Monthly Archives: August 2017

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Wonderful Glass!

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Glass is wonderful stuff! 

“Oh, yuk!” Bobby exclaimed as he pulled a glass jar out of the fish pond.

“What ever are you doing with that?” Mum asked.

“Ooh, it’s yukky!” Betty said as she came in on the act.

“You’d better go and clean it out and wash it,” Mum said, “And make sure you do it properly with plenty of water and detergent” she called after him as he trudged off with it.

Later on she went inside and said, “How well did you get that jar clean, Bobby?”

He pointed to a sparkling jar on the bench. “Look how nice and clean it is now!” he said proudly.

“You’ve made a really good job of that Bobby”, she said, “I couldn’t have done better myself!”

“Do you know what that reminds me of?” Uncle Jeff asked from the depths of his armchair where he was sitting, “It just shows that no matter how dirty we let our lives get with being mean and nasty, God can still clean us up if we ask Him to. But we have to really mean it for Him to do it.”

“It didn’t get really shiny until Bobby used the detergent”, Betty said.

“No, that’s just like us trying to clean our own selves up,” Uncle Jeff said, “It doesn’t last and we never get to being sparkly and shiny. It’s as though the Lord Jesus uses the detergent of His Word on us and then we are just like brand new again.”

“Doesn’t the Bible say something about it being like washed by the Word?” Sarah asked as she came in and heard what they were saying.

“Yes, it does. And just as that glass will get dirty again, it will need to be washed again and again, but the actual glass is still shiny underneath it all. We just have to ask God to clean us up each time we do or say something that is wrong,” agreed Uncle Jeff.

“Yes, that’s right,” Mum said, “Glass is a wonderful thing and it is lovely to see it so shiny and clean again. Thanks Bobby!”

 

 

 

Random Devotional Thoughts
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   The  mandarins on our trees are just about finished, and I was peeling one of the last  the other morning. It was firm and round with a beautiful sheen to it, and  looked to be a perfect specimen. But as the skin was being peeled back. I could see a small black patch deep inside the fruit. This was going to spoil the whole thing, as each segment had a tinge of the black on it. The mandarin was unfit to eat, and I had to throw it out.

How often we are like this mandarin! We put on  good clothes to go to church and sit there listening to the sermon, but inside we may be day dreaming miles away, or perhaps we have some resentment against someone else and are secretly seething about it. Afterwards, our friends greet us by saying, “How are you?” and we reply by saying with  bright smile, “Fine, thanks!”

Everything appears to be great, but we know deep down that it isn’t. We aren’t fine at all. We are like that mandarin, and that patch of resentment inside taints every part of our life. We dodge that person when we see them in the street; we can’t say anything nice about them and perhaps start a whispering campaign about them.

For that mandarin to become edible, a lot of it had to be cut away. It hurts us when the bad stuff gets cut out, but until it does, we are useless to God and man. Jesus Christ could see right inside the hearts and minds of the priests of His day, and He told them they were hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. Don’t let’s be like this; remember that He can see right inside us too.

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Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

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  People often ask this question….it just seems that life isn’t fair!! We do the best we can and then things go wrong for us!

The Bible tells us about a man like this, a good man who did the best he could and then he lost everything. It also gives us a picture of why this happened which will help us to see things differently when things go wrong or us too.

If we turn to the Bible and look at Job chapter one, verse one, we read….”there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, one who feared (respected and reverenced) God and who hated evil.”

So we see that Job always did his best and as we read down the chapter, we see the things that he did for himself and for his family. Let’s turn it into a story……

One day, God’s team of angels came to report to Him. God noticed a shiny, glistening, sneaky looking one among them who  didn’t usually come, and recognised him instantly.

“Where have you come from, Satan?” He asked.

“I’ve been walking up and down all over the place,” Satan replied shiftily.

“Have you seen any person as good as My servant Job is?”, God asked, “No-one else is as good in the whole world as he is….he loves Me and hates everything evil! He makes me an offering every day, not only for himself but also for his family.”

“Ho”, sneered Satan looking at God, ” No wonder he is so good! You look after him on every side, and have given him all he’s got! I bet if you took it all away from him it’d be a different story! He would curse You to Your face if that happened!!”

God knew His man, and He knew He could trust Job to do the right thing.

“OK,” He said to Satan, “We’ll see. I’m allowing you to take away everything that he has. I know he will stand firm for Me.”

Satan chuckled gleefully. ” I’ll make him sorry for following God’s ways. I can beat him!”

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.                                  The next day, Job got up early as he usually did, and made the morning sacrifice for himself and his wife. Then he made another sacrifice to cover each of his children. As he did this, he prayed for each of them, as he did every day. “Lord”, he said, “Please help the boys to stand firm for you; help them to resist temptations, and always be helpful  to their mother and sisters. I pray for the girls, Lord that they will not be vain with how they look, but that they will try their best to be beautiful with their minds and their speech.”

Job knew that his eldest son was putting on a party that day for his brothers and sisters, and he hoped that everything would go well for them all. While he was sitting there after breakfast thinking about them, he saw one of his servants rushing up the path. He could tell something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” he called out as the man got close enough to hear.

“We were out in the field ploughing with the bullocks and the donkeys were there beside them when a marauding tribe from over the hill came and rounded them up, killing all the herdsmen, and I’m the only one who got away!”

With that, he fell down on the ground panting with the run, and fright at what he had seen.

The man had hardly finished telling Job this when another servant came panting up. “Oh!,” he said, “There was a massive lightning storm over the paddock where the sheep were, and they have all been struck dead as well as the other servants there. I’m the only one who managed to get away to tell you!”

A third servant came panting in from another direction and said, “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yes, and killed the servants with swords; and I only am escaped alone to tell you.”

Job hardly had time to take all this in when another servant came rushing in from the direction of the oldest boy’s house.

“Oh, oh,” he wailed when he saw Job, “Your sons and your daughters were eating their meal and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house when there was a terrific gust of wind rushing in from the desert like a tornado, and the roof was lifted off and the whole thing collapsed on everyone else in the house, and they are all dead! I’m the only one to  escape and tell you!”

Job had been sitting down all this time, and now he stood up and tore his long robe off his shoulders. He went inside and shaved the hair all off his head to show how upset he was.

His wife and servants wondered how he would cope with all this bad news and the disasters that had happened. But he didn’t curse or swear, or even complain. It didn’t even enter his head to ask God why this had all happened.

Instead, he got down on his knees and prayed in front of everyone left in his house, and said, ” I was born naked with nothing, and I will go back to God the same way, with nothing. The LORD gave me these things, and the LORD has taken them away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

In all these disasters Job didn’t sin or complain and blame God foolishly. I wonder how we would act if this happened to us?