The little girl had been giving her mother a hard time all morning. Finally her mother said, “Please behave your self. Don’t you know that every time you misbehave, I get another gray hair in my head?”

“My,” the little girl said, “you sure must have been a bad little girl. Just look at all the gray hairs Grandmother has!”

That’s a story about how we become the way we are. Apart from the obvious lessons that we parents need to be careful in the way we seek teach our children - we can’t put anything over on them – apart from that the story is a good introduction to one of the most profound truths of scripture, captured in one verse of our Galatian lesson today, verse 19: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!”

You who have been taking notes in …