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A 5-year-old learns the real value of getting old
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Make-believe is fun. Every child loves to pretend. That’s why a little boy will throw a stick on his shoulder and march like a soldier, and a little girl will cradle her favorite doll in her arms like a loving mother.

C.S. Lewis, author of children’s books, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” believed that fantasy stories taught true lessons about life. Thus Lewis told stories about lions and princes that taught lessons about sacrifice and salvation. He hoped that his stories would ring true in the hearts of the children who read them. Then when they got older and they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth of it would clash and clang in their souls with joy.

When my son was about 5 years old, that bell began to “ding” for the first time.

We left our son with my parents to baby-sit for a week, while my family and I went on a vacation to New York City.

One day, our son hopped up in his grandmother’s lap and asked a blunt question. “What’s good about getting old?”

She thought a minute and then said, “Well, you can retire and you don’t have to go to work anymore.”

Not satisfied with that answer, he demanded, “What else is good about it?”

She thought a minute and then said, “You learn more about God, and get to know God better.”

His eyes grew wide in amazement and he asked, “You mean all that stuff they say about God at church is really true?”

“Yes,” his grandmother told him with a chuckle. “That stuff is really true.”

The Bible teaches parents (and grandparents) to constantly tell the stories of our faith to the next generation. “Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:7, HCSB). If we do, our children will eventually learn that stuff is really true.

(Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read my blog at www.holyhumor.blogspot.com.)

Is there a church for a big woman with an itch?
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A pastor was called to be guest preacher at a church. He knew this church was different when the congregation ended every line of the hymn with the shout of “yeehah!”


As he stood to preach, he noticed that people were spread out on the pews. He would see a person, then a space, then another person, and another space. He wondered why nobody sat next to another person, when he noticed on the pew beside each person was a cowboy hat.


Another time this same preacher was invited to a new church in the city. He was surprised to see that everybody there looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box, because they had piercings and earrings on every part of the body imaginable. A rock band was playing alternative music on the stage.


As different as these two churches were, they were both growing and reaching people for Christ.


Years ago I was pastor of a small country church in the backwoods of Mississippi. There was another Baptist church just five miles away in the town (population 600). The pastor’s wife at the town church asked me, “Why don’t our two churches merge?” I said, “There are people in my church who would not feel comfortable or fit in at your town church.” She said, “Oh, come on. We’re a small town church. What could be so different?”


I said, “Well, I got one really big woman in my church who, when she gets to feeling an itch, she pulls her dress halfway up and she scratches herself.”


The eyes of this pastor’s wife got really big and she said, “I see what you mean.”


I forgot to tell her about another woman in my church who saw a roach running across the wood floor, so she stomped on it with her bare foot, laughed and shouted, “Aha! I got him!”


Yep, the culture was definitely different where I was pastor.


Jesus upset the religious establishment because He crossed cultural barriers. He loved to eat with tax collectors and Gentiles and other strange people. Jesus walked into the land of Samaria, full of half-breed Jews who worshiped in weird ways and talked different and smelled different.


Jesus walked right up to a Samaritan woman at a well and started talking her language. He accepted her culture, but he let her know her sinful lifestyle had to change. Soon she had the whole town following Jesus (see John 4).


So what cultural barrier is keeping somebody in your community from hearing the gospel? If you tear down the cultural barriers to share Christ in your neighborhood, you may hear the angels shouting, “Yeehah!”


Copyright 2014 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.