Every time my wife wants me to try a different recipe that she has prepared, I start finding a reason to say no. I want to ask her, “What is in the recipe? Why do we have to try something different?” These thoughts run through my mind before I eat the new dish.
Several years ago, we faced a mystery in our home. When my older children were 3 and 4 years old, all of our children’s books were getting ruined. The pages were wrinkled, folded and ripping. The books could not fit on the shelves because the damaged pages made each book take up twice as much shelf space as it should have. We were forced to throw the kids’ favorite books in the garbage because they were unreadable. I saw it as a crisis of responsibility. How could our children be so careless with their possessions?
The message couldn’t have been any clearer—not only the message of the Rev. Tom Tickner’s closing sermon on Oct. 14, but also the underlying message at the heart of the entire ARMSS/POAMN national conference.
