Visitng The Temple

The first task of the church is to worship God. The second task is to reach out. And mixed right in there is the need as well as the command of God to pass our faith on to our children. There are churches that have no children in them. Churches where children are not welcome, and I feel very sorry for those churches. It is a hollow community of faith indeed where children do not come and sing and laugh and learn and ask and skip up the walkway into the church. I wouldn’t hesitate to guess that watching the kids come into his church is one of God’s greatest pleasures on Sunday mornings.

Anyway, what do we get out of watching the boy Jesus go to the Temple? Hopefully a renewal of our own enthusiasm for our faith. We stand at the beginning of a new year. I trust that by now we are all accustomed to thinking of putting a “2” in front of the year when we write the date. 2001! “Who’d a thought we’d make it there, huh?” But here it comes.

Resolutions?

To devote ourselves more to God.

NBA hero Shaquille O’Neal enjoys quoting Shakespeare (Time magazine). In fact, it seems he knows a little something about the classics. Time magazine quoted him as saying that he wanted to be known as “The Big Aristotle.” Shaq said this because, Aristotle once said that excellence is not a singular act, it’s a habit – you are what you repeatedly do.”

Shaquille O’Neil is on to something. “You are what you repeatedly do.”

Those of us who are fighting the weight battle know all about that. If what you repeatedly do is eat donuts, then pretty soon your middle starts taking on the shape of a donut. If you smoke, you don’t start to look like a chimney, but you do wheeze and gasp like a steam engine (I can say this because I was a heavy smoker until five years ago). If you let go your anger and loose your temper too often, people start viewing you as a hothead. If you repeatedly drink too much, you start looking like heck.

But let’s forget the negative. If you’ve developed a bad habit from doing something unwise repeatedly, you don’t need me telling you about it. And if you are married, then your husband or wife probably nags you about it often enough.

So let’s look at something else at the beginning of new year…let’s look at positive things you can do to improve your relationship with God, help our church by being a more spiritual person, and growing in faith.

In the past month I’ve done two things for my cars. I took them to a car wash and had the dirt washed off them. They look a lot better for it. I also took them in for oil changes – one to Auto Spa and one to my friend Heff at Shade Tree garage.

Of the two things, which was more important for the well-being of my cars?

If the salt and grunge wasn’t washed off, sooner or later they’d corrode. But it would be far more serious if I neglected the inside of the engine, the part you don’t see. Ignore your oil level and your motor will seize and burn up. Don’t change the oil when it starts getting dirty and your engine will wear out fast. A dirty car will last longer than a car dirty inside.