Prodigal Daughter

Why would God go to all the trouble to endure our bad choices and our flagrant sinning in order to have relationship with us? Hear the story of the lost son from the modern setting as told by Philip Yancey in his book What’s so Amazing about Grace.

Yancey tells the story of a prodigal daughter who grows up in Traverse City, Michigan. Disgusted with her old fashioned parents who overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, the length of her skirts, she runs away. She ends up in Detroit where she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. The man with the big car – she calls him “Boss” – recognizes that since she’s underage, men would pay premium for her. So she goes to work for him. Things are good for a while. Life is good. But she gets sick for a few days, and it amazes her how quickly the boss turns mean. Before she knows it, she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, and all the money goes to support her drug habit.

One night while sleeping on the metal grates of the city, she began to feel less like a woman of the world and more like a little girl. She begins to whimper. “God, why did I leave. My dog back home eats better than I do now.” She knows that more than anything in the world, she wants to go home. Three straight calls home get three straight connections with the answering machine. Finally she leaves a message. “Mom, dad, its me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, I‘ll understand.” During the seven hour bus ride, she’s preparing a speech for her father. And when the bus comes to a stop in the Traverse City station, the driver announces the fifteen-minute stop. Fifteen minutes to decide her life.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. But not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There in the bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads – Welcome Home!

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes and begins her memorized speech. He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. We’ll be late. A big party is waiting for you at home.”

Eluding Our Rescue

In 1981, a Minnesota radio station reported a story about a stolen car in California. Police were staging an intense search for the vehicle and the driver, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief. On the front seat of the stolen car sat a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had intended to use the crackers as rat bait. Now the police and the owner of the VW Bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car. So often when we run from God, we feel it is to escape his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue.

Source Unknown

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All It Would Take To Make Me Happy

Charles Shultz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a Christian message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to love one another. Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another:

CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.
Lucy: Are you sure?
CB: Of course I'm sure!
Lucy: You mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing?
CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean!
Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy?
CB: And then I'll be happy!
Lucy: [Lucy turns and walks away saying] I can't do it!

What Lucy can not do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. God loves you and is telling you today, "He loves you!" "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."

Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com

The Four Chaplains

The Four Chaplains On a cold February 4, 1943, the American ship, the Dorchester, was carrying several hundred soldiers off the coast of Greenland. Suddenly, an enemy torpedo ripped into its hull. Within minutes the ship would go under. Amid the panic and confusion, four chaplains, Alex Good, Jewish; John Washington, Catholic; Clark Poling and George Fox, Protestants, stood together with their life belts on. Many of the soldiers had none. Without lifeboats, their chances for survival were nil. Quickly, the chaplains took off their belts and gave them to four men. As the ship sank, the chaplains, with hands firmly clasped, prayed the Lord's prayer. The chaplains gave their lives for the others, because One other had first stood in for them. "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12) That's a tall order. Well, not so unreal, considering his love stands taller than life itself. James Weekley, Tilted Haloes, CSS Publishing Company http://www.Sermons.com/