DAILY BREAD, THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007

THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Neal Pollard

The story begins pathetically. An unwanted, abandoned dog is left along the side of the interstate. It is hit twice by passing motorists and even shot with buckshot. Cold and starving, the dog's chances of survival are quickly diminishing. Then, an unidentified woman driver picks up the dog. She takes it to a care shelter there, paying for its expenses. Apparently, she is a nurse and her compassion influenced even her choice of career. Fortunately, the dog had no broken bones or fractures, and it was quickly adopted.

What a heartwarming story! Such compassion for one of God's creatures is worthy of imitation. It tugs at our heartstrings. A hurting, defenseless canine. A sacrificial person in the midst of less admirable folks who neglected and even actively harmed the dog.

Jesus is the master teacher. He taught a story of a man, beaten and left beside the road. Robbers actively harmed him. Others, though knowing better, neglected him. One, "the good Samaritan," rescued him at great personal price. Jesus implicitly condemns the thieves and the negligent ones. He likewise praises the rescuer.

There are people who have been beaten by sin problems and are spiritually dying. We pass them in the hall and the mall, at work and on the way. Upon many of these we bear no influence. On some, we do. Wherever possible, ignoring the personal cost, we must help.

There are people who have been beaten by sorrow who are languishing in despair. They may be in our physical family or church family. They may be our friends from work or school. Our attention, our compassion, and the wisdom from God's Word are all salve that can comfort them.

There are people who have been beaten by problems who are just hanging on. They may not see the need to keep going. You can spell the difference by helping lift them out of their ditch of despair. Proverbs 25:11 reminds us, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Maybe some troubled soul needs a healthy word from you.

We can see, smell and pet a dog. Physical assistance like that in the sweet story above captures our hearts more easily. It's tangible. Yet, the potential good we can do by aiding the soul, spirit, or heart of another far transcends what can be empirically measured by our senses. It could make an eternal impact. Do a "good Samaritan" thing today!

DAILY BREAD, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

THE BEAUTIFUL QUALITY OF THANKFULNESS
Neal Pollard

Her name was Mrs. Broadhead. She was a resident in a west Alabama nursing home. She was known for saying one thing with great frequency: "We have a lot to be thankful for, don't we?" Emaciated, confined to a wheel chair, with a speech impediment due to a stroke, and filled with aches and pains, this was her life's motto.
Wedding and baby showers, small gifts or tokens of appreciation, compliments, words of encouragement, acknowledgments, visits, deeds of kindness, and the like are golden opportunities to express it. Yet, far too many have failed to learn the beautiful grace of gratitude. It is wondered if Jesus used the parable of ten lepers to illustrate not the importance of thankfulness but to give an approximate percentage of those who fail to show it. Remember that when the lone man returned to give thanks to Jesus, He observed, "Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17).
While demonstrating thanksgiving to God and to fellow men is growing more rare, it is certainly a Christian characteristic! In the midst of general teaching, Paul inserts the charge, "And be thankful" (Col. 3:15). In prior generations, great emphasis was placed upon instilling manners and courtesy within our young people. One demonstration of etiquette was to never let a gift or kindness go without a card, call, or word of thanks. It is extreme selfishness and self-absorption to fail to acknowledge the sentiment of others, whether the expression was big or small! Failing to show gratitude is like telling others that we are spoiled or entitled.
Christians, above all others, have so much for which to be thankful. The remarkable command from Paul is, "In everything give thanks..." (1 Thess. 5:18). Thankfulness for tooth aches, flat tires, bills, taxes, death? Perhaps Pollyanna was a good teacher. She played "the glad game." Whenever she had to endure a bad thing, she chose to find something about which to be glad. Cannot we do the same? Christians are to be found "overflowing with gratitude" (Col. 2:7).
God rejects those who are not thankful (Rom. 12:1). It is an ugly trait to be ungrateful. It is synonymous with being inconsiderate. Paul says to esteem others better than oneself (Phil. 2:4). For all which that includes, gratitude plays a part. Never fail to return a favor, gift, or act of consideration wiht a simple "Thank you." It is your obligation. It will become your joy!

Daily Bread, Tuesday, March 20, 2007

DEAD PEOPLE IN FIRST CLASS!
Neal Pollard

Very occasionally I get the opportunity to sit in first class and it is a different ride from coach, from the legroom to the service. I even have a few interesting stories about riding up front, but nothing to match Paul Trinder's harrowing tale. Paul was sleeping up in first class last Friday on a British Airways flight from New Delhi to London. He shifted in his seat, took a peek at his seat mate, and then probably remembered that he hadn't had a seat mate before he drifted off to sleep. Trinder says, "I remember looking at this frail, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill. When I asked what was going on, I was shocked to hear she was dead." She died in coach, and first class was apparently the only place available for dead body storage.
Analogously, Americans are definitely in the first class compartment of this world. Our nation is beautiful, our resources abundant, our infrastructures in great shape, our material wealth nearly unrivaled, and our quality of life--from our food choice to our health care--is without peer among the other nations of the world. Yet, here in "first class" there are dead people everywhere! They are dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1; Col. 2:13)! They need to know that even when dead in their trespasses, they can be made alive in Christ (Eph. 2:5). Unlike the situation that made airline headlines, the spiritually dead can be made alive again through Christ. The Prodigal's father rejoiced that his son, once dead to him, was alive again (Luke 15:24).
No matter how well we are living physically and materially, it means nothing if we are dead in our sins (cf. Luke 12:19; 16:19). We lose it all, even if we could gain the whole world, if we lose our soul (Matt. 16:26). Yes, masses of folks are dying whose existence is lived far below "first class" accommodations. Everyone, from every lot in life, needs nothing more than the saving message of Christ. It should disturb us more than anything else to know that people all around us are dead!

DAILY BREAD, MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2007







Happy birthday to a first-ballot, hall-of-fame Mom (BRENDA POLLARD), who turns none of your business today in Fayetteville, NC. Here's the bread...

WILL WE FARE BETTER THAN CAESAR?
Bill Becker

In William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, a soothsayer cries out, "Beware the Ides of March" to alert Caesar to an unknown danger. In reality, Caesar would not have recognized in the word "ides" any inherent danger at all. There is no specific threat or fear implied in the term. It simply means "the fifteenth."

The Roman calendar used three terms to express different times of the month. Kalends (from which our word "calendar" comes), meant the first day of the month; Nones meant the seventh day of the month; Ides meant the fifteenth day of the month. This was true of March, May, July and October. In the other months of the year Nones meant the fifth day of the month and Ides the thirteenth day of the month.

The other days of the month were not numbered. One kept track of them by subtracting from the Nones or Ides of the month. "V Ides of March," for example, would mean March 11 ("V" being the Roman equivalent of the number 5 which is subtracted from Ides).

So even if a soothsayer had actually proclaimed to Caesar "Beware the Ides of March" all he would have known is that on March 14 he should be alert to the possible arrival of some unknown danger which he, at the time, could not identify.

With regard to spiritual matters, the situation is somewhat reversed. We know the specific event which is coming, but not the time of its arrival. The 'event,' of course, is the day of Judgment. We all know its coming is certain (Heb. 9:27), we know it will be a day of rejoicing for the faithful and weeping and gnashing of teeth for others (Matt. 24:45-51), and we know it will be a day of separation (Matt. 25:31-46).

Yes, we know many things about the day of Judgment, but not when it is coming. Unlike Caesar, who knew the day of a great unknown danger for which he was to be prepared, we must be prepared every day for an event we know. Are you prepared?

--The Reminder, Moulton, Alabama

DAILY BREAD, THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2007

THE MYSTERY OF INFLUENCE
Neal Pollard

A few years ago, a fourteen year old girl named Shannon Smith was shot to death in her own back yard. A bullet lodged in her brain. Though already tragic and horrific, the story was made more tragic by the inexplicable nature of the shooting. Police, judging from the trajectory made by the entry would, concluded that the bullet fell from the sky. Somewhere nearby, some unknown person had fired a gun for no known reason. The bullet completed its path of travel inside an unsuspecting teenager. Tragic, indeed!
Who fired the gun and why? The action pales next to the consequence. Someone aimlessly fired a weapon. A child died and parents were left to mourn her loss. It was all so unnecessary and avoidable!
Christians are a special people, a God-possessed, holy group (1 Pet. 2:9). The world sees Christians (Matt. 5:16). They react to children of God, either "glorifying" (Matt. 5:16) or "blaspeming" (2 Sam. 12:14) Him. Christians are either transformed from worldliness or conformed to it (Rom. 12:2). Conformity carries tragic consequences.
Influence is an inevitable burden carried by every Christian. Others watch what we do, hear what we say, and evaluating our judgments. What we wear, how we talk, where we go, and with what we entertain ourselves may seem harmless or at least harmful only to us. Yet, we can aimlessly fire and eternally wound another's soul by our influence.
The man or woman who fired that gun may not realize even now what they did with one "harmless" squeeze of a trigger. Maybe they will not know on this side of time. Just so, we may be shocked on that day to realize how many or exactly whom we influenced. We're on a spiritual battlefield (Eph. 6). Let's be careful not to shoot at the wrong side! We may wind up doing harm to the very people we're commissioned to save. Let's watch our aim!

DAILY BREAD, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2007

The Things She Saw!
Neal Pollard

Her father-in-law was a slave. The first two numbers of her date of birth were "18." She died in the nursing home at the age of 108. She was voting age when World War I ended, but women could not yet vote. She was a five-year-old girl growing up in Tennessee when Orville and Wilbur made news in a neighboring state. She was of legal retirement age when the civil rights movement swept across the south her famous husband helped effect. She saw her husband help establish 250 churches in the south over their thirty-four years of marriage (some information gleaned from an e-mail news alert posted by Tami Ross, Christian Chronicle, 3/7/07).
She saw changes, good and bad, sweep across our nation. Divorce was extremely rare, in and out of the church. Five states (OK, NM, AZ, AK, and HI) were admitted to the union after her birth. A pound of bread was a nickle, as was a quart of milk. Pork chops were a dime. The mayor of Chicago made an extravagant $10,000 per year (www.chipublib.org). In her childhood, radio, TV, computers, space travel, Ipods, the internet, soccer moms, NASCAR dads, blackberries (at least the electronic kind), political correctness, and fast food restaurants were beyond foreign concepts.
She saw changes in the church, positive and negative. Her husband, Marshall, was one of the greatest positive contributors to change in the last century. He was one of the first black evangelists used widely among predominantly white congregations. She was in grade school when the official recognition of the split between churches of Christ and the Christian Church was reflected in the U.S. census of 1906. She was born fourteen years after H. Leo Boles, was 33 when A.G. Freed died, 24 when J.A. Harding died, 19 when David Lipscomb passed, 13 the year McGarvey died, and B.C. Goodpasture was three years old when she was born! She saw the decade we were purported to be the fastest growing religion in America. She saw extremism, left and right, take its toll on us in the following four decades. She left this world for the next as we stood in the middle of the greatest informational and technological boom the world has ever known.
Laura Keeble died today at the age of 108.

DAILY BREAD, TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2007

THE SUNRISE
Neal Pollard

This morning's sunrise (pictured above) was an awesome sight, just one little reminder among a countless number of God's majesty and power. God's hand in nature is a comfort to us, but that He works such in splendor and beauty are benevolent extras from His gracious nature. Noah's rainbow was a covenant and sign, but the sunrise is one of many natural phenomena that God has applied to the appearance, work, or nature of His Son.
In Luke one, the Holy Spirit through the writer reveals Zacharias' prophesy about John's work as the harbinger of a Messiah who was about to appear to their generation. In part, Zacharias says, "For you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways; to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (1:76b-79). Of ten New Testament occurrences, only here is anatole translated "dayspring" or "sunrise." The other nine occurrences, found in either Matthew, Luke, or Revelation, render it "east" (the place from which the sun rises each day).
Zacharias had not been able to speak since encountering the angel while performing his priestly duties in the temple (Luke 1:10). His mouth had been shut since the time Gabriel had told him that the son he had just learned he and Elizabeth would bear would be the forerunner of Jesus (Luke 1:19). Zacharias did not believe the revelation Gabriel gave to be true, and for this his lips were sealed until Elizabeth gave untimely birth. Zacharias was instructed to call their newborn "John" rather than name him after himself. That day, his lips were loosed and he prophesied about both John and Jesus.
Zacharias proclaimed Jesus "the Sunrise." Why? Jesus would pay mankind a visit, appearing as the sun that starts a brand new day. He would illuminate (cf. John 8:12), the way the morning sun dispels and chases away the darkness. He would bring peace, the way the coming of the day often chases away the fears and insecurities of the night. No more beautiful sunrise ever appeared than He who appeared in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. He brought endless peace and offers endless hope. Nothing is more beautiful!

DAILY BREAD, MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2007

Do Not Be Disturbed
Neal Pollard

There continues to be the false religions interpreted by the world to be Christianity. There are web sites posted by professed "ex-Christians" and even former members of the Lord's church. News and history channels give a skewed perspective and betray a hostile attitude toward Christianity, with movies, music, and talk-show hosts speaking in most irreverent terms of Christ and those who put their trust in Him. Archaeologists purport to have evidence of the lost tomb of Christ. A fellow student of mine, a preacher, was arrested for an immoral crime that caught regional media attention and an excuse for the secular to attack the Christ he preached. There are almost daily examples of this sort of assault.
Some may be tempted to wring their hands and surrender. Others may feel pressure to cower and cover their faith. Most will at least find these things disturbing. Certainly, attacks made on Christ incur the wrath and sorrow of heaven, so that it would bother us is natural.
Often, New Testament writers talked about what might disturb or attempt to disturb us as Christians. We can become disturbed because of the actions of those who are our own brothers and sisters in Christ (cf. Acts 15:24; 2 Cor. 12:20). False teachers can create disturbances, even claiming to speak in the name of Christ (Gal. 1:7; 2 Thes. 2:2). Once, Paul acknowledged that the church at Thessalonica was in a position to be disturbed by afflictions brought on by those antagonistic to the church of Christ. The writer of Hebrews saw that those Christians were disturbed by opposition (Heb. 10:32-34; 2:3-4). Jesus often warned that being His disciple would bring hatred and hostility from the world's direction (Luke 6:22; John 7:7; 15:18-19; 16:2; 17:14). John echoes the same message in 1 John 3:13, saying, "Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you."
I believe the statement is true that "we are not citizens of this world trying to make it to heaven, but citizens of heaven trying to make it through this world." We will be troubled and tried because we follow the suffering servant. Let us look past these things and keep our focus on the never-ending joy and ever-enduring peace of heaven.

DAILY BREAD, FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2007

"Daddy, Tell Me About Your Father"

My dad, Gary Neal Pollard, Sr., is a man of sterling character. He is generous, yet spendthrifty (in the good sense). He is a hard worker. He is a very smart man, having earned several advanced degrees, but he is extremely humble. He loves his children, showing unswerving dedication and unembarrassed concern over their welfare (even as they navigate their adult years). My dad played ball with me. He watched me play ball. He frequently led the family in nightly devotions. I saw him, on an often-paltry preacher's salary, buy a poor family a week's worth of groceries. He genuinely believes in prayer, and I often caught him practicing that belief. He is a strong man, but he unashamedly sheds tears over spiritual concerns. He is not a perfect man, but he is a godly man. I will make sure my sons know how good their grandfather is, and I am thankful they already know.

I cannot believe I have three boys. One day, they will be grown. Given the Pollard track record, they might even have some boys some day. Someday, somewhere, there well may be a conversation between Gary, Dale, Carl and their respective children. My name will come up. My qualities will be mentioned. They will have memories of me. As I write this, I almost tremble. What kind of legacy am I building for my boys? How will they remember me? Like a blinding light, I see each little frailty and flaw in my character! Am I praying enough, singing enough, doing good often enough that they will see, learn and imitate me? Can they safely follow my lead?

Dads, God has given you a special role and place in the family. You are the earthly leader of your home. You are slowly, steadily building a legacy, each and every day. The words and deeds of your life are putting it together, the bricks that are building their memory of who you were to them. Take that seriously! Live up to the level of your responsibility. Spend time with your children. Show them love. Nurture them. Admonish them. Lead them to heaven. Even after you have gone, you will be the topic of family conversation. Do not be a disappointment to them. Do not disappoint your Heavenly Father. Be a good dad!