Best and Worst
Six and a half billion people can be divided into many categories e.g. men and women, young and old, Jew and Gentile, saint and sinner, etc.
And then there are Best and Worst categories. Listen to a person. Hear the words that fall from their lips. Let your ear be sensitive to the tone, the message, and the intent. You will not need a committee to decide whether you are encouraged or discouraged by the story you hear.
Take Granny Crews: she qualifies, having celebrated her 101st birthday Saturday, to be called granny. I phoned Granny in South Boston, Virginia from New Mexico to congratulate her. She took charge of the conversation to tell me how “wonderful” it is to be alive, how “wonderful” to have her family, how “wonderful” it is at 101 to go to church with most of her family, and how “wonderful” for me to think of her. She gave instructions for me to tell my “wonderful” wife that she loves her.
The first time I met Granny Crews she was a passenger on a tour bus that Laila and I were hosting. At age 80 few of the younger folks could keep up with her.
Granny was here just after the Wright brothers’ first flight. She saw the first automobile, Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, WWI, WWII, Korean Conflict, Vietnam War, sexual revolution, Hippies, Yippies, Yuppies, rise of the charismatic movement, Watergate, crisis of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker, Persian Gulf War, hurricanes, floods… She also lived to see crop failures, experience near death health issues, bury a much loved husband, and she has outlived all her friends and family born in 1904.
“So Granny Crews,” I said, “sum up life for me. Tell me what I can share with others.”
She sits for a moment. Takes a deep breath and says, “It’s been good – just wonderful. I tell you the Lord has been good to me. I just don’t know how it could have been any better. You know I love to go to church. Church has been my life -- just nothing like the church. I miss it terribly when I can’t go. It means so much to me that my family is in church.” She takes a deep breath and smiles.
It has become clear to me in time that conversations with folks are definitely in the plus or minus zone. We feel better or worse when the conversation is over. The difference in our perspective of life is either more optimistic or pessimistic. Best or worst has touched our lives. We received and were affected.
Know this my friend; the creator God has placed you here to make a difference in the lives of others. The story you tell in words and deeds will either encourage or discourage.
Why not make a wonderful difference in the lives of others. Serve the Lord and allow grace and mercy to richly fill your heart (Hebrews 4). Fill your days with righteous living, and fill your heart with songs of joy, and your mouth with words of encouragement.
Be one of the best to point others to the goodness and wonder of a loving God. This is the reason God created you.
In wonder at His wonderfulness,
Pastor Bare