New family member

Jump to Comments

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned we had recently heard from my brother’s other daughter.  I just found out she has a my space page and checked it out.  Her kids are so cute!  I can see different members of our family in her children.  I wish I could be there, however, I’ve commited to sing at the church celebration this weekend at all services.  So this weekend will go by fast, but it will be well worth it! 

If you have a family member that you haven’t seen in awhile, go see them.  If there’s a conflict, put the past behind you and forgive.  In my KLove Devotional, there is this story:

• Telling of his experience as a POW, Ernest Gordon related how after work one evening a guard noticed a shovel missing.  Insisting one of the prisoners had stolen it, he screamed for the guilty party to come forward.  Then he prepared to kill them one by one till someone confessed.  Suddenly a Scottish soldier broke rank, stood to attention and said, “I did it.”  The guard beat him to death on the spot.  When he’d exhausted his fury the other POW’s picked up their friend’s body along with their tools and returned to camp.  At that point the shovels were re-counted.  The guard was wrong.  None was missing!
• What kind of person would take the blame for something he didn’t do?  Christ!  “We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for … how someone … noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.  But God put this love on the line for us by offering his Son … while we were of no use whatever to him” (Ro 5:7-8 TM).  Think about it: “God … piled … everything we’ve done wrong, on him” (Isa 53.6 TM), hence the only “Mediator who can reconcile God and [man] … stood between God’s anger and the punishment for our sins.  Having lived the life we couldn’t live and taken the punishment we couldn’t escape, He offers us redemption we couldn’t afford.  Now the questions we must answer is: If He so loved us, can we not love each other?  Having been forgiven, can we not forgive?

This really bonked me on the head.  Can you imagine the courage it took for that prisoner to stand up and say he did something, to take the punishment and protect the others?  Can you imagine the guilt the other POWs felt?  Do you think the guard had any guilt after the shovels were re-counted?  I cannot imagine what all of them were feeling.  Just being a POW is too much to imagine, then add on the abuse and beating, it is heart wretching.  Then to think about the beating Christ was given and the torture he had to endure, before they hung him on the cross to die.  Why did He die?  He paid the price for our sins, no matter what sin you and me have commited in our lives, He paid the price so we didn’t have to.  I would love to have that kind of courage and strength to be like Him.  Todd Agnew says it best:

2 Comments

Filed under Blessings, Family, Ministry, Music, Random Thoughts, Scattered thoughts, Spiritual, Uncategorized