Grains of Sand

In recent days a friend on FACEBOOK started a discussion on whether or not physical punishment, i.e. the “strap” applied to children produced violent adults. I responded by saying that I still had the strap that my parents (usually) my Dad used occasionally on my brother and myself. You can see the photo. It is part of a belt off a piece of farm machinery and is about 12 inches long. Believe me, it stings! I have kept it all these years as a reminder that my parents cared enough about us to use it when all else failed to drive home a point they felt we needed to understand. Because I happen to be reading in Hebrews these days where the Lord’s discipline is discussed, my friend’s post and the instruction from the Word of God made an interesting study. “ And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishe...

Pixabay I have a news app on  my iPad. This morning, like many other mornings, I took a peek at the headlines and shut-down the app. I don’t want to know. The world is too ugly a place for this bright sunny morning with its fresh fall of brilliant white snow on the ground. Evil is overwhelming. Whether it happens on the streets of Rainbow Village, in the remote regions of the Far North, in the back halls of power, in the quiet backyards of suburbia, or in some third-world rocked by perpetual conflict, it’s just too much. Enough, already. How do you stand firm when the ground underneath is shaking? I remember a few nasty tremors of the earthquake variety. Their arrival was a reminder of just how insecure our hold on anything is, no matter what the venue may be. Psalm 11 is made up of only seven verses, but they powerfully address the issue of rocking foundations. " In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me: 'flee like a bird to your mountain. For look, the wicke...

Pixabay I don't know why I think I can get away with it! But I suppose I am no different than most people in thinking that somehow God will overlook my "little" failures and follies. But offending God has its consequences, and eventually our failures and follies will come back to haunt all of us. And in case we don't think that our "little" ones are all that bad and God will overlook them, James 2:10 reminds us that to break one commandment is to break them all. And God will not let us off the hook. This was the warning issued by Moses in Numbers 32. Two and a half tribes of the twelve that had set out for the Promised Land had decided to settle east of the Jordan River. This was fine. But there was a condition. When it came time for God's people to cross over the river to take possession of what God had promised, the two and a half tribes were to enter the land with their brothers and help them conquer the Canaanites who lived there. Then and on...

Pixabay I don't know why I think I can get away with it! But I suppose I am no different than most people in thinking that somehow God will overlook my "little" failures and follies. But offending God has its consequences, and eventually our failures and follies will come back to haunt all of us. And in case we don't think that our "little" ones are all that bad and God will overlook them, James 2:10 reminds us that to break one commandment is to break them all. And God will not let us off the hook. This was the warning issued by Moses in Numbers 32. Two and a half tribes of the twelve that had set out for the Promised Land had decided to settle east of the Jordan River. This was fine. But there was a condition. When it came time for God's people to cross over the river to take possession of what God had promised, the two and a half tribes were to enter the land with their brothers and help them conquer the Canaanites who lived there. Then and on...

“ There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins ” —Ecclesiastes 7:20, NIV. Last night I watched the beginning of a televisions series called The Borgias. Though I haven’t read up on the subject recently and I am certain a lot of fiction has been added to the facts, history doesn’t deny that these leaders of the church in the fifteenth century (or any other century) was unholy men dressed up in holy clothes. Before I began to watch the movie I had been at church facilitating a discussion on evil and suffering.   The movie left me with that age old question prompted by the discussion: Why? Many of the saints of Scripture asked God, Why? Someone commented last night that it was too pat an answer to say that evil and suffering exist because we live in a broken world, and that we need to focus on fact that there is another world, a better world that is to come. It was a good thought. But the inescapable truth is that our world is broken, we broke ...