 A simple, illiterate Londoner was converted from alcoholic to believer through the work of the Salvation Army. He went regularly to the Salvation Army chapel. One day he came home depressed. His wife asked, “What’s the matter?”
He said, “I’ve just noticed that all the Salvationists wear red sweaters, and I don’t have a red sweater.”
She said, “I can fix that.” So she knitted him a red sweater, which he wore proudly to chapel.
The next Sunday, after he returned home, he still wasn’t happy. His wife asked, “What’s wrong this time?”
He replied, “I just noticed that all their red sweaters have some yellow writing on them.”
 She too was illiterate, but she said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll embroider some writing on it for you.” She had no idea what the yellow writing on the red sweater of the Salvationists said. It actually says, “Blood & Fire.” That’s the motto of the Salvation Army. The man’s wife had no idea what the letters said, and she couldn’t read anyway. So, copying a sign from a store window across the street, she embroidered three words onto his red sweater.
When he came home next Sunday, she asked, “Did they like your sweater?”
“They loved my sweater,” he beamed. “Some of them said they liked my sweater better than their own sweater.”
What neither husband nor wife knew was that the sign in the store window across the street said, “Under New Management.” What a great thing for a person to proclaim: “My life is under new management.”
We can declare that very thing today! It means giving up the precious control we think we have over our own lives. But do any of us really think we control very much at all about our lives? I have found that relinquishing control to a loving and trustworthy God is safer, and for that matter, a more accurate representation than thinking I’m in control anyway.
Just this morning Pastor Philip Miller of Westwood Baptist made an interesting observation. He said that most of us believe that Jesus is the expert in eternal life, but we think that He doesn't know as much about how to live our lives in the real world of 2013 as we do. So we go on thinking like the world, trying to live our lives according to the world's faulty wisdom. That's Old Management, not new. And it results in failed relationships, failed business, failed happiness.
Under New Management, that’s what I want my next sweater to say!
*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©. They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.
It may be humankind’s oldest question: “Is there a God?” Some people accept His existence without difficulty; others can’t believe unless they ‘see’ God. Most people are somewhere in
between.
Anthropology has never found a significant society that didn’t have some type of religion searching for the transcendent, yet some people doubt God’s existence.
Ryan was interviewed on the street. He said, with all the assurance that only a young, inexperienced person can have, “God did not create man . . . man created God!” A cute–sie little saying that Ryan probably heard from someone he looks up to. At age 17, Ryan believes he can have a great life relying only on himself, his ability and intellect. Will Ryan still believe a great life depends on him when he’s 27 and has discovered very few things in life he truly controls? Will he believe he can engineer his dreams himself, when he’s 37 and wrestling with some of the heartbreak and calamity of life? Will he still believe he can create his own wonderful life when he’s 47 and has seen tragedy and horror on a cosmic scale? When Ryan is 57, what will remain of his idealistic belief that there is no God and he is the captain of his own fate (a la William Ernest Henley)?
If God is so obviously a creation of human imagination, why do people grapple with this question, “Is there a God?” I think the answer is, most of us can see without trying that with no supreme being, life has no meaning or satisfaction or value.
The Apostle Paul was visiting Athens, Greece, and saw a temple dedicated to “an unknown god.” Paul spoke to the Greek philosophers of that day about this “unknown” god. He identified Him as the One True God, creator and sustainer of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to renew a onetime God–man relationship gone sour.
 That day, on a big, lumpy rock in Athens called Mars Hill, in the shadow of the Parthenon, a few listeners were
interested, though most just scoffed and walked off in a huff, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Paul was successful because success is not defined by which side has the most people, but by indi-viduals finding peace and purpose and pleasure in the knowledge that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives.
*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©. They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.
 A great story about over-abundance comes from WW–II. Two soldiers were sent to an uninhabited Pacific island as forward observers. Once a month they would send an order for supplies over their shortwave radio, and the materials, food, medicine, etc.,
would be air–dropped onto their tropical island.
One thing they ran out of was toilet paper, so they ordered a
gross. Problem was, the unit of order for toilet paper wasn’t one roll, but one gross of rolls, or 144 rolls. So where it said “one unit,” they ordered 144. Soon a plane flew over and dropped a gross of grosses—144 times 144. They received 20,736 rolls of paper.
If one roll would last two men, eating a crude, high–fiber diet, four days, then 144 rolls would be enough for 1 year, 6 months, 3 weeks and 6 days. When you do the math, 20,736 rolls is enough toilet paper for 227 years, 2 months, 4 weeks and 1 day!!! Over–abundance indeed!
When Mother Teresa came to Fort Wayne in 1982, while I was a college student, she told a moving story about taking a bowl of rice to a malnourished family in the slums of Calcutta.
She went into the hovel where the family lived and offered a bowl of rice to a stick–thin woman. The family’s poverty was having a damaging effect on them. As soon as Mother
Teresa gave the rice to the woman, the starving woman slipped out of the house and disappeared. The nun wondered where she had gone, and asked someone else about it. The other person took Mother Teresa’s hand and led her behind the house and down the street to another shack where poverty was the only decoration.
To her great surprise, Mother Teresa discovered the first woman, carefully pouring half the
rice she had been given, into the bowl of the second family. Even in her own poverty, she was sharing the bounty she had received.
From my travels in many foreign countries, I know firsthand that virtually every American is
wealthy, compared to people in the Third World. Each of us can afford to give liberally, even conservatives. Jesus served poor people almost exclusively during his life on earth. How can we do less?
*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©. They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.
The website for Jim Carrey’s 1997 film, “Liar, Liar,” explains the plot like this:  A fast–talking divorce lawyer’s habit of swaying juries with fabrication, distortion and deception carries over to his
relationship with his five–year–old son, Max. When Fletcher lies once again by
making promises to Max that he can’t or won’t keep, the son makes a wish, before
blowing out the candles, that his dad will somehow have to tell the truth for a whole day. It results in some embarrassing—even professionally damaging—truths that open the lawyer’s eyes to his problem with lying.
The lie–free day is painful for Fletcher. He is pulled over by a traffic cop, and the following conversation ensues:
Cop: You know why I pulled you over?
Fletcher: Depends on how long you were following me!
Cop: Why don't we just take it from the top?
Fletcher: Here goes: I sped. I followed too closely. I ran a stop sign. I almost hit a Chevy. I sped some more. I failed to yield at a crosswalk. I changed lanes at the intersection. I changed lanes without signaling while running a red light and speeding!
Cop: Is that all?
Fletcher: No... I have unpaid parking tickets. [groans]
Then there’s his truthful encounter with a hungry, indigent man outside the courtroom:
Bum: Got any spare change?
Fletcher: Absolutely!
Bum: Could ya spare some?
Fletcher: Yes I could!
Bum: Will ya?
Fletcher: Nope!
Bum: How come?
Fletcher: Because I believe you will buy booze with it! I just want to get from my car to the office without being confronted by the decay of western society! Plus—(screaming) I'm cheap!
Lying can be a joke in American society. But it’s no joke to God. He keeps track of every little thing I say, and if it’s not true, He knows it and He takes it seriously, and He will hold me accountable for my lying. He never stops loving me, but He does have high standards.
History is replete with people who would have been much better off if they had just told the truth to begin with. The humiliation is probably much less than having our lies exposed in the end. And God isn’t amused when we refuse to tell it like it is.*The views expressed in this blog are in no way intended to represent the views of Child Evangelism Fellowship©. They are exclusively the expressed views of Curtis Alexander.
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