12May2017

Local Family Misses Church Due to Bacon

Written By robfaircloth

Spoof, WI (Wire) — Church leaders were surprised to learn recently the reason that a family had been absent from worship services.

One of the elders reported that everyone was alarmed when the family, usually regular attenders, missed church.

“When we went by to check on them that day, they told us that they had been ready to come to worship, but decided against it after a big country breakfast. One of the kids had scorched the bacon. The pork aroma permeated their clothes, and they didn’t want to smell up the sanctuary.”

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9May2017

3 Reasons to Pray with Other Believers

Written By robfaircloth

The church prayer meeting has fallen on hard times, for many churches going the way of sword drills and catechisms.

To paraphrase Tim Challies, more people say they want to be part of a praying church than actually commit to praying with the church.

There are many reasons for this, among which might be that prayer meetings aren’t very glamorous, refusing to accommodate themselves readily to an entertainment gospel. Imagine the anachronisms posed by juxtaposing biblical prayer with contemporary notions of church life, in the form of sermon titles:

  • “Four Easy Steps to Lamentation and Penitence”
  • “God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Intercession”
  • “Three Personal Advantages to Forsaking Your Own Desires and Submitting to the Will of God”

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5May2017

Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels

Written By robfaircloth1 Comment on Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels

 

Granddaddy always wore a tie.

He wore a tie to work, and he wore a tie to church. He wore a tie to mow the grass, and he occasionally wore a tie when he went fishing. He wore a good shirt and tie to plow the garden, and it drove Grandmother crazy.

Merrill Brooks Faircloth was born five years into this century, when Teddy Roosevelt was President and no one had heard of kudzoo. Friends called him Metz and siblings called him Bubba, spelled “Bubber.”

Granddaddy was an athlete, and lettered in four sports in high school. He played college basketball when contact wasn’t allowed, baseball when they used those funny mitts, and football when they wore leather hats. He once returned kickoffs for touchdowns on two consecutive plays. He injured his leg at a time when doctors had limited knowledge about such things, and walked with a limp the rest of his life.

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2May2017

How to Test Your Omissions

Written By robfaircloth

None of us like tests. Well, some do. Very few of us like tests. We might be familiar, for example, with having to test the emissions of our vehicles. Not the same kind of test we normally fear, but we don’t relish the prospect of failing any test, and we don’t like to be told about the bad stuff coming out of our car.

James, the half-brother of Jesus and author of the eponymous book in the Bible, wants us to dislike the bad stuff coming out of our hearts. He doesn’t want us to fail the “omissions” test.

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27April2017

Learning to Water Ski in South Alabama

Written By robfaircloth

People are usually surprised, and skeptical, when I tell them I learned to water ski slalom. For some reason, it was easier for me to control one water ski rather than two.

Skiing on two skis requires that you 1) keep them separated and 2) keep them pointed straight ahead, neither of which I could ever do. Any violation of 1) and/or 2) results in a watery wipe out, usually accompanied by either a) large amounts of pond water accumulated in the sinuses, eyes, or other body cavities or b) a lake water enema. There is a difference.

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26April2017

Doing the Right Thing is Also the Best Thing

Written By robfaircloth

If failing to do the right thing is sin, then we’d best have some idea what the “right thing” is.

The problem is that our attitudes toward sin are, well, sinful. We suppose that since we don’t habitually murder, rob, and steal, we don’t have much of a sin problem. But God has a much broader view of sin. He is holy, after all.

The Christian life is not simply a matter of avoiding the “wrong thing,” especially the “big” wrong thing, such as murder or robbery or theft, but of doing the “right thing,” and we’re told, in James 4:17

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James is concerned that the believer’s faith result in good works, because all living faith works. Only a dead faith produces no works, no good deeds, and James wants believers to know that living a life pleasing to God, and delightful to us, requires that we not only refrain from bad deeds (sins of “commission,” those we commit), but that we not refrain from doing good deeds (sins of omission, duties or expectations or commands that we omit).

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18April2017

Earnhardt Epitomized Excellence

Written By robfaircloth

Let me make a confession. I am not a fan of auto racing.

Before you burn me at the stake as a heretic, make no mistake that I am a genuine southerner in all respects, and have the credentials to prove it:

  • I was born in Alabama

  • I use the term “y’all” and use it correctly

  • I have dressed fish, shot a deer, chewed tobacco (not my favorite, and been called a hick

  • I drive a pickup truck, and

  • I believe that unsweetened tea is a crime against humanity.

But I don’t like car racing.

Identifying with Sports

This is probably because I don’t really identify with any elements of it. My own automotive experience doesn’t include driving around in a circle for three hours at one hundred and eighty. Once, during my first year of college, I drove around Birmingham for two hours because I kept missing my exit. Although I really needed a “pit stop” by the third lap around, this is not quite the same thing.

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