One day long ago, my buddy and I decided to drive his old car across a dry creek bed. A fun idea turned out to be a bad idea. Half way over, we sunk deep in the gravel. Everything we tried to get unstuck did not work. Idea after idea failed. Our “horse” was stuck, for sure and for certain. Evening was coming on and our options were walking home or going to someone’s house and calling home. In those days there were no cell phones. Both plans were not acceptable to a couple of enterprising fellows like us. Either option spelled defeat. Of course, we were, in fact, completely defeated. By now my mom, who kept close tabs on me, even though I considered that not needful, had dispatched my dad to check on the whereabouts of her number one and only son. And there he was, in his company car, coming over the hill with the radio antenna whipping in the wind. My hero, then and now, and always will be. “What are you boys doing,” he asked. We replied as manly as we could, “We’ve tried everything and we can’t get unstuck.” He didn’t laugh or even chastise us for what we had done as I recall. He had a way of teaching without saying one word. He simply said, “Take some air out of the tires”. We did and Ronny drove out easily. Ronny and I learned a big lesson that day, and it was more than how to get a stuck car out of a creek.
Hummingbirds regularly come to our feeder outside the window to partake of the “goodie juice” we provide. The feeder can be seen by Rhoda and me from our respective vantage points. We alert each other as visitors arrive, usually unexpectedly, and they leave almost the same way. One must be on one’s toes to see them, for hummingbirds don’t stay long.
We have noticed an interesting thing about hummingbirds. When they approach the feeder and if a wasp is there, they don’t land, or if they do and see a wasp they quickly fly away. Wasps like hummingbird feeders too and apparently like to sting the hummingbirds, or at least the hummingbirds think they do. When no wasps are at the feeder, the birds land and drink away. At this very moment, a hummingbird has come for its morning refreshment and refreshed itself. Why did it stay? Because there was no wasp there, it had no fear at the feeder! The hummingbirds have a rule – wasp at the feeder – fly away – wasp not at the feeder – stay and enjoy the gift of the feeder.
Why can’t people be as wise as the hummingbirds? Some not only don’t fly , in our case, don’t run from an obvious danger. They fall for Satan’s overtures and often do not see the spider until they’re caught firmly in the web. Shakespeare said in his great play, The Merchant of Venice, “There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts”. If you have read my other works you know that I am a poet and like to use my poems to illustrate a point. I would like to take that opportunity again in this essay and include a poem I wrote some time ago which I think is germane to today’s topic.
POKER MAN
Why do you condemn this, that’s in?
Why do you maintain it’s a sin?
Why do you stand so hard
Against a little game of cards?
You can’t prove it’s wrong to me
For I’ve closed my eyes and cannot see
That something is amiss
And I can’t hear the serpent’s hiss.
Have you wondered about the guy wandering the highways with the backpack and run down shoes? Where’s he going? Where’s he from? Where’s he spending the night,? Is it in a pasture under a tree? And how does he keep warm in the winter? What does he eat and where does he get his water? Who would chose a life with such self imposed deprivation? Who would chose to be homeless?
But people who would never chose to live their physical lives like that make choices putting them in the same situation spiritually. Jude, verse 13, refers to ungodly individuals who are described as “wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever”. The most tragic thing that can happen to a human being is to disconnect from God, in computer terminology, “disconnected from the network”.
Several years ago I observed men traveling down the Interstate Highway that cuts through our little town and wrote a poem about a fictitious man I called “Johnee”. I hope you enjoy it and see how it describes an absolute disconnect.
Johnee
by David Allen
They found him last night,
wrapped in his sleeping
blanket. Out on the Interstate,
dead as a hammer, stiff as
a board. Died sometime
in the night, all alone, all
by himself.No I.D., only, “ My name
is Johnee”, tattooed on his
chest.Where was he from? Where
was he going?Well, he’s not going anywhere,
anymore. And somewhere, long
ago, someone bounced him on
their knee
and said,
“ Oh, Johnee, you’ll
go far in this world”.But, this, this was too far,
Way too far.
Johnee lost his way. The way home grew so dim he could no longer see it. The darkness overcame him and he died. Johnee disconnected. Are you connected?
Listen to an audio presentation on this topic here
On May 29th, my darling little granddaughter, Sierra died. She fought a most heinous form of cancer for eighteen months. She died bravely, the way I want to when it’s my turn. I was with her at one o’clock in the morning when she breathed her last. Those eighteen months would take a volume to chronicle which I will never do. But, through all the hours of weeping and happiness, yes, happiness, there is something that I learned that is on my heart to share. Maybe it will help you, I hope so.
People usually deal with dying and death, particularly a tragic one, in pretty much the same way. They believe that no matter the severity of the illness, prayer will more than likely change the outcome. Their core belief is that God will interdict on behalf of the sick person and heal them. Modern medicine does what was impossible only a short time ago, people live who would have died then. These medical marvels are a gift from God.
But what about those who are not healed? And no matter how many, how long or how fervent the prayers, they die. When this happens some will blame God for “taking” their loved one. How could an all knowing, all powerful God let theirs die and let another live? It’s a puzzle that begins to eat at the very center of the believer’s heart. Well meaning friends might say, “If we had only had more faith”, or some other horrific statement, the sick one would have been made well. This is a satanic phrase and even though well intended strikes terror deep into the soul. How guilty would you be if your loved one died because you “didn’t have enough faith?” Yes, we should have faith, enough to move a mountain, as Jesus said, but this faith is not for physical mountains, but spiritual ones.
“What the Old Man Does is Always Right” is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen which tells of a peasant who trades his horse down to a sack of rotten apples, justifying his trades all the way down. If you can ignore the original moral it can be repurposed as a powerful parable illustrating the sins of attrition, those sins that slowly result in a drift away from a strong relationship with God. We can justify our actions all we want, but if in the end we are left with a rotten relationship our eternal reward is at risk. In an interesting twist, the man’s wife agrees with his actions all the way – showing that our drift can influence others away from God as well. Really, what the old man does isn’t always right. Read the full parable below.
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He was so proud of it. The lines were right, the joints fitted, the wood finished to a glow. The boat drafted better than any other and its beauty inspired use. He could remember it now looking at the vessel before him. Where had the beauty gone? The years had worn it so slowly he hadn’t even noticed. Now weathered, dull and leaking, the boat’s original beauty was only a faint remembrance…
Growing up in the church a lot of time was spent on two categories of sin, namely sins of commission, those things God tells us not to do but we do anyway, and sins of omission or those things God tells us to do but we ignore. These are important categories but with a warning: if we focus on a checklist of things we should and should not do, we by our nature grow to rely on OUR goodness and not on God’s. Jesus clearly stated over and over that his disciples would become children of God and be consumed with a relationship with God through him.
Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37(NIV)
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! John 3:1(NIV)
Over and over the Word of God explains Christians are about relationship not rules. Our obedience (omitted and committed) is because we love God and value His presence in our lives. We want to please Him. Because of this, I believe there is a far more dangerous category of sin, attrition. Attrition is any activity that causes a slow drift away from our relationship with God. The dangerous thing is that it can take the form of just about anything, including religion. Sometimes seemingly harmless activities over a lifetime (or less!) lead us to a point we are separated from God and don’t even recognize it until it’s too late.
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)
Practical Christian application:
1. We have confidence in an eternal reward through Christ
2. It’s impossible for us to fully understand God’s will
3. God wants us to have patience, know that evil will not prevail, and to fully place our trust in Him
Last week we lost a 15 year old family member after a lengthy battle with cancer. Her struggle was featured in a post by her grandfather last month. As I prepared to officiate over her funeral I thought it was appropriate to share on this blog the comfort our family found through God.
Over and over family members and friends in the community asked how God could let something so terrible happen to someone so young. A close friend who had lost his wife in a tragic car accident years earlier had great counsel to me. Part of his word he took from a message Billy Graham delivered on the National Day of Prayer, September 14, 2001
I’ve been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept by faith that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. Full message here
Our family found great comfort in suffering knowing that God is a loving God even though we may not know why such tragic things happen. We choose to trust God.
Practical Christian application:
- Rejoice in your Christian birth
- Fix your eyes on Jesus and strive to steadily grow in him day by day
- Be zealous, but avoid the emotional highs (peaks) and corresponding lows (valleys)
- Don’t be embarrassed, but don’t be satisfied about where you are as a Christian,
- More mature Christians should be patient and gently lead newer Christians to maturity.
Early in my life I remember a friend of mine who was a recent Christian convert and “on fire” for the Lord. He was constantly chiding me for not being a more overt Christian. He was a cheerleader for Christ wearing the right symbols, saying the right words, carrying the right books and confronting others to hold them accountable. I was crushed a few years later when I saw video evidence of this same person in a one of the most un-Christian like situations.
This memory came back in full force recently while reading Chapter 7 “Emotion is Your Enemy” in the book Wooden on Leadership by the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. In the opening sentences of this chapter he describes the beautiful peaks and valleys of the Swiss Alps but explained peaks and valley belong in the Alps not in temperament.
What is the measure of a man? What is it that he calls upon down deep inside when desperate times come? Heroes are sometimes found in shooting wars and sometimes in wars of another kind.
For the past year my granddaughter Sierra, has fought cancer. January brought news that she was suffering from osteo sarcoma in her right knee. This is a tumor attached to the bone. Chemo, titanium inplant, more chemo, cancer recurrence in the calf of her leg, amputation of the right leg above the knee, another surgery for recurrence in a lung and now extended treatment with a new protocol to improve her immune system is a summary of her year with terror, seven operations and numerous biopsies!
It’s 2009 and she’s back in school, looking forward to getting a prosthesis on what she now affectionately calls her “little leg”. We’ve been in three hospitals as well as a consultation in another. We have met many “battle buddies” along the way, and what a blessing that has been. We have seen grace and courage in people thrown almost overnight into a nightmare they could never have imagined, a nightmare not to be awakened from, but one awakened into, over and over and over.
Cancer is a thief, a robber of time, money and most of all, normalcy. Normal is good. Boring is good. But in the wild and terrifying roller coaster ride where Mr. Cancer takes away a person’s buttons and bows, there stands another MAN. He’s the guy that stays the course, doesn’t run from the unthinkable and remains true to what he vowed, “in sickness and in health.” He’s the man holding his wife up when she’s almost beaten, cancer tired. He’s the dad that holds his wife up when their baby is sick unto death. He’s the hero of Cancerland and somewhere they’re making his medal of honor, his badge of courage. These men are described, I hope, in a poem I wrote some time ago and is in my book, ” POEMS BY LOU DAVID ALLEN”
My Prince Charming
Is not the richest,
Nor the smartest,
Nor the most handsome,
But when I’m sixty three
He will still love me
And put a diamond on my hand.
And should our babies be
Sick, even unto death,
He will pray God takes him
And not them.
That’s who my Prince Charming is.
Guest author David Allen has a B.S. degree in Physics and an MBA. He has been an elder in the church, engineer, teacher, junior college administrator, mayor and a salesman. For more information about his book of poerty contact David at dallen@camalott.com
