Keys for a Successful Family Life - Part 4

Psalm 16, and let's stand for the reading of God's word. Psalm 16, verse 1. Preserve me, O God, for in thee do I put my trust. O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord, my goodness extendeth not to thee, but to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight. Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. Thou maintainest my lot. The lions are fallen unto me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel. My rains also instruct me in the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou will not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou will show me the path of life, and thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures evermore. Let's sort of focus on verse 11 that in God's presence there's fullness of joy. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for letting us come back and again and again we need your anointing on our hearts, our eyes, ears that we can see, our minds that we can think, and we ask that thou would bless us, rebuke the enemy from us, but may we just recognize that you want us to focus on you and what you have to say to us personally. Maybe it's just one thing that we would get out of this message or maybe the whole weekend, but I pray that your word would not return into void but would accomplish that would you please. Thank you for your kindness to us, Lord, and now teach us about the joy of the Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, I titled this Joy in the Home. Joy in the Home. And joy is tied in with character, and I'm going to be over in the book of Genesis again about a character and a little bit about the struggle with Cain and Abel. Cain seemed to have a problem with doing what was right, and a problem with the world, and maybe with us sometimes, but his countenance fell, the scripture says. Genesis 4, when he didn't bring the right offering, he brought an offering that represented works versus the one that Abel brought which represented faith. But unto Cain, verse 5, unto his offering he had not respect, and Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And then the Lord asked him several questions, and the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted, and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him, and the Lord said unto Cain, third question, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not, am I my brother's keeper? And he said, the fourth question, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground, and now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength, a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And it goes on about some more things with them. Joy, I believe, is sort of tied in with our character, and character definition of that is the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing. And number two, it's the moral or ethical quality. He's a fine character, a low character, honorable character, trustworthy character, shady character, courageous character, generous character, lovable, and etc. Or maybe quite a character. Maybe some of us have had children that are quite a character. I think our latest granddaughter is quite a character. Well, I might have made some wrong statements in the last message about Edom and got those sort of messed up a little bit. But let's keep on moving and understand that joy is something that is to be manifest in our life. It was the character of Christ. He was full of joy all the way to the cross, and it was a thing, and by presence of fullness joy, and because of what was set before him, the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despised the shame, and those things. Somebody said character is what you are in the dark. Somebody said character is what you are, and do, and say. And some of the bad things about character, somebody also said negatives are developed in the dark, and so God wants us to be characters of light and joy. So I want to just focus on this as we raise up some of us raising our little characters. Important people, very important, and I think that God would want us to raise them up to be happy, to be free, to be very joyful. Somebody said joy is the bloom on the stem of our character, and I've got a quote back here from a Puritan. I just got a little piece of it here, but he said a beautiful face is at all times pleasing, pleasing to the eye, but especially when joy is manifested in the countenance, and so joy is something that's going to be shown in the countenance. I'll tell you a little secret, if you promise not to tell anybody, but before I married my wife, the Lord had spoke to me in my spirit, and he said it'd be my business to make sure that her countenance stayed good and happy, because if it fell, if it wasn't, then I was in trouble. And so it's a husband's duty to make sure he has a cheerful wife, and they've got ways to communicate to us that they're not happy with this or that, and they're a real blessing. I remember Roy Daniel, I think it was this last time he was here, he, and I got this quote, he did something wrong, I think he got on a tractor or something, maybe he told you this, and he came into his granny, he said, and she looked at him and said, what have you done wrong? She could probably see it on his face. Okay, let's go into this and see what we're going to learn about this. I believe that joy was just so exuberant in the life of Jesus that everywhere he went, he was just a joy to be around, a joy to be with, and the children probably just loved to be with Jesus and would like to get on his lap and receive his hugs, and the disciples got into trouble one time trying to keep him away. But I want to share with you a little story to start off here, and I think I might have one more story, and I think I've had a couple children say they like the stories. Well, that's why I'm doing it, for you to have some stories, and maybe you might remember one of them. This one is about a guy by the name of LaGuardia, and he was made one day the mayor of New York, and he was known to be a very happy man, and they said he always wore a little flower on his lapel, and this is back in the days of the depression. I'm trying to remember the year, around 1935, and so it was hard days. They come out of those days, and he would just, I guess he was a character. They said that he would get out and ride on the fire trucks, go with them to a fire. He'd go with the police to make a raid, and he was just doing things like this. They said that he would take all the kids in an orphanage to a ball game, get them all in, and he just did things like that, and one cold January night in 1935, he did something really unusual. He went to one of the worst sections of town where they had a night court going on, and he went in there and dismissed the judge, and he said, I'll take over, and I'll do the cases tonight. I guess he could legally do that, and so he did, and so he took over, and a poor old woman come up, and she was charged with stealing a loaf of bread, and he tried to get the owner of the store to drop the charge, and he said, your honor, I just can't do that. If she gets away with it, everybody don't think they can get away with that, and so he's sort of in a, he's got a problem here, and so he says, okay, and the lady had said, my daughter's sick, and I've got my two grandkids, and the husband's deserted us, and I'm trying to take care of these kids, and they were just starving. Well, what's he going to do? He's now in the place of a judge, and so what he did, we would understand that, he said, I've got to punish you. This law, I can't make an exception for you, so I fine you ten dollars or ten days in jail, and of course, you can't do it, and you know what he did next. He took off his robe, went down there, and paid the ten dollars, and then come back, okay, so she was free, but yet he wasn't done, but then he says to everybody in the room, I fine everybody in this room 50 cents for living in a town like this. They collect the money, and the belief had to go around and collect 50 cents from everybody in the room, the lawyers, there were about 90 people there for traffic, tickets, and stuff like that. There's a large crowd, and so they went around, and they collected 47 dollars and 50 cents, and handed it to the lady. Now, the next thing is what the crowd did. They'd just been forced to give up money that, you know, they didn't want to pay a fine. They didn't do that, but when he finished, they had all these people, they stood up and gave the mayor a standing ovation for what he did. He just brought joy. He was just a man of joy, so if you can imagine that God has raised you up to be a person of joy, and to bring joy in people's lives, maybe that encourages us to do some different type of things. All right, let's see if there's anything in this that we can learn. The countenance reflects our inner self, the character of what's inside it shows, and it shows the good, bad, and ugly. You know, sometimes we have the bad that comes out. I know you never probably had one of these, but you ever seen the little baby, something it didn't like, and it sticks that little lip out? Boy, out it goes. It's not happy with whatever's going on. It just has a way. The bad just has a way to come out, and that's the way it goes with us, and so we have to work with the children and get them to, you know, you just can't go around all your life having it sticking your lip out, and so our job is to try to get them to learn to be happy and joyful, to be good. Hebrews 12, to as I said, who for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. So, it's a real challenge to get ourselves to much less endure things that would not produce joy naturally. It's, of course, a fruit of the Spirit, but also to bring our children to the point where we can have them to be happy. The old Puritan said the purest character is full of joy, expressed by a clear countenance, and then I added that in service to others. The purest character is full of joy, expressed by a clear countenance, and then I put in there service to others. There was a story about Beethoven who had a really good friend, and his friend's son was killed, and of course, people go around and try to give you comfort when you lose a loved one, but Beethoven, he went to his friend's house, and he went to his friend's piano, and he just sat there and played for a half hour, and his friend said out of all the people that came to comfort him, Beethoven just sitting there and playing the piano brought the most comfort to him, and I have a statement here. When we come into the lives of people, and God brings people into our lives, we need to do what we can with what we have to help them have joy, and of course, you can't give joy if you don't have it, so it's our business to keep our hearts right with God, which can be a challenge if you got quite a bit of the old man inside of you, but Jesus was just one of pure joy. You can imagine him, and let me go over and read some verses to you, and you know all these verses. That's the neat thing about preaching at some churches where everybody's Bible people, and they know the word, but John 15 11, John 15 11, these things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. The intention of God when we get saved is for us to be joyful people, and of course, the countenance, you can't really hide what's inside. You can try, but it's really going to show, and some people say, how you doing, you know, and they, oh, I'm doing great, whatever, but as soon as they turn their back, they're back down again, and so Jesus said that he came to give us joy. These things that I've spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. If you want to flip over to 16 in verse 20, verily, verily, I say unto you that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy, so if God gives us sorrows, not only for ourselves, but for our little kids, maybe they have something happen, we have a responsibility to help them understand it's not to rob us of our joy, of our being aware of God working sorrows. Sorrows really sometimes, and I'll talk to you about that in just a second, can work the deepest joy into our hearts. 21, he used the illustration of a woman who has sorrow because her hour has come, but she remembers no more the English for joy, that a man is born into the world in 22, John 16, 22, and ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your joy, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. Verse 22 to 24, hitherto have you asked nothing my name, ask and you shall receive that your joy may be full, and so a praying people should be a joyful people because they're doing it by faith and believing the Lord. In 1713, which is the Lord's Prayer, he said, and now come I to thee, talking to the Father, these things I speak in the world that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. So joy is a wonderful thing to have and to let it be the flag that swung from our heart. All right, I believe it's our duty, it's one of the duties that we had to be filled with joy and to get our children to be happy when their circumstances that are not can be a challenge, and it can be hard. Now, Cain had extreme ugliness and anger coming out of his life. He was not, and usually we're not happy because of something that's not going our way, and so in raising our children, we're sort of focusing in on the home this weekend. It'll be a real job to try to get our children to understand that we're not going to always have things our way, and we can't let these things, these bad things take our joy away. No Puritan again said this, joy is the brightest expression on the countenance, the brightest expression on the countenance. We've got one of our little granddaughters, she just turned five. She's very expressive, and they just had a little birthday party for her last time on her birthday, and they had some presents, and boy, she would go, she was just, wow, oh, she was just really enthusiastic about everything, and she's like that, but she can crash, and then she's got a little brother to help her there when he comes along. You know, Hudson Taylor, if you've never read his life, you ought to study on his life, because he went through a lot of hard things, but he learned to be a very joyful person, and he went through many years of struggling. Then he found the secret of letting the Lord be the Lord of his life. I did something, I think, this morning, I told you something about the little boy that was Bill Orr. It wasn't him that offered the dollar to his mother. That was another story almost like that, and I was going through this. Oops, I got that fact wrong. I got it mixed together on that, but I need to correct that one. All right, the sad countenance. Now, what about a sad countenance, because sometimes we can have a sad countenance. Let me say some things about that, because biblically, the Bible talks about it. When Jesus, after he'd been raised from the dead, and he's walking with the two disciples down the Emmaus Road, that was the thing he picked up on them, he says, as you walk and are sad. Now, they are sad, so we have sad things. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 7:3 that sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Sometimes God lets us have some sorrows, and we're not going to be a hypocrite. We're going to cry. We're going to cry. Our kids grew up for about 13, 14 years with their eight kids, and the dad dies, and we were at the funeral Thursday, and so we don't hide it, but there's something that God wants to do in our lives, and I think I've got that written down on this next page. I do. We shouldn't waste our sorrows, because what these sorrows are going to do, they're going to drive us deeper and closer to God, and here's the full statement by this Puritan. A beautiful face is at all times pleasing to the eye, but then especially when there is joy manifested in the countenance. Joy in the face puts a new beauty and makes that which before was beautiful to be exceeding beautiful. It puts a luster and glory upon beauty. So does joy in the face, heart, and life of a Christian. Cast a general splendor and glory upon him and the ways of God wherein he walks. The joy of the Lord is not only the strength, but also the beauty and glory of Christians. Now, God allows sorrows to come into lives. Remember when Paul was asking the Lord three times to remove that thorn? He wasn't really happy about this different thing, and what God did, he said, my grace is sufficient for thee. So when we go through sorrows and these things affect us, God is going to use the sorrows to deepen his grace in our lives. And so, because we grow as little children spiritually also, and we act like little children until we begin to get a little bit more mature. The Puritans said that the more rich the soul is in grace, the higher the soul will be in joy and comfort. And it just seems to be the way to get the grace of God in our lives in a deeper way is to go through the sorrows of life. And we learn to turn these things, you know, he'd give us, we got the song, he'd give us more grace and all these different things. Now, even men and women that are used by God and mature can have what we call a bad hair day. We can have a day like that, and our council will show it. There's a preacher that he shared a story, and I've shared this story. I don't know if I shared it here before, but he was, and he was not, he was just really, he's a lawyer, a Christian lawyer in our country that helps churches and Christians. But he was out in California, and he just got with some meetings, and he's trying to get somewhere else, and there was a major bad deal, and the lines at the airport just went for blocks and blocks and blocks, and maybe out into the parking lot, and he was not happy about that. And it happened to be, I don't know if it was the same preacher or another preacher that knew him, they come along and saw him there. And that preacher was coming down the line, sharing Christ with people and giving out tracts, and he'd come to his friend, and he said, what are you doing here? Oh, the flights of cats. You know, we talked about cursing and blessing. He probably really wasn't in the blessing mode. And this preacher, he looked at him, he said, well, this is a wonderful day. Look at all these opportunities. They won't go away. They won't get out of line. You can share Christ with them, get out tracts, and he said, now here's some tracts. You just go down the line and start passing out tracts. And then he said, and before you go, he said, fix your face. And he did. He got his face fixed, and he took opportunity. So these things happen. These things just happen. Rejoice and be exceeding glad. The Lord taught us, and remember we did last year, the Beatitudes. So you got these things happening or whatever, but we can't teach our kids and get into them what's not into us. And so God's let us practice first so that we get the victory and that can help them. Now, Johnny, I know that was a brand new toy and your cousin tore it to pieces, but you have to learn that that's the way life is. Mommy just had this happen to her, and I just want to share that Jesus will help you through this. And then he'll probably say something, then agree with that or whatever. But, you know, rejoice and be exceeding glad when you're getting persecuted. They want to kill you and throw you to the lions and all these things. The only way that that can be produced is through the Holy Spirit. And so it's a real challenge to do this. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. They had some sorrow there. They just had not yet figured out that the ways of God are not our ways. And it's like he said, where was it in Jeremiah, Isaiah? It's like God said, your ways are not my ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts. It's like God said, but I wish you would get in line with me. And understand the way I work. So his grace is sufficient. It takes, I believe, the storms of life to just drive us to the Lord for his grace and for that joy to come out and give us a bright countenance. Now, I've got about seven lessons about this subject. And Cain is our illustration on this. Cain is probably the ultimate expression of self. If they'd had cars, he would have had ultimate road rage, probably would have ran over his brother or whatever, but he killed him. And you've got these out here, the Judas, the King Saul, and whatever. If we don't get our children to understand the ways of God, that God is going to turn it out for good, and we use the illustrations or whatever, they may not have such a good testimony. The first one, then, joy is the measure or the expression of a soul in contact with God. Jesus was continually in contact with his Father, and the devil's going to be trying to knock us out of contact with the Lord. And so that's one of the things that we can use for a self-check in this area. Abel was in contact with God. He was glad to obey God. He was glad to give his offering that the way God wanted, and this is the way the enemy works. Envy, jealousy, and whatever, and come after and kill them. But Cain was in trouble. The second thing, it is the greatest measure of grace that ushers in the greatest measure of joy and comfort. And it seems like the way that we get more grace and more of the power of God in our life is to have trials. I mean, if you're out in your sailboat, you're not going to go very far very fast without some wind, and it takes those storms and things to come along to make us go to the Lord. It's just the way it is. Listen to this. I just finished up a few weeks ago a series in the book of 1 Thessalonians, and talking about these guys back over in 2 Corinthians 8, 1. These people were really poor, the Macedonian saints up in northern Greece. And here's what he wrote to the Corinthians. Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, how that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. See, listen, these guys are very poor. They've got a lot of things going on. The church was being persecuted because when Paul came in there, people were getting saved. He got in trouble and had to leave the country, and he wrote letters back, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. But because of their contact with God, the grace of God in their lives, they were sending money and giving away out of deepest poverty. And sometimes it seems like some of the poor saints will give more, just like the widow with her two mites. Just then got Jesus really excited about what she was doing. And Paul's pretty excited about them. He said, for to their power, I bear record, verse 3, and beyond their power, they were willing of themselves, praying us with much entreaty. He not even wanted to take it, that we would receive the gift and take upon us the fellowship of the ministry to the saints. And this they did, not as we hope, but first gave their own selves to the Lord and then to us by the will of God. Selfish souls are generally not very happy. And we could go into some stories in that area. A third thing, a third thing, first joy is a measure and expression of a soul. The second thing is the greatest measure of grace that ushers in the greatest measure of joy and comfort. Third thing, if you're taking notes, I hope you can take speed notes, great measures of grace will a man not only have a heaven there, but also a heaven of joy here. You ever, I was at a conference, I think it was Sioux City, Iowa one time, and it was for counselors and Christian psychologists and those teams, things like that. It just, I don't know how I got there or whatever. But I remember when we went to lunch, this one guy came and sat down, I had one of my other elders with me up there at this thing, and this guy came and sat down across the table from us, and he said his prayer, and he was just full of joy. You could see, I said, wow, this guy is really walking with Jesus. I never forgot that, he just was really full of joy and happy. He's just happy, and I thought, this man's walking with the Lord. And so the, there he was. Here's a fourth way, great measures of grace will amend not only the heaven there, but a heaven of joy here. Let me tell you a little story, let me just stop. I got to tell these stories, and I got to tell them year after year, so I don't forget them. My people listen. But there was a preacher, his name was Glenn Shepard, and I remember during the revival days of the Canadian Revival, and how, and I was in Bible college in those days, and the Holy Spirit was really working, working in our school, and working those powerful days in 69, 1969, not 1869, but 1969 and 70 and 71 in there. But this guy had got touched by revival, Glenn Shepard, and I can't remember some southern state or whatever, and he, he ran into, there was a guy that went to their church, and he was very poor, very poor. His job, and it was a very rich church, they had a lot of rich people in there, bankers, and lawyers, and these type of guys, but this guy was a honey dipper, and maybe you know what a honey dipper is. It's not what it sounds like. He would empty out the septic tanks. That's what they call down there in the south, a honey dipper. Now you learn something new. Anyway, this man walked with God, and he ministered to the pastor, who was of this first church, first big Baptist church, I think it was, in this prominent area, and the pastor would go out to his house, and this man would bring him into the presence of God, and just ministered to the pastor, the joy of God, and the pastor just had the feet of this guy that emptied the septic tanks for all the rich people around there. Well, the pastor did something wild. He had to go off and speak somewhere else, and so he asked this honey dipper to take the pulpit for him. Now how do you think that went over? So he did, and the guy preached that Sunday for the pastor, and the pastor came back wondering how it went over. I guess he didn't care if they threw him out or whatever, but the church secretary met him, and he asked how'd it go, and she said, oh pastor, the glory of God fell on the place. God came and worked in a powerful way. Pastor, when are you going to be gone again? Hope you're gone next week or two, you know. Don't underestimate what God can do through you, or use to minister to you. May use our little ones to teach us more things. The fourth thing now, after the honey dipper story, great measures of grace carry with them the greatest evidence of the truth of grace, and I glean these from Puritan, and the clear evidence there is in the soul of the truth of grace, the higher will joy and comfort spring. Let me say that again. If you're trying to copy it down, you can get in my notes afterwards. Great measures of grace carry with them the greatest evidence of the truth of grace, and the clear evidence there is in the soul of the truth of grace, the higher will joy and comfort spring out of our lives, and so it seems like sometimes that God is going to have a specifically designed trial just for you, to help you develop joy amid those trials. The next message, Lord, well, and I'm going to share later on after our break, is going to be, I forgot to set that, okay, is going to be the title, Never Give Up, and I think I'm going to share that story with you, tell you about this morning, just to illustrate how important it is for us to never give up, but that's the fourth one. The great measures of grace is going to take us into a higher area of joy. The fifth one is this, love for Christ which produces that joy unspeakable. It is the love for the Lord Jesus Christ which is going to produce that joy unspeakable. You know where that comes from? 1 Peter 1:8. Matter of fact, I thought I marked that. Let me read it. If I didn't, I'll find it. I did mark it, I think, somewhere. Listen to this. Whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. So it's quite a challenge to raise up our little ones and have them to be joyful when we maybe are struggling with that ourselves. Think about this. So many times people are pushing themselves forward and it gets to be a bad thing in churches or denominations or whatever. It's bad enough at work and in places like that, but the occupation of John the Baptist was to live in the desert, wear leather clothes, eat grasshoppers and honey and whatever. Maybe he had a few other things for his diet that maybe wasn't as appetizing as one of the kids in my church come up with a chocolate covered grasshopper one time, and he dared me to eat it, and I ate it. You got to keep contact with these kids, you know. Swallow fast. But John the Baptist's joy was to decrease that Christ might increase. Would that be your joy, that you could be willing to go down to suffer, to get lower, whatever? That was his joy, was to go down that Christ might increase. And so many times people want to get themselves pushed forward more, and so the more we go up, the farther Christ goes down. But the most joyful Christians would be those that are willing to be put down. How many of you have heard of Priyanhide? A few of you have. You might have heard this story, but he was a great prayer warrior in India, and he was well known as a man of faith. I mean, and God used him to win souls. He's the one that went to God to win one soul a day, and then he went on to win two souls a day, and then on up to four souls a day, and I don't know how far he went by faith and prayer. Amazing, amazing man of prayer. But he went up to a Keswick conference, I think it was in England somewhere, and they didn't know him very well up there. The man who got him up there knew how powerful a man he was. You remember that story of what happened to him at that conference? They invited him to speak, and he got up to speak, and he wasn't a great speaker. I never heard him. It was way back before my days, but he's sort of stuttering around a little bit and getting started slow in his meeting, and a lady stood up and started singing, and others joined her, and they sang him down. He went down off the pulpit, went back into the back room. They sung him out. A great, powerful man of God, and the man that invited him there thought, this is horrible. How humiliating. And he went back there, and I think he had his back turned, and he said, Brother Hyde, this is awful, and he apologized, this is just terrible. And John Hyde turned around, his joy was just flowing out of his face. He's just so happy. He said, it's the Lord. Let him do what he wants. Die into self. Die into self. The crucified life brings the joyful life. Seven. Seven, I think I gave you the sixth one, didn't I? Yeah. John the Baptist's joy was to decrease. The seventh one is great measures of grace give us comfort and joy with our tears. Great measures of grace give us comfort and joy with our tears. One time I remember something was going to happen, and I had really been looking forward to that for years, and then all of a sudden it was taken away, and at the same moment I had sadness, but also great joy. It was a strange experience, because I knew God was in on it, and it was something that I thought that God had directed, and later on God did bring it back around. It was like the death and burial and the resurrection of the vision that he gave me. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. So, it's quite a challenge if we're going to teach our children to be joyful, and we're not very joyful. I want to close up with a little story. Children like the stories, and sometimes parents do too. This is called a Sandpiper to Bring You Joy. I got this book. I got these stories in it, and I read this story, and since I still got some time, I think I'm going to read this whole thing to you. A lot of times I tell it, and I leave details out, but this was a story about a lonely child, and it was about a wounded lady, a struggling lady, and this little child, this little girl had a lot of pain, and she was suffering, and the other lady was struggling with life, and the little girl was six years old, and here's how the story goes. So, you just get all the details of it, and it's written from the aspect of the woman that's struggling and having a hard time, facing life, and she meets this little girl, and she said, she wrote in the story, she was six years old when I first met her on the beach near where I live. I drive to this beach a distance of three or four miles whenever the world begins to close in on me, and she was building a sandcastle or something, and looked up, her eyes as blue as the sea. Hello, she said. I answered with a nod, not really in the mood to bother with a small child. I'm building, she said. I see that. What is it? I asked, not caring. Oh, I don't know. I just feel, I like the feel of the sand. That sounds good, I thought, and slipped off my shoes. A sandpiper glided by. That's joy, the child said. It's what? It's a joy. My mama says sandpipers come to bring us joy. The bird went glistening down the beach. Goodbye, joy, I murmured to myself. Hello, pain, and turned to walk on. I was depressed. My life seemed completely out of balance. What's your name? She wouldn't give up. Ruth, I answered. I'm Ruth Peterson. Mine's Wendy. At least it sounded like Wendy, and I'm six. Hi, Wendy, she giggled. You're funny, she said. In spite of my gloom, I laughed, too, and walked on. Her musical giggle followed me. Come again, Miss P, she called. We'll have another happy day. The days and weeks that followed belonged to someone else, a group of unruly Boy Scouts, PTA meetings, an ailing mother. The sun was shining one morning, and I took my hands out of the dishwater. I need a sandpiper, I said to myself. Gathering up my coat, the never-changing balm of the seashore awaited me. The breeze was chilly, but I strode along, trying to recapture the serenity I needed. I had forgotten the child, and was startled when she appears. Hello, Miss P, she said. Do you want to play? What do you have in mind? I asked with a twinge of annoyance. I don't know, you say. How about charades? I asked sarcastically. The tinkling laughter burst forth again. I don't know what that is. Then let's just walk. Looking at her, I noticed the delicate fairness of her face. Where do you live? I asked. Over there, she pointed toward a row of summer colleges. Strange, I thought, in winter. Where do you go to school? I don't go to school. Mommy says we're on vacation. She chattered, little girl talk, as we strolled up the beach, but my mind was on other things. When I left for home, Wendy said, it had been a happy day. Feeling surprisingly better, I smiled at her and agreed. Three weeks later, I rushed to my beach in a state of near panic. I was in no mood even to greet Wendy. I thought I saw her mother on the porch, and I felt like demanding she keep her child at home. Look, if you don't mind, I said crossly. When Wendy caught up with me, I'd rather be alone today. She seemed unusually pale and out of breath. Why, she asked. I turned on her and shouted, because my mother died. Oh, she said quietly, then this is a bad day. Yes, and yesterday, and the day before that, and oh, just go away. Then Wendy said, did it hurt? Did what hurt? I was exasperated with her and with myself when she died. Of course it hurt. I snapped, misunderstanding, wrapped up in myself, and I strode off. A month or so after that, when I went next to the beach, she wasn't there. Feeling guilty and ashamed and admitting to myself I missed her, I went up to the cottage after my walk and knocked at the door. A drawn-looking young woman with honey-colored hair opened the door. Hello, I said, I'm Ruth Peterson. I missed your little girl today and wondered where she was. Oh, yes, Miss Peterson, please come in. Wendy talked of you so much. I'm afraid I allowed her to bother you. If she was a nuisance, please accept my apologies. Not at all, not at all. She's a delightful child, I said, suddenly realizing that I meant it. Where is she? Wendy died last week, Miss Peterson. She had leukemia. Maybe she didn't tell you. Struck dumb, I groped for a chair, my breath caught. She loved this beach, so when she asked to come, we couldn't say no. She seemed so much better here and had a lot of what she called happy days. But the last few weeks she declined rapidly and her voice faltered. She left something for you. If only I can find it, could you wait a moment while I look. I nodded stupidly, my mind racing for something, anything to say to this lovely young woman. She handed me a smeared envelope with Miss P painted in bold, childish letters. Inside was a drawing in bright crayon hues, a yellow beach, a blue sea, a brown bird. Underneath was carefully printed a sandpiper to bring you joy. Tears welled up in my eyes and a heart that had almost forgotten how to love opened wide. I took Wendy's mother in my arms. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I muttered over and over and we wept together. That precious little picture is framed now and hangs in my study. Six words for each year of her life. Speak to me of inner harmony, courage, undemanding love, a gift from a child with sea blue eyes, hair the color of sand, who taught me the gift of love, the gift of joy. Let's pray. Our Father, we can get so caught up in our own busyness and in our own ways, we can fail to see the simplicity in the life of a child who you bring into our lives to bring us joy, these tender, precious little ones. Father, help us to realize that you bring joy and you bring the sandpiper our way. A sandpiper, she said, to bring you joy. I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would use the word of God to go deeply into our lives that we would not get so caught up in our own sorrows and our own struggles that we don't have time to listen to a little child or a neighbor or a business acquaintance or somebody. People are needy, Father, and they need Jesus. They need the Lord and we can't give them the joy of the Lord if we don't have it ourselves. So, Father, I pray that you would use this simple little old message just to remind us the story of the sandpiper and this little girl named Wendy who you had there to help this lady have a happy day. We thank you now in Jesus' name. Amen.