This Past Saturday we celebrated my mother’s 90th birthday.  It was a great day.  My mom is still very full of life and very alert.  I’m thankful that I was blessed to have her as a mother.  Born in 1919,  the daughter of immigrants from England, she has seen tremendous change over the past 90 years.  She lived through the great depression and World War 2 and has watched technology transform our culture.  She is a survivor.  Her father died in a coal mining accident in Colorado when she was still a toddler.  Her mother raised 7 kids doing the best she could as a single mom.

She was pulled out of her P.E. class when she was in school because the doctors discovered she had a “bad heart.”  She survived major surgery around 1949 and was told she could never have anymore children.  I was born a year or so later.  Then in the late 50’s she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, things looked bad but she survived the cancer and the surgery.  In the early ’60’s she had more major surgery, this time removing a large portion of her stomach due to a stomach ulcer.  By the ‘70 she could no longer travel in high altitudes due to her on going heart condition.  Next came diabetes.  Now that is a huge challenge to someone who has such a great love for chocolate and ice cream.  Somehow they (chocolate and ice cream) have managed to coexist with the diabetes. 

In 1997 my father, who had lived a very healthy and active life, was diagnosed with lung cancer.  The surgery ended up being too much for him and he never left the hospital.  My mother continues to grieve his loss but she survived.  In 2006 she found out that she had stomach cancer.  Some thought it was too much to operate on an 87 year old women.  My mom thought otherwise.  They removed all but a walnut sized portion of her stomach.  The recovery was excruciating.  Following a month in a rehab center that just about killed her, the director of her rehab recommended that we take her home and let her live out her last few days.  She didn’t know my mom very well!  We got her out of there  in time to save her life. 

Saturday was a great day.  It was a day to celebrate, not just my mother’s 90th birthday, but to celebrate her great love for life and her great ability to survive against all odds.  A celebration that included a few pieces of chocolate.  After all what’s the point of surviving if you can’t enjoy a piece of chocolate every now and then. 

Thank you Lord, for my mother and all that she has taught me through her words and through her life.  So much of who I am is because of her.  I am especially thankful that she taught me about you – to know you, to love you and to serve you.  Amen

Lies, rumors and half-truths can bring a lot of pain.  We’ve all been caught up in them to varying degrees.  Sometimes we’ve been on the receiving end and sometimes we’ve been on the giving end of the pain.  Sometimes the pain caused can change the direction of a person’s life.  This is true for the apostle Paul.  In fact, the last seven chapters of Acts are all about the results of the rumors, lies and half-truths told about Paul in Acts 21.  When bad things happen to us as a result of lies we have a choice as to how we can respond.  We can choose to become bitter and resentful or we can allow the Lord to use it for good.  This Sunday we will examine Paul’s response to his unfair treatment that landed him in jail for over two years. 

 Our lies, rumors or half-truths may not put someone in jail, as it did Paul, but there is a different kind of prison that we can find ourselves in when they become a part of our lives.  It is a prison that leaves us living in the shadows and always looking over our shoulder.  Our words have the power to destroy or to bring healing.  Why is it so easy for us to use words that can bring pain?  Why is it so easy for us to spread rumors that only hurt or destroy?   Consider the words of James 3:5-6 as it is paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in “The Message“  “It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

Let’s remember the power of our words and use them to bring healing and encouragement.  Let’s use them to put out fires not start them.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7 NIV

Have you ever been talked out of doing the right thing? I don’t mean by someone who didn’t have your best interest in mind (we can usually spot that), but by someone you love and trust, by someone who wants the best for you. It’s not always easy doing the right thing and it’s especially hard when the people who love us give us great reasons why we shouldn’t. I don’t know about you but I’m really tempted to listen to well meaning people who want to talk me into believing that the right thing is also the easy thing. In Acts 21 Paul is surrounded by some really good, really godly and really well meaning people who are telling him not to go to Jerusalem. He ignores them all and it breaks their hearts. This Sunday we will examine just how it is that we get God’s will for us and/or for others so wrong. We’ll take a look at some misconceptions, many of us have, that can lead us away from, not towards God’s will.