Math God's Way

 Once I had a young student who was mildly dyslexic. She struggled with it, thinking she was stupid. Sometimes though she came up with astounding insights, things that I remember to this day.

She was working on her math homework one day and I noticed the subtraction problem she was working on. The problem read 8 - 5 =___. Her answer was 13. 

I tried to help her work through the math using an image of M&Ms. I asked her, "If you had 8 M&Ms and you gave your brother 5 of them..."

She quickly responded, "I would never do that!"

I smiled and went on, "Well, let's say you did. Would you have more M&Ms after you gave them away than you had to start with?"

She gave me the biggest smile and told me, "Yes. God would give me more."

I was astounded. It occurred to me take maybe her checkbook would never be balanced, but she wouldn't ever run out of money.

Think about it. God is a generous Father. All He wants is our love and trust.

Thanks for visiting with me. 

God bless us all.

Kathi

I Can't Top This Story

I borrowed this from Wycliff Bible Translators.  See the link it the end of the story.

Two women cross the road in the town of Maroua, Cameroon. Nearby, a Wycliffe translation advisor working with the Hdi language noticed that all verbs end in either i, a or u, which changes the meaning, but the word for love, ‘dv-’, didn’t have a version ending in ‘u’. He asked the Hdi translation team about it. “Could you ‘dvu’ your wife?”

Everyone laughed. “Of course not! If you said that, you would have to love your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘dvu’ about anything. It just doesn’t exist.”

He (the translator) sat quietly for a while and then asked, “Could God ‘dvu’ people?”

There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded. “Do you know what this would mean?! This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love.”
The New Testament in Hdi is now ready to be printed and 29,000 speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Eph 5:25: “Husbands, ‘dvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘dvu’-d the church…” Please pray for the Hdi as they receive God’s word for the first time. Read the full story at http://www.wycliffe.net/stories/tabid/67/Default.aspx?id=2922&pg=1&topic-id=24

Thank God for His continuing love,

Kathi

Inspired by Greatness

This morning I found this Scripture being quoted by one of my friends on facebook:

"Let them praise the name of the Lord for His name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up for His people a horn, the praise of all His saints." Psalm 148:13-14

It reminded me of one other verse that always leaves me breathless when I consider it.  Isaiah 40:12a says: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?" 

If you stretch out the fingers of your hand as far as they will go and measure from the end of your thumb to the end of your little finger, that is the span or breadth of your hand. 

God holds the universe in the span of His hand.  Just think about THAT for a minute and see if your perspective on God doesn't change for the larger.

Psalm 8 goes on to add:

3When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

4what is man that you are mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him?

How God could even find us in such a vast expanse is incredible!  That He would be willing to come down to be with us is even more amazing. 

We see this skit in church every so often.  I'm going to add the link to it so you can enjoy it too. 

http://www.sermonspice.com/product/38133/the-birdcage

God bless us all,

Kathi

Disreputable

Our guest pastor today was from a church called "The Alley".  His ministry is to drug addict, alcoholics, street children, and ex-felons.  He tends to stop into bars and play a few licks with the band because, as he says, he goes to his congregation rather than waiting for them to come to him.

John the Baptist, as the son of a priest, was supposed to wash frequently, wear clean white linen, and show up in the temple to offer sacrifices in the prescribed way.  He did none of those things.  John wore camel's hair and leather.  He ate locusts and wild honey.  He preached to Romans and the backwash of the people until the scribes and Pharisees came down to see what he was up to.  And then he told them what he thought of their "establishment" ways.  He baptized people in a big muddy river.  He did not do "what he was supposed to do".

Jesus was the same.  If he was supposed to be the Messiah by "churchy" standards, He certainly didn't live up to their their expectations.  His first miracle was turning water into wine to keep the party going.  He hung out with tax collectors, thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, and other disreputable folks.  He was three days late for His best friend's funeral.  He took for disciples the unlearned (by the religious people's standards), a liar and at least one thief.  James and John, the sons of thunder, today would have been part of a motorcycle gang.  It seems as if Peter and Andrew had some kind of running feud going - "How often do I have to forgive my brother?  Up to seven times?"  What a bunch to have to deal with on a day-to-day basis!

Yet Jesus loved them all, struggled to show them how to love, how to forgive, how to be forgiven.  He never tired of giving them God's best.  He told them stories that they could relate to in simple terms.  He could have commanded the king's palace, yet He slept on the ground, bathed in streams, wore homespun, and smelled like the ordinary people who gathered around Him.

It doesn't hurt us church folk to remember how our Teacher loved the unlovable and reached out for them to snatch as many of them from the enemy as He could.  God looks at the heart.  We shouldn't decide how to treat people by what their outsides look like.

God help us all to be more like Jesus.