June 1, 2011 Pastor's Blog

June 1, 2011
Dear Family of Faith,
Sometimes the newspaper has stories that are almost unbelievable because of the sorrow they engender in my heart. There were two this past week that brought great sadness to me. One was an incident at the Redneck Games Festival in Inglis where a 15-year-old New Port Richey boy stabbed a man to death because the man got in a dispute over revving an engine with the boy's father. The father's anger will likely result in a long prison term for the boy. The second item was the picture of a grieving Tampa woman at the funeral of her 13-month-old grandson who was killed by her daughter's boyfriend. If that were not enough pain, the grandmother stood out on a Tampa street the day after the child's death to raise money for his funeral expenses! A fifteen-year-old killer and a thirteen-month-old victim, a father who will spend the rest of his life regretting his anger and a grandmother who will spend the rest of her life wishing she had been home! Life doesn't get much rawer than this. On those days when I struggle to pay my taxes or listen to people complain or wish that I lived closer to my kids, I think about such sorrows and how small my problems are when compared to many in this world. I was thinking that same thought this past Monday on Memorial Day when I thought about all the young men and women who gave up their lives on foreign battlefields who had barely graduated from high school-- and how much of life I have lived since those school days-- a life they never got to experience. It's no wonder the Apostle Paul admonishes us (Philippian 2: 14) to do all things without murmuring or arguing. What do we have to murmur or argue about when compared to the burdens of so many others? Surely we are blesssed. The trick is to remember it, and live with gratitude. I hope to do so, and I pray that you can, too.
With affection,
Pastor Carlan