This entry is a little different!\u00a0 It is different because it was written by my wife, Diana, who is a very talented writer.\u00a0 We hope you enjoy!<\/p>\n
My brother has attempted at least twice to give our mother a usable coffee mug.\u00a0 His first attempt was in elementary school when he bought her a coffee mug from the Santa Store at school as a Christmas gift. When the time came to wrap his purchase he found to his horror that it had broken into several pieces. As you can imagine he was utterly heartbroken. His second attempt came shortly after enlisting in the Navy. My brother returned home on leave for Christmas with a surprise in his sea bag, a coffee mug that sadly did not survive the flight home. Each of these mugs has been lovingly super glued together by our father. Amazingly enough both mugs actually passed the test of holding water.\u00a0 These mugs despite their visible cracks have a special place in our mother\u2019s heart. These mugs truly validate the statement, \u201cit\u2019s the thought that counts.\u201d According to the world those mugs are worthless but if you ask our mother she will tell you they are her most priceless possessions. These memories came back to me as I was reading Philippians 1:9-10 \u201c And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in<\/i> all judgment;\u00a0 That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.\u201d After reading these verses I looked in the footnotes and found that the word sincere actually means \u201cgenuine\u201d and more than likely it originally meant \u201cto be tested by sunlight.\u201d It seems that in the ancient world there were pottery salesmen who would sell pottery claiming that it was of the best quality when in truth it was filled with cracks which rendered it completely worthless. How they got away with selling the worthless pottery would be to fill in the cracks with wax before glazing and painting them. Then when the pottery was done you could not tell merely by looking at it that there was anything wrong with it. What these salesmen failed to realize was that if you held the pottery up to the sunlight the wax filled cracks would become visible as the sunlight poured through them.\u00a0 How many people do you meet and talk to each day that portray themselves as having everything together in life?\u00a0 How many times do we put up the fa\u00e7ade that our life is fine, when in reality we feel like we are cracked and falling apart inside?\u00a0 We may be able to fool most people some of the time, some people most of the time, but we are never fooling God at anytime.\u00a0 The key is not to try to cover up the cracks ourselves, but rather to allow God to fix the cracks in our life.\u00a0 He does that as we live in a right relationship with Him through reading His Word and talking to Him in prayer, then allowing Him to make the necessary changes in our life.\u00a0 The reality is that we all have cracks, some cracks are just more visible than others.\u00a0 The great news is that God has the supernatural glue that can fix us and make us new again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This entry is a little different!\u00a0 It is different because it was written by my wife, Diana, who is a very talented writer.\u00a0 We hope you enjoy! My brother has attempted at least twice to give our mother a usable … Read More