Once upon a time a man lived in a little village that was overrun with skunks. This man was a good hunter and trapper and knew how to entice the skunks into cages. People would ask him to come and remove the skunks that denned up under their houses. He became known as the “SKUNKMAN”! He eventually charged a small fee for his services and most people were happy to pay him to take away the odorous little creatures.
One day, after removing the fifth skunk from a home, the homeowner asked what would happen if he didn’t pay. The SKUNKMAN said he put captured skunks into little cages and gave his clients thirty days to pay. If on the thirty- first day he had not received his money, all the skunks he had collected from under the non-payers home would be returned to the front porch. Needless to say, this policy was seldom enforced.
Our sins are like skunks, they seem to hang around and stink. Satan likes to bring them back to our door, over and over and over. He wants to shove our faces into our mistakes and shortcomings. He wants to keep us captive, ruminating over old failures. It is one of Satan’s biggest tricks, to get people to despair and think there is no way they can be “good enough” to be acceptable to God. The good news is that the price of our “skunkey” sins are paid for by the blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ! Satan cannot bring back our sins for payment, they have been paid, in full!
“ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
“…and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” I John. 1:7
H. Belloc, in his essay, “The Little Old Man”, said, “ that of everything which runs or creeps upon earth, man is the fullest of sorrow”. Sometimes, the events of life send Belloc’s observation about sorrow cascading deep into our psyches. We may feel overcome, even overwhelmed by the loss of loved ones that seem almost impossible to bear. But, over time, great sorrow is replaced by joyful confidence that God is with us and all is well.
Jesus was described once by the prophet Isaiah as “a man of sorrows”. A being that could have had anything He wanted, and died on a cross, how strange that would seem to a person who didn’t know the greatest story ever told! But, now, He does have everything, eternity in heaven with His loving Father! From Calvary’s misery to heaven’s glory . He’s home, home at last. And He calls us home too. Little sheep, come home to Me, and be safe at last, safe at last.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair…, struck down, but not destroyed… For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Selections from I Corinthians Chapter 4 (NIV)
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2 (NIV)
Have you ever been on the “outside” of things? Remember when certain ones were chosen last to be on teams in their childhood? It was usually the same person all the time. We all want to belong, sometimes desperately. How sad it is for those who want to be on the “inside” and are held on the “outside”. Wouldn’t it be grand if there were a place where who you were didn’t make a bit of difference to those who were there, and there you would be accepted, loved and even adored? There is!
It’s the family of God, a community of believers, who because of what was done for them, would do anything for you. People want to be valued – to know they were here for a reason – that is what fellowship is all about – to bestow honor upon those who expect it the least – a community where one is treated and treats others better than any place on earth.
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” I John 4:11 (NIV).
A Child of the King
By Lou David Allen
I stumbled and fell right down,
Silly me, I hate to be a clown.
I was hurt, I knew, really bad,
They all laughed and I was sad.
Mocking, “ You can stand if you try!”
But, all I could do was sit and cry.
So completely embarrassed by it all,
Why did I have to go and fall?
I hung my head in shame,
And thought, “It’s all me to blame.”
Then I heard someone sweetly say,
“Have you hurt yourself, are you O.K.?”
No, it couldn’t possibly be true!
The most popular girl in my school,
Sitting here, by my side,
Unwounding my broken pride.
Afterwards, all agreed she had done me a kindly thing.
But I think more.
I think they had seen a child of the King.
I’ve been to war.
Not a figurative war, which many people have experienced within their unique circumstance, but a real war where bullets fly both ways and mortars and rockets explode with the intent of ending lives. My war experience, of course, is no longer unusual as the United States continues adding to the longest period of conflict in our history. I understand the damage a war can do.
Private, figurative wars, the ones without bullets, have been raging for centuries and are just as spiritually damaging as the real wars are physically damaging. Spiritual wars are waged in our minds as we deal with the loss of loved ones, the breaking of a heart through shattered marriages, the breaking of promises and vows, the loss of stability financial or emotional. The lists go on and undoubtedly will touch everyone who will read this paragraph. The private wars have touched my family and me through suicide, cancer, divorce, death…
The Bible is at times so grand and the plot so complex it’s sometimes difficult for most of us to gather details about God’s will for us. We rely on scholars and theologians to interpret passages but because of disagreement among scholars we are forced to choose which we feel is most correct. That’s why it’s good to take an overview of the scriptures to discern the context; I describe this view as a “helicopter view.”
During my time in the Army, situations on the ground became much clearer when viewed from a position that permitted a view of the entire operation, not just one small perspective on the ground. This was done by finding high terrain, using unmanned arial vehicles (UAV), or jumping in a helicopter and seeing first hand the big view. This helicopter view is important when studying single scriptures to better understand the intent of the writer at that time to the recipients. The same can be said concerning the complete collection of biblical collection of writings. So what’s the story?
The little English sparrow is a great success story. The insignificant little bird is actually not a sparrow, but a member of the weaver family of birds. Brought to America, probably as a stowaway on early ships, it took hold in the New World and became one of the most dominant birds we see. Jesus also spoke of sparrows, the sparrows of Jerusalem. He remarked in Matthew 10 that two of them sold for just a penny. Then He makes the astounding observation that not one of them falls to the ground apart from the Father. The implication is that not only does He know when the tiniest of His creation dies, He is there. Jesus is making the obvious thing obvious. If God loves His little sparrows like that, then how much more does He love His children? When we are in trouble, God comes to our rescue. The psalmist in Psalms 102 considers himself as a sparrow alone upon a housetop facing great danger. That’s a pretty good picture of a helpless and hapless individual. But in verse 17 he says the Almighty would regard the prayer of the destitute. No one is ever alone who has his Father.
“What the Old Man Does is Always Right” is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen which tells of a peasant who trades his horse down to a sack of rotten apples, justifying his trades all the way down. If you can ignore the original moral it can be repurposed as a powerful parable illustrating the sins of attrition, those sins that slowly result in a drift away from a strong relationship with God. We can justify our actions all we want, but if in the end we are left with a rotten relationship our eternal reward is at risk. In an interesting twist, the man’s wife agrees with his actions all the way – showing that our drift can influence others away from God as well. Really, what the old man does isn’t always right. Read the full parable below.
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Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT)
I love this video and you’ve probably seen it many times. As you watch it again consider if our culture has changed our self-image and devalued the love we have for ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves how can we love our neighbor?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Practical Christian application:
- Rejoice in your Christian birth
- Fix your eyes on Jesus and strive to steadily grow in him day by day
- Be zealous, but avoid the emotional highs (peaks) and corresponding lows (valleys)
- Don’t be embarrassed, but don’t be satisfied about where you are as a Christian,
- More mature Christians should be patient and gently lead newer Christians to maturity.
Early in my life I remember a friend of mine who was a recent Christian convert and “on fire” for the Lord. He was constantly chiding me for not being a more overt Christian. He was a cheerleader for Christ wearing the right symbols, saying the right words, carrying the right books and confronting others to hold them accountable. I was crushed a few years later when I saw video evidence of this same person in a one of the most un-Christian like situations.
This memory came back in full force recently while reading Chapter 7 “Emotion is Your Enemy” in the book Wooden on Leadership by the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. In the opening sentences of this chapter he describes the beautiful peaks and valleys of the Swiss Alps but explained peaks and valley belong in the Alps not in temperament.
