Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

Israel's exodus from Egypt is one of the most significant events in the Bible and references to it recur throughout the Psalms and the prophets. Thus, it surprised me to learn that the New Testament uses the word, "exodus" only three times. Joseph commanded the Israelites to carry his bones from Egypt at their exodus (Heb 11:22). The other two references encourage us on to our triumph.

Translations often obscure a depth of meaning the author intended to convey. In Luke's account of the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus "of his exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Lk 9:31). Most translations replace "exodus" with "departure" or "decease." With the use of exodus, Luke injected into the three-way conversation all the triumph of Jehovah God over the gods of Egypt, all the power of His emancipation of Israel from slavery to be His people, all the hope of a way opened through the sea all the way to the Promised Land.  Of course, we understand that through the cross and the resurrection, Jesus did triumph over all the forces of evil and did set us free from sin and death—the true exodus by which Israel's fades to insignificance.

Peter reminds his readers of basic truths to stir them up because he knows his death approaches and so that "at any time after my exodus you will be able to call these things to mind." (2Pet 1:15). Inasmuch as the very next thing Peter mentions is the mount of transfiguration, it seems probable that he intended a connection to the Lord's exodus triumph. In the last sentence before he spoke of his personal exodus, Peter exclaimed that just as the way was blasted through the Red Sea for Israel so also the way is prepared for us. "For as long as you practice these things … the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you." (2Pet 1:10-11). So heaven is not a wish or a dream. If we abound in faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly kindness and love the way to the Promised Land is as sure as the resurrection of Jesus and formed by the same power.

Thus, in speaking of his own imminent death as his exodus, Peter connects Jesus' triumphant exodus from this sinful world to our own sure hope of that same exodus.

"Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. "(2Pet 1:1-11).
 

When I did my internship as a music teacher in the public schools, I looked up one day to find my professor walking into the music room behind the fifth grade class scheduled for that half hour.  My heart sank.  I did have a lesson prepared, but it was not a wow-zer.  It taught a valid musical concept, one I could easily build on in future lessons—the first of what educators called a “unit.”  I had prepared a lesson plan with appropriate behavioral objectives.  It met all expectations and requirements.  But to me, it seemed so—well, ordinary.
            I taught that lesson twice in a row with no problems.  The students caught on quickly and I met the objectives with no difficulty.  After the second group left I approached the tall, slim, dignified looking lady, expecting her to meet me with, at best, a mediocre assessment.
            “Good job,” she said, and when my jaw dropped she added, “Listen:  they can’t all be showstoppers.  You taught an important lesson and you taught it well.  They learned exactly what you set out to teach them and they enjoyed it.”
            I learned something that day, something I keep reminding myself as I approach the computer day after day, struggling sometimes to find something to write.  Just do your best.  Turn in a good effort, be faithful to the Word God has entrusted you with, and let Him take care of the rest.
            Sometimes I hear from people telling me that what I wrote was exactly what they needed that day.  A few times it was a piece I almost deleted because I was so dissatisfied with it.  The same thing has happened to Keith.  When you preach two sermons a week, every week, you occasionally produce one just because you needed one to fill the time one Sunday morning, not because you were particularly enthralled with the subject.  Many times people have complimented those very sermons.  At least one of them led directly to a conversion.
            Many times we feel unnoticed and totally useless to the Lord.  We think we are doing nothing for God because nothing we do matters.  Nonsense.  More people are watching you than you know.  You need to learn the same lesson I did. 
             Every day can't be a showstopper.  Some days are so ordinary as to make you wonder why you exist.  You get up, you go to work, you come home and spend time with the family.  You pay your bills on time and help the neighbor with his ornery lawn mower, perhaps even mowing his yard for him.  You study your Bible, and then you hit the sack and get up and go again the next morning, an ordinary--you think--honest, hard-working Joe.
           Or you get up and down all night with the baby and barely know you are sending your older ones off to school because you are so tired.  But then you still do the grocery shopping and prepare the meals and launder the clothes.  You wash dishes and scrub floors and dust the countertops and shelves, change the sheets, then throw together an extra casserole for a sick neighbor, help the kids with their Bible lesson and then their homework, and fall into bed exhausted.
            Or you sit at home alone because you are too old and sick and frail to get out any longer, so you watch a little TV, read your Bible, call a few folks on the sick list (besides yourself), write a few get well and sympathy cards, then go to bed and start all over again tomorrow.
          And all of you wonder, what good is that to anyone?  Well, you never know, especially when you count God into the mix.  He can work wonders with the weak, the frightened, and the average.  He can take the smallest seed you plant and make a huge tree out of it.  Don’t you remember a parable along those lines?  In God’s hands, nothing you do is just filling up time.
          So get up every morning and do what you are supposed to do in the way you are supposed to do it.  Someone out there needs to see you do that, and if you do, God will take care of the rest.
 
I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that plants anything, neither he that waters; but God that gives the increase. Now he that plants and he that waters are one: but each shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow-workers...  1Cor 3:6-9.
 
Dene Ward
 

Keith has been keeping a journal since Lucas was born.  We always use a five subject spiral notebook, beginning a new page for every day, and come within a couple dozen pages of filling it completely.  That means we have stored up forty-three of those notebooks and are working on the forty-fourth.  Sometimes we pull one out and read it, usually laughing out loud here and there, occasionally cringing at something stupid we did or some ordeal we went through and can hardly imagine now. 
              Keith has made an index of "important things" in our lives, one manila cardstock page for each year, all clipped together.  If we need to know when we purchased something that has gone kaput, we can pull out half a dozen sheets from about the right time, and quickly skim them until we find it.  If we need to know when one or the other of us had a surgery or the last tetanus shot or any number of other things, five minutes will tell us all we need to know.
            At first, as a young mother who scarcely had time to think, and certainly not much time for myself, I hardly wrote in the things.  But as the boys grew up and no longer needed Mommy every few minutes, could dress themselves, bathe themselves, and entertain themselves, I began to add a page here and there—to get my side in, which is our inside joke about it.  For well over the past twenty years I, too, write in it every day.  The only problem I have is that now that we are together 24/7, if he tells everything we have done in a day, I have nothing left to write except, "Yep."
            This year we have had a bit of a problem.  Suddenly, usually on the edges of the page, the pen stops writing.  These are the same style and company's pens we have used for decades.  Occasionally I can pick up another pen and fill in the missing letters, but not every time.  It makes this usually pleasant chore a real aggravation. 
             The other night Keith left me to go study, carrying the same pen with him that had just refused to write not only on the edges of the page but smack in the middle, too.  He pulled out a sheet of cheap notebook paper to take notes as he studied and the pen wrote just fine anywhere on the page.  That made him think.  He came back to the journal and pulled it out.  We have always used Mead notebooks.  This was one we found on a super-cheap sale, a Stellar—which it evidently is not!  The problem was not the pen; the problem was the paper, some sort of finish that kept the ink from writing on it in scattered places.  Unfortunately, we bought two of the things.  That second one will go somewhere else, not as our next journal, and we will just have to suffer through the rest of the year with this one.
            For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  (Jer 31:33).
           In this time of the new covenant, God is writing his law upon our hearts.  He expects that our "obedience of faith" as Paul calls it twice in the book of Romans, will be "obedience from the heart" (Rom 6:17).  That heart will "delight to do his will" (Psa 37:31; Rom 7:22).  That kind of heart will "know righteousness" (Isa 51:7).  That kind of heart, pure and sincere even as it follows God's rules carefully, is what He demands from His people. 
            God writes on our hearts through the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3:3).  As we fill ourselves with His Word, our hearts are being etched with a marker far more perfect than the ones we use.  God's writing implement works just fine.  If He is having trouble writing on your heart, it's not the pen that is at fault, it's your heart.
 
And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts  (2Cor 3:3).
 
Dene Ward

My little boys used to bring me bouquets all the time.  Sometimes it was Queen Anne’s lace.  Sometimes it was a bright blue spiderwort.  Sometimes it was a rain lily or a stem of pink clover.  Sometimes it was just a dandelion bloom.  All of these are wildflowers, what any suburban lawn grower would call “weeds.”  Yet I put them all in vases of various sizes because they were all precious to me.  My little fellows had no idea the difference between domesticated flowers and wildflowers.  All they knew was “flowers,” and out here in the country we are surrounded by them.
            But even they would never have gathered a bunch of them, ripped off the blooms and handed me a fistful of stems.  The problem with religion today, including some of my own brothers and sisters, is they value the stems and not the flowers. 
            A few months ago someone told me how listening to a certain teacher had made his day so much better.  I anxiously awaited the lesson he had heard, but he never once said a word about the content.  All I heard was the teacher’s name, at least three times, and how that person had made his day better.  What he had done was throw away the flower and put the empty stem in a vase of water to admire.
            I understand having favorite speakers and teachers.  Nothing makes me happier than to hear someone compliment my husband and my sons.  But none of them teach for the glory.  They teach to help people. If all people remember is their names, then they haven’t been much help, have they? 
            If I can’t tell you what a person taught me, did I learn anything, or was I just entertained for a few brief moments?  One of my favorite teachers isn’t much of an entertainer, but I always go away with a new way of looking at things, even things I have been looking at for decades now.  He makes me think, and he makes me see the possibilities.  He makes me want to go look at it again myself, and I often do.  He makes me examine my life in ways I never have and want to change for the better.  Can your favorite speaker do those things, or does he just make you laugh and feel good?
            There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to someone for help with your Bible study.  God did ordain the role of teachers in spiritual things (Eph 4:11).  He meant for us to have brothers and sisters we could go to with questions and problems.  Paul told Timothy to pass on what he knew to “faithful men.”  He told the older to train the younger.  But God also holds us individually accountable for what we do with what we hear.  “Work out your own salvation,” Paul told the Philippians, well after Jesus had already said, “If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the ditch.”  It is up to each of us to be careful to whom we listen and to examine what they say against the Word (Acts 17:11).
            A good teacher doesn’t care if he receives praise or not—that is not his purpose.  All he does is hold up the Word of God and present it to you.  “What is the straw to the wheat?” God asks in Jer 23:28.  That word “straw” has several meanings according to Strong’s, and one of them is the wheat stalk, or stem.  Which is more important, God is saying, the stem or the wheat it holds up?
            I knew a man once who nearly tore a church up because he insisted on “his turn” to teach when not only was he a lousy teacher, he didn’t even know the Word of God accurately enough to teach it.  Clearly, it was all about the glory of teaching to him, and clearly he needed the admonition in Rom 12:3:  For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
            I know the temptation.  So did Paul.  I refrain from [boasting], so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited, 2 Cor 12:6,7.  It shouldn’t matter to me what people say about my speaking or writing.  What should matter is how many I reach, how many are helped and encouraged and how many souls are saved.  And that is what should matter to those who listen and read too. 
            And do you know why this is so important?  If you value the who above the what, then someday, sooner or later, you will be deceived into believing a lie.  Even good teachers make mistakes, and you might be deceived by an honest error too.  That is why James tells us in 3:1 that teachers will receive the “greater condemnation.”  Teaching is a responsibility, and anyone who craves the glory is manifestly unable to handle that burden.
            Most of the preachers and teachers I know will tell you the same things I am now.  If you want to make me happy, then use what I give you, remember it and grow.  Share it with others who might need it.  Even if you forget where you got it, just pass the good news along.  That is what really matters.  Give them a bouquet of flowers, not a handful of stems.
 
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.
 
Dene Ward
           

As I was proofreading my latest book, I realized that I had used the same phrase at least four times, the one about kissing the tops of my children's and grandchildren's heads over and over whenever they sat in my lap.  When I read through something, I look for what I call "speed bumps" in my writing—things that make me stop for a second and say, "Huh?"  Sometimes it's a non sequitur, sometimes it's a dangling modifier, sometimes it's a pronoun with no antecedent, or several other things, including a word repeated in close proximity to itself.  My first inclination was to go back and delete a few of those repeated phrases.  Then I realized that those references were all in separate essays.  They only made speed bumps because I was reading them back to back to back.  As it was, they made for thematic unity.  I love my children and grandchildren more than life itself, and now everyone knows it!
            The Holy Spirit did the same thing when He inspired men to write the Bible.  I first really noticed it when I was studying the Psalms.  I had found lists of the various types of psalms and what each contained.  In the process of looking for those elements in each psalm, I was encountering repeated words and phrases, or their synonyms.  In Psalm 13 David asks the question, "How long?" four times in 6 verses making it obvious that he was in distress and this was a Psalm of Lament.  In Psalm 51, he speaks of sin and its synonyms 12 times and asks for forgiveness using nine variations of that word.  Yes, this is one of the psalms he wrote after his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah.  There is no question what the psalm is about whether you know that fact or not.
            We are studying Deuteronomy together during our exiled worship services.  We study separately all week, and then on Sunday morning after breakfast we sit down together to sing, pray, and take the Lord's Supper as "the Lord's church on the Ward property."  Then we spend a good hour or more sharing what we have discovered in our personal study.  While it isn't something Keith usually does, because of my Psalms study, I have found things to count, and they have made me aware of some things about Deuteronomy I never knew before.  It is a great book!
            Let me share just one little thing I have discovered in all my counting.  I heard it said all my life that the New Covenant is heart religion while the Old is nothing but following the rules.  I discovered long ago that this was not the truth.  Let me just lay this on you quickly this morning.  If you have your own concordance, either a hard copy or online, you can look for yourself.  The book of Deuteronomy says "Be careful to do" all the commands of the Law 21 times, not counting about half a dozen synonyms.  But it also uses the word "heart," as in "obey with all your heart," "turn to the Lord with all your heart," and of course, the one that became known as part of the Shema, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart," 25 times!  That doesn't count the references to having an evil or stubborn heart, the opposite of the heart God wanted, which proves in itself that God has always wanted heart religion.
            So if you have that incorrect notion of the Law, start studying on your own today, not just Deuteronomy, but the whole Old Testament, and you will see the error quickly.  And use this little tip whenever you study—when God uses the same word again and again, you might just be looking at a theme you need to pay attention to.  It might be something you have missed for years.
 
And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,  (Deut 10:12).
 
Dene Ward
 

We didn't have much money when I was growing up.  It helped that my Daddy could and would tinker with anything in order to fix it.  Toasters, lawn mowers, electric frying pans, anything that had stopped working he would take apart and play with until he figured it out and got it going again.
            We once had a television set he had to tinker with.  In those days you had to get up and turn the knob yourself if you wanted to change the channel (there were only 3) or the volume.  Another knob took care of the horizontal hold, and I imagine most of you are saying, "The what?"  Finally, the horizontal hold just quit holding, but he figured out that if you whacked the top of the set firmly, it would hold again.  We usually whacked it at least once for every show we watched, but that always fixed the problem.
            As for that channel knob, something had slipped in the cogs and it would no longer settle directly on the correct inner slot so you could get that channel.  (Don't ask me to explain any of this, just trust me.)  The knob was round with two flat places that stood out from the round part, directly opposite each other.  That's how you turned it—by putting your thumb under one of those flat spots and the rest of your fingers over the other, pushing clockwise.
            Daddy whittled a wooden stick just long enough to wedge between one of those flat spots and the lip of the television cabinet over the channel changing knob.  First you put the knob in roughly the right place, then you wedged in the stick and pushed until you got the picture to come in.  Then you carefully let go, trying not to breathe too hard that close to the stick, backed away and sat down.  Then, and only then, could you get that channel.
            Yes, it was a lot of trouble to get the thing to work.  It was so much trouble that we were burglarized once and the thieves left that TV.  The little stick was sitting on top of it, so we know they tried it and just couldn't figure it out.  What thief would want a "high maintenance" TV when the next house probably had one that worked easily?
             So why not just buy a new TV?  Did I mention the money problem?  As long as something worked, we could not afford to replace it.  Only when something broke beyond repair, and something that we really needed, did we scrape together the money to replace it, and a television was not a "necessity."
            I think we've had a high maintenance lawn mower in our married life, one that had to be started just so, or stopped just so and had to be held just so or it would quit altogether.  Many people would have just gone out and bought another, but did I mention the money problem?  We had it, too.
            I have known some women who bragged about being "high maintenance women."  For the life of me I cannot understand why that is something to brag about.  You would think they would be afraid their husbands might just go out and get a new one.  Unless maybe there are money problems.
            And then there are the high maintenance Christians, something else I would never brag about.  You know who they are.  They want attention about anything and everything in their lives, even if others have similar or worse problems.  Everyone is supposed to visit when they are sick or even "just because."  If they don't get the attention they think they deserve, they will simply stop attending the worship services and it's all our fault for not taking care of them.  They take offense easily and the preacher has to kowtow to their whims to get them back.  The elders are supposed to listen to them more than anyone else, and if they don't, they "just might leave."  When they do finally do something, they expect lavish praise from the pulpit, the bulletin, and the grapevine or the whole church is labeled "ungrateful hypocrites."  If they need a rebuke, everyone walks on eggshells around them trying to figure out a way that won't upset them.
            Seems to me that God doesn't have the money problems we have always had.  And it isn't about replacement either.  God does not need any of us. He bestows His blessings, including salvation, out of love and grace, not because we deserve it.  Instead of self-absorption, God wants self-denial and self-control.  If we know what's good for us we will be someone who is much easier to get along with and who will work well for Him without needing any of the tinkering nonsense we always had to do with our television. I would think we would all be so grateful to Him and so afraid of hell that none of us would even court the idea of being a "high maintenance" Christian.
            Or maybe that high maintenance Christian just needs God to give him a good whack once in a while.
 
Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, you shall never stumble: for thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  (2Pet 1:10-11).
 
Dene Ward

We planted the main garden the second week of March.  It looks great this year, and I have already put up what we need and more, and shared with people who probably wish I wouldn’t any more.
            When the cantaloupe row came up, which is Keith’s baby, he was happy to see it full with no bare spots.  I heard about it the day he saw the first bloom.  Then a couple of weeks later he came in with a funny look on his face. 
            “Let me show you something,” he said, and I followed him out the door straight to that row of cantaloupes.  “Look at those baby cantaloupes.”  So I bent over, lifted the leaves and looked, only to discover baby cucumbers instead.  He had gone out to plant without his glasses and used up the remains of what he thought was a packet of cantaloupe seeds on the first two hills.  Turns out that packet, which did not have a picture let me hasten to add, must have said, “Cucumber.”  So the first two hills in the cantaloupe row are cucumbers.
            Is that bad?  Well, yes and no.  I already had plenty of cucumber hills planted, and these two extra hills are some of the most prolific bearers I have ever seen.  I have made my pickles and still my refrigerator is overflowing. 
            And it turns out these two hills are the best tasting of the bunch.  But since he tossed that empty packet of “cantaloupe” seeds, we have no idea what kind they were.  I have been experimenting with new varieties the past two years and these were leftovers from the year before.
            Then there is the fact that his row is two hills short of cantaloupe, which to him is a catastrophe.  So what can we learn from all this?
            Well, I doubt he will ever forget to wear his glasses when he plants the garden again.  But what about us?
            I suppose the obvious point is this—you will reap what you sow.  Thinking it is cantaloupe won’t make cucumber seeds produce them.  That old “sowing his wild oats” adage is the stupidest thing I ever heard.  All he will get, whoever he is, is wild oats.  You don’t “get it out of your system” and think you will produce anything else.  “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
            What are you sowing in your children?  What do they hear you say?  Please do not make the mistake of thinking they do not pick up on sarcastic comments and hypercritical statements, even at a very early age.  Children tend to think that everything that goes wrong is their fault, usually because they have to deal with the foul tempers of parents who take it out on them.
            What about their entertainment?  What words are being sown in their active little minds?  What ideas?  What priorities?  What character traits?  Do you even know what they are watching? 
            What about their friends?  I have had children in my home whose parents never once called or even darkened my door.  One time I had a young man for the whole weekend.  He came home with my sons on the bus on Friday and we put him back on the bus Monday morning!  We didn’t mind a bit, but where was his mama?  I still haven't met her.
            What about yourself?  What are you sowing?  What is your entertainment?  What is your reading material?  Where do you go and with whom?  If you find yourself saying things you never said before, maybe it’s time to change friends.  They are sowing more in you than you are in them.
            Check the seed packet this morning before you go out.  Check it again when you come in.  Make sure you are sowing the seed of the Word of God, not only in your friends, but in your children, and in yourself.  And put on your glasses when you do.
 
For they sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind…Sow to yourself in righteousness, reap according to kindness…Hos 8:7; 10:12.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Warren Berkley.

Revenge is never sweet. It is an inherently unhealthy habit forbidden by God in 1 Thess. 5:15 and other passages. We all know that. But let’s elaborate on the history of revenge.

Revenge has never:
…produced authentic justice
…healed anyone
…promoted righteousness
…converted a sinner
…glorified God
…built a church
…made a marriage better
…raised a child
…earned an honest living
…or sent anyone to heaven

Ralph Waldo Emerson was right: “For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
 
Warren Berkley
Berksblog.net

We’ve all seen those definitions of pessimism and optimism, the classic being the half-empty or half-full glass.  As a gardener, I’ve come up with my own.  When you look out over your herb garden, do you see beautiful brightly colored butterflies flitting around, or does your mind’s eye conjure up green caterpillars on naked parsley stems, their leaves stripped away practically overnight?  I have a friend who is overjoyed at the sight of a butterfly.  I often have a difficult time sharing her joy.

But I recognize the problem.  Pessimism can easily turn to cynicism.  We want to rationalize that by calling it “being realistic.”  But here’s the difference: 
Realism understands that you won’t save everyone (Matt 7:13,14).  Cynicism doesn’t even try. 

Realism knows that you are unlikely to change the mind of that misled young man in the white shirt and tie who knocked on your door with Bible in hand, but it greets him with kindness and respect.  Cynicism views him not as a lost soul, but as an adversary and approaches him with sarcasm and downright hatefulness.

Realism knows that perhaps even a majority of those who ask for help at the meetinghouse door are making prey of good-hearted brethren, but it takes the time to politely ask a few questions and determine an appropriate action just in case.  Cynicism immediately tars them all with the same brush and sends them on empty-handed, both physically and spiritually.

Realism is compassion tempered with wisdom.  “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”  Cynicism is malice fueled by pessimism.  It looks for the worst, it expects the worst, and ultimately it rejoices in finding it.  That is about as un-Christlike as it comes.

So watch the butterflies today and enjoy them.  You can always check for caterpillars in the parsley later, and then rejoice when you only find a few.
 
[Love} does not rejoice at unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  1Cor 13:6-7.
 
Dene Ward

We noticed it on Friday night.  The fridge temperature was up to 43 from the usual 38 we aim at.  We always keep a thermometer in it just so we can monitor these things, but we had been in and out of it all day, gradually adding several pounds of produce from the garden, most of it still warm from a Florida sun even after a good rinse in cool tap water.  We decided that must be the problem.

The next morning, after a good 12 hours without opening the door, the fridge temperature was up to 48.  Well, that's not good, we thought, and called our friendly appliance repairman who also happens to be a brother.  We told him it was not an emergency, so don't come out on a weekend, but was there something we could check and maybe fix ourselves?  Not really, as it turns out, so we loaded it with ice blocks in an effort to use it as one big cooler until we could have it seen to. 

On Sunday morning, the temperature was up to 56.  Since, during the lockdown, we are having our own church services with one of our other members, we did so as usual, and then called the repairman again.  He was perfectly happy to come check things out, and even brought his family so we could chat while he and Keith worked on the fridge.  By the time he arrived, after we had both had our "in-home family services," the temperature was up to 68 inside the refrigerator.  Considering the huge blocks of ice we had placed in it to obviously no avail, we expected this to be a really huge, and expensive, problem. Maybe even a total replacement problem.

It only took about five minutes to discover what was wrong.  He looked at Keith and said, "Your thermometer says it's 68 in here.  Mine, even with me standing here with the door wide open, says it's 42."  The refrigerator wasn't broken; the thermometer was.  Whew!  Cheap fix, even if a little embarrassing.

It's easy to look good when you measure yourself against the world.  The more I read about the ancient Romans, the more frightened I become for our country's sake.  Sometimes you can't tell which country is being described—them or us.  Considering what God did to them, I worry what might happen here.

You can look pretty good when you measure yourself against your neighbors, too.  Many are decent people, but the majority would not have any qualms about a little cheating on their taxes, or telling "little white lies," or using the common expletives we hear all around us.  You, I hope, would know better and do better.

And if you are really careful about whom you choose, you can even look good compared to some of your brethren.  We are all fighting battles, but some fight a lot harder than others who have just decided "that's how I am," and let it go.  Yes, when you measure yourself against someone with that attitude, you will probably come out on top.

But God expects us to use His standard.  We are called to follow a much worthier calling and a much higher example than the people around us.  For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. (1Pet 2:21-23).

God will judge you fairly too, based on His standard, not the one you might be using now.  You might wind up thinking you are just fine, when the reality is far different.
 
Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.  (2Cor 10:12)
 
Dene Ward