Life is Like A Cup of Coffee

I can remember this date as not being a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.; but I cannot remember when everyone was not important to me; thanks to my parents. One of my best friends when I lived in Tacoma was Black-(Tyler Frazier) I have lost track of him. Matt Lambert was a special friend of our family and our associate pastor in Federal Way. But to me it is not about color- it is how people are important. As the video says, Life is like a cup of coffee. It is not just students who were killed in a school- it is about the babies aborted in our country. I am thankful our church has joined in helping students in our community to have food on weekends. And I am thankful my grandkids do not look at handicap friends as different- we may have outsides that are different- but we are the same inside- our blood is all the same color and God loves each of us so much that he died for us. Last years video was by Billy Graham, but this year I wanted to  share "Life is like a cup of Coffee".

An Open Letter

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an open letter April 16, 1963, in response to local Birmingham, Alabama, clergy expressing opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. Here is an excerpt from the letter, written while King was in the Birmingham City Jail.                      

“... There was a time when the church was very powerful -- in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment...

“Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.                      

“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions,

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr. said that. He died over 50 years ago and made the famous "I have a Dream" speech over 45 years ago. I am thankful my parents taught me God loves all colors of skin- and to look at the heart and not the color of a persons skin.  Remember the song, Jesus Loves the Little Children,...Red and yellow, Black and White, they are precious in his sight...I am not sure if we have arrived at equality in America or if we ever will. You cannot legislate that, it is choice we must embrace. Billy Graham did much to tear down those racial barriers and I had to share this sermon - he can say it better than I can and the Bible has not changed. And one more quote from someone special, "God Loves the Sinner but hates the Sin"

Remember to Fly the Plane

Flight 401 bound for Miami from New York City with a load of holiday passengers. As the huge aircraft approached the Miami airport for its landing, a light that indicates proper deployment of the landing gear failed to come on. The plane flew in a large, looping circle over the swamps of the Everglades while the cockpit crew checked out the light failure. Their question was this, had the landing gear actually not deployed or was it just the light bulb that was defective'

To begin with, the flight engineer fiddled with the bulb. He tried to remove it, but it wouldn’t budge. Another member of the crew tried to help out...and then another. By and by, if you can believe it, all eyes were on the little light bulb that refused to be dislodged from its socket. No one noticed that the plane was losing altitude. Finally, it dropped right into a swamp. Many were killed in that plane crash. While an experienced crew of high-priced and seasoned pilots messed around with a little light bulb, an entire airplane and many of its passengers were lost. The crew momentarily forgot the most basic of all rules of the air: “Don’t forget to fly the airplane!”                      

The same thing can happen to the local church. The preacher and elders can be so busy fighting petty fires and focusing so much of their attention on insignificant issues that they lose sight of what church is all about. The church can have so many activities, programs, projects, committee meetings, banquets, and community involvements -- so many wheels spinning without really accomplishing anything of eternal significance -- that the congregation forgets its primary objective.                      

Let’s not be like Flight 401 or the invention that doesn’t do anything! Our primary objective is to win this lost world to Jesus Christ.                       - - Charles R. Swindoll (from Dropping Your Guard)