No Time To Count $160 In Coins?

Neal Pollard

Wayne Roberts forwarded an article to me about a bizarre incident that recently occurred in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Colorado State University student Ted Nischan, who has a lead foot and limited income, went to the Fort Collins municipal court to pay a speeding ticket.  What makes that newsworthy is that his form of payment was not cash, check, or credit.  It was coins!  $160 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.  The court workers apparently does not accept that much money in that form of payment.  His personal bank would not convert the money without charging him, a fee that would leave him short of what he owes the government.  Court supervisor Fran Seaworth says that it would be a colossal waste of taxpayer money for a clerk to count out that much change.  It is a refreshing, if unusual, example of prudence in a world of red-tape-filled bureaucracy (http://www.9news.com/news/local/article/260797/346/Fort-Collins-rejects-coins-as-payment-for-ticket).

In many areas of life, we risk bogging down in the minutia and majoring in the minor.  Men’s business meetings or even elders’ meetings which regularly, predominantly deal with finance and material matters to the neglect of what our main mission is risks doing the equivalent of counting a bucket full of change (cf. Acts 6:3-4; 20:28).  In our own personal, spiritual lives, when we are consumed with the here and now with little regard to eternal matters, are we frittering away time counting our bucket of change?  That’s what the rich farmer did (Lk. 12:15-21).  How easily we can lose sight of the important which poring over the ultimately inconsequential!

Subdivisions

Neal Pollard

One of my favorite bands (Tony Raburn’s definite favorite) is Rush.  One of their songs, “Subdivisions,” talks about how much peer pressure is a part of life.  Conform and be cool or be cast out, they sing.  The world certainly works that way.  I went to high school in coastal Georgia, a very large school in a military town.  Did we ever have “groups.”  We had goths, headbangers, preps, jocks, rednecks, geeks, and a large number of ethnic groups.  While some were harder to pigeon hole and felt at home in multiple groups, there was much “subdivision” in the high school halls and shopping malls.  The worldly way of thinking is to divide, group, alienate, and pit one against another.

Through the cross, Jesus died to eliminate enmity and division. Jews and Gentiles were divided, but the cross was God’s tool of reconciling them back together.  This place of unity is called the “one body” (Eph. 2:16).  That “one body” is identified as the church (Eph. 1:22-23).  This means that God designated a place where subdivisions do not belong.  The church is to be a people who are united (Eph. 4:1ff).  We come into Christ from so many different places.  Perhaps we were goths, headbangers, preps, et al, but when we come into Christ we are one body.  This can be uncomfortable and unnatural, but it is what sets apart God’s “set apart” from those who conform to the world.  In Christ, we are transformed (cf. Rom. 12:2).  Our effort is to be toward oneness.  It must be to eliminate all barriers, race, education, income, background, and whatever other distinctions the world is prone to make.

It is one of the great blessings of Christianity!  Let the world prejudge, make distinctions, and isolate.  The church is to be a welcoming, loving, and uniting group!  May this ever be our focus and desire.  Jesus was willing to die for that ideal (cf. John 17:20-21).

Avoiding Acid Spills

Neal Pollard

 Before we started school one fall, my parents took my sister, brother, and I to the heart of Atlanta to go school shopping at a Belk’s Department Store Outlet.  This was at a time when you could really find good bargains and quality items for cheap prices at outlets.  They had plenty of clothes, but also hardware, tools, housewares, and more.  As I wandered through the store, I remember coming up to a big serving spoon and picking it up only to see that the round part was gone.  It was sitting in a small pool of acid and the acid was eating away the spoon.  My parents duly warned me to avoid it unless I wanted my hand to look like that.  Visualizing my appendage looking like that spoon, I had zero difficulty obeying.

 It happens when we frequently complain, criticize, grumble, and grouse about our work, duty, circumstances, and life.  It happens when we making someone the butt of our joke through cruelty.  It happens when we cannot tell others how we are doing without spouting off a laundry list of woes and agonies.  It happens when we become characterized by negative rather than positive speech.  We may not realize it, but such speech negatively effects those around us.  It demoralizes and discourages.  It can even cause spiritual stumbling.  This is destructive, but it can be avoided.  How?

 Get to the “heart” of the problem.  Jesus says that the “acid spills” come from a reservoir–the heart (Mark 7:21).  It is stored within and then comes pouring out when those contents are under pressure.

Think before you speak.  Ask whether or not the words will be positive, constructive, and helpful. If in doubt, think some more. If there is any doubt, leave it unsaid.  You have to give advance consideration to “let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person” (Col. 4:6).

Focus harder on the blessings.  At any given time, on any day, we have difficulties and disadvantages.  We are still on earth and not yet in heaven.  Why not “count your many blessings, name them one by one.”  I am convinced that a person truly filled with gratitude will not be an acid-spiller (cf. Col. 2:7).

Practice positive speech.  Habits are formed through a process. Conscious, repeated effort will more nearly produce the needed result than to keep the bridle off the tongue (cf. Jas. 3:2).  Yet, every determined effort to praise, compliment, verbally encourage, cheer, and edify another builds the habit.

 Among the little I recall from chemistry is that the opposite of acidic is basic.  Certainly, this is a spiritual basic.  Positive, wholesome, and helpful speech is a building block  that has the opposite effect of acidic speech.  May we all strive to get back to “basics.”

3-Second Rule

We’ve all seen it.  Someone is about to bring a tasty morsel up to the mouth when it slips and drops to the ground.  The person grabs it as fast as possible and exclaim to all in the room, “3-second rule!”

This rule, for any unfamiliar with it, states that bacteria will not contaminate the food that is dropped on the ground for a certain amount of time.  Some have called it the 3-second rule, while others have said 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 23.7 seconds, or whatever amount of time they still feel comfortable eating something from the ground.  Recently, scientists at Britain’s Manchester Metropolitan University decided to test this so called “rule.”  They found that many processed foods lived up to the 5-second-rule or more (sliced ham, cookies, etc), while others were contaminated in 3 seconds or less (Pasta, dried fruit, etc).  I suppose this discussion is far from settled, but it does appear that some foods actually live up to some of these “rules.”

All of this talk is pretty silly and trivial for the most part, but something much more significant are people who take a “3-second-rule” mindset towards sin.  Far too many people are willing to give in to sin “for just a little while.”  We compromise ourselves with statements like:

“It’s ok if I see a bad movie like _________ just this once.”

“It wont hurt me to _________ with my friends.”

“Just a little bit of _________ isn’t a big deal.”

In Christianity, there is no 3-second rule.  Scripture says that all “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4) and separates us from God (Romans 3:23; Isaiah 59:1-2).  Ephesians 4:27 says plainly, “do not give the devil an opportunity.”  The point is, we allow ourselves to think that “just a little bit” of sin is not a big deal.  But is this the way God sees it?  What sin does He consider small and insignificant?

Meanwhile, Satan is looking for just the tiny and most insignificant of opportunities.  He is looking for the smallest of footholds to begin climbing back into our lives.  Too often it starts with a “3-second-rule” mindset or sin.  Let’s not let the Devil have ANY opportunity in us.

Let’s never pick spiritual trash off the ground and bring it into our lives, no matter how “safe” or “dangerous” we might think it is.

“The” Secret to Better Health

“In The Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, Norman Cousins tells of being hospitalized with a rare, crippling disease.  When he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital.  Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, Cousins reasoned that the reverse was true.  So he borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment, consisting of Marx Brothers films and old "Candid Camera" reruns.  It didn't take long for him to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain free sleep.  Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed.  After the account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins received more than 3,000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world” (Today in the Word, MBI, December 18, 1991).

It really is amazing what a change in attitude can do for us.  Cousins went from “incurable” with negative emotions, to “completely cured” because of laughter and positive emotions.  Many studies have shown that worry, anxiety, and similar negative emotions are very bad for a person’s health.

Similarly, God has told us things like, “Be anxious for nothing…” (Philippians 4:6), and “Do not worry…” (Matthew 6:31).  When the Lord commanded these things it wasn’t just because He wants us to trust and rely on Him, He was sharing with us the secret to better health.  Trusting and relying on God is actually good for us!

No one should be more happy, worry free, and at ease in life than a Christian who trusts in the Lord.  As Paul stated so well, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).  For Christians, the end of this life simply means eternity in heaven.  What an encouraging and stress reducing statement!

The benefits of trusting and having a relationship with the Lord are limitless, but it’s nice to know that it is actually healthy for us to be close with Him.  This only leaves us with one question: Have we been full of worry and anxiety, or have we been putting our trust in the Lord?