Who's Granny Are You?

I subscribe to a daily clean funny, and I got this one today. Although it is cute, it has some toe stomping elements too...

The little boy came home from his first day at Sunday School. He told his mother that his Sunday school teacher was Jesus' granny.

"How did you reach that conclusion?" his mother asked.

"Well, she never stops talking about Jesus," he replied.

I am not a grandparent, but there is definitely a common denominator that connects most. They love to talk about their grandkids. You walk into my in-laws home and you would have thought they wallpapered their home (which is usually museum like) with snaps of my kids. But the reality is we talk about most that which we value to most. God thinks so too! Consider this passage from Hebrews 13:15-16: "Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased."

So, who's granny are you?

In a Class By Himself

As most of you know, we have a new addition in our home. Our new foreign exchange student from Italy, Federico, has blessed us and has begun to challenge me in many ways. He is teenager in every sense of the word, but he is insightful and thinks heavily about life and the things we experience therein. He is often taking in things, things that we see and experience daily without thought, in wonder and amazement. He is frequently asking hard questions about life and politics. These questions are not so hard because I don’t understand my convictions, but because I have to break it down in manageable terms that he can understand in his limited but growing mastery of the English language.

In our discussions, he often has shown that his opinions on America and its ways have been shaped not from personal experience, but by exposure to the media in Italy. He is young and shares many opinions that are consistent with his peers on both sides of the ocean, but he is teachable and open to discussion which is encouraging. I have found that we are all at a disadvantage when we look at things from a limited point of view. This is especially true when it comes to our experience with God.

I am currently reading a refreshing easy read by Chip Ingram called God As He Longs for You to See Him. I love Ingram’s teaching as he tends to, as Hendricks puts it, “put the cookies on the bottom shelf.” In his chapter on the holiness of God, he makes this statement, “God’s holiness, like His other attributes, is in a category by itself. He isn’t six or ten or one hundred times more holy than the best person you know. God himself is an entirely different category in which he is the only member.” WOW! That is humbling, because that means I am sinning just in how I am thinking about how holy God is, because I am thinking differently than He is. Often I think of God in terms of being more holy than I am, but he is so much more than that, he is in a class all by Himself. He is, as the angels declared, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY.”

Ingram goes on to say, “When we get a high view of God, we stop comparing ourselves to others because we understand how much we fail to measure up to Him. Instead of trying to figure out how close we can get to sin without actually sinning, we begin trying to figure out how we can get as close to his purity as possible.” That is when we cry out in the same manner that Isaiah did, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." (Isaiah. 6:5)

May God today expand your knowledge of who He is as He has me, and then worship Him for who he truly is!

"Thus says the LORD, 'Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest?'” (Isaiah 66:1)