Want To Be Rich?

Growing up poor I never thought about having money.  I thought on things like having a treat for dinner such as ice cream.  Being poor never bothered me because I didn't know I was poor.  I thought everybody lived like me until we got a television set in 1954.  We had only two channels and compared to this day's entertainment it was so clean it would never make you blush.  I saw new car commercials and had no desire to have one of those.  I had my Mother, Father, and brother. It was a good life.  Oh, there were things that happened to make me think hard about how to get ten cents for a potato peeler for my Mother's birthday when I was six years old, but even back then God provided a way for me to get it.  That was no easy task!  It cost ten cents brand new at the General Store up the street.  I have some really good memories of the time I grew up in, but eventually, I grew up and I saw girls with their pretty dresses in school and perms in their hair.  It was in the fourth grade when I began to discover that there were poor people and there were rich people.  Above all though, I concentrated on my school work because that was my love.  I had very little time to wallow in self-pity over material things.

I Timothy 6:9...But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

I think this means those who hunger and thirst after riches. Working hard to make a good living is not a sin.  It is a blessing from the Lord to have the desire to provide for your family the best way you can.  So, if you want to be rich think about investing in the life to come.  That is true riches. my friend.

The Day I Cried

In 2005 we were attending a Church that I loved.  I had made friends with my neighbor lady who had two children.  She was white, but the father was black.  He had abandoned her and the children.  The two girls were twelve and eight.  The situation broke my heart.  The lady was attending the police academy and was planning to be on the force.  She was living in desperate depressing conditions though.  It came time for Vacation Bible Camp at our Church.  We had taken the girls to Church with us several times so I went to the youth director and asked for help so the girls could go to camp.  He said, reluctantly, he would pay for one of them if we paid for the other one and so we did.  He then put his arm against the wall and said in a disgusting manner, "Where did you meet these people anyway?"  His question took my breath away for a couple of seconds.  It was the way he said it.  He was upset, there was no doubt about that.  I told him that they were my neighbors and he wiped his face and said "okay".  I left.  My heart was so cast down that I might as well have cried to see prejudice inside the Church leaders like this.

The girls were so happy when they got the news and I never mentioned what took place.  A week later they all came back and the next Sunday when we were on our way to Church the eldest girl asked if I would sit in the back with her.  She told me the first day at Camp a girl accused her of stealing a quarter from her.  After that, she said that none of the girls would have anything to do with her.  She asked me why that girl would do that if she was a Christian.  That question felt like a hammer hit me on the head.  I tried to explain to her that some people are prejudiced and just because that girl went to Chruch it didn't mean that she was a Christian.  I held her hand and told her I was sorry that she had to go through that.  She never went to Church with us after that Sunday.  How sad at such a tender age.  

The Mother did graduate and became a guard at the Court House.  My heart broke for those two sweet precious girls whose father had left them and for the bad experience at the Church.  Prejudice of all kinds will always exist until Jesus comes back to make it right.

Family Today

Those of us who are "elderly" think back at a time when the family lived in a world with morals.  What has brought us from Mayberry to sitcoms filled with homosexuality and downright filth?  Everyone lives accordingly as to what is right in his own eyes today....Judges 21:25.

We live in a fallen world, but where have the morals gone?  Can we point to a decade where they began to slip away from us?  In 1950 "adultery" was against the law!  Homosexuality was a crime and punished by imprisonment!  We mourn for those who grow up in these times today where there are no laws enforced to protect our children from child molesters.  "Adultery" has been on the law books since 1900, but was no longer enforced somewhere around 1960.  

Satan wants to destroy the family as God designed it and he is winning.  His time is short and he is working overtime against the Children of God.  We could list a thousand things that have caused the family to be torn apart today, but what can we do?  First, we must go back to Mothers having a heart for God's Word where it instructs us in Titus 2 to live as Godly women.  

What can we do speaking from this chapter in Titus?  Think about our family and compare it to the family that God wants for His children while we are here on earth.  It begins here my friend.  If we want children who will grow up and be Godly people it will take prayer and applying the Word of God to our lives.