Do You Pay Your Taxes Joyfully?

Tim Challies asks this loaded question yesterday in his blog. I would commend to you his biblical answer found HERE.

It is tax season again. In just a couple of weeks a lot of us will be writing a check to the government, or, far better, hoping that the government will be writing a check to us. It is this time of year when, more than any other, we are forced to think about taxes, so once again I find myself pondering the first few verses of Romans 13. Paul is writing to the church at Rome and telling them that each one of them is to actively obey the governing authorities in every situation. He makes no exceptions; he simply commands them to obey all the time—”Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” It’s interesting to think about what Paul was commanding here.
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Oops!

I can be a real klutz. I have very few manual skills and I never grew out of the "tripping over my own feet" stage of life. I have fumbled and dropped more than my fair share of balls. In other words, "oops" has been a regular part of my vocabulary. It is not only in the physical world that I have fumbled things. I have messed up relationships. I have prejudged people before ever getting to know them. I have used and abused those who love me most in this world. I have failed and sinned my way into more than one tight corner and created untold disasters. Oops is not even sufficient for the ways that I have blown it. Perhaps that is why something Paul, our worship leader last Sunday, said resonated so deeply with me this week. He said "Oops is never said in heaven." Our God never is clumsy. He never makes mistakes. His plans never go belly-up. He never fails. He never ever has to say oops - and that comforts me.

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...

The walking, talking providence of God

Today I met a man in Israel I will never forget. Fifteen years ago he was voting in a primary for candidates of the Likud party. At the polling station, two Palestinian terrorists burst in upon the crowd who were choosing their candidate for the next election. They sprayed the crowd with automatic gunfire. Seven people fell to the floor, wounded by the barrage. The terrorists moved among the fallen, stopping to shoot each one between the eyes to make sure that they were dead. Six people died that day. Today I met the seventh. He was wounded four times in the initial burst of gunfire - once in each leg, once in the arm and once in the side. The terrorists then put a gun two feet from his face and put a bullet between his eyebrows. I saw the deep scar with my own eyes. The next year he spent in a coma. Today I met him at the little restaurant he owns outside the gates of the ancient ruins of Beth She'an. He stood in f...

The Plodding Preacher

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