Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 14 – No. 3412 August 25, 2012
Thought for the week: "You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person." – Unknown
Several days ago as I left a meeting at our church, I desperately gave myself a personal TSA pat down. I was looking for my keys. They were not in my pockets. A quick search in the meeting room revealed nothing.
Suddenly I realized, I must have left them in the car. Frantically, I headed for the parking lot. My wife, Diane, has scolded me many times for leaving the keys in the ignition. My theory is the ignition is the best place not to lose them. Her theory is that the car will be stolen. As I burst through the doors of the church, I came to a terrifying conclusion. Her theory was right. The parking lot was empty.
I immediately called the police. I gave them my location, confessed that I had left my keys in the car, and that it had been stolen. Then I made the most difficult call of all, "Honey," I stammered. I always call her "honey" in times like these. "I left my keys in the car, and it has been stolen."
There was a period of silence. I thought the call had been dropped, but then I heard Sue's voice. "Ken" she barked, "I dropped you off!" Now it was my time to be silent.
Embarrassed, I said, "Well, come and get me." Diane retorted, "I will, as soon as I convince this policeman I have not stolen your car."
A lesson for teachers that should be taught in all schools—and colleges.
In September of 2005 on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.
When the first period kids entered the room, they discovered that there were no desks.
"Ms. Cothren, where are our desks?"
She replied, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk."
They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."
"No," she said.
"Maybe it's our behavior."
She told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."
And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.
By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren's classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came, and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, "Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you."
At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.
Twenty-seven U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place, those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.
Martha said, "You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it's up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don't ever forget it."
"I don't want to drive up to the Pearly Gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to Scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."
Recently two dear friends were inflicted by the soul-searing, heart-rending pain of the deaths of people close to them. One lost her lifelong companion and soul mate, a gentle, good man who lived a good life of 70 years. The other had to say goodbye to her totally innocent newborn son, the victim of a neurological anomaly.
I've tried to process these personal tragedies in the context of notorious homicides, including the killing of Ed Thomas, the teacher and coach in Iowa shot by a mentally ill former player, and the murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings, a Florida couple rightly revered for caring for and loving 19 children, including a dozen with special needs.
How can we explain the deaths of the good and innocent? In Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose young son died of a rare disease, shares his struggle to understand undeserved suffering. He found no comfortable answers, thoughtfully discussing and rejecting classic answers, including the ideas that God has a hidden purpose that we cannot and need not understand, that suffering is a test or a lesson, and that God leads our loved ones to a better place.
Rabbi Kushner says he found peace of mind when he gave up the idea that everything that happens to us is caused by or purposely allowed by God, or that everything happens for a reason. It's futile and foolish to expect the consequences of natural forces and human nature to conform to our notions of fairness. God, he says, doesn't send us the problem. He gives us the strength to cope with the problem.
The question to ask is not, "Why did this happen?" but "What am I going to do with the life I have?"
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."1
You may recall that several years ago Mel Gibson was bitterly criticized for his movie, The Passion of the Christ. Much of the criticism was apparently by people who didn't even see the movie. But that's not my point. What if Mel Gibson, or any other actor for that matter, were doing a movie glorifying homosexuality and/or gay marriage, or promoting the liberal and legal use of marijuana? Chances are many of these same critics would praise such a movie as being enlightening.
One cannot help but wonder if the accelerating moral decline in the U.S.A. didn't begin "in 1947 when the Supreme Court ruled on the 'Separation of Church and State,' opening the door for Madalyn Murray O'hair and her 1962 lawsuit which literally kicked God out of our schools. Furthermore, in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled to make abortions legal, and since that time some 50 million babies have been killed."2
Even many churches today have also gravely lowered their standards of biblical morality. Not so long ago, an openly gay bishop was appointed to the Episcopal Church. Does this also mean that a single bishop would be accepted and appointed if he were an openly practicing fornicator? More recently the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lowered its standard thereby opening the door to allow homosexuals to be ordained as pastors.
One cannot help but wonder at how far we have moved as a society from the light and how much are we now walking in darkness?
Years ago former president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, posed the same question: "In the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping to know the full sense and meaning of these times in which we live. In our quest of understanding, we beseech God's guidance. We summon all our knowledge of the past and we scan all signs of the future. We bring all our wit and all our will to meet the question: How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward the light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?"
I am also reminded of the words of President Ronald Reagan who said, "If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under!"
With God's help let us make sure that you and I walk in the light—the light as revealed to us in God's Word, the Bible.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help us as a nation to see the folly of our ways when we turn from the light of your Word and walk in darkness. In your mercy please send a great spiritual awakening to our country ... and let it begin in me. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. 1 John 1:5-7 (NIV).
2. Jerry Beavan, American News Commentary, June 8, 2011.
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