When our oldest son was in Scouting for 10 years, I volunteered to do some fundraising for the Gulf Ridge Council.  I’d go to local businesses and say something like:

“I believe that one of the biggest problems we have in society today is young men.  Many of them are essentially lost.  They fill our courts and prisons, leave unwed mothers stranded and alone, and those problems get compounded over and over again.  Scouting works directly on that problem by helping to shape young men who will be responsible citizens and good fathers.”

It worked because it’s obviously true. Scouting is not as popular today as it once was and it has had its own controversies and changes with which I have not kept up. But who would argue against the Scout Law?   

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Our annual meeting invites us to reflect on the prior year and look ahead as best we can. I began to think about all of the repairs, renovations and remodeling Good Shepherd has done over the last ten years.

When Meg and I came for my interview, the nursery had been fairly recently remodeled and refurbished, and we loved it. It said a lot to us about the commitment the church had to the babies and toddlers you had, as well as the ones yet to come.

Remembering that, I took a mental walk through all of our buildings and grounds, starting with our reception area and working through the office wing into the parish hall, kitchen, educational wing and into the main church. Then across the street to the Kenney Youth Building, the nursery, the Campbell building, our apartments and then downtown to our Thrift Shop. I made a list. Every building and all of our grounds have been remodeled and/or renovated in significant ways.

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Today’s gospel from Matthew brings us from the birth of Jesus to confront the very difficult truth of why we needed Jesus to come into the world.

Our relationship with God has been fundamentally broken from the beginning of human consciousness because we use our freedom to choose against the Lord’s will. Not everyone all of the time, but everyone some of the time. Somehow, some way, sometimes, we all do. Paul wrote this to the Church at Rome, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) John put it more confrontationally, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)

If you doubt that, think of it this way: what other creature on this planet routinely chooses to act against its own best interest and/or that of its community? We chafe against laws, rules, homeowners’ association covenants. We chafe against our own self-disciplines like diets. Sometimes we even chafe against our needs, like medication.

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