The next time you have a choice to make…ask the question, “Is this good?” We want to pursue those things that build up, as well as avoiding the bad; to walk in righteous paths rather than just avoiding the sinful ones.

Me: “Hey Stacy, do you remember that kids movie?”
Stacy: “Sort of.”
Me: “Do you remember if it’s bad? Should we show the kids?”
Stacy: “I don’t know if it’s bad, but is it good? I think that’s the question we need to be asking.”
Me (in my head): “Ouch. Thank you Lord for a godly wife.”
Sometimes you need a good knock in the head to get your eyes watering and your brain to thinking straight. “Is it bad?” What a terrible question. There are a thousand things that are “not bad” that offer no net positive. And that is especially what we are aiming for with our children. We want to do more than avoid harm. We want to actively pursue good!
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If the counties (and states) north of Richmond were red instead of blue and treated the working men south of Richmond with magnanimity rather than neglect or contempt, there still would be a problem because what those men need isn’t patronage; it’s control over their own lives and a say in the fate of their own communities. No wage ever will be high enough if the men who earn it aren’t free. “Rich Men North of Richmond,” like populism itself, is about control, not wages.

You don’t need a college degree to understand what’s happening in our country.
Oliver Anthony, the Virginia songwriter and singer behind the viral hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” didn’t even finish high school. But his song is the most intelligent political commentary of the year. [The viral song debuted Monday at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.]
That’s because there are two parts to it, though most critics and many admirers have picked up only on one.
The song isn’t simply a class-war complaint. The trouble with the rich men north of Richmond isn’t that they’re rich; it’s that “they all just wanna have total control/Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do.”
Anthony, real name Christopher Anthony Lunsford, is a throwback to the folk libertarianism that gave us the American Revolution.
There’s a social and spiritual level to the song beyond its obvious economics.
Maybe that’s easy to miss because Anthony’s biography, which he summarizes on Facebook, sounds like something Hollywood would dream up for a working-class troubadour.
He lives in a trailer in Farmville, Virginia.
He cracked his skull working in a North Carolina paper mill, spent six months unemployed, plunged into depression, and tried to drown his suffering in alcohol.
And he can really sing: “Rich Men North of Richmond” has poignant lyrics, but its appeal lies as much in the simple catchiness of its sound, and Anthony’s voice puts autotuned pop stars to shame.
It would make a great movie, but Anthony’s life shouldn’t be reduced to a caricature, and neither should the message of his song.
Look at the first verse: “Overtime hours for bulls— pay” is the line that catches everyone’s attention.
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Why was Jesus born the son of a carpenter to work as a carpenter? The question remains answered only in the mind of God. Yet it can be said that the Father’s plan to atone for sin through Christ was perfect, and carpentry provided the perfect home life and work for the Son of God who would take away the sins of his people.

Why was Jesus born the son of a carpenter, to work as a carpenter (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3)? Some would respond that before the Son of God entered his public ministry he needed to work, and carpentry provided a living as good as any other. However, there are other occupations which look as if they would have been better suited to prepare him for ministry. Fishing would have been fitting work; Jesus called the disciples to become fishers of men, fed multitudes with fish and bread, and compared the kingdom of heaven to a fishing net. He could have been a vintner, growing and processing grapes for wine. Young Jesus turned water into wine, then later said he himself was the vine feeding his disciples, and he cautioned his listeners against putting new vintage into old skins. Shepherding could be called a family tradition, since the Messiah came from the line of Judah, and King David worked among the sheep. Jesus told a parable about seeking the lost lamb, he said he knows his sheep, and—most importantly—he is the sacrificial Lamb of God. Shepherding would seem a better occupation than carpentry.
Christ did not say much about wood or carpentry. He spoke of judging others with the analogy of the eyes having a splinter or a log, and he alluded to carpentry when he told of the man tearing down barns to build bigger ones. Why the Christ was born of the virgin Mary into a carpenter’s household is information the Lord has not condescended to reveal to his image bearers. However, this brief article proposes that the attributes of carpentry uniquely contributed to prepare Christ for his earthly ministry.
When I was a child visiting my grandparents, a man I did not recognize came to the house. My grandmother introduced him to me as her brother. He was a quiet and reserved man, but he none the less extended his hand in gentlemanly fashion and I grasped it. I could feel his calloused leather-like palm and fingers. I was surprised by the texture and lack of suppleness of the skin. Grandmother informed me that her brother had been a carpenter for a number of years. The manual procedures required in his trade had resulted in gloves of skin created by reoccurring contact with the rough surface of wood.
Like my great uncle, the Lord of Glory’s hands had been thickened to some degree over time by tooling wood. Some of the personal encounters Jesus experienced during his ministry might raise a question regarding God’s wisdom in selecting carpentry for a trade. Consider some of the things Jesus did in ministry. His thick-skinned fingers took mud he made from spittle and dirt and gently applied it to the eyes of a blind man to give him sight (Jn 9:6). It was his toughened hands that gently touched the children that came to see him (Mt 19:13-15). Then, following rash Peter’s slash of Malchus’s ear with a sword, the Christ, the anointed one, carefully used his calloused hand to miraculously restore the ear (Jn 18:10; Mt 26:51). The softer hands of a physician, lawyer, or scholar may be thought more appropriate for Jesus’s work, but the toughened hands of the Carpenter exemplified his full humanity as he accomplished the divine work of redemption.
Jesus often argued from the lesser to the greater in his teaching, but his carpenter’s hands show a physical argument from the intuitive, what man expects, to the counterintuitive, what God does. The ways of the Triune God are not man’s ways. Christ’s hands exhibited his mannishness—and their skill came in handy to make a whip for running the moneychangers out of the temple—
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