Little Actions Can Result in Big Blessings

Opportunities Abound Be a Blessing!

A couple of days ago I had an important appointment. Even though I wasn't sure how to get to the place where the meeting was to happen, I arrived on time, early, actually. I was dressed OK. I thought things went well. When I finished I called Kathy to give her a verbal "thumb-up," and see if she wanted me to pick up anything on the way home (A man's got to earn his points when he can.). It was then that disaster, or at least potential disaster struck. I reached in my left pocket and my keys weren't there. I patted my other pockets, looked in my arm-full of stuff I was carrying, and they weren't there. I went back to the place where I had had my meeting, and they weren't there. The receptionist said she hadn't seen any.  Sinking feeling. Calculation as to how much trouble and expense would be involved making new keys. Wondering if there were any identifying marks on the key-ring that would lead to compromised security. Sinking feeling is intensified. I called Kathy. It took an hour out of her day to bring me another key. That gurgling sound is the sound of my point total going down the drain. My one hope was that when she arrived with the other car key, I'd find that I had locked my keys in the car, and all would be well. Alas, even after I checked under seats and floor mats, I didn't find the lost keys. I went back to the receptionist and gave her my card with a request to "call me if . . ." I once more back-tracked where I had walked, and was about ready to give up, when I remembered a couple of guys had been working on some building project in the corner of the parking garage. I hadn't walked particularly close to where they were, so I hadn't thought of asking them earlier, but in desperation I thought I'd give it a shot. As I approached them the guy who appeared to be in charge read the question on my face. Before I even asked, he pointed to my keys hanging on a faucet handle. I soon confirmed that yes those were my keys. When I went over to thank the guy he told me that he had spotted the keys on the pavement and asked his trainee to pick them up and put them where they might be seen. It would have been very easy for those two guys to have said, "Oh, just leave them alone." or even, "Serves the person right, they should be more careful with their keys." Obviously, though, they had better thoughts than that, and I'm blessed because of it.   “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” (Matthew7:12, NLT) I'm sure glad those guys were thinking along those lines. I need to think of ways that I can apply Jesus' words and be a blessing to others, maybe even someone I've never even met. It's STTA (Something To Think About).

Sharing the Good News. Building the Community:

Let me give you readers a heads-up, maybe a warning.  You might want to quit here.  This STTA is more stream of consciousness than usual, perhaps rantish, and with more polical overtones than I am generally comfortable with. I love my little community, nestled in the Alleghany (for you folk up north, that is the way to spell it) Mountains.  My town is made up of pickup-driving, deer-hunting, fish-catching, lunchbox-toting folk who have been wonderful neighbors for all of my adult life.  They helped me raise my boys.  Covington is a mill town.  It has been for most of its history.  It's just that the product "the mill" produces has changed.  For all of my lifetime, and a couple before mine, our chief export has been paper/packaging and activated carbon.  No matter where you are in the world there is likely to be a package on your shelf, that was once a tree that grew not far from me, and I can almost guarantee that you have driven a vehicle in which our carbon is part of the environmental control system. It hurts me to see the forces-that-be make decisions that diminish my community.  The papermill is like many industries.  It has gone through a succession of mergers and sell-offs in recent decades.  It appears that it has decided that as many of the people who think for their supper as possible ought to be moved to Richmond or elsewhere.  The railroad made a similar decision a while back.  Maybe putting all the really smart, well-educated heads all in the same place makes sense.  Personally, I think it removes them from a great source of wisdom with greasy hands.  When I moved to the "Highlands" about forty-five years ago, the community had a mix of managers, professionals, and workers.  Doctors and lawyers were part of the mix.  Top execs sat next to newly hired high school grads at basketball games.  Not only has corporate centralization of management changed all that, but amorphous entities, like market-realities and globalization have reached in with unseen hands to change my town--not for the better. From the chair where I sit it seems clear to me.  I am surrounded by mountains covered with trees.  For longer than folk can remember, hearty men have hauled logs out of these hills and valleys.  Millions of logs, in the days before coal was used, were reduced to charcoal to fire the early iron-furnaces of the region. Teams of horses and mules hauled gigantic logs to sawmills, train tracks that no longer exist carried bark to leather tanning plants. In a seemingly never ending procession I've seen logs, pulp-wood, and trailers full of woodchips go by my house to the papermill.  Yet the mountains are green in summer and a brilliant calaidascope of color in the fall.  Long ago those who think ahead realized that unless new trees were planted, or in the case of hardwoods, allowed to repopulate on their own, the resource would be gone, the soil would wash into the rivers and out to sea.  Nothing of value would be left. I wish the same kind of thinking were applied to the human-resources.  I look at what my home was, what it is, and where it is headed, and I have an ache in my gut.  Certain industries are built on extraction.  You mine gold until it is gone, then you are done.  I don't think anyone has planned to do so, but it looks like to me that my community is on that same extraction trajectory, only it's not something dug from the ground that is being extracted.  It's people. When you take a woman or a man with a PhD out of a place like Covington and move them to a place like Richmond it makes a difference.  If that well-educated person is the kind that I've known over the years, they are making great contributions in the community at large, their absence from town makes it less likely that the next young engineer, school teacher, or physician who sets up shop here will choose to buy a house, put their kids in the local school, etc. etc.  What I've seen happen in my time in my home, here, is the PhD gets moved to a place where you can't throw a rock without hitting someone with a graduate degree, the young professional who plies her trade here decides to live elsewhere and commute, and the sharp high-schooler sees no alternative other than relocation, again there are etc. etc.  If we treated our forest resources like we are managing our human resources our mountains would be nude. I'm not saying it is anybody's fault.  I am saying that if anything is going to change somebody has to do something about it. Believe it or not, I started in on these somewhat dark thoughts by thinking about an outreach that my church just finished.  As we have for a couple of decades, Covington Bible Church hosted a Live Nativity.  For free--in fact we give away cookies and hot-chocolate--we host a simple, but effective event that points people in our community to the real meaning of Christmas.  Obviously I'm pleased with this event, because it is an outreach centered around the Gospel, the heart of the faith that I have spent my life proclaiming.  I'm pleased, as well, however, with the fact that this is a home-grown, local, people being "good-for-nothing" effort.  It is the kind of thing that people do not only because they love the Lord, but because they love their neighbors.  It is our gift to our community. No doubt a young lady who reported back to her mom has a certain measure of bias, but I was encouraged with her report.  She now lives in big, Happening-place, USA.  She attended a Live Nativity in her new home. She wrote back to her mom, who is a key leader/worker in our outreach,  "Ours [meaning the one she grew up with] is better."  I thought it was ironic when I talked to a young family after their visit to our live nativity.  I asked them if they had a good time.  They gave us high praise.  "They used to have an event like this near our home.  For some reason they don't do it anymore."  The irony is, these folk are from one of those places where the upwardly mobile who work in my community often choose to live and from whence they commute to work here. A fellow pastor has said, "The church is this world's last best hope."  As I look around at my community I see that the church is one of the few entities prepared to invest in little places like the place I call home. If you are still with me, thanks for listening.  I hope you enjoyed your coffee; mine was good.  I need to change clothes and go down to help some guys tear down the sets from the live nativity.  Tearing down, it's part of what we do to build-up our home.   It's STTA.       We thank the Lord that we were able to give this gift to our neighbors.  Merry Christmas.

Sacrifice, III

“And do not neglect doing good and sharing,
for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” 
(Hebrews 13:16, NASB95)  

I Peter 2:5 says that part of God's purpose in drawing people to Himself and making them His children is so they can "offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

Many think that Christians are people who do good deeds in order to earn their way to heaven--sort of a celestial barter system.  The reality is, Followers-of-Jesus engage in good works because they are on their way to heaven.  They have been   “rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred . . . to the kingdom of His beloved Son,” (Colossians 1:13).  Ultimately this Kingdom will overcome all the consequences of sin and death in this world.  The "whole creation," which "groans and travails" in it's current state, will one day be "be set free from its slavery to corruption" (Romans 8:21).
Clearly part of our worship of our Redeemer-God is to join with Him in doing Good works in this fallen world.  We cannot, by our human efforts, reverse the curse of sin, but we can--to use a former president's image--create points of light.  Properly done, and accompanied with appropriate Gospel witness, these points of light point to the Light of the world, Who is Jesus.

Christ-follower, find something good to do today.  Do it in the name of, and for the glory of the Lord.  It is a sacrifice with which God is pleased.

It's Something to Think About.

This STTA is part of a series inspired by Pastor Doug Williams's message from last Sunday.  In his handout he suggested that we look at these Bible verses to investigate "spiritual sacrifices": Romans 12:1, Hebrews 13:15-16, Philippians 4:18, Romans 15:15-16.  We are doing that in this week's STTAs.  You can read past STTAs here.
Here is an article that explores the relationship between what God is doing in individual hearts and what He is doing in the world.
 

God's Story in His Own Words. a message composed of nothing but Scripture that presents the flow of Divine Revelation from "In the beginning," to the final "Amen."

You can find directions for getting where you really want to go here.