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Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
by Tom Kelley
Tom Selleck has never really been a box office bonanza but he has been in some interesting films which strain the realm of possibility. In the movie, "Her Alibi," he plays a divorced writer who falls in love with an accused murderess from a family of Romanian clowns. He becomes her alibi against the murder accusation because he feels she is the answer to his need for the subject of a new crime novel.
As her alibi, he takes her to stay in his home in his guest suite. During the course of their intereaction she asks him about his former wife. He responds by telling the young lady that his wife left him because she said she couldn't grow if she stayed with him. Selleck's character opined, "I thought she was fully grown when we married." Personal growth in a relationship is important to many people.
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, in The Chambered Nautilus, "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, as the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, till thou at length are free, leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" Many creatures outgrow and shed such things as tusks, shells and skins. As they mature they grow to where those things are restrictive so they get rid of them in order to continue to grow.
So, how are you growing? Are you moving slowly and surely toward your goal in life? And what might that goal be? Marriage? Financial security? Community importance? The biggest question is, does Jesus have a place in there somewhere? Is He at the center or has He been consigned to the periphery? Life, at its best, is lived with Christ as the focal point.
"We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ; from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love." Ephesians 4:14-16 Simply put, you grow for yourself you grow old. You grow for the Christ you grow up.
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...He was the Minister of the Minorsville Christian Church located near Stamping Ground, KY.
...Becky and Tom have three children; John, single and in worship ministry in Nicholasville, Kentucky; Sean, married (Jennifer, elementary school teacher) with twins (Grace and Patrick, b.d. 10/31/04) and regional director of Papa John's Pizza in Central KY; Kara, married (Vince Taylor, prison guard) and working with Hospice East in Winchester, KY.
...Tom went to be with the Lord on November 13, 2009 after a lengthy battle with cancer. If you have been touched by Tom's writings please send an email to Tom's son at jkelley@catalystchristian.net
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