I preached in chapel last week, and I used the guys in the picture as my illustrations. Do you know them? The guys in the picture are Wario and Winnie the Pooh. You probably know Pooh. He has an insatiable love for honey. He regularly gets stuck in Rabbit’s window because he goes after honey with his whole heart.
Wario, on the other hand, is a villain from Mario Brothers. If you know our family, you know we love Super Mario Brothers. Wario has a great desire to get as many gold coins as he can. He runs around with a bag of gold coins and collects more and more. Keep reading to find out what they have to do with my sermon…
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We have a little princess in our family. Our little girl loves princess things, and her bedroom wall has princesses all over it. She puts on her princess dress, her tiara, twirls around, and sings, “I’m gonna be a princess.”
This also means that she’s a big fan of Sofia, one of the latest Disney Princesses that has a show on the Disney Channel called “Sofia the First.” We watch it at least once a day.
Sofia and her mom live in the village of the kingdom until, one day, Sofia’s mom marries the king, making Sofia a Princess. They move to the castle, and of course this means that she has to learn all about how to act like a princess. The whole show is about how she messes that up but learns in the process.
To understand what the show is about, read the lyrics to the (as always) catchy Disney theme song:
I was a girl in the village doin’ alright
Then I became a Princess overnight
Now I gotta figure out how to do it right
So much to learn and see
Up in the castle with my new family
In a school that’s just for royalty
A whole enchanted world is waiting for me
I’m so excited to be (Sofia the First)
I’m finding out what being royal’s all about (Sofia the First)
Makin’ my way it’s an adventure everyday (Sofia)
It’s gonna be my time (Sofia)
To show them all that I’m Sofia the First!
As I was walking to work this morning, I couldn’t get that song out of my head. It really is catchy (Click to watch it on Youtube). I was also thinking about how Sofia’s story is like our story.
We are just ordinary people who God chooses to bring into His family through Jesus, making us heirs to the Kingdom. We are now in the process of learning to live according to our new position as His children. We struggle, there are things we don’t understand, but our loving Father the King is right there to guide us through it all.
We truly are adopted into the Royal Family.
We should be like Sofia:
- Excited to be part of God’s family
- Exploring what it means to be children of the King
- Making our way daily in the adventure that God has for us
We ought to be living like princes and princesses today.
We had Easter dinner on Saturday this year with some of our missionary friends. We went to their house, and the kids played with their kids. Then we all came back to our house (4 families with 14 kids) to hunt for Easter eggs at the Seminary. We may not have a big back yard, but having a Seminary out back makes for some great hiding spots for eggs.
After they hunted eggs, we dyed our own eggs out back in our back yard. The weather was great, and we had a great day. Check out our Easter pictures on Flickr.
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Our kids love to draw on the sidewalk (and everywhere else) with chalk. The great news is that we have an entire basketball court right outside our back yard where they can draw. Nathan can spend hours out there drawing, and he usually comes in covered from head to toe in blue, white, or yellow chalk.
Yesterday we were playing outside and I was talking with them about what Easter is all about. I was trying to get Nathan to tell me the story. While talking, I sat down to draw with him, and he began to draw something on the sidewalk. He was really proud of what it was. After I saw what he drew I wanted to take a picture of it. Check it out.
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We’ve been attending First Baptist Church of Satelite. Tomorrow night they are having a 200 voice choir Christmas concert with an orchestra and everything.
Wednesday they performed at a local mall, so we went to the mall, got pictures with Santa, and checked out the choir. Here’s a quick picture of what it looked like. I used the Photosynth app to take the picture.
The academic dean of the Seminary asked me to help organize an event with his youth group and another group from another church. I thought it would be fun to teach them how to play Bunko. That proved to be quite a challenge. I think they had more fun playing basketball than playing Bunko, but the purpose was for them to get to know each other better, so I think Bunko worked out well.
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