I’ve Been Waiting For This Word

I didn’t know it, but I’ve been waiting for this.

Among the many projects of my son, Donald, initiated on his computer network is a free daily devotional thought e-mailed to readers each day.

Donald’s site is at http://www.rdex.net/devotions/

Time and time again, the brief Scripture and thoughts in these devotionals have been just what I needed to get through whatever I’m going through at that moment.

Sometimes the flowery expressions of these ol’timey Christians leave me cold and I just delete the e-mail file after a quick scan — but other times, their phrasing sparks wonder, and their thoughts really help me get through my own tough day.

For instance:

This morning I’m on pins and needles waiting for an important phone call. While twiddling my thumbs and impatiently resisting the urge to push ahead and call the guy myself, I read the following thought from Charles Spurgeon, who wrote this in the year 18Whatever:

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"Wait on the Lord." — Psalm 27:14

It may seem an easy thing to wait, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns not without years of teaching. Marching and quick-marching are much easier to God's warriors than standing still.

There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take. Then what shall it do?

Vex itself by despair?

Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption?

No, but simply wait. Wait in prayer, however. Call upon God, and spread the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid.

In dilemmas between one duty and another, it is sweet to be humble as a child, and wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God.

But wait in faith. Express your un-staggering confidence in Him; for unfaithful, untrusting waiting, is but an insult to the Lord.

Believe that if He keep you tarrying even till midnight, yet He will come at the right time; the vision shall come and shall not tarry. Wait in quiet patience, not rebelling because you are under the affliction, but blessing your God for it.

Never murmur against the second cause, as the children of Israel did against Moses; never wish you could go back to the world again, but accept the case as it is, and put it as it stands, simply and with your whole heart, without any self-will, into the hand of your covenant God, saying, "Now, Lord, not my will, but Thine be done. I know not what to do; I am brought to extremities, but I will wait until Thou shalt cleave the floods, or drive back my foes. I will wait, if Thou keep me many a day, for my heart is fixed upon Thee alone, O God, and my spirit waiteth for Thee in the full conviction that Thou wilt yet be my joy and my salvation, my refuge and my strong tower."

Donald’s site is at http://www.rdex.net/devotions/

Working Along The Way

See the author’s photo with all those road signs in the background?

No, we did not make her stand out in traffic with her aluminum walker.

Yesterday as we worked on Barbara White’s Along The Way series (divided that huge file of pages into four books of 200+ pages each), my daughter-in-law, Helen, an accomplished graphic artist, engineered an author’s photo for the back cover of the books.

No famous newspaper columnists were harmed in this experiment. Barbara was actually standing in front of a flowering bush when Helen did the headshot.

Helen also designed a new logo for my book publishing endeavor:

That’s a single photo! Now I can insert this logo with one click of my mouse instead of the tedious, frustrating, hair-pulling process I’ve been going through to space this thing on the back cover of my books.

It pays to ask for expert help.

Just a single click now — WHEEE!

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Enough giddiness. Here’s Barbara’s guest blog column for today:

We’re All Adopted

One day in a fit of adolescent anger, in rebellion against a stricture I was placing on his behavior, my son yelled that I had no right to tell him what to do because I wasn't even really his mother.

I surprised him. Without a moment's hesitation I put my hands on my hips, stared upward at him for eye contact (he's more than 6 feet tall) and said, "Oh, yes I am, and don't you forget it."

My son is adopted. He had picked what he thought might be a red herring of sufficient size to throw me off guard for a moment and let him drive home his version of how he should behave.

He may have been testing my feelings about him, too, consciously or unconsciously.

But fortunately I had already thought that through. I know that adoption made him really my son.

And he understood my answer, for he was grinning as he stalked off into his room.

Adoption is a legal matter. In the eyes of the law, the adopted person has all the status of a natural heir, a child of the body. It is a relationship bestowed by the new parent and certified by the courts.

Perhaps my son was wondering in his own mind and heart whether he was truly a son and heir, or whether if he rejected me, I would reject him. But adoption produces more than a legal offspring. It makes the one adopted a true child of the house and an heir in the full sense of those words.

When we become children of God, we do so through adoption. I wonder sometimes if we really feel like God's adopted children. Sometimes we may feel as unsure of our status as my own son did about his that day.

Jesus is God's Son, the only one born His Son; all the rest of us are His children by adoption.

But our adoption was paid for with more than the time, effort, and even money we pay when we adopt children. Our adoption fee was shed by Jesus on the cross.

Would you pay that much to adopt a child?

Jesus compared human and heavenly fathers. Earthly fathers would give their children good things out of what they had to give, he said. How much more would the heavenly father give to his.

When I stand and yell at God that I'm not really His child, it's out of fear that I might not be His child, that I might, somehow, have fallen out of the family.

But I know my son is my son.

And I know I am His child.

Stacking Eggs

The final stages in formatting a book resembles building a tower of playing cards.

Each section I add, each header or footer, each font change, any move I make can bring the whole thing down in shambles.

I remember how with the Ward Diary I discovered a fatal error just two days before I’d intended to publish that work; that discovery set me back weeks before I could correct it and finish the book.

I’ve arrived at another shaky point now with Barbara White’s manuscripts. Looks as though I have material for four books here… But formatting them is like stacking eggs.

Because I feel her work is so important and because I’m so nervous about the process of formatting it — I do so want to get it right — I’m going to knock off blog posting myself for a couple of days and post guest columns she wrote.

Here’s a sample:

The Hard Choice Between Good And Best

I had to leave a discussion before it was finished the other day — a situation that causes me to return over and over to an unsettled question.

In this case the topic was that portion of the Lord's Prayer in which we ask Him not to lead us into temptation, or not to put us to the test.

What does it mean, asking God not to lead us into temptation?

The suggestion was made that it meant asking God not to put before us really hard choices — not choices concerning things we can see are wrong, like adultery or stealing — but choices between Him and good things we hold really dear.

For example, one member of the group told of realizing right in the middle of a Little League soccer match that he did not know where the Lord was in the whole thing. He shared the strange feeling the thought had given him and said he hoped he would not have to choose between soccer, which he loves, and his Lord.

What could possibly be wrong with having that kind of fun, asked another member of the group. And we began to consider the importance in our lives of "having fun."

Football fans in the group stood solidly by their intention to watch the Super Bowl. They said they did not think that made them awful persons — a conclusion with which I agree, by the way.

What the hockey fan meant was not that hockey was "wrong," but that he hoped (prayed?) that God would not lead him to the point of having to choose between hockey and the Lord.

Having fun is not wrong — unless the Lord has asked us to leave that fun and serve Him in another way. It is not having fun that is wrong, but our pursuit of happiness (a national right!) when it takes us along any road that is not the one our Lord has chosen and marked out for us.

There is nothing wrong with such innocent pleasures for anyone before whom God has placed a specific choice. It may still be all right for every other Christian, but the Lord may say, "It is wrong for the you I want you to be, so choose."

The degree of difficulty in that "test" will depend on the degree of attachment sports has for you.

But what if the Lord puts a choice before you between serving Him or pleasing your mother and father? What if He puts the choice of helping a stranger or helping your children?

God wouldn't ask that, you might say indignantly.

But I believe He might and that is the kind of test I ask Him not to put before me, though I think that is exactly what He meant when He said we had to be willing to go instantly to the marriage feast when called.

Me & God's Pigeons

Grateful readers ought to erect a statue of me in the park — or at least award me a kernel of corn.

About 5 a.m. this morning after another 20+ hour marathon at the computer, I finally finished scanning in that shopping bag full of Barbara White’s newspaper features. (See my August 20^th posting).

The result adds up to 758 pages of text in Word.

Now, all I have to do is turn this raw material into a book (or books).

Since each feature in those 758 pages came from between 2 to six columns of news print and since because of wrinkles, fold, staples, tape, torn ages, uneven copy and bleeds of ink from pages behind — each column had to be scanned one at a time.

Thus, I’ve spent a lot of time recently hunched over the scanner.

This has been pure dogged clerical work; I keep thinking that I could be replaced by a trained pigeon.

Yes, long ago I saw a tv documentary about how some pharmaceutical company had trained pigeons to work in the production of the life-saving prescriptions we take.

Don’t you find that comforting?

They taught the pigeons to tap computer keys in a specific sequence to manufacture the pills. If the pigeon tapped the keys right, a kernel of corn dropped down a chute; if the pigeon goofed, no corn.

Saves the company from having to hire Chinese workers to manufacture the same drugs.

Pigeons work cheep (Lord, I’m clever!) — almost as cheap as I do.

But I don’t think my job is in danger.

Most American pigeons don’t want to do the work I do.

Speaking of pigeons, remember the collapse of that bridge In Minneapolis, Minnesota, that killed all those people on August first?

Well, a study just came out which blames the disaster on pigeons!

Yes, pigeons!

The weight of pigeons roosting under the bridge and their corrosive droppings made the bridge fall killing all those people… If the pigeons can be blamed, then the disaster was an Act of God and the insurance companies don’t have to pay.

It’s all God’s fault.

There’s a news story about the pigeons on the bridge at http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6869086,00.html .

I wonder who paid to have this study done?

No, that couldn’t be. Insurance companies are honest.

It had to really have been the pigeons’ fault.

The Bible says that God knows every sparrow that falls; it does not say a word about pigeons.

I’ll bet that Hell is just full of burning pigeon feathers.

Or maybe that’s insurance papers I smell burning.

Speaking of acts of God, I took Ginny out to see one this morning because last night we got into an argument.

You see, while we agree on major issues: politics, religion, Iraq, global warming, etc., other issues divide us.

I’ve heard that if you take care of the big issues, the little ones fall into line.

BULL!

That’s nonsense.

I’ve never heard of a marriage in trouble over nuclear disarmament; it’s the little things that rub.

Our argument last night was over relish.

We ate hotdogs for supper. Hotdogs with mustard and relish.

I scrapped out the last smidgen of relish from the bottom of the jar to go on the last hotdog I had …

Then I went to toss out the empty jar.

That woman I married stopped me.

She said there was still relish in the bottom of the jar.

I said there wasn’t.

She said there was.

She said the bone-empty jar still contained enough relish scraps for a potato salad.

I defended my evaluation of the relish jar.

A heated discussion developed.

I slouched off to the tv room to watch football; she slammed things around in the kitchen.

Irreconcilable differences.

For a time.

It’s all ok now because I’m so thoughtful. Sort of.

As a gesture of conciliation, at 5 a.m. this morning I woke her up to go out in the yard with me to see the eclipse of the moon. Wasn’t that a thoughtful husbandly act?

Shouldn’t viewing a beautiful act of God together strength our relationship?

Not being a nature lover, Ginny proved un-conciliatorized.

She did not relish getting up an hour earlier than usual.

But she got to laughing at my enthusiasm.

It’s all ok between us now.

But, know this: If our marriage ever does break up, it will be all her fault — Hey, I’m not the one who married an idiot.

Back to the statue of me and the pigeons:

When I was a kid there was a funny popular song about a sailor who thought a stature should be erected of himself because of his heroism in World War II.

I only remember the refrain about the pigeons in the park and his statue:

They build nests on Lincoln,
And they build nests on Lee,
Oh, what will they do on me?
On me. Oh, what will they do on me?

That song keeps running through my head this morning.

And I have this strange craving for a kernel of corn!

Pricks

Last week my elastic broke.

Like every other well-dressed writer here in Florida in the midst of a drought and 98+ degree weather, my work uniform consists of a cotton tee shirt and a pair of swim trunks. I usually work barefoot too.

Being of robust physique, I place a certain amount of strain on my swim trunks and last week the elastic waistband broke. Any time I got up from my desk to even walk across the room, I had to keep one hand in my pocket to keep my trunks from dropping to my ankles.

I have other swim trunks but this pair is my favorite; I’m reluctant to give them up.

In my many, many years as the father of six children I have learned a few things.

So while Ginny shopped for other things in the Wal-Mart, I wandered into the new-born and infants section looking for diaper pins.

Couldn’t find any.

I ask two sales ladies. One had never even heard of diaper pins (too young); the other had heard of them but could not recall having seen any for years. The three of us searched high and low and eventually found a card of four diaper pins on a side aisle spike.

Diaper pins are extra-large safety pins used to hold cloth diapers (apparently those are no longer stocked either) onto a baby; Disposal paper diapers used tape.

I don’t think there was any such thing as disposal diapers when our kids were little, only cotton cloth squares to be folded into triangles and pinned at the points. Bet I could still do it. These diapers needed to be washed and Ginny and I still remember how to do that too.(We did not own a washing machine in those days and diapers had to be done by hand — something you don’t forget).

The big selling point of diaper pins is that they sport a large head with a snap so that the pin will not spring open and prick the baby.

Supposedly.

Once home, I gathered a pleat in my swim trunks and pined it securely in front right where a belt buckle would be.

Looked a bit odd but since I work alone 95% of the time, who’s to notice or care?

Worked fine.

Until…

I saw a bug earlier this morning — an unusual occurrence, unheard of here in Florida (according to the Chamber of Commerce).

I squatted down to swat it with a shoe — and my diaper pin sprang open.

I noticed immediately.

Those things hurt!

A pin in the bellybutton provokes a response (I wonder if that’s why babies used to cry so much?).

As the rare, strange, unusual, unheard of roach escaped, a Scripture verse sprang into my mind. It relates to the conversion of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.

He’d been persecuting Christians when a bright light knocked him off his horse and a voice from Heaven spoke to Paul.

Paul said, “Who art thou, Lord”?

The shining Speaker identified Himself as Jesus and said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks”.

Now it’s easy for me to think that Jesus was warning Paul about getting along with other Christians.

But, Bible scholars say that’s not what the verse means.

Apparently, Jesus was referring to pricks of conscience, those little thoughts that nudge us toward God even when we don’t want to think about Him, those ideas that come seemingly out of no where that make us uncomfortable with what we are and what we do.

Pricks of conscience. That sudden bitter-sweet yearning for Home, that hunger that can not feed on this land’s bread, that longing for Something more, that yearning for Someone we will only recognize when we see Him.

The still, small voice of God. The voice we recognize, but don’t want to.

These pricks are hard to escape, to avoid, to rationalize, to ignore.

When God tells you something, you know it. Down deep, He is hard to ignore — but that’s possible if we really set our minds to it. God is a gentleman; He doesn’t rape anybody. If we insist, He will let us go our own way (wherever that leads).

It is hard to kick against the pricks — but it is possible.

So, when I felt the prick of the open diaper pin this morning, maybe, just maybe, it was a prick from God telling me to loose weight.

Nah! That can’t be right. God loves me just as I am, doesn’t He? Perhaps I should study the Scripture to be sure if that is what He’s telling me.

Trouble is, as my friend Barbara said in one of her newspaper columns: God loves us just as we are, and too much to let us stay that way.

Here’s an odd aside:

Back 30 years ago or so, the elastic in my undershorts broke and I could not find a safety pin to hold them up. I rummaged in Ginny’s jewelry box and came up with this huge costume jewelry broach given her by her mother. It glittered with sparkling red, green, yellow and blue stones.

No one will ever see I thought, and pined the front of my drooping underwear together. I was a bachelor once and I remembered how guys repair clothing.

As I padded down the hall in my briefs from shaving in the bathroom to our bedroom to dress, I encountered the kids in the hall.

“What’s that you’re wearing, Daddy,” they chorused.

“Hush! Go back to your rooms,” I said. “Those are the family jewels”.

Thirty plus years have passed and the rascals still tease me about that.

I’ll never live it down.

Jesus Made Me Lose My Santa Suit.

I used to own a Santa Claus suit — red velvet, white fur trim, wide shiny black belt, high black boots, snowy beard, tasseled red cap.

During the season I’d wear it to amuse the kids — (and on one memorable occasion to amuse Ginny, but we won’t go there).

Anyhow, years ago this guy asked to borrow my Santa suit for some charity thing.

I loaned it to him.

He never returned it.

And I never asked for it back.

I can’t.

Jesus said not to.

“Give to every man that asketh of thee,” He said, “And of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again”.

I wish He hadn’t said that.

It would have been nice if He’d have stuck to talking about the flowers of the field and the birds of the air… But Jesus tends to meddle in real life.

According to Him, I’m to give, to loan things without ever asking for them back.

This situation has percolated in my mind recently because a couple of weeks ago this neighbor borrowed something from me for the weekend with the promise that he’d return them on Monday.

When I loaned the tools I casually mentioned that I’d need them back to do my own yard. I felt reluctant to let him take off my tools in the first place, and I worried that he’d dull the blades, and I hinted that I really wanted them back on Monday…

And he said he’d return them Monday…

But that was Mondays and Mondays and Mondays ago.

He still hasn’t returned them.

Sorry bastard!

Why in the world would Jesus let him get away with it?

If Christian bill collectors followed Jesus’ instruction, they’d loose their jobs.

If you don’t ask for it back, you’ll never get it back and come Christmas, you’ll be naked beneath the tree (but that’s another story and I said we won’t go there).

Why did Jesus tell us to let things go without asking for them back?

I wonder if He did it to emphasize that the borrower is responsible for keeping his own promise. When we say we will do something, we are to do it.

Jesus practiced what He preached. Why, when He borrowed a tomb from Joseph of Arimathaea, He returned it just as He said He would. He returned it in good order. Hardly used. He even folded up the grave clothes.

On the other hand, I wonder if this teaching of Christ’s about not asking for things back lets me know how much of a hold possessions have on me. I loaned that guy my Santa suit over 20 years ago and it still galls me that he didn’t return it.

Is that red suit so important that I harbor 20 years’ worth of resentment?

Do I own those missing tools, or do they own me?

My Bible contains 1,341 pages. Not one single word in those pages tells me what somebody else ought to do.

Not one single word!

It never says “They shalt not steal” it only says, “John Cowart, thou shalt not steal”.

I think it should tell them what to do. In fact, if I were to write the Bible, it would be a lot different. But I didn’t, so it’s not.

The Scripture never tells how somebody else ought to treat me, only how I am to treat them.

And I treat them nice!

Yes indeed, over the years I have loaned people clothes, and tools and money and boo….

Oh. Damn!

Out of the corner of my eye I see in my bookcase that copy of Archbishop Fenelon’s book on Christian Perfection that I borrowed from Mr. Darby over four years ago…

I said I’d return it to him in a week….

Let’s forget that I ever wrote this posting. OK?

Remembering Blind Sam

My buddy Sam read the Bible with his fingers.

Sam had been born blind and had never seen anything at all. Yet back in the 1970s he learned Braille, graduated from college, got married, and became the pastor of a small rural church near Jacksonville.

Sam became interested in a method of evangelism I used in a rescue mission where I volunteered and in street preaching. It involved drawing stick-figure paintings to illustrate Bible stories.

Sam asked me to teach him to draw pictures.

A man born blind drawing pictures!

Impossible!

But with God all things are possible.

After much prayer, we had an idea.

I got a long, wide wooden board out of a dumpster, painted it white, and tacked small white nails in a pattern of a picture illustrating a Bible verse along this board. The nail heads protruded about a quarter of an inch.

Thick lengths of different colored knitting yarn were fastened at anchor points at the bottom of the board.

Sam learned the sequence of weaving each strip of yarn among the nail heads to draw a Bible picture. His skill at this amazed onlookers and several watchers turned to Christ on hearing the blind man’s message.

With God, all things are possible.

Here is an old photo (taken about 1972?) of people paying attention to Sam’s preaching on a street corner while drawing with yarn:

The Bible verse Sam is illustrating is Romans 6:23 — “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord”.

Speaking of sin:

Once a bunch of us guys were standing around talking, as Christian guys are wont to do, about temptation — especially as it relates to ogling sexy women.

One of the guys teased Sam saying it must not be a problem for him since he, in spite of being married, had never actually seen a woman.

“It’s worse for me than for you guys,” he said. “When a woman walks by, you can see if she’s a dog or not. To me, every time I hear any woman’s step or voice, in my mind I see her as a raving beauty wearing a filmy silk negligee. Every woman!”

“How do you know about filmy silk negligees?” a guy asked.

“Reading the Bible is not the only thing I can do with my fingers,” Sam said.

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As I scanned Barbara White’s columns into my computer Thursday, for some reason I got to thinking about Sam….

After I wrote the above journal posting, my friend Wes came over to take me to breakfast. We talked about plans and friends and family… When he asked about my youngest daughter and we talked about things that happened years ago, a crying jag struck me and I could not stop crying for the longest time.

Utter damn wimp! Or maybe my sleep deprivation led to my crying jag. Or maybe something else was at work.

I’m ok now. Maybe I’m just cracking up.

I know the Lord Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and He is my Lord, but I’m experiencing darn little peace at the moment.

That phrase “Help of the helpless” does mean something —not sure what right now.

Victory in Jesus - I can do all thing through Christ which strengthens me - we shall overcome — and all that jazz.

Isn’t that how faith is supposed to work?

But as Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”.

So I weep a little.

Big deal.

I’ll survive.

I’m Not Commendably Decent At This Hour

It’s almost 4 a.m. and I’ve been at work for three hours now — yes, a disturbing dream woke me up a bit earlier than usual.

In my dream Ginny got into a shouting match with a waitress in a crowded restaurant. Considering that in our 40 years of marriage, I’ve never heard Ginny shout at anybody for anything, you can see why I found this dream disturbing.

Once awake I continued scanning Barbara White’s 15-years-worth of newspaper columns. I’m about a third of the way through now (my blog for Monday, August 20^th describes the project).

I’m tired so here is a sample column from Barbara:

Commendably Decent

Now I know how the company that makes Kleenex feels when somebody calls some other tissue by that name.

I have just learned that Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says the word Christian can be used to describe someone as "commendably decent or generous."

The person doesn't even have to believe in Jesus Christ.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. has fiercely protected the use of the name Kleenex.

Obviously, Christ's followers haven't done the same about the word Christian.

We have allowed what it means to follow Christ to be so watered down that being commendably decent is enough to earn that precious title.

Jesus, who died on the cross, was not just commendably decent.

He was a great deal more than that. I believe His followers are to be more than that, too.

He was tenderly loving to sinners. He was passionately confronting to hypocrites. He abandoned His own interests in obedience to the Father — to the point of death.

I'm afraid people don't see that when they look at us. That's why Christianity has become something so wan as to qualify for the description of merely decent.

The problem is most of us really don't "die." :

We surrender to God here and there in little ways — in decency and generosity. But we do not "die" in the big ways — in surrender of our wills to His will or in giving our lives for others.

We just don't.

So I suppose we have earned that new definition.

Sadly, many of us appear to be satisfied with that definition. It asks no more than we can easily give.

These Christians ask very little of anyone else, of course. They settle for this least common denominator and call it love and acceptance.

On the other hand, some of us ask a lot more — only we ask it of others. And we don't ask, we demand. Then we condemn those who don't meet our demands.

Jesus could speak pretty harshly when He chose. But mostly only the Pharisees received the brunt of His harshness. And it was their insistence that other people follow their dictates that brought out Jesus' strongest words of condemnation.

Some people have embraced a weak imitation of Christianity because of the teachings of certain Christians.

Some have turned their backs on Jesus because of the actions of others.

What a quandary.

Do I have a solution? I think I do.

As a follower of Jesus Christ I believe I must be tremendously tough and enormously loving and tender.

I must demand a great deal of myself in the areas where God has spoken to me. My God will deal with me according to His wisdom, power and goodness — if I am willing to let Him do it.

He will show me what is needed to make me like Jesus — much more than commendably decent.

And I must allow others to be dealt with the same way — by God. I should tell them what I believe to be God'’s truth, but I must leave the Spirit room to work.

Jesus said that when He is lifted up He will draw all men to Him.

So Christians need to lift Jesus up. That means we need to become so filled with Him that He is all people see when they look at us.

I'm afraid we have been too busy lifting up our own versions of who He is and not the Lord Himself. I'm afraid we will lose sight of who He is ourselves if we do that long enough.

Barbara’s own blog, Along The Way, can be found at http://alongthewaybybw.blogspot.com/

I'm A Loving Man!

I am sympathetic, loving, generous, and kind — and I’ll kick the kneecaps off anybody that says otherwise!

Case in point:

As Ginny and I ate supper last night, a guy from down the street knocked on our front door. At the sound of the knock, I said, “Damn! Somebody at the door. Tell ‘em to go the hell away”.

Ginny let him in anyhow and as my supper got cold, he told me that his niece had died.

“She was young, just 32,” he said. “She died in her sleep. When her husband went into wake her up, she wouldn’t wake up. She looked the picture of health but her heart gave out. And my brother drowned last week; he was out fishing up in Georgia and fell out of the boat. Couldn’t swim and went under. Death is sweeping my family”.

As he talked, all I could think about was my supper getting cold.

I must be a super hypocrite because Ginny says I treated this guy with sympathy and understanding.

It may have appeared that way, but my heart was not in it.

I never met his niece or his brother, I barely know the guy himself. His troubles, his family’s troubles mean nothing to me. No more than earthquake victims in Peru or trapped miners in Utah, or Category 5 Hurricane Dean victims in Mexico.

Oh sure, I’ll say a perfunctory prayer for such people, but I don’t get all worked up over their plight.

This should bother me more than it does.

Yet, in times past, I’ve prayed for Christ to give me a loving heart.

He must have put that prayer on the spike to be gotten around to later.

Maybe I should amend my prayer to ask for a conveniently loving heart, one that won’t let my supper get cold.

I Remember Pantyhose

With so many women on the Internet (Jellyhead, Heather, Moogie, etc.) all talking about shoes this week, it’s only natural that my thoughts should turn to pantyhose.

Now, I hardly ever wear pantyhose myself — they bind — but years ago, I used to buy some every few weeks.

I bought them to use as a visual aid when I taught Bible lessons at a rescue mission. Actually, the pantyhose themselves, I gave to Ginny; but the pantyhose containers came in handy to illustrate one of my Bible lessons.

Haven’t seen them around for years but back in the 70s, there used to be a brand of pantyhose called, I think, Leggs. As a marketing ploy, that company packaged their pantyhose in large, hollow, white plastic eggs which measured about four inches in length.

It was the plastic eggs I used to teach about the new birth Christ offers.

People are like eggs.

We all look the same on the outside. Hard to tell much difference when you look at us, but some eggs have life inside, others don’t.

I displayed two identical eggs which I’d prepared beforehand to the men and women at the mission.

The eggs look the same, feel the same, weigh the same — and every one of them is potentially alive.

If an egg does not have life within it, it goes rotten.

I’d recruit a volunteer from the audience and crack open one egg on his head (my Bible lessons were serious affairs). That egg proved full of black dripping goooo. (That got folks attention).

If there is life within, (I’d crack open the second egg to reveal a cute fuzzy yellow chick)…

Jesus said, that He came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. Paul said that without Christ living within us, we are dead in trespasses and sins. Jesus said, He stands at the door and knocks; He promises to come into us if we open that door…

Eggs eventually crack open.

So do people.

Life within — or putrefaction.

And that life comes from the outside; the egg does get life by itself. It must come from a higher source, a living source.

You can’t tell whether an egg is living or putrefying by looking at the shell… You know, a lot of people look at Christians and say there’s no difference between us and a nonbeliever.

They’re right.

On the surface, there isn’t.

We both, godly and ungodly alike, wash our cars, watch the ball game, change the baby, wait for payday… No external difference.

The world finds this disappointing. They expect more of people who claim to walk with God. They think we should glow in the dark or something. They point with glee when some tv preachers runs off with the money, or the choir leader — or both… The world expects Christians to be different, to be a cut above, to fly higher…

Well, no egg can fly.

Yet.

But there will come a day, a day when all eggs crack open, when our rottenness or our living beauty will be revealed.

The difference between people and eggs is that eggs have no choice as to whether they are rotting inside or growing up to fly.

Eggs have no choice.

We do.

Shuffling Paper

For years and years and years, I have prayed that the Lord would let me publish a significant book.

I wanted to publish a book which would advance His kingdom, win souls, bring joy to the hearts of men, uplift humanity, rescue fair damsels in distress, strengthen the faint-hearted, comfort the feeble-minded, contribute the annals of great literature, outsell Harry Potter and Stephen King combined, make a difference in this weary world, and…

Well, you get the idea.

I think I have found just such a significant book.

Trouble is, it’s not one I wrote.

The book I think will do all this and more is written by someone else — but I am playing a small part in its production.

I’d like to backtrack a bit to tell about my part:

In my work preparing the 16^th Century diary of Samuel Ward, a translator of the King James Bible, for publication, I noticed an odd word — ENDITOR.

In those ancient days, that word referred to the last guy to prepare a manuscript for the printer, the guy who made the manuscript consistent, the guy who ended the book — the person we call today an editor.

That’s the role I’ve been playing recently.

Instead of writing my own copy, I’ve been doing routine clerical stuff to prepare a manuscript for a series of books by my friend Barbara White, who’s work has been awarded by numerous journalistic, religious and civic organizations.

For over 15 years at the Florida Times-Union, Barbara wrote a personal account of her spiritual journey. Thousands of readers followed her column, Along The Way.

"I write about trying to live the Christian life and failing and trying again," she said.

She says she’s nothing special, yet the walls of the hall leading into the editorial board room at the newspaper displayed scads of bronze plaques, scrolls, citations and journalistic awards she won for her writing skill.

Although Barbara is a Christian, she told me that one of her biggest thrills came when a Jewish congregation recognized her writing by planting a tree with a commemorative plaque honoring her work in Israel.

Barbara evaluates her own writings as work that she once did — then stuck in a shopping bag in the back of a closet.

When she retired from the newspaper, the publisher gave her all her by-line files from the newspaper archives, and granted her full permission and copyrights to turn her columns into a book. He appreciated the cumulative value of her work.

Yes, Barbara is a neat lady.

Unfortunately, her idea of book preparation is somewhat less than neat.

Here is a photo of the flowered shopping bag full of newspaper clippings she brought for me to turn into a book:

Although Barbara sometimes wears her Phi Beta Kappa Key, proof that she’s a brain, I somehow doubt that she’s ever read the Writer’s Digest guidelines for manuscript submission.

My first task involved simply unfolding all these hundreds of crinkled clippings.

That alone took days.

Next came sorting. I moved a folding table into our foyer to make a bigger work surface:

Then each clipping had to be smoothed out and pressed under volumes of my Encyclopedia Britannica. The work overflowed onto the floor and every chair in the house.

For hours Ginny and I discussed the best way to present this material. Our son and his wife, and our daughters helped us collect and arrange and type and sort — it became a family project.

Why go to all this trouble?

Because we feel that Barbara’s work may well be destined to become a spiritual classic.

The humility, power and scope of her life and writing provide a living illustration of what it’s really like to be a Christian.

"I write about trying to live the Christian life and failing and trying again," she said.

I read each article she wrote and culled dated material. I focused on saving pieces which feed my own soul, pieces I feel readers can most identify with, and ones which will most provide help in everyone’s daily struggles, problems, and joys.

This first reading proved a powerful impact on my own spiritual life.

Yes, preparing this manuscript is a pain in the ass, but it’s worth the trouble.

Then came the hard part — scanning copy.

Barbara’s articles run between two and five columns of newsprint across; my scanner will only pick up a single column at a time. Because of wrinkles, ink bleeds, crinkles, years of being folded, etc., many articles needed to be retyped from scratch.

My daughter Patricia undertook much of that tedious work.

Once an article scanned, it needed to be formatted:

Nothing to it —

All I had to do was: Preview the copy, adjust the marquee, scan in one column at a time, close the scanner program, convert the article into Word, go into Page Set Up command and standardize the margins, save, go back into Page Set Up and change the paper feed size, use the Find/Replace function to remover optional hyphens (these are caused by ink dots and unrecognizable characters, etc — as many as 230 per article); save, remove three to five Section Breaks per article, save, remove bizarre symbols which the scanner thought fun to insert for no apparent reason, save, change the font type and size for Headings and Text Body, Spell Check, save, write a title, insert graphics, save, highlight, copy, transfer to a book format and paste, change indentation, save, re-do the document set up, insert headers and footers, and save. Check the rendering against the hard copy and save. Then red-mark and file the hard copy.

Then move on to the next article.

That’s all there is to it.

Why bother?

Because I feel this may well be the most significant project I’ve ever worked on, the very book I’ve prayed for years to produce.

It’s worth the trouble.

Barbara said, "I write about trying to live the Christian life and failing and trying again" .

To expand my limited work surface I brought in some old wooden onion crates and spread out the scanner operation. I commandeered an asbestoses trivet from Ginny’s kitchen to gently flatten each article against the scanner’s glass screen.

In the midst of all that work, I’ve been inserting graphics and playing with book cover designs.

But, more importantly, as I work on these routine tasks, I am becoming more and more aware of the love of God for me.

As I repeat these rote mundane tasks — Ginny says it’s like Peter and John repairing their fish nets — I’m catching glimpses of the majesty of Christ.

As I shuffle paper, I feel drawn to worship by the magnetic beauty of Jesus.

And I feel thankful.

Golden Years

Ah, yes!
Ginny and I are sailing into our Golden Years.
Sometimes we feel as though we're in one boat; sometimes, in the other:

My Shoe Story

In response to Jellyhead’s challenge, all the e-women I know are posting photos of their shoes recently.

I do not have any photo of my shoes.

I’ve never taken one.

Can’t imagine why anyone sane would.

However, I do have a shoe story; it’s recorded in my 1999 daily journal. Here’s a copy:

John Burns His Own Stupid Foot

Thursday, April 1, 1999 — Spent the day cleaning up the yard extra good for Easter.

I was up on a ladder trimming vines with the electric hedge trimmer and smoking my pipe at the same time. To reach a difficult place, I started to put my pipe away and stretched down to tap it out on the heel of my left boot, a habitual practice.

A ladder is not the best place to do this.

I missed my own heel.

As I knocked my pipe out, the dottle, the lump of red hot charcoal left in the bottom of the bowl as a residue of burning tobacco, fell into the top of my boot. It was still as hot as a charcoal briquette. Intense pain.

Of course, I was wearing high top boots instead of my usual canvas slip-ons as a safety measure because I planned to be running the lawnmower; so it took me a while to cut off the power trimmer, climb down from the ladder, unlace the boot, pull it off and crush out the burning coal.

My sock had caught fire!

Horrible pain.

It burned a hole the size of a quarter in the side of my ankle, burned it right down to raw flesh. I think I could see the surface of my ankle bone in there. I nearly fainted. I believe I went into shock. Intense pain

Thank God that Ginny caught a ride home from work and I did not have to walk to meet her this afternoon.

The comment of my sympathetic, compassionate wife as she bandaged my wound this evening:… “Oh well, John, the Surgeon General has warned you that smoking can be hazardous to your health”.

John's Guest:

Here’s a guest post written by my friend, the award-winning columnist Barbara White:

When God Can Not Be Felt

A friend asked me how she could believe in God when she could not feel. His presence.

It's hard, but what are the options?

Either God is or He isn't.

He isn't real only when I can feel Him. If He is real any time, then He is real all the time and my feelings have nothing to do with it.

God says, His name announces, I AM.

I have only two responses: to believe or not to believe.

Feelings are wonderful, but not a reliable gauge of truth.

I paid a visit to my grandson last Sunday afternoon. The living room was full of people of all ages when I arrived. Russell was one of the small people.

He spotted me as I came through the front door and dropped what he was playing with to rush toward me.

"That's my grandmother," he announced to anyone who might be listening as he raced to fling himself into my waiting arms.

I can't really describe the way I felt when I was holding him — better than wonderful. I would love to have that feeling every day.

I would love to be able to run to God and throw myself into His arms, too. I would love to feel safe, held gently and securely in His arms, my head against His breast.

I know that's quite anthropomorphic — describing God as if He had arms and legs and so forth, just like me.

God is spirit and yet, sometimes, I do feel as if I am held in His arms. Maybe that's because I know God through Jesus, and He has arms for holding.

Sometimes I don't feel a thing — or worse, I feel as if I have never been held, as if those former times were just a figment of my imagination.

That is when I must come back to the original question. My original question, that is, not my friend's.

Do I believe God is?

Since I do believe that, I may say I do not feel Him, but I will not say I do not believe in Him. I may say my feelings are a mess, but God is still God. While my heart aches with loneliness or throbs with dullness and fatigue, I will know that God is still God. When everything seems questionable, I will stand on the fact that God is still God.

Russell is my grandson on days when I don't see him or hold him in my arms.

God is my God on days when I don't feel Him, either.

It's that easy — and that hard.

----
Barbara’s own blog, Along The Way, can be found at http://alongthewaybybw.blogspot.com/

Waiting Room Amusements

To capture an alligator, straddle it’s back, reach under it’s lower jaw, and pull up — “So’s you bend it’s hed way back”.

“Them gators’has got powerful jaws for snapping shut, but a gator ain’t got that strength for to open it’s mouth up wide,” said the young man, tall, rail thin, tough and flexible as a steel cable.

How to subdue a gator, how to know when one may attack (they grunt), how to avoid the whipping tail and the “gator death roll” are some of the things I learned from a young man in the waiting room while my eldest daughter was undergoing a procedure to reduce the pain from nerve damage in her arm.

If I recall correctly, this was the third or fourth time in the past couple of years I’ve waited outside the surgery while doctors have tried this. She faces still more operations in the future.

Few places on earth provide fewer amusements than a surgical waiting room.

There’s no way to get comfortable in such a spot.

For a while I talked about art, and her days as an art student in New York City, and her cute cat tee shirt business, with my daughter-in-law, Helen, (caution: revealing bath photo on that link) who drove me over there and waited with me. She also helped me with several computer problems.

But reading her Harry Potter book absorbed her.

The young man who fell to talking to me was bored out of his skull, so he began telling me how he had worked on this farm up in Georgia where the owner raised alligators “fer meat, heds ‘n hides”.

To move one that doesn’t want to be moved, once you pull the gator’s head up and back, a partner circles it’s snout with duct tape or a wire loop and places a strip of tape over the creature’s eyes. You secure the legs then, if you need to kill it, use a boom stick (I’m not sure if that’s a shotgun shell on a pole or an icepick-like spear) to sever the gator’s spinal cord.

“You don’t wants to break the skull ‘cause that messes up the hed then you cain’t sell ‘em,” he said.

You cut the gator’s throat and hoist him up on a fleshhook to drain the blood.

“You hose ‘em down the hide to clean ‘em, then lift ‘em up on a cart and take ‘em over to the women. They’uns cut the hed clean off, skin ‘em out and butcher up the meat for the freezer… I learnt all that stuff,” he said.

He told me all about feeding gators, capturing ones that get loose, and about the time his boss (on purpose? inadvertently?) locked him in a pen with 50 or 60 hungry gators.

After that, “I quits that place. My Mama didn’t raise no fool”. He came down to Jacksonville to earn his living doing yard work; he’s enrolled in a trade school to learn welding. “They’s good money in that”.

I learned a lot from our waiting room conversation. I never knowed any of that stuff ‘bout gators afore. I kept looking this kid in the eye and thinking, Here is a man for whom Christ died, just like me. This guy is immensely valuable. Important! Precious!

I wish this young man every success in his welding school; I wish him joy in his new life without gators.

With all our talking, I only got to read a few pages of the book I’d taken into the waiting room to amuse myself.

I carried a reprint of the Sermons of Samuel Ward of Ipswich, first printed in 1636. This is not the same Samuel Ward who wrote the diary I’ve been editing; this is the other guy, the wrong guy, but I’m tracking him down too just for the fun of it.

Hey, what else is there to do in a waiting room but wait, watch the fish circle the aquarium, wait, talk to folks there, wait, amuse yourself as best you can, and wait?

I just realized something — Were I able to pronounce the words as Samuel Ward of Ipswich did 400 years ago, I’d bet the young man from Georgia would understand those sermons better than I do!

The vocabulary, speech cadences, colloquial expressions, idioms, and contractions of deep-woods Crackers and the people of Southern Appalachia have strong roots in Elizabethan English. Ward’s sermons would strike a cord with them.

But, if your tastes run toward neither gator raising nor 400-year-old sermons, but you’re inclined in a more modern bend, I follow the blog of a Church of England reader named Pete. His daughter, Karen, was one of the first people ever to comment on my blog and I got to know him through her. His last post links to a sermon he delivered last Sunday.

I think he has something important to say and he says it well.

Wonder if they have gators in England?

Oh yes, my daughter came through her surgery fine — until next time.

Then you’ll find me in the waiting room again.