Feeling Old
This statistic made Joe Carter feel old:
…based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 25 percent of all Americans alive at this moment have never known a world without the Internet and Internet access. That represents 75 million Americans who consider going online as natural as turning on the TV or cooking something in the microwave oven.
I suppose, then, it makes me feel doubly old, because of the comparison they use… I can remember a time when my family, growing up, did not have a microwave. In fact, I remember that at that time, “TV dinners” were not something you microwaved, you cooked them in the oven. And you couldn’t have cooked them in the microwave even if you’d wanted to – the packaging was all made of aluminum foil… (And it tasted like it, too!)
Godly Grief vs. Worldly Grief
I read this news story and couldn’t help but think of 2 Corinthians 7:10, especially when I read the bolded part:
A woman apologized Friday for a “bad decision” in helping her 6-year-old daughter win tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay that falsely claimed the girl’s father died in Iraq.
A false essay won a 6-year-old girl four tickets to a sold-out Hannah Montana concert.
Priscilla Ceballos said she hadn’t intended to mislead the contest sponsor but got caught up in helping her daughter “realize her dream of seeing Hannah Montana.”
“Instead I brought so much negative attention to my family,” Ceballos said, reading a statement on NBC’s “Today” show. “Please accept my heartfelt apology and please do not punish my child for my mistake.“
It is truly heartbreaking that someone in this situation considers the worst part of their sin to be not the sin itself – lying, and causing her daughter to lie. Rather, she considers the worst part her sin to be one of the just consequences – negative attention. Isn’t that simply replacing a sin of lying, with one of pride?
It is also very telling that she does not consider her child, who wrote and submitted the essay, to have also made a mistake.
Proverbs 22:66 Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it. (ESV)
Follow Me!