A New Year’s asssignment — don’t cause drama

9 And let us not grow weary while doing good,

   for in due season

   we shall reap

   if we do not lose heart.

  ~  Galatians 6:9 (NKJV)

By Bro. John L. Cash

We had some fun at the Choctaw school right before our Christmas break. I bought an inexpensive tree (complete with lights) at Walmart and then had my 11^th grade English students make ornaments for it.  They were instructed to punch 4-inch circles out of recycled Christmas cards, look at the picture from the card, and then write a rhyming couplet on it about the picture on front. Their poetry was impressive and brought a lot of joy.

One of my juniors (who is an avid hunter) made a correlating pair of ornaments. The first had a picture of a rabbit, to which he added “If it hops, it drops.” The second, with a picture of a bird, said, “If it flies, it dies.”  That probably wouldn’t make him popular with the Humane Society, but I thought it was clever, nonetheless.

I liked one of the ornaments so much I carried it home from school to put on my own Christmas tree. The young man had punched out a picture of Jolly Old Saint Nick looking at the names on his package-delivery-list. I loved the young poet’s rhyming couplet: “I want a pony because I eat baloney.” Indeed, nothing says Christmas like an ode to a highly-processed-meat-product.  😉

After reading the following verse on one young lady’s ornament, I said, “That’ll preach.” It read, “It’s Christmastime. Don’t cause Drama. Or there will be Karma.”

That’s not really an overtly Christian message, but I understood her point. The Bible says nothing about “karma”; that’s a Hindu idea. But the Holy Scriptures clearly teach us that all our actions have side-effects and consequences. On many occasions, St. Paul uses the illustration of our actions being “seeds” and the results being a “harvest.” Perhaps he says it best in this passage from Galatians 6:

7 Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.

8 For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

The Lord has blessed us all with a wonderful New Year — and a brand new decade! It’s time for us to begin a new field, with a different crop, as we labor moment by moment and day by day.

And (literally) for Heaven’s sake, let’s not sow drama.

For a change, let’s plant daisies….😊

Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 34 ½ years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. He’s currently on a sabbatical from the preaching ministry, and is an English teacher at the Choctaw Tribal School. He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in a brick house in town (where the Christmas tree came down last week.) You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.