8-18-2018

Good Morning All,

               Psalm 90:12; “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”

       I was visiting with a younger mother the other day.  She and her husband have three children, two boys and a girl.  She has a job, he has a job and the children participate in just about everything.  They have soccer and spring baseball and softball.  They have dance, music in school and one set of piano lessons.  She has everything plugged into her smartphone which is synced to her husband’s phone.  She belongs to a couple of civic groups and is willing to help with the youth at her church.  I got winded listening to her.

    I asked her if they ever had time to eat together as a family.  She replied, “Oh yeah, real often, we go through the drive through on the way to a game somewhere.”  Well, I guess it is family time.  Yet does it really count?  One of the unfortunate side effects of trying to have everything is that when you get it; there is no time.  If you have and do everything, there truly isn’t enough time in the day and there really isn’t time in your life.

   We seem to think that in order to be happy or successful that we have to have everything, do everything and leave nothing for tomorrow.  Yet the one thing that truly suffers is our relationships because these need to be built on people and not on things.  I talked with a counselor one time who was seeing an increase in couples in their mid-40’s through early-50’s who had no idea how to interact or communicate with each other.  They were married in their early to mid-20’s had a family, chased kids for 15-20 years and when they became empty nesters; they were left empty.

    In our verse, God is telling us to plan wisely.  The most important parts of life here on earth are the relationships that we form.  God gives us the gift of faith.  He gives us the forgiveness of sins.  He gives us the gift of reconciliation.  He wants us to foster out loving relationships with those people who he places in lives.  He gives us the time, the energy and the wherewithal to make them satisfying relationships.  Yet we can’t keep putting “things” ahead of people.  We can’t keep thinking that having our children in one more event or that our belonging to one more club is the answer.  We have to stop seeing stuff as the answer to the hard work that relationships are.

    Relationships can get messy every so often.  This will happen when sinful people are put in the same room.  Yet God’s love for us is to have solid loving relationships here on earth as a dim reminder of the love that God has for us.  It is also to give us a helpmate here on earth.  It is to give us someone to share the glad and the sad moments with.  Our life should be about each other and not about stuff.

Gracious Lord, we see in you the perfect relationship between Father and Son.  Help us to strive for this type of relationship here in this life.  Give us the wisdom to pick people over things.  Be with those who are struggling with their relationships at this time.  Help those who are lost in the shallowness of possessions and guide them by your Spirit back into your loving arms.  In the precious name of Jesus, our risen Savior, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret