I have a friend who is studying and serving in a foreign country. In that place, she cannot share openly about her love for God and her acceptance of God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. She is careful to respect and to follow the law of the land in which she is living. The penalty of not doing so would be severe for her and those who join her.

But, there is no law against her “sharing her culture.” And, so she does just that!

I am not sure what she does for Veterans Day. But, I know that her celebration of Thanksgiving starts by offering her new friends the food and history of America. But, she doesn’t stop there. She shares her heart about why she is thankful, how God has blessed her with His love and saving grace. This believer goes beyond the turkey, Pilgrims and Native Americans and explains why she is thankful.

At Christmas, she makes her Nativity display a prominent part of her holiday decorations. And, in the middle of cookies and hot chocolate, she tells the story of the miraculous birth and how the love of God came to the earth to live and to teach and to be crucified by man.

At Easter…well, you can only imagine how she celebrates Easter!!

So often, I believe that we define incorrectly our culture as our heritage. I think that my culture isn’t necessarily what my grandparents were and my parents are, it is what I am. I may have retained parts of their culture, but I have also added things of my own.

And, my culture can be modified. What I believed and practiced yesterday doesn’t confine my culture of today or tomorrow.

Don’t limit yourself to your past!! Build on it, improve it, change it.

Ok, gotta go!! Navy is playing Notre Dame today. Part of my culture is being a Navy fan!! (I got that when I married the love of my life, John – a Navy man!). GO NAVY!!

Love,

Jill (just one of God’s kids)

Read about how our lives can be changed from the book of Ephesians!!

“And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.

“But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.”