In this category, you will find many inspirational stories to be used for your Church Bulletins, Church Newsletters and/or Inspirational E-mails.
One of the more difficult things for someone on a weekly basis is to prepare content for the church bulletin or newsletter.
Usually, it’s a tug-of-war trying to get information from department or ministry leaders concerning the events taking place soon. Plus, the attempt to get an article from the Pastor can be an adventure due to the busy-ness of their schedule.
We want to do our part by adding a new category called “Church Bulletin Articles”. These will be brief and inspirational and may be used within the context of the church communications to the congregation via e-mail, bulletin or newsletter.
Perhaps some of them would even work as Sermon Illustrations! Stop back often as we plan to build the selection in the weeks and months ahead.
In reality, all our letters can be easily modified for that purpose. So, some of the content will be similar to our letters, while most of it will be new stories.
Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you’ve had a baby. Somebody doesn’t know that once you’re a mother, normal is history.
Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct.
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.
Somebody said being a mother is boring.
Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver’s permit.
Somebody said “good” mothers never raise their voices.
Somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a golf ball through the neighbor’s kitchen window.
We had the meanest mother in the whole world! While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal, eggs, and toast. When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had to eat sandwiches. And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was different from other kids had, too.
Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You’d think we were convicts in a prison. She had to know who our friends were, and what we were doing with them. She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an hour, we would be gone for an hour or less.
For many centuries the men and women in Europe looked out upon the western sea, what we call the Atlantic Ocean, and they saw the sun coruscating upon the glittering surface of the waters and they wondered.
They wondered if there was anything beyond. Scholars said that you could sail off the edge of the world—there was nothing out there at all. In fact, inscribed on the escutcheons of the coat of arms of the nation of Spain was its national motto, Ne Plus Ultra, meaning, “There is nothing beyond.”
Jay E. Adams writes that under the roof in his back yard hangs a hummingbird feeder that he keeps filled with sugar water. There are four openings in it from which birds may suck the nectar. Yet, day after day, from early morning until after dusk, the feeder is the source of their own private version of star wars. One bird chases all the others away.
“As I said,” Adams writes, “there is room for four birds at a time, and fully that number attempt to feed. But the top dog (excuse my use of this metaphor for a hummingbird!), who now ‘owns' the feeder, will not let them. All day long he sits on the branch of a nearby apricot tree guarding ‘his' feeder and defying others to transgress on what he has established as ‘his' territory.
Valentine's Day is an opportunity to show others our love. We give candy, flowers, and gifts to friends and loved ones. It's literally a sweet day, with sentiment and real sweets. It's good to show love to those we love and to love our enemies as well. Jesus says in Matthew 22:39, ” Love your neighbor as yourself.” But we know that it's preceded by another and greater commandment. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
