I laugh when I hear people say, “Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in your garage makes you a car.” While I understand what they are trying to say, it has some holes in it’s theory. I could stand in a garage for a million years and I would not even begin to resemble a car. I might collect a lot of dirt, but I won’t sprout a muffler or grow tires. And yet, the…
I have never been a good poker player or a good liar. My grandmother said my eyes always gave me away. I didn’t like that when I was holding a straight flush or trying to deceive my parents. Now that I am all grown up and living a life for Christ, I am glad my eyes give me away. We have all heard the saying, “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. I believe that to some extent. I…
I saw that question on a bumper sticker the other day and I chuckled. It brought back childhood memories of the skating rink. I was never really good at roller skating, but I loved trying to do the Hokey Pokey on skates. As I thought about the bumper sticker, I thought life really is like the Hokey Pokey. We put our arm in and test the waters of some new adventure, new relationship, new food and such. We pull our…
Gluttony We have All-You-Can-Eat restaurants, we jumbo-size everything, $1.00 drafts and happy hour is now 4 hours long and yet we still want more. We live in an “instant-gratification” world. How much is enough? Tens of thousands of people die each year from alcoholism and obesity. I could have been one of them on a hundred different occasions. There are so many diseases caused by our gluttony; diabetes, heart disease and cancers of all types, depression, etc.. We are so…
Envy This time of year many people envy those of us that live in Florida. While they are enduring subzero temperatures, we are walking the beaches. Envy tends to be one of those acceptable characteristics. We all do it, it’s human nature. As with all of the deadly sins, we take it to an extreme. We envy those with wealth and so we steal from them, judge them and gossip about them. We envy other’s bodies and so we pay…
Lust The fifth deadly sin is lust. All kinds of images come to mind when we hear the word lust. Our first thought is usually sexual, but there are many forms of lust. Lust for money, lust for power, lust for fame and the list goes on. Lust is defined as, “a passionate or overmastering desire or craving“. It is healthy to be passionate about something. I am passionate about raising my child, about writing and helping others. When that…
Pride We have all heard the saying, “pride cometh before the fall”. Ever wonder where that saying came from? Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction, And haughtiness before a fall.” NLT We all have pride, myself included and at times my self-righteous pride has gotten me into a lot of trouble. There is such a thing as good pride, pride in a job well done. Pride in accomplishing a task that seemed impossible. It is difficult to swallow pride, but…
Sloth I have to admit that I am rather judgmental about the laziness of others. We all have those days when we lay around the house in our pajamas watching TV all day. I think those days are beneficial in some strange way. When that lazy day turns to habitual laziness we have a problem. When we start believing the world and our government owes us something, there is a problem. When we are highly capable of working, even in…
We are days away from probably one of the greediest times of year (Christmas). A time that is meant to be about giving and so much more. Millions of us got up at a time we usually sleep through to shop, to save money, to fight the crowds and traffic to get what we wanted. While I have never personally participated in “Black Friday”, I am not shaming those that do. I understand there is a thrill to it and…
We all have heard about the seven deadly sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. We sneer at the ones we see in others, we cringe at the ones we see in ourselves. I wonder if we ever contemplate the opposite of those seven sins? I wonder what would happen in a home, a community, the world if we choose the opposite? I challenge you, as you read this series of articles, to ask yourself those exact questions….