Our Christian faith and the Christian principles which proceed from that faith are to be lived out in our relationships. We are to love God and love our neighbor. The one must precede the other. If we love God, we are equipped to love our neighbor, and our family members are our nearest neighbors. So our piety must begin at home. It is sometimes easier to love those people with whom we have little contact. We can wave quite cheerfully out the car window at our grumpy neighbor. But loving our child or husband or parent who is grumpy is another matter.
1 Timothy 5:4 tells us that if anyone has a mother or grandmother who is a widow, they should “first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God.” We often look for “ministry” that is far away, across the world, or helping people we do not know. And, of course, there is a place for such ministry in the church. But this passage tells us that we ought to keep our priorities straight. Before we start trying to export our piety, we had better have a goodly stock of it in our own homes. Show your piety at home. How? By taking care of your aging mother or grandmother. Continue reading ‘Piety at Home’
It is easy to read into this picture what happened – a mom stuffed a barely awake toddler into her just finished sweater to document the fact that she finally sewed on the buttons after a lot of neglect. Then the toddler stands outside in the breeze with her bed-head puffing into the wind, being testy with siblings who approach the pumpkins which she is guarding. But she is also very pleased with her sweater and won’t let anyone take it off after we go inside. And mom is pretty pleased too – because finishing something is all part of the fun of starting it!
So, one of my children (should I say which one? Hhhmm. Maybe I’ll leave it ambiguous. But I should mention, due to the spelling, that it wasn’t one of my eldest). Now I’ve lost the thread of my remarks and I’ll have to start over again.
A Muse has struck one of my children, resulting in a poetic inspiration and they dashed off a little poem that I felt I should share because it just makes me happy. I should also mention that none of us has ever been to Texas, so where this came from I have no idea.
Here goes.
I want to be to Texess,
I want to be to Texess,
Wher the girls are so preches,
I want to be to Texess,
Wher cowboys ete their brecfast,
I want to be to Texess,
Wher girls are so preches,
I want to be to Texess,
Were you never no wat’s comen
in Texess.
Were girls are so preches.
Now come on. That’s clever.
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