At lunch time one day, a little boy opened his brown bag, unwrapped his sandwich, pulled the two pieces of bread apart and stared at the peanut butter inside. He then uttered a sound of disgust and ate the sandwich.

The next day he went through the same routine. He took the sandwich out of his brown bag, unwrapped the sandwich, and then pulled the two pieces of bread apart. Once again, he said with disgust, "My goodness! Peanut butter again!"

The friend who ate with him every day said, "Why don't you tell your mother you don't like peanut butter?"

The little boy answered angrily, "You keep my mother out of this! I make my own sandwiches."

*****

Much of modern psychology has focused our attention on the damage done to us by our parents. As Anna Russell said in the "Psychiatric Folksong" a few years ago:

I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed
To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband's eye.
He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,
And here's what he dredged up, from my subconscious mind.
When I was one, my mummy hid my dolly in a trunk
And so it follows, naturally, that I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,
and that is why I suffer from kleptomania.
At three I had a feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers
and so it follows naturally I poisoned all my lovers.
but I am happy now I have learned the lessons this has taught:
Everything I do that's wrong, is someone else's fault!

There is no doubt in my mind that we parents do leave our marks and sometimes scars on our children. Our parents did the same thing to us.

But God created us with the capacity to rise above our personal histories. If we had a painful childhood, we do not have to continue repeating the mistakes of our parents or to remain chained to the past. Human personality is not cast in concrete. The human spirit is flexible, transformable, and fixable (to coin a word).

People can learn how to love. Couples can learn how to meet each other's needs. Parents can learn how to give strong, godly, loving leadership to their children. God's grace is the guaranty that there are no hopeless situations.

All of us need two things in our lives: models and mentors. We need someone to show us what it looks like to have a successful marriage and to be good parents and to live a consistent Christian life. That's the MODEL. Then we need the MENTOR - someone who will walk with us, hold us accountable, and encourage us to keep on.

The best place to find models and mentors is in the church. To be sure, not everyone in the church qualifies for these two roles. Many have not figured it out yet. But there are some who have traveled far enough down the road of life, marriage, and parenting to be qualified to give counsel and hold us accountable.

Some people play at church membership and then wonder why they get little out of it. Others invest their lives in God's church, invest their resources to bless others and extend the kingdom, and then invest their influence in other people. These people are always growing; and they always seem so happy and fulfilled.

You can become the person you want to be. The best place to start is by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and then becoming part of Christ's body, which is His church.

If you don't like peanut butter sandwiches, then stop making them. God will help you do it.

Alan Day, Senior Pastor