Friday Coffee with PJ

Pour your favorite brew and join me for some random thoughts that just happen to be rambling through my
mind.

1. People in our society look for any and every way to avoid taking responsibility. This should not surprise us, for in Genesis 3:8-13 we see both Adam and Eve, when confronted by God, trying to pass the blame for their actions. But a recent article in the Washington Post really "takes the cake!" You might want to take a moment and read how the diagnosis of "affluenza" was used to help a teenage boy avoid jail time after he caused the death of four while he was driving drunk. Hmm. Makes one wonder what could possibly top that?

2. Last Saturday I attended a wedding of the daughter of close friends. I was struck with how "grown up" she and her siblings all looked, decked out in their wedding attire. I can recall them all as little children running around the hallways of church! Ouch! Where is time going? One of my goals for 2014 is to spend time meditating each month on a passage that reminds me of the brevity of this life and the need to focus more on the next. The passage I chose for this month is Psalm 39:4-5. I encourage you to take a moment and mediate on these verses. Then pray them back to God. Life is too short ... eternity too long to spend our time investing in the wrong place!

3. My wife and I recently picked up a used mini-van (still can't believe at my age I am back to the minivan!). When we bought the vehicle, only one key fob came with it. So we purchased a used one online and took it (and the van) back to the dealership. They programmed our used fob so it would work with the van. Happy that we now each had our own fob, we returned home. The next day I discovered that the fob that came with the van was now no longer working! Somehow the programming of the used fob rendered the other useless. So .. back to the dealership we had to go to get it all straightened out (which they quite willingly and apologetically did). As I thought about this I was reminded of life in general. Life doesn't always work the way we think it should. And sometimes when we think we have a problem fixed, we don't! We hit a lot of "speed bumps" along the way. Some are so slight we barely notice them. Others are so large they threaten to keep us from our journey forward. But it is a comfort to know that when we do hit one of these ... we can always go back to the One who made us. He has promised to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5-6). He will straighten out our path if we only trust him (Proverbs 3:5-6).

4. Finally, as a follow-up to my Tuesday posting about the Grim Reaper: I did not know as I wrote that post that earlier that day a woman in our church had received the news that both her mother and grandmother had died just a few hours apart. Again, another hard reminder that death comes knocking far too often. All of us had better be prepared (see Tuesday's post to see how this is done!).

Thanks for stopping by . . .
pj