A cardboard box blocking traffic

Sunday   9-27-15  (Palma, Mallorca, Spain... home of Daniel and Noemi Rodriguez)

Scripture reading:    Hag. 1-2   Ps 129     Luke 10

S=Scripture O=Observation A=Application P=Prayer  SOAP for the soul.

S.  Hag 1:6  Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! NLT

O.  The Israelites were earning, but not getting ahead for they had left the Lord God out of the equation.  They had become discouraged and abandoned the construction of the temple of God.  The prophet Haggia says, “You’ll never get ahead... you’ll never progress like this.  Place the Lord God first in your lives.

A.  Have I ever been there?  Have I thought I don’t have enough to cover my expenses? I just cannot afford to pay God the tithe that He says is his.  I’ll just miss one month... then I’ll make it up?  

When I was pastor in Colfax we had a family that showed up in church; a mother with two sons who lived in poverty.  We often took up grocery donations to help them.  I went to visit them many times.  They had several dozen banty hens running around inside the house, several dogs and three cars... all in disrepair parked outside.  When I suggested killing and cooking one of those many banty hens, the woman was horrified!  “Never!  These are my pets!”  I soon discovered that they were paid a “disability salary” from the state on the first of the month.  They spent it the first week... all of it.  They seemed to buy an old car almost every month.  Then one of the boys who thought he was a mechanic would open the hood to “fix” it.  And it soon became one more car with the hood up in their cluttered yard.  Some people just can’t get ahead.  True they did not display a great deal of wisdom and they were not even considering including God in their equation... except for a hand-out.  Pockets with holes!

P.  Lord God, What a blessing to have wise parents when we were small!  It was the worse time of the great depression in the USA, still we never missed a meal.  Many times we only had old hard bread which we broke up and ate in a bowl of our canned fruit from our own trees along with milk.  And that was our whole meal.  We were not rich... yet we were rich.  Our parents put God first.  Once my daddy came in with a large cardboard box filled with fresh bread.  It was lying in the middle of the street, blocking traffic.  It looked just like an empty box, but when he went to remove it... he found a treasure.  We thanked You, Lord, for fresh bread for several days.  Come to think of it, God.  You never, ever abandoned us.  Thank You.  Amen.

Ralph