π¨Newsmax is running the 2020 election story Maria would not drop β the one Fox muzzled her over.
Sorry, Rupert.
You can fire the host.
You canβt keep the story inside the building once she walks out.
Dolly Parton is dead, and the church never knew what to do with her.
Half my feed is posting rhinestones today. The other half never trusted her, because she would not wear the uniform.
She never preached a sermon.
She just did the works.
One man. Fifty-eight years. In an industry that eats marriages. No scandal reel, no reality show, no trading up. Just Carl, and a promise kept until death did them part.
She could have built towers in Nashville. Instead she built in the mountains she came from, so the people she came from could work.
Two hundred million books. Given away to children, free, no strings, while the rest of us argued about what to read.
A million dollars for a vaccine in the middle of a plague, and she called it what it was: helping.
She was a feminist who never used the word, a superstar who never left home, and a believer who never made you watch her pray.
"Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." James 2:18.
We spent years asking whether she was one of ours.
She never asked whether we were one of hers. She was too busy feeding children.
I do not know her heart. That was never my job. I know her works, because the whole county she came from lives on them.
"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Matthew 7:20.
You want to honor her today? Put down the tribute post. Put a book in a kid's hands. Stay married. Do the works.
That was the whole sermon. She just never said it out loud.
And now... the rest of the story.
Every year, families across America gather around the television.
They watch a bald kid try to kick a football. A beagle dance on a dog house. Charlie Brown get a rock instead of candy.
They laugh.
They don't know they're watching a man's autobiography.
When Charles Schulz was a boy, the other children called him Sparky. The name of a horse in a comic strip. A joke horse.
He failed every single subject in eighth grade.
Not one or two.
Every. Single. Subject.
But the grades weren't the worst part.
Paul Harvey told this story, and his voice cracked on this line:
"Sparky wasn't actually disliked by the other youngsters. No one cared enough about him to dislike him."
He wasn't hated. He was nothing.
The one thing he had was his drawings. He submitted cartoons to the school yearbook.
Rejected.
He wrote to Walt Disney. Poured everything into the drawings.
The reply was a form letter. Disney only hired the very finest artists. Sparky was not among the very finest.
Harvey paused there. Then: "I think deep down, Sparky expected to be rejected."
This is where the motivational speakers lie to you.
The rest of the story isn't about winning.
Sparky didn't try to prove them wrong. He wrote his autobiography in cartoons.
He drew himself. The loser. The kid who failed everything.
He named him after himself.
Charlie Brown.
You know what Charlie Brown never does?
Win.
His kite crashes. Lucy pulls the football. The Little Red-Haired Girl doesn't notice him.
And sixty years later, we still watch.
Not because Charlie Brown succeeds.
Because Charlie Brown keeps showing up.
Here's the part even Paul Harvey didn't tell.
Schulz taught Sunday school. He read the Bible so constantly his strips are filled with scripture.
When network executives tried to cut Linus reciting Luke 2 from the Christmas special, Schulz refused.
Either the Gospel stays, or there's no special.
It stayed.
A boy called a horse.
A student who failed everything.
An artist Disney rejected.
Planted the Gospel of Luke in front of sixty million homes.
The loser became the messenger.
God has a history of using the rejected ones.
Moses had a stutter. David was the forgotten son. Peter denied Him three times.
The kite never flew.
But the Gospel did.
Still falling?
Good company, brother.
Get up.
He's not done with you yet.