Yes and No

Today's Link
Thinking Allowed

Saying for the Day

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.Acts 2:42

Picture of the Day
(Our Roses taken yesterday)

It’s Sunday and today I think I am well enough to go to Church.
Last Sunday I was sick and didn’t go and it impacted my week.
Not that I felt guilty. There is no guilt attached to being sick.
No I just missed the infusion of power that comes from being in fellowship with people filled with the Holy Spirit. I missed praising God with them, singing with them, and even having my sins forgiven even as their sins were. I even gain from having coffee with some of them after the service.
Church does so much for me I really hate to miss it.
And today is a special day. Six young people will have a chance to affirm the faith of their Baptism and in the ceremony we can all affirm our faith.
I look forward to it.
I just can’t imagine loving God and skipping worship.
I just can’t.

News from Pigeon Falls

The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal.
It is early Sunday morning in Pigeon Falls and Pastor Joan is going over the notes for her sermon. She tries parts of it out loud to see how they sound. She wishes she had more time.
Later that morning when she has delivered it once she runs it back through her mind looking for areas that need changing to make them clearer before she preaches it again at the second service.
Here is an excerpt from that sermon:
This morning I want to tell you a story. It’s a story of two men. One by community standards is a bad man and the other a very good man. The bad man, we’ll call him Alf has been involved in numerous petty crimes and every time he gets out of jail he does something to get himself thrown back in. As our story begins he is hiding in the attic of a house he was going to rob but the owners came home too early.
The other we’ll call him Zed is a rich powerful man. Most of the people in town work in his factory . He is highly respected and looked up to. As our story opens he is being asked for a donation to help save a little town whose dam needs to be reinforced before the rains come. He agrees to give them $100, 000 , the total amount they need. He says he’ll have a check drawn in the morning.
One man says no to life the other yes.
But the story gores on. The man in the attic finds an old faded letter, only a line or two. It is a letter from a mother to her son telling him he is loved she and his father have forgiven him. God loves him and has always been ready to forgive him. Our thief's heart breaks and he begins to cry. He goes downstairs and tells the surprised owners that he was there to rob them but he changed his mind. They should call the police and turn him in. But they don’t. Instead they make him some coffee and talk with him about his change. He tells of the letter and the man begins to cry. “God has touched you” as he did me. You will never be the same again.
Zed , on the other hand thinks over what he decided to do and sends a check for only $10,000. They had no right to ask him for more. His yes became a no. The project failed to raise enough. The dam broke and people drowned.
One man’s no to life became a yes and the other’s yes became a no. What made the difference?
One got caught up in the grace of God the other in his own selfishness. Grace turns our no to yes. Grace lets us stop living selfishly and live for the Father.
It is grace that separates the two boys in Jesus' story this morning. One remembers the love of the father and decides to change his no to ayes . The other really doesn’t care.
It is when we discover how much God loves us that we are free to say YES to what God wants of us.

Wrap Up

I made it to Church. Betty and I were greeters. They lost our name tags but everybody seemed to know us. The Confirmation service was awesome. The sermon was great. Pastor Steve is beginning to share a bit of his vision for worship with the congregation. It was just a wonderful morning. In the afternoon I updated the website. I wanted to highlight the video of the laying on of hands in the confirmation service but I couldn't get it to work on the web page. I wasted a lot of time playing with html trying to get it to work. Finally I settled for buttons that take you to the videos. Then I did a little reading. Betty and Pennie were upset by the Packer loss. I did some link visiting.
Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA

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