5-20-14 Life in the Parkie Lane

A Poor Trade                                                                                       


"I've heard it all before, I don't need it." One of the ushers told me when I asked him why he wasn't in the church services.

The kitchen was located immediately behind the children's church area / fellowship hall in the basement of the church.  As I served in the children's church I noticed that the ushers, who were also leaders in the church, had taken up the habit of raiding the Sunday school classrooms of donuts, cookies, and candy.  They then met in the kitchen for coffee and sharing of the "loot" instead of returning to the services after they had taken up the offering.

This bothered me, and not because they didn't offer me a donut. I decided to ask them one day why they weren't in church and I received the above answer.  I commented, "I need the reminders, even if I have heard it before. Besides we, as leaders of the church, set the examples for others." It got awfully quiet.  They knew they had made a poor trade - donuts for doctrine.

I have not attained the place of knowing it all, and I am not mature enough to forsake the preaching.  I am still striving to get to know Jesus better.  Besides, I forget stuff and have to relearn it all the time.  The notes in my Bible tell me this.  I think, "Wow, I never saw that before! Then I look at my notes and there is the concept that I had forgotten." Parkinson's hasn't helped this at all.  But then with a poor memory two things happen, 1. everything is fresh and new and 2. I get lots of exercise retrieving things I had forgotten. 

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.´ Philippians 3:12.

© copyright Kevin T Boekhoff


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