From Australia came amazing stories of a kindly nurse who was doing wonderful things to enable children, who had been crippled with infantile paralysis, to walk. The name of Sister Elizabeth Kenny became known all around the world. Sister Kenny visited the United States and gave her treatments in several large hospitals. To one who spoke to her admiringly one day, Sister Kenny said quietly, "I'm no genius. I'm just a very ordinary person who still remembers and puts into action the stories my mother told me from the Bible." Sister Kenny had learned about Jesus, and had come to desire above everything else to live as he lived, and to love as he loved. That's the way Christ intends for us to live also. What's your opinion? If you have two sons, and you tell one of them to do a job, and his answer is no, then afterwards he does it, and you tell the second one to do the
same job and his answer is, "Sure, I'll go," and he doesn't do it, which one is doing what you told him and following your will? That's the story Jesus told the crowd, and that's
the question he posed to the religious leaders of his day. The crowd answered Jesus by saying the son who said, "No," and then changed his mind and did the work was
better than the other son. Jesus said, "That's right," and he illustrated that by saying that the tax collectors and the harlots of the day would go into the kingdom of God before
the Jewish religious leaders to whom he was speaking. Jesus holds in front of us two sets of imperfect people of whom one set is no better than the other. Neither son was
a joy to his father. Both were imperfect people; but one certainly pleased his father more than the other. There are some important lessons for us in this story. This parable
details for us two kinds of people: The one kind is those whose words are a lot better than their deeds, and the second kind is those whose deeds are a lot better than their
words. As you look and evaluate your own life, which of the two sons are you? Or are you both?