FULL OF NEW WHINES?

“Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.” (Acts 2:13)

That verse is about the Day of Pentecost and there’s much I could write about it.  Today’s title, however, is just a silly “take off” on it, as I say, “They are full of NEW WHINES!”.

This is just a pet peeve I have.  It really bothers me when people whine. 

It’s bad enough when a child of three or four whines!  You know, that annoying, emotional, manipulative, drawn out, “But I wanna go to the zooooooooo......!” followed by crying and (often) kicking and screaming.  As bad as that is, well, it’s CHILDISH behavior and there are ways to handle it.  But when someone over 30 whines, it’s, well, I’m actually at a loss for words about it...

You can probably guess, and YES, in the past twenty-four hours I had to deal with a whining adult.  For anyone who’s trying to guess who the whiner was, I need to make it clear, you won’t be able to.  It’s NOT someone from the church i pastor.  It’s NOT a relative of mine.  It’s also NOT someone who lives in Massachusetts.  And, I’ll tell you it was over the phone.  Now, that WAS unpleasant, but had the person been right there in person it would have been MUCH worse, so I guess I can be thankful it was over the phone.

I sell automotive collectibles.  It was someone whining about the mail order of automotive collectibles I’d recently filled.  I think I would rather have listened to a 5-year-old whine that they wanted a chocolate ice cream cone, not a vanilla.  The one thing I hate about selling automotive collectibles is that at least half of those who buy them whine that they got a lousy deal, or they should have gotten more for their money, or I gave a friend of theirs a better deal....something like that.  They really should read the parable of The Laborers in the Vineyard in Matthew’s Gospel because among other thing that parable teaches is Jesus wasn’t crazy about whiners, either!

Have you ever traveled to a Third World Country?  I have.  Haiti.  Twice.  Listen, we have SO much stuff in this country, it’s almost sickening.  While two-thirds of the people on this planet go to bed hungry every night in their shacks, we complain because we paid $20 more than we should have or some other such silly thing.

I love the spiritual side of Christmas.  I went Christmas caroling with several other people a couple of times this week and I really enjoyed that.  I will enjoy our church’s Christmas Eve service on Monday night.  But all the materialism, and the cutthroats at the shopping centers (I won’t even go to Natick Collection!  Framingham Shoppers World is the closest thing to a “mall” I’ve been to this December), well, I can take very little of that.

I’m about to start WHINING, myself, so I’ll stop!