The Spoiled King

There was once a great king who was very wealthy. He was the most powerful man in the land and was always able to buy anything his heart desired.

One day the king saw a lovely vineyard and decided to buy it. But the owner refused to sell at any price. The king had never in his life been in a situation where he could not buy what he wanted. He stormed and pouted like a spoiled child. He lay on his bed and refused to eat.

Determined to get what he wanted, the king began plotting to unlawfully seize the vineyard. When he managed to do it, God passed judgment upon him. This story is in 1 Kings 21 but you can read the modern version in today's newspaper.

If you want your children to grow up to be men and women of integrity, don't give them everything they want. Make them work for it or learn to do without. And when they lose at playing a game, teach them that being a good sport and gracious loser is more important than winning. If they don't learn these things when they are young they will make fools of themselves when they are adults.

Seven Men

    Seven Men Who Rule the World From the Grave is the title of a book by Dave Breese. I read the book ten years ago and wrote a blog post about it. I just went through the book again and will only give a summary this time. 

   The seven men who rule the world from the grave and their ideas in a nutshell are:

Charles Darwin--evolution

Karl Marx--socialism

Julius Wellhausen--humanism

Sigmund Freud--sexual revolution

John Dewey--liberal education (no absolutes)

John Maynard Keynes--government economics (deficit spending)

Soren Kierkegaard--situation ethics

  Things have certainly not improved in the last ten years and the book is just as relevant today as it was the first time I read it.

If you would like to read the longer version, you can find it here.

https://stauffer-scribbler.blogspot.com/search?q=seven+men

Take-Aways

 Last evening was the concluding service in a week of revivals meetings at our church. Kevin Hurst was the speaker and delivered excellent messages. We may be a tiny bit biased because he is our nephew and grew up in our congregation. But it's more than that. He is a deep thinker and dug to the root of the subject. Here are a few of my take-aways from the week.

1. "You don't HAVE a soul. You ARE a soul and have a body."

Because we are temporal human beings we tend to think of things in the here and now. The fact is that we are eternal souls housed in a physical body. The soul continues to live on after the body dies. Where it goes depends on the choices we made while the soul was in the body.

2. "Be an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity." Although this was written to a young man, Timothy, it applies to every believer of any age. Professing to be a Christian isn't enough. We must live it out in every area of life---in the words we say, the lifestyle we live, the way we treat other people, in our attitudes, in difficult circumstances, and moral purity. Those five words encompass every area of life. And living it out takes a lifetime.

3. Joseph is one of the few men in the Bible that nothing bad is said about him. His faith was built on a solid foundation and made it possible for him to (a) resist temptation (b) endure suffering (c) forgive quickly. According to human reasoning, he had every right to pity himself and give up on God. But he was faithful and eventually saw the big picture. He told his brothers, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good." It is not wrong to be tempted or to wonder why. It only becomes sin when we yield to the temptation or doubt God.

4.  It only took one sin for Adam and Eve to be exiled from their garden home. No amount of good deeds could buy it back. We cannot save ourselves with any amount of good deeds. We need someone who can forgive our sins and save us from our foolish selves.

5. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

(James Russell Lowell)

East and West Meet at Lancaster

 On Friday evening, October 30, we attended the wedding of our grandson, Marcus Stauffer, to Irene Mbilinyi.

Marcus was born in Haiti and brought to this country by his adoptive parents twenty-four years ago when he was two years old. Irene was born in Tanzania and came to this country from and orphanage at the age of nine. She went back and forth several times but spent most her time in California with her foster family. She knew someone in Lancaster, Pa. and went there to attend college. That is where she and Marcus met. They were born on opposite sides of the world and lived on opposite coasts of the United States. Whoever would have dreamed they would get together?

They planned to use a small barn on a relative's property for the wedding but then decided it was too small for the 75 people who would attend. So the ceremony was held on the lawn behind the barn and the reception in a tent. That would have been perfect except for the weather. Fortunately, we were warned to dress warm so we had heavy coats and a blanket. But the poor bridal party shivered through the ceremony with no protection. Halfway through the ceremony Marcus took his suit coat off and put it on Irene. Black skin isn't any warmer than white skin!

The ceremony was short and sweet and then everyone made a beeline for the tent where it was a little warmer. We braved the cold long enough for a grandparents photo. We are the only grandparents Marcus has.

The buffet table at the reception offered us an array of choices. It was all very good and plentiful.

Marcus and Irene took the weekend for a short two-day honeymoon and will be living near Lancaster while continuing their studies in nursing. We wish them success in all their endeavors.