Give Honor to Whom Honor Is Due
Friday, February 1, 2019
Thoughts on Nehemiah 1:11
Thoughts on Nehemiah 1:11 by Phil Ware
"O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man." Nehemiah 1:11
God takes great delight when we pray asking for his guidance and help! This is especially true when the focus of our efforts is on building up his people and his Kingdom.
Nehemiah comes as God's servant. He's not giving God a "go do" list using prayer to make God his servant. Instead, Nehemiah's heart burns with the needs of God's people.
The rest of the book of Nehemiah is proof that God loves his children to pray when the desires of their heart are on his people and his will.
My Prayer...
Precious and righteous Father, please use me today as your servant. Take my words and use them to bless, encourage, and comfort. Take my influence and use it to mend and inspire. Take my time and fill it up with your concerns.
Precious and righteous Father, please use me today as your servant. Take my words and use them to bless, encourage, and comfort. Take my influence and use it to mend and inspire. Take my time and fill it up with your concerns.
May the glory and honor of all I do bring glory only to you. Your grace has saved me, please use me now to share that grace with others. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life
Sports Has Turned Lives Around for Good
Excerpt from Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer.
Excerpt from Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert Creamer.
Though his parents were living, George Herman "Babe" Ruth was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, which served as an orphanage, reform school, and training school:
"What ultimately brought the Ruths to the final drastic step [of sending their son to St. Mary's] is impossible to determine, but on June 13, 1902, a Friday the 13th, when George was not yet eight and a half years old, he was committed by his parents to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys.
He was listed as 'incorrigible' when he entered the Home, as it was usually called, and Ruth later admitted this, adding that whenever he wanted something in those days he took it, usually from his parents.
'Looking back on my boyhood,' he said in his autobiography, 'I honestly don't remember being aware of the difference between right and wrong.'
As a grown man Ruth was usually meticulously honest in money matters, but otherwise that carefree attitude toward moral and social codes remained. His excesses occasionally brought him to his knees, figuratively if not literally, but in the words of sportswriter John Drebinger, 'He was the most uninhibited human being I have ever known. He just did things.'
"Whatever Little George did in the late spring of 1902, it was enough to send him for the first time on the long trolley ride out to the Home. St. Mary's was primarily what its name said it was: an industrial training school for boys. But it was more than that. In later years it was to become solely a reform school, and a boy who was sent to St. Mary's was labeled bad.
In Ruth's day it was a reform school too, but only partly; it harbored orphans and boys whose homes had been broken by divorce or death or serious illness, and it also took in poor boys whose families could not afford to take care of them.
St. Mary's was four miles southwest of downtown Baltimore, a stunning distance for a small boy whose lifetime had been encompassed by a few city blocks. ... There were 800 boys at St. Mary's, and George Ruth, at eight, was one of the youngest.
"In his pamphlet [written years later] on Ruth at St Mary's, [his former classmate] Lou Leisman recalled a Sunday visiting day around 1912 when he, Leisman, was feeling sorry for himself because his father was dead, his mother was ill and he had had no visitors for two years; the eighteen-year-old Ruth, who had had no visitors himself, said, perhaps in a rough effort to console the younger boy, 'You're lucky, Fats. I haven't seen my father in ten years.'
On another visitorless Sunday Ruth said, 'I guess I'm too big and ugly to have visitors. Maybe next time.' Next time never came, according to Leisman. But Mamie [Ruth's mother] recalled, 'We could visit him once a month. We used to ride out on the trolley. We had to change cars, there at the convent.' So someone was visiting the boy.
He grew up there, and even though it was in a real sense a prison for a growing boy, he looked back on St. Mary's later with a warmth and nostalgia he never felt for the places he lived with his family. St. Mary's was his home.
"Each boy had a job at St. Mary's, Ruth's was in the tailor shop
The account money he earned in the tailor shop was important to young Ruth. With it he would buy gobs of candy at the little store and distribute it to smaller boys, particularly those who were orphans and had no relatives or friends.
The account money he earned in the tailor shop was important to young Ruth. With it he would buy gobs of candy at the little store and distribute it to smaller boys, particularly those who were orphans and had no relatives or friends.
This apparently is not legend, for his largesse stuck in the memory of those who knew him at the Home. Leisman grew rhapsodic about his kindness. He told a story about an eight-year-old boy with the rather graphic name of Loads Clark, who burst into frightened tears one day because he had broken a window in the laundry. He was terrified by the prospect of the punishment he would receive.
Ruth, sixteen at the time, calmed and soothed the younger boy and told him, 'Go on, get out of here. Take it on the lam.' Loads did and Ruth took the blame for the window and accepted the punishment.
According to his devoted friend Leisman, 'He made life a little more livable when life seemed unbearable.'
Lawton Stenersen remembered Ruth at St. Mary's as popular, unpredictable, stubborn, reckless and, above all else, generous."
Character and Leadership Skills Taught Through Sports
Character and Leadership Skills Taught Through Sports by Bill Wilson
As we approach Super Bowl weekend, there are mixed feelings among Christians about the impact of sports on society. We hear both sides pretty ardently. Some say that sports are overrated. They give the example of millionaire players cry-babying about
various issues in society. Others say that athletes should use their platform to make the world a better place to live. Some say that these players are spoiled and think they can do and say whatever they want. Others believe that the athletes are examples
to children and young people. As someone who has coached for most of my life, there is good and bad in most everything, but to me, with sports for children the good far outweighs the bad. Here's why.
Last week at the Pro Bowl in Orlando, Fl., I had the opportunity to work with a film crew interviewing young people, parents, coaches and referees at the NFL Flag Football National Championships. Girls and boys ages 8-14 from across the country and
even a team from China competed to see who was the best in the nation at flag football. My interest was what playing football taught them about life, the values they could share with others that came from football. The answers were amazing. Where you might
expect "kid" type answers like "It's fun," these young women and men really understand the value of sports, and in particular, football in their lives.
One of the girls said, "Flag football gives us the ability to compete with the boys and show them that we can play, too. This gives us confidence that if we can compete with the boys, we can accomplish anything." Another girl said she learned "time
management" from playing football. She said that playing football helped her learn how to balance school, studying, football, and other activities, and she thought this time management would help her throughout the rest of her life. Another young lady said
that teamwork was a valuable tool that she is already applying to her life. Still another said that football has taught her how to be a better leader by encouraging her teammates, and being encouraged.
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