I’m in the middle of a re-election campaign for City Council. There are three incumbent candidates and two challengers. We have a pretty benign political landscape in our city of just under 75,000 people. We all run “at-large”, which means we represent the whole city not just districts or precincts. There is nothing of controversy happening and we remain a vibrant, growing,and upscale community. I have no idea why we have challengers, most of the time they just want to run to see how it is. I was given some great advice when I decided to run the first time, “always run like you are ten points behind”. I’m never so self-confident that I would believe that I’m that well liked; besides medium speed is not a pace that you will find me at very often. These campaigns are very hard for me because I hate asking for help, I’m usually the one helping others. This weekend, the ENTIRE family pitched in to get the last details completed before we make the final push into the election. Today, my wife, son and I spent almost five hours driving around town in two cars  maintaining the campaign signs spread throughout the 120 square miles of our city. We relocated signs, fixed those knocked over and reinforced the signs against the wind. We all gave up our Sunday afternoon to do what was right for the campaign. On Saturday, our college senior spent most of the afternoon and several hours of her Saturday night putting the final touches on the graphic designs for the door hangers and a banner. As I write this tonight, ALL of the preparation is done thanks to the teamwork of my family and their support of me. I’m not really into bragging but they reminded me why I am a truly blessed man (not that I needed it). My lesson-learned in all this, don’t wait until it’s all over to thank those that help you along the way. Thanks to my great family!

“…the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does…” Ephesians 6:8

In this verse, St. Paul is in the middle of telling the church at Ephesus how masters and slaves should treat each other. What he is saying is that we as human beings, do not get to judge or reward what we think is right or righteous. St. Paul is telling us that since God is faithful and just, caring and compassionate and, the one true judge that we should be more like him. Practice forgiveness, compassion and working hard, just as our Father in Heaven does, are the principles of St. Paul’s message. The Lord, our God will take care of the rewards for hard work. There is no mention of building up “credits” to win God’s favor, no amount of works that needs to be preformed, no amount of money to be tithed; simply living as God would. God became man to show us the way, the truth and then gave us eternal life with him in heaven through His Son our Savior, Jesus Christ. He will reward the good that people do; we don’t need to judge the lives of others. We do however, need to thankful, to God, for the people in our lives who make things better.