| Good Morning Everyone, Our theme for this month: “Change can be good for you” Our Bible verse for today: “Pay careful attention, then, to how you live – not as unwise people but as wise – making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15-16 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Less is often more and good is better than bad.” In the late 1970s (back in the days when I used to watch television), there was a weekly show I enjoyed called “WKRP in Cincinnati”. It was about a radio station trying to transition from sedate music to top-40 rock ‘n’ roll. The new DJs included Venus Flytrap and Dr. Johnny Fever. A holdover from the old staff was a neurotic newsman named Les Nessman who had a bad habit of including way too much detail in his reports. In an attempt to get him to say less, the other characters tried to convince him that “Less is more.” They would chide him, “Less is more, Les, less is more”. Meaning that his newscasts would actually be better if he would include less information instead of more. That’s often true for us too. We typically fill our lives full of things that don’t really need to be there. Sometimes they are bad things that are harming us; at other times they’re neutral things which are just taking up space in our lives and which we could easily do without. God wants us to clear out both the unnecessary clutter from our lives along with the bad stuff, so that He can replace it with something better. He wants to fill our lives with good things – but usually we need to empty of it bad and/or unnecessary things in order to make room for the good things. The editors of “The Men’s Study Bible” ask you to imagine that you are walking along the beach and you find a small chest washed up on the shore. You eagerly open it only to discover its only filled with sand. As you stand there in your disappointment a rich man comes along, sees your disappointment, and offers to fill the chest with gold coins for you. You’re eager to receive those gold coins but there’s a problem – the chest is already full of sand. In order to allow it to be filled with the coins you will first need to empty it of the sand. Would you do it? Of course you would. You would much rather have the coins instead of the sand but first you will need to make room for the coins by getting rid of the sand. What things have you filled your life with that you really need to get rid of? Perhaps there’s just too much stuff and too many activities and clearing some of it out would actually improve the quality of your life (less is more). Maybe some of it is bad and God wants to replace it with things that are much better, but you will need to clean out the bad in order to make room for the good. In Ephesians 5:15-16 Paul simply urges us to make wise choices about such things, but take a moment to read his lesson in Galatians 5:19-23. There he is much more specific about it when he gives us a list of what he calls “the works of the flesh” and he explains that if we will rid our lives of those things, then there will be room for God to replace that bad stuff with “the fruit of the Spirit”. Turn there in your Bible for a moment and compare those two lists. Which of them you would rather have your life filled with? You will have to get rid of the bad stuff in order to make room for the good. Less is often more and good is better than bad. You have to choose what you want your life to be filled with. I encourage you to be wise about it and make good choices. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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