Roger

Our family of origin – the family we grow up in – shaped our values, set our moral compass, nurtured us mentally and emotionally and provided for our basic needs.   Recently, I have been asked by several to talk about my childhood.   I dedicate this blog to all baby boomers.   One asked, “Pastor, what good things do you remember about your growing up years.”   I was intrigued by the question, because often it’s all too easy to remember the bad and minimize the good. Actually, I appreciated the question because it forced me to take a trip down memory lane beginning in 1961 and pull out those memories that still feed into the “collective me.”   I would like to share several highlights: 1.      My first day of kindergarten was traumatic for me and I remember crying.   I also wet my pants! Mrs. Baber knelt down beside me and told me what a good, strong boy I was and protected my dignity.   Her kind, supportive words literally...

How much are you worth? The worth or value of something depends on how much one is willing to pay.   Money talks!   The parable of the Lost Sheep in Matthew 18:12-14, demonstrates the value God places upon the individual: “What do you think?   If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?   If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray.   So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” The shepherd left the ninety-nine to save the “one.”   He laid his life on the line to find one stray.   That’s what Jesus did for us!   It seems incongruous that God would invest in the safety of one lamb, unless that lamb is us! Do you remember the story of the washed-up starfish?   A young girl was walk...