knew we could. My family had ventured to Ethiopia to adopt our children. I had certainly earned my motherhood “stripes” having lived in Ethiopia with my own mother and two babies for five months. It was an adventure, and I loved the way we were blessed to do it. Truth be told, the thought of having another baby right then would have been terrifying. No, the reason I was struggling so much was because of pride. My good and godly sister was able to do something I never could, though I tried for many years - she made a baby.

I am one of those weird people who really look forward to making New Year’s Resolutions. I create a document of goals I want to accomplish in each area of my life and try to reflect on how I did for the prior year’s resolutions. However, goals and resolutions are pretty useless without a plan to accomplish them. If you read goal setting books, you will eventually get to a section about breaking them down into much smaller steps which usually break down to create a new habit. Habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” We can create good habits, and we most certainly can create bad habits as well. When we set goals, the key is to work on developing GOOD habits so that a habit does eventually become a tendency that is hard to give up.

A year ago today, I left Europe on emergency leave to go to my father’s bedside. It would be the last time I flew home to see him.

In the weeks that followed, there were many lasts. Last conversations, last words of comfort and gratitude, last touches, last hugs, and last looks…last moments, last prayers, and last breaths.

My children attend a school that uses a classical model of education. Although this entails many different things, one point that is emphasized is the classics in literature. They read ancient literature including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. A few years ago, my sister and I, in hopes of trying to understand some of what our children are learning, joined a book study led by one of the teachers at the school and read some of these books. There are many things I learned in this study, but one I was pondering on again today was centered on what Paul meant when he wrote the following in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:

I got up early this morning, around 3:00 a.m.; I am preparing my material for a lesson that I will be presenting soon and wanted to get some thoughts on paper. I opened my shutters and looked out my front window and saw my peaceful neighborhood, with scattered streetlights and calm homes resting with no care. I start to wonder how we can ever properly perceive the battle that we are engulfed in, when everything around us takes us out of the foxholes and away from any battleground, providing only peace and prosperity. How is it that we remain the militant kingdom in a battle for our lives?

I often talk in my classes about the “chance of birth”. We do not choose the earthly circumstances of our own births any more than we choose the circumstances of our own deaths. We spend much time during the days of our lives talking about the external things of our lives; we speak of choosing our own destinies, controlling our own directions, choosing our own paths. But, in reality, the most fundamental experiences that impact our lives are not chosen or directed by us, nor do they define who we really are. We are born on the day and in the geographical location that chance has provided us. Our spirits and hearts are housed in earthen vessels (I Cor 4:7) that have an outward appearance that we may like or not like, that have elements of beauty, characteristics, and attributes distinctive to us but not changed by our own wishes or desires, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6:27, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” Our experiences and circumstances of life are mostly determined by opportunities afforded to us due to these fundamental beginnings. We speak languages, pursue courses of education, work in places, and even marry people that are part of our earthly experiences and situations.

“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” (Matt 18:21).

Peter’s question makes so much sense to me. Wouldn’t life be easier if we could keep track of the offenses of others until, eventually, we could just write the person off altogether?

The other day at work, I was listening to a “fireside chat” between one of the executives where I work and an author. The author was sharing some interesting statistics that his think tank had pulled on the surprising similarities of priorities between political parties in the United States, even though most of us would feel as though the divide has never been greater. He ended up sharing that this is because humans apparently are notoriously bad at determining what the majority of people believe, and this is typically due to the inputs that are in our lives. We base many of our views around what others believe on the loudest and most frequent inputs in our lives. His application was to question the audience on what the loudest and most frequent inputs in their lives are – social media? the news? etc.? He then questioned if any of those inputs may have ulterior motives.

I’ve said for many years that although, of course, I know Jesus saves my soul, in many ways becoming a mother saved me, too.

Do you ever wonder about the encounter of Jesus and the woman at the beginning of John 8?  Though Jesus had been teaching now for some two and a half years, my guess is she had not been around Jesus much, if at all, before this morning.  One would suppose that she has been dealing with life, life burdened with the tangle of webs woven with sin.  It is evident that she, over the course of her years, has become entwined with the complexities of earth.  

As a Christian, my effectiveness is directly tied to my involvement in achieving God’s desired effect. The Bible is full of illustrations revealing the small role an individual’s life can play in God’s plan; we are all different parts of one body with Christ as our head (1 Cor. 12:12-31, Eph. 4:11-16), and we are stones in God’s temple with Christ as our cornerstone (1 Cor.3:10-16, 1 Pet. 2:4-5).