Tuesday; December 19

There is an interesting story coming out of Atlanta this week.  Many of us are familiar with the electrical outage at the airport that disrupted thousands of travelers (in fact, some of you may be much more familiar with it than others of us), but the outage wasn’t the interesting news – that comes from Chick-fil-A.  If you are familiar with this particular fast food chain you probably also know that they do not open on Sundays because of their corporate principles.  Well, it just so happens that when thousands of people were stranded at the Atlanta airport, they were willing to come to the rescue by preparing and serving sandwiches to the stranded passengers last Sunday. 
Honestly, I don’t know if they gave away the sandwiches or sold them for a profit, but it did get me to thinking about our approach to some of our spiritual principles.  Yes, I believe that there are some things that must never be broached or changed, but there may also be some principles that can be “overridden” in service to others.  During the New Testament times the Pharisees appeared to be more interested in rules than in people.  It seems that some of them may have missed Solomon’s point, “To do righteousness and justice is desired by the Lord more than sacrifice.”. (Proverbs 21:3)  Again there needs to be a structure to our belief system, but we must also have the wisdom and compassion to know when people come before policies.
Let’s never lose sight of the fact that there are two prongs to what is important in Christianity – a love of God and a love for our fellow man.  When we have the ability to blend these two principles together, we will be in pretty good (spiritual) shape.
Think About It!

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