Anna lost her first tooth!



Still a little freaked out, but happy right after it was pulled:



And... FALL is HERE!!!





Signs

In most cities, if you write checks that you don’t really have the money to write, you just get fined by your bank, which is enough of a deterrent for nearly everyone. Some places of business post those rubber checks, the names and even pictures of folks who overdraw their accounts. In the town where I went to college, it was worse… I remember driving to work one morning and seeing someone walking on the sidewalk around the courthouse wearing one of those gigantic sandwich signs. From really far away I couldn’t read it and assumed it would be one of those nutty “The End is Nigh” people you always see in movies, but it wasn’t. As I drew closer I could read the sign, which said, “My name is Tony Craig and I write bad checks.” (I made up that name by the way) Later that day, as I was driving home from work, I saw the guy still walking around the courthouse with this sign displaying his name and crime for everyone to see! He had been there all day telling thousands of people about his empty bank account. That punishment was old school!

In the town where I now live, there is a labor dispute going on between a business and a group of its workers. For months and months there have been people in a few different locations throughout town sitting in lawn chairs beside a 25 foot-long sign dumping shame on this business. After months of driving by these signs, you get to where you don’t even see them anymore… they’re as much a part of the landscape as the Bradford Pear trees that shade the disgruntled workers. The other day I noticed their sign, though. You see, one of the signs had changed. I drove past and read, “SHAME ON ROBERT MORRIS.” (not his name) It didn’t just cast shame on the business, but on one individual person.

Now, I don’t want to get into this labor dispute. I don’t know the issues or who’s right or wrong. That’s not why I’m writing this. I’m am writing this because when I drove past that sign, it struck me that I would be horrified to find my name on a 25 foot-long ‘shame’ sign in giant capital letters for all to see. I mean, my daughter can sorta read now… what if she saw that sign? The thing that really got me though, was that someone could make that sign… I don’t know what this guy’s sins were, but I know I have sinned. I know that I have done things that deserve public disgrace. If there were a sign for every cruel word I’ve said or every unfair or messed up thought I’ve had, this world would be covered with them! And that could be said for just about any of us. What if my worst sins were broadcast on a billboard for random passers by? What if my crimes became a public spectacle?

Thanks be to God for His grace! Because I’ve believed in Jesus, I am totally forgiven for every wrong word, thought or deed in my past present or future; and even if I did have to circle the courthouse with a sign, I am completely free and forgiven in the only court that really matters. In Colossians 2 Paul says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Isn’t that awesome!? Because of His grace, I’m not a spectacle and the only thing written over my life is, “Holy.” In the face of Almighty God, I can stand with no shame and no sign.