Listen to today’s devotional James 4:11-12 “Do not speak evil against one another” is hard when they give us so many good reasons. Some people make it very easy to remember and rehearse what they did wrong. Have you ever replayed a conversation over and over, thinking about what you should have said? Then you tell somebody else what happened, and somehow the story gets a little better every time you tell it. At least, your part does. James knows we will have problems with one another. He is writing to people who share a faith and still struggle to share a life. So he does not say, “Never talk about it.” He says, “Do not speak evil against one another.” There is a difference. I may need to tell someone that I was hurt, or speak the truth. I may need help deciding what to do next. But as I do, I can also frame things the way I want because I want someone else to think less of the other person. I can choose the details that make them look their worst. I can say their name with a cer...
Listen to today’s devotional Matthew 18:1-5 Psalm 78 calls God’s people to tell the next generation “the glorious deeds of the Lord.” We have a responsibility to hand down the faith, to teach children the stories and ways of God. But in Matthew 18, Jesus turns the classroom around. The disciples ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Instead of giving them a ranking, Jesus calls a child to the center. Then he says, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We often say children are the future of the church. Jesus places a child in the middle of the church and says, “Pay attention. Your future depends on what this child can teach you.” In the ancient world, children had little status. So Jesus is not romanticizing childhood. He’s confronting the disciples’ hunger for importance. They want to climb the kingdom ladder, but Jesus points to someone who can’t climb it at all. “Become humble like this child.” I'm trying to fo...