As Keith says, we are so typical it’s embarrassing. Be that as it may, let me tell you about my grandson.
He had just turned two. As he sat there in his high chair licking the frosting off his cupcake he quite deliberately read the letters on his Happy Birthday sign, the one that used to hang over our dining room windows when his father and uncle had a birthday, “H-A-P-P-Y,” all the way through to the end, never missing a letter. Then he told us what colors the letters were, each one different. Before that he had recited the alphabet, not sung it mind you, but recited it. Then he had counted to nearly 20 and recognized all the numbers. All day he had been pointing out shapes, including “oval” and “rhombus.”
Shortly after we had arrived, his granddad had read him a book. “See the fish?” he said.
”Dolphin,” two year old Silas instantly corrected.
His parents told us about a time a couple months before when a friend from church had come walking through the restaurant where they sat. “Hi Mark,” they said, and suddenly my 22 month old grandson was reciting, “Luke, John, Acts, Romans,” taking up right where he thought his parents had left off.
Isn’t it normal for parents and grandparents to brag on their kids? Do you think God doesn’t have the same feelings we do? When I brag on my grandson, when I say he is the cutest, smartest little boy in the whole world, I am simply living up to the image in which I was created. “Have you considered my servant Job?” God asked Satan. “There is none like him in all the earth.”
At least twice God spoke from Heaven about his Son, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” Don’t you know God loved saying that?
When God made Israel his chosen people, his children, he had every right to expect them to behave like his children should. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, Ex 19:5,6.
When they didn’t he was just as devastated as we would be if our children did not behave themselves well. For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the LORD, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen, Jer 13:11.
In a Messianic passage, Isaiah speaks of the coming kingdom, the church. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…for the LORD delights in you, Isa 62:3,4. Just as Old Testament Israel had the chance to make God proud of them, we have that chance today.
What would people think about your Father if they saw your behavior and heard you speak? What would they think if they saw how you treated the poor, the sick and the weak? What would they think if they saw how you drive, how you dress, how you work for your employer? All some people will ever know about God is what they see in you.
Make your Heavenly Father proud enough to brag about you today. “Have you seen my child? There is none like him in all the earth.”
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire, 2 Pet 1:3,4.
Dene Ward
He had just turned two. As he sat there in his high chair licking the frosting off his cupcake he quite deliberately read the letters on his Happy Birthday sign, the one that used to hang over our dining room windows when his father and uncle had a birthday, “H-A-P-P-Y,” all the way through to the end, never missing a letter. Then he told us what colors the letters were, each one different. Before that he had recited the alphabet, not sung it mind you, but recited it. Then he had counted to nearly 20 and recognized all the numbers. All day he had been pointing out shapes, including “oval” and “rhombus.”
Shortly after we had arrived, his granddad had read him a book. “See the fish?” he said.
”Dolphin,” two year old Silas instantly corrected.
His parents told us about a time a couple months before when a friend from church had come walking through the restaurant where they sat. “Hi Mark,” they said, and suddenly my 22 month old grandson was reciting, “Luke, John, Acts, Romans,” taking up right where he thought his parents had left off.
Isn’t it normal for parents and grandparents to brag on their kids? Do you think God doesn’t have the same feelings we do? When I brag on my grandson, when I say he is the cutest, smartest little boy in the whole world, I am simply living up to the image in which I was created. “Have you considered my servant Job?” God asked Satan. “There is none like him in all the earth.”
At least twice God spoke from Heaven about his Son, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” Don’t you know God loved saying that?
When God made Israel his chosen people, his children, he had every right to expect them to behave like his children should. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, Ex 19:5,6.
When they didn’t he was just as devastated as we would be if our children did not behave themselves well. For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the LORD, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen, Jer 13:11.
In a Messianic passage, Isaiah speaks of the coming kingdom, the church. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…for the LORD delights in you, Isa 62:3,4. Just as Old Testament Israel had the chance to make God proud of them, we have that chance today.
What would people think about your Father if they saw your behavior and heard you speak? What would they think if they saw how you treated the poor, the sick and the weak? What would they think if they saw how you drive, how you dress, how you work for your employer? All some people will ever know about God is what they see in you.
Make your Heavenly Father proud enough to brag about you today. “Have you seen my child? There is none like him in all the earth.”
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire, 2 Pet 1:3,4.
Dene Ward
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