The family of God here at Dowagiac Church of Christ wishes to extend to you a warm welcome. If you have questions about our worship services and why we do what we do, we will be glad to give you a biblical answer. The uniqueness of the Church of Christ is that we are trying to restore to the best of our ability those things that we see the first century Church doing. We are also working hard at building the spirit, unity, and love that Jesus taught and prayed for. We have no clergy, but are working together as equal co-workers trying to serve one another and the area in which we live. Come study with us, grow with us, and serve with us as we strive to do God’s will in all things.


Remember that we have several classes in which we all can participate. Larry Brewer is taking us through the Book of James on Sunday mornings at 10:00. Wednesday evenings at 7:15, Bill Gibson is walking us through prophecies in the Old Testament that point to Jesus and what He came to do when He lived among us.

Since John Clayton is out of town for several weeks, Jim Harasewicz will be speaking this morning and David Pickens will speak tonight.

Let us remember all the people we know who have a need of our prayers. Keep in mind the people who are on our prayer list, but we also need to remember those who are not on that list—in particular, John, who is traveling, being in Virginia this weekend to hold lectures with a congregation in Manassas, then travelling to Texas for a visit with family and a series of lectures.

You’ve probably seen the TV commercial about the group sitting around a table, completing a conversation with the boss via phone conference, and hitting the mute button to trash talk him. Just at that moment, a technician walks in to explain he is there to fix the broken mute key. Uh-oh! Bad career move!

In real life this past week, five of us were around a table, completed a phone conference with a person, and thought we had ended and hung up. I was seated immediately in front of the speakerphone and made some comments to our group about him and our call. Then we heard his voice! “You guys may need to hang up on your end,” he said. “I seem to be having trouble disconnecting.”

Maybe that’s why an online article from CNN caught my eye the next day. It was about a new feature called “Undo Send” that Google’s Gmail is developing. “Undo Send” is an option someone can enable on her Gmail account. When she composes an e-mail and hits the send button, an “Undo” button will pop onto the screen for five seconds. Clicking it retrieves the e-mail in draft form and lets the author correct spelling, edit content, or simply cancel the message altogether.

Don’t you wish you had a feature like that on your tongue! I could have used it countless times to save myself embarrassment. To keep from offending. To just keep my big mouth shut -- instead of firing back some angry or hateful line. But without an “Undo Send” button, it was hurled across that space between me and a friend or mate or stranger. And I was left to try to clean up the mess.

I admit to having learned a few things from living. One of them has to do with the importance of putting a bridle on my tongue. For all the times I still talk when I should be listening, I’m actually better at it than I used to be.

My mother used to tell me to count to ten before speaking. (She saw my need early. I seldom got past about three or four.) Then I grew up, got married, and had more adult responsibilities. I learned the hard way that she had given me some really good advice. Having to apologize and to recoup relationships (when possible!) over time finally taught me the value of restraint.

As you get ready to begin a new week, think about the value “Undo Send” could have for your electronic communications. Make a firm resolve to use its verbal equivalent in your workplace, family, and church this week. And pray for God to give you the restraint to follow through with your commitment.

If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless (James 1:26 NLT).

By the way, just in case you were wondering, I said some really positive things about the fellow on the other end of that open phone line. Whew!
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(c) 2009 Rubel Shelly <rshelly@rc.edu>’s  “FAX of Life” printed each Tuesday. See Faith Matters for previous issues of the “FAX of Life.”

This article is from:
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200904/20090416_undosend.html

I heard about a couple who received a set of two horrible bedside table lamps as a wedding present from a distant aunt. Since the lamps were so ugly, this couple didn’t want to actually use them, so they put them in storage and bought a nicer set themselves. That worked for a while, but a few years later, this particular relative came to a family celebration. Knowing she would be there, the couple quickly set up the aunt’s lamps on the tables and hid their usual ones under the bed.

When time came to show the aunt around the house, the wife said, “Come and see how nice your lamps look in our bedroom.”

She turned on the switch on the wall—and suddenly an intense luminosity emerged from under the bed … .

Oops! How embarrassing! I am reminded of the following statement made by Jesus:

[Jesus] said to them, “Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light” (Mark 4:21–22).

Jesus’ point here is not quite the same as it is in the more familiar passage in Matthew 5:16 (“Let your light so shine before men …”). Here in Mark, Jesus has apparently just begun to speak in parables. To the apostles, it may have seemed that Jesus was trying to hide the truth from people by speaking with such obscurity. But Jesus points out that wouldn’t make much sense; it would be like lighting a lamp (to bring light) and then placing it under a bed (to hide the light). His reason for using parables wasn’t to hide God’s truth, but to set it on a lampstand so that it could give forth as much light as possible.

Father, we thank you for sending One who not only came to show us the light, but who is Himself “the light of the world”. May our lives and conversation be such that we will never be embarrassed by an attempt to hide that light under our beds. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Have a great day!

Alan Smith

http://tftd.faithsite.com/content.asp?CID=20068