Good morning and welcome. It's
Wednesday here at the ole blogger ranch and this one checks in as
April 18, 2018. As many of you know, I do read obituaries. They fascinate me. There's something about the way in which a person's life is described that is of interest to me. Morbid? I don't think so, but, that, I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder. I saw one that only had a photo of Doug. Underneath the photo it had these words, "Doug died." That was it. Nothing more. Maybe Doug was a fan of William Shakespeare who said, "Brevity is the soul of wit." An Ohio man included these words in his obituary, "Respectfully requested six of the Cleveland Browns to be his pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time." A fellow named James from Moss Bluff, Louisiana had this sarcasm put in his death notice, "His regrets were few but include eating a rotisserie hot dog from a convenience store in the summer of 2002." This one more or less is self-explanatory: "Richard Norton Bacon (Rick) of Lumberton has left the building. His friends will tell you he's in a better place. The rest will say they can smell the Bacon burning. He is stress-free and at peace." Then we have the computer programmer's summation: "Diagnostics indicated multiple cascading hardware failures at the root problem. Though his hardware has been decommissioned, Bill’s application has been migrated to the Cloud and has been repurposed to run in a virtual machine on an infinite loop.
" I can understand the thoughts from Amos, whose write-up gave this insight: "Loved everything about New York City except for the New York Times." Freddie's legacy included this conclusion, "His stories may have been only 50% true but they were always 100% awesome." Raymond obviously wanted everyone to know exactly how he felt: "He despised canned cranberry sauce, wearing shorts, cigarette butts in his driveway, oatmeal, loud-mouth know-it-alls, Tabasco sauce, reality TV shows, and anything to do with the Kardashians." One last one for today: "William left this mortal realm on Friday, July 29, 2016, at the age of 69. We think he did it on purpose to avoid having to make a decision in the pending presidential election. He leaves behind four children, five grandchildren, and the potted meat industry, for which he was an unofficial spokesman until dietary restrictions forced him to eat real food. . ." I can hardly wait to read mine.
I remember an older preacher I heard who said we should all live our lives in a way so that when we die, people will not have to make up something good to say about us. I'm preparing to teach this upcoming Sunday the so-called love chapter, 1st Corinthians 13. Jesus had said, "
By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:35) The folks that were born again members of the local fellowship meeting in Corinth, Greece, needed a lot of correction from the founder of the work there, the Apostle Paul. The 'why' we do what we do is always key. In Hebrews, we learn that without faith it is impossible to please God. In our lesson from Chapter 13 in the first letter written to the Corinthians, we learn that without true Christ-like love, everything else is pretty much meaningless. This love, like our Savior, is demonstrated by self-denial, selflessness, and sacrificial living on behalf of our brothers and sisters within our local fellowship. Jesus said when that is in place, the people outside will know that we are His followers. That chapter goes into a lot of detail to describe what true Christ-like love is and isn't. For those folks at that time, they had everything going on, preaching, teaching, worship, and activities, yet, they were greatly lacking in the foundation of the purpose, that being showing forth the love of Jesus, one to another. Very convicting stuff. I should know. I've been studying it. We all can be challenged in that chapter.
Amen.
It has everything to do with genuine humility. Again, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is our example. The great Christian writer C. S. Lewis wrote these words, "The point is, God wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are." Here is a blessing of humbleness that C. S. Lewis spoke about, "Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego….Only the truly humble belong to this kingdom of divine laughter…Humor and humility should keep good company. Self-deprecating humor can be a healthy reminder that we are not the center of the universe, that humility is our proper posture before our fellow humans as well as before almighty God…" Here's my take. I've been at this a long time but I have a long way to go in reflecting these truths in my daily living. What about you? (Remember, once you think you have achieved a state of humbleness, you just lost it.) May God help us all is my prayer.
Amen. ....More later.
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