The torn plastic label from a 2-liter bottle, several scraps of both black and white plastic trash bags, the label from a jug of pesticide, the plastic top to a convenience store 44-oz cup, the corner of a corrugated cardboard box, a cracked, black plastic nursery pot, a Wal-Mart bag, a ramen noodle wrapper, a Hershey bar wrapper, a Tootsie Roll wrapper, a Starburst wrapper, a Rice Krispies cereal bar wrapper, a sunflower seed wrapper, six hunks of white batting from some sort of cushion, a Fritos bag, a Subway sandwich bag, a paper Wendy’s hamburger wrap, a Krispy Kreme carton, three Little Debbie oatmeal pie wrappers, an empty gallon bleach jug, a used napkin, the Styrofoam from a raw meat package, and a piece of a used disposable diaper.

            All that is what I picked up on the west side of our property one morning last week, blown over the fence from the neighbors’ since my last pick-up two weeks before.  You would think their place would look a little better after losing all that, but it didn’t even make a dent.  I have mentioned them before.  These folks must believe that life comes with a built-in maid service.  If it does, theirs needs to be fired.  Whatever it is they believe, they don’t believe they have the responsibility to clean up their own messes.

            As much as we like to think we are so much better than that, we often are not.  We may not litter the landscape with fast food wrappers and everyday rubbish, but we often leave spiritual and emotional messes in our wake.  Broken trust, tattered relationships, bitter disappointments and battered feelings can mark our paths when sin affects our lives.  A few unguarded words can hurt instead of heal.   A self-centered attitude can trample a heavy heart.  Self-righteousness, because of its exaggerated sense of absolutes and conviction in its own virtue, can mercilessly beat a weak soul into giving up the fight.

            My neighbors never seem to notice the mess they leave, the cumulative effect of dropping whatever is in hand simply because that is the convenient way to take care of it.  I am even worse when, in my headlong rush to please myself or pass judgment, I fail to take the time to stop and look behind.  The pieces of souls marking my path should wake me up.  They are far more damning than a whole dumpster full of Twinkie wrappers.

 What unto me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Jehovah: I have had enough of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Wash yourself, make yourself clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil;  learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow… Turn to your God: keep kindness and justice, and wait for your God continually... If you had known what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. Isa 1:11,12,16,17; Hos 12:6; Matt 12:7.

 

Dene Ward

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            We are a self-centered and selfish culture.  If you think that has not found its way into the church, you are wrong.  If you think it hasn’t found its way into your own heart, you are probably wrong again.  Have these words ever left your mouth?  “No one came to see me when I was sick/injured/in the hospital?”  There is your evidence right there.

            God meant for us to minister to others every day and in every circumstance of life.  Too often, if we see our lives as a ministry at all, we see it as periods of service broken up by periods when we cannot serve—for example, when we are ill.  In other words, when things don’t come easily, when things are not perfect, we are “on break” or “out to lunch.” 

            If anyone had an excuse for taking a break, it was Paul while he was in prison.  Yet he tells the Philippians that he was fulfilling his mission to preach the gospel, “this grace,” even while imprisoned, Phil 1:5-7.  God recently taught us this lesson of perpetual ministry in a way we will not soon forget.

            Keith had major surgery in May that kept him in the hospital five days.  In fact, it kept me in with him since I can more easily communicate with this deaf spouse of 40 years than anyone else can, and I took care of many basic nursing chores too.  

            We have always made it a point to treat service people as people, not personal slaves or furniture.  Many waitresses have told us they remember us from earlier visits precisely because of that.  We tried to do the same with the hospital medical staff.  We didn’t complain; we didn’t make demands; we took care of our own needs as often as possible, and said please and thank you when we had to ask for something.  We never really thought about that—it’s just something we do because the Lord would have us treat everyone kindly and with respect.

            One night one of the nurses took me aside and asked about our “religion.”  “There’s something different about you,” she said, and gave me an opening to talk with her about the Lord and our church family. 

            Another night one of the nurses stayed in our room talking to us far longer than she needed in order to accomplish her task.  Finally she said with a sigh, “I need to go check on the others, but I’ll be back to talk more when I can.”

            Yet another day, one of the nurses who had been with us for three days was leaving for four days off, and knew that she wouldn’t see us again.  She made a point to come say good-bye. 

            While we were there we handed out tracts and blog cards.  We wrote down church addresses and website addresses.  We gave out email addresses.  Although we had taken those things with us “just in case,” I was shocked at how many we were able to give out, at how many people wanted to talk.  We thought we needed their care, but God showed us how to give it right back.

            What is happening in your life right now?  Don’t assume that you cannot serve when you are physically indisposed.  Don’t hang an “out to lunch” sign on your life because you have too much going on right now to pay attention to anyone else.  What did Jesus do while he was hanging on the cross?  How many did he minister to?  His mother, a thief, the very men who drove the nails, and all of us as he died for our sins.

            Jesus expects us to live as he did, thinking of others’ needs first.  If you have done it long enough, it comes without thought, even in turbulent times, painful times, sorrowful times.  The trick is to do it while things are good.  Do it in the grocery store.  Do it on the freeway.  Do it at school and work and when you speak to your neighbor.  It must become natural in order to come automatically in trying circumstances.  Any difficulty you have, especially when things are easy, is a telling factor—it shows how little you have been working on it.

            Service, first, last, always--and regardless of circumstances—that is the motto of a true disciple of Christ.

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ, Philippians 1:12-13.

To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak, Ephesians 6:18-20.

Dene Ward

In the country you deal with insects on a regular basis, especially the flying kind.  Living in the middle of cow pastures, chicken and pig farms, with road kill scattered every couple hundred feet down the rural highway, you don’t even want to think about what that fly might have last sat on as it heads straight for the cookies cooling on your countertop.

            We found a remedy for this problem many years ago when Keith preached a gospel meeting in a small Arkansas town.  It sat right in the middle of rice country where they could have sold mosquitoes by the ton if there had been a market for them.  As we ate our breakfasts in the restaurant of the motel the church had put us up in, we saw three or four small wooden ledges in various places around the room, a foot below the ceiling.  A small white box on each of them puffed every fifteen minutes.  Finally we asked one of the waitresses and she told us they were automatic insecticide sprayers, and yes, they did work.

            So when we got home we bought one.  It is rigged to spray once every thirty minutes for the twelve hours of daylight, and it works like a charm.  No more gnats hovering in clouds around the lamps or buzzing our eyes, and no more flies wandering the kitchen looking for tasty landing strips. 

            Though it is not silent, we never even hear this thing spraying any longer.  We are so used to it that it is just a part of the surroundings.  When we suddenly start seeing gnats or flies again, we know it has either run out of spray or the battery is dead.  Right now I do not remember the last time I heard it spray, but I know it must be working because I do not have any problem with bugs swarming this monitor.

            I am afraid we get the same way with God’s blessings.  Which ones do you notice?  Just the big ones, the ones that you especially prayed about yesterday or last week?  Does that mean you have not received any today at all?  Of course not; it just means that you are so used to all the daily blessings you receive that you no longer even recognize them. 

            When someone tells me to quit complaining and count my blessings, it usually makes me angry.  Maybe that is because I must shamefully admit that I have reached the point of the Pharisees, who seemed to think that they earned their blessings.  If anything bad happens, God has let me down.  I have been so good and faithful, why did this problem happen to me?  When the truth of the matter is, I have sinned too, so why not me?  In fact, why do I receive any blessings at all because I don’t deserve a single one?  I have forgotten just how bad sin is, and so I minimize it and maximize my goodness, which Isaiah tells me is no more than “filthy rags,” when compared to the holiness of God (64:6).

            Because it is so plentiful and so “automatic,” I never even notice the good that God sends my way on a daily basis, and gripe and complain because He does not send more or does not send the specific good I want the most as quickly as I want it.  If someone looked at a gift I gave him and complained because it was not the brand he wanted or he didn’t like the color, I would probably never give him anything else ever again.  Think about that for a moment.

            It may be trite, but make a list today of all the blessings you take for granted.  God sprays them around profligately and we never even notice. 

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,  And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly, Job 1:20-22.

 

Dene Ward

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You know that fellow who pulled out in front of you yesterday like he didn’t see you?  Maybe he didn’t.  In Florida it is legal to drive if one eye can be corrected to 20/40 and the other 20/200, or both at 20/70.  There came a point before my last surgery when I quit driving for awhile, not because I was no longer legal, but because I no longer felt safe.  It’s one thing to value your independence enough to risk your own life; it’s another to risk someone else’s.

            There are times in my life as a Christian that I must make a similar choice.  The world may have a list of things they think a Christian should or shouldn’t do which are not actually spelled out in the scriptures.  I may have brothers and sisters in the Lord with the same mistaken ideas.  In an ideal world, we are all packaged in bubble wrap—nothing anyone else does effects us.  Unfortunately, since Adam and Eve were banned from Eden, the world is no longer ideal.

            The Lord never meant for the weak to rule the church, which is what happens when we allow every little “that offends me” to determine the actions of the church.  For some reason those people only read half of Romans 14:3:  “Let not he who eats [meats sacrificed to idols] set at nought him who does not,” while ignoring, “and let not he who does not, judge him who does, for God has received him.”  “Offend” in the older versions means “sin.”  Anyone who uses “I’m offended” to get his way must, by definition of the word agree that first, he is sinning, and second, he is a weaker brother according to that passage,   Maybe I am being cynical, but it seems to me a lot of people would complain a whole lot less if someone pointed that out to them.

            If we all simply refrained from taking part in things we are not comfortable with instead of raising a ruckus every time, the church would, in fact, come much closer to the ideal community Christ gave his life for.  Don’t you think that Simon the Zealot and Matthew the publican, two ideologically polar opposites, still had some fundamental differences even after three years of serving the Lord?  Yet they put them aside to try and save the world.  The problem is that we think our likes and dislikes are more important than the Divine mission we were given by God.

            Like those two martyred apostles, I must occasionally make the decision to give up my rights for the sake of someone’s soul.  No, I cannot worry about the busybodies who observe my life through a telescope just looking to find a flaw.  No matter how hard I try, they will eventually succeed in their task.  And no, we must not allow the mission of the church to be set aside for the stubborn few.  But the question is, what about the good and honest hearts that I personally may affect for the worst?  Driving down my chosen course may be lawful, but is it safe to those around me?  A good question to consider as we go through the day.

And when they came to Capernaum, those who received the half-shekel came to Peter and said, Doesn’t your teacher pay the half-shekel?  He said, Yes.  And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke first to him saying, What do you think, Simon?  The kings of the earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute, from their sons or from strangers?  And when he said, From strangers, Jesus said to him, Therefore the sons are free.  But lest we cause them to stumble, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first comes up; and when you open his mouth you shall find a shekel.  Take that and give unto them for me and you, Luke 17:24-27.

 

Dene Ward

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Have you noticed this about the internet?  Everyone is in a hurry to spread bad news, almost as if a prize were given to the one who knows it first and has the most lurid detail.  Why is that, especially among Christians?  Shouldn’t a group created by Good News be far more likely to share that?  Yet the many who are quick to excuse their inability to talk to their neighbors about their salvation, have no such qualms about telling even their enemies about a tragedy.

            Psalm 22 should give us pause.  We tend to think of it as “the crucifixion psalm” and relegate it to Messianic prophecy alone.  However, most scholars believe that these psalms had an application in the day in which they were written also.  Therefore, Psalm 22, which is clearly Messianic in many ways, also applied to some time in David’s life. 

            It must be obvious that we do not know every detail of his life.  John said about the life of Jesus, Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. John 21:25.  Surely the same could be said for David, who lived far longer than the Lord on this earth.  He could easily have had a serious illness we are not told about, or a life-threatening injury.  As many enemies as this man of war had, this psalm could refer to some of them.  Whatever it was, this psalm tells us some dire straits David found himself in. 

            Note the structure of the psalm.  If you have a modern version, you will see the sections separated clearly.  The “I/me” sections, those about David and his lament, are alternated with the “thou/you” sections, those addressed to God.  The “I/me” sections gradually increase in length, first two verses, then three, then seven.  The “thou” sections gradually increase their urgency until the final one when David seems to scream, “Save me from the mouth of the lion!”

            The danger pictured in the psalm gradually increases.  “Many bulls encompass me.” “They open wide their mouths.” “Dogs encompass me…they pierced my hands and feet.” “Come quickly.  Save me from the mouth of the lion and the horns of the wild oxen.”  By this point, David feels the end is near one way or the other.

            Suddenly, in verse 22, the mood changes.  The poet uses less figurative language and calmer speech.  “Praise” becomes the repetitive word instead of “Deliver me, save me, rescue me.”  David begins to recount this desperate time only so he can tell others the good news—God delivered him.  “Praise him, glorify him, stand in awe of him,” he tells the assembled congregation, probably those whom he had invited to his thank offering feast.  The Law of Moses made provision for a man to offer a sacrifice when something wonderful had happened to him.  He was to invite his friends and neighbors and share not only the feast, but the good news of the blessings God had given him.  (Lev 7:15; Deut 12:15-18; Psa 40:9,10)  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have such a tradition today?  Especially in a day where all we want to share with others are the disasters, the complaints, and the bad news, to actually share good news and praise God for His blessings would be a welcome change.

            What are you sharing with your facebook friends today?  With your family and neighbors, your classmates, fellow workers, and even the cashiers and waitresses you see during the day?  Is bad news the only thing that exhilarates you, or do you excitedly tell others the good news—that a Savior loves them just as he loves you and has done so many wonderful things for you. 

            God had a people once who only reveled in the bad news, including ten men who came back from seeing a glorious Promised Land and with their evil report (bad news) “made the people complain” Num 14:36.  It did not take long for God to give them up to a wilderness in which they learned what bad news really was. 

            Think today, not only before you speak, but before you share. Let’s start a new tradition.  Let’s make a thank offering feast for our friends instead of a gripe-fest.  Share the good things in your life, so that someday you can more easily share the most important thing—your Lord.

The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news refreshes the bones…Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country, Prov 15:30; 25:25.

Dene Ward

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            A few weeks ago I got out a pretty dress, put on my heels, found a pretty pair of sparkly, dangling earrings, and dabbed on some lipstick.  Keith and I went out to celebrate our anniversary.  He trimmed his beard, wore a coat and tie, and polished up his dress shoes.  Do you think either one of us for a moment thought that because we chose to dress up for each other on that evening that we didn’t love each other the other 364 days of the year?  If we had, we would not have been celebrating number 40.

            Our assemblies have gotten more casual in dress as the years have gone by.  I understand that dress has nothing to do with the heart.  Sometimes people clean up the outside when it’s the inside that matters.  I would never judge a person as being less than devoted to the Lord because he wore jeans to the assembly, or because he waited on the Lord’s table without a tie on.  I think most of us have gotten past such superficiality. 

            Recently, though, someone said in my hearing that we needed to realize that we serve God all the time, not just on Sundays and that dressing up on Sundays was a sign of being a “Sunday morning Christian.”  I certainly agree with the first part of that statement, but I think the second half goes too far.

            I still wear a dress to our Sunday morning assemblies because that is what I have done all my life.  I see nothing wrong with dressing up—it’s one of the few chances I get.  It does not mean I don’t love the Lord the rest of the week, any more than dressing up for an anniversary dinner means I don’t love my husband the rest of the year.

            Why is it wrong to judge a person who does not dress up, but perfectly fine to judge a person who does? 

            That is just a small example of a big problem we all have—one way or the other we often do exactly the same things we criticize others for doing.  We may be just as judgmental, just as tactless, just as inconsiderate as others.  We have just wrapped ourselves in such an aura of self-righteousness that we cannot see it in ourselves.  Our vision has been clouded by what we want to see, not what is really there.

            I have developed another eye problem—a growth that is fogging up the vision I still have, and which will gradually worsen unless it is removed.  Unfortunately, because of all the other conditions, the surgery to remove the growth is as dangerous to my vision as allowing the growth to continue on. 

            But there is no argument here: it is far more dangerous to our souls to allow that spiritual haze to grow unabated than to remove it.  Self-righteousness breeds true, and becomes more and more difficult to see in ourselves as the years go on. 

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye, Matt 7:1-5.

Dene Ward

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I was reading the Q and A column in a cooking magazine based in Boston.  “You’re kidding,” I spoke aloud when a reader asked how to dispose of bacon grease without clogging her sink.  Dispose of bacon grease?  Keith was equally appalled, but on a whim he asked a friend, who is originally from New England, what he did with his bacon grease.

            “Why?’ he asked with a suspicious look on his face.  “What’s it good for?”

            What’s it good for?  I guess this is one of those cultural things.  Bacon grease to a Northerner must mean “garbage.”  Bacon grease to a Southerner means “gold.”

            My mother kept a coffee can of it in her refrigerator.  I do the same.  My grandmothers both kept a tin of it on their stoves.  They used it every day, just as their mothers had.  In the South bacon grease is the fat of choice.  In the old days only better-off farmers had cows and butter.  The poorer families had a pig, and they used every square inch of that animal.  Even the bones were put into a pot of beans and many times the few flecks of meat that fell off of them into the pot were all the meat they had for a week.  In a time when people needed fat in their diets (imagine that!), the lard was used as shortening in everything from biscuits to pie crust.  And the grease?  A big spoonful for seasoning every pot of peas, beans, and greens, more to fry okra, potatoes, and squash in, a few spoonfuls stirred into a pan of cornbread batter, and sometimes it was spread on bread in place of butter.

            I use it to shorten cornbread, flavor vegetables, and even to pop popcorn.  Forget that microwave stuff.  If you have never popped real popcorn in bacon grease, you haven’t lived.  I am more health-conscious than my predecessors—in fact, we don’t even eat that much bacon any more.  But when we do, I save the drippings, scraping every drop from the pan, and while most of the time I use a mere teaspoon of olive oil to sauté my squash from the summer garden, once a year we get it with dollop of bacon grease.  Any artery can stand once a year, right?

            As I said, it’s a cultural thing.  Things that are precious to Southerners may not be so to Northerners, and vice versa.  Don’t you think the same should be true with Christians?  What’s garbage to the world should be gold to Christians.

            One thing that comes to mind is the Word of God.  In a day when it is labeled a book of myths, when it is belittled and its integrity challenged, that Word should be precious to God’s people.  David wrote a psalm in which at least seven times he speaks of loving God’s word, Psalm 119.

            We often speak of “loving God” or “loving Jesus,” but you cannot do either without a love of the Word, a love shown in obedience.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the words that you hear are not mine, but the Father’s who sent me, John 14:24.  Jesus even defined family, the people you love more than anyone or anything else, as “those who hear my word and do it,” Luke 8:21.  Surely the ultimate love was shown by the martyrs depicted in Rev 6:9 who were slain “for the Word of God.”

            Do we love God’s Word that much?  Then why isn’t it in our hands several times a day?  Why aren’t we reading more than a quota chapter a day?  Why can’t we cite more than one or two proof-texts, memorized only to show our neighbors they are wrong? 

            Bacon grease may be gold to a Southern cook, but it is hardly in the same category.  Yet I think I may have heard Christians arguing more about when to use bacon grease than when to read the Bible.  Maybe we are showing the effects of a culture other than a Christian’s.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." John 14:21

Dene Ward

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We had another hawk nest this past spring, this one in the forty foot tall pine tree on the northeast corner.  We nearly missed it since we seldom go to that side of the property, but suddenly one day, we saw activity in a big ball of leaves, twigs, and moss, and, picking up the binoculars, realized that two baby hawks sat in the nest with wide open mouths, waiting for Mama and Daddy to bring dinner.

            We watched them awhile every day, and I spoke to them often enough that they began to recognize my voice and cried when I left.  Within a few weeks their white down was gone and they were almost, but not quite ready to fly.

            One afternoon I was sitting by the window when lightning struck so close I nearly came up out of the chair.  A storm soon followed, and I weathered it with a crossword puzzle and a magnifying glass. 

            After supper Keith and I went on our regular evening stroll around the place, stopping first by the pine to check on the babies, more like teenagers by then.  “Oh no,” he said, and after a few more steps I saw it too—a streak of white all the way down the pine.  It was the nest tree that had been struck.  He put the binoculars to his eyes and said he saw no movement in the nest at all.  Then, as he was making his way around the tree to try to catch it from all angles, he came upon them.  Both babies had been thrown from the nest to the ground.  One was dead, a mangled, broken mass of feathers.  The smaller of the two was standing about eight feet away, soaking wet and pitiful looking.  Mama perched on a branch across the fence watching.  There was no way she could carry a baby this big in her talons back to the nest to feed and tend.

            What to do?  First, we had to get it up off the ground before Magdi and Chloe saw it.  Keith picked up the scared baby, a double handful of feathers with a head as big as my fist.  It didn’t struggle at all, shell-shocked, I suppose, so we talked to it soothingly as we carried it to the back of the truck and put him inside the camper top.  Then, after batting around a few ideas, Keith found an old milk crate, filled it with leaves and moss, and climbed the oak tree nearest the pine that had low enough branches for him to get up into after the ladder steps ran out.  He nailed it as high as he could reach.

            Meanwhile I went looking for bird food, raw meat in this case, and the only thing I had that was not frozen solid was cubed steak I had bought on sale that morning—still, it was expensive bird food.  I put it in the microwave just long enough to get the chill off, but not to cook it.  When I dropped a small chunk in the truck by the bird, all he did was look at it for a few seconds.  Then his eyes turned to me and never left me, so I kept on talking to him to try to keep him calm. 

            Keith managed to get up the ladder with him somehow, as I stood on the bottom rung to keep it steady for his one-handed grip.  He set the big baby in the box and then tried hand-feeding it.  That did it!  The hawk knew it was food after that (and nearly had human finger as dessert), so we put more in the homemade nest.  We heard Mama again, as she flew back around the old pine, calling for her baby, so we left as quickly as possible.

            Now it was time to wait.  Would she find him and accept him and feed him again, or had we sealed his fate by handling him?  There was no way to know.  We had done our best to save him and the rest was up to him and his mother.

            The next morning, we stepped outside early and looked toward the tree.  Mama must have heard us, for she flew then, but we were overjoyed to see that she had flown from the make-shift nest in the oak tree where she had indeed found her baby.  Three days later he flew on his own.

            We wonder sometimes how much that bird understood what had happened to it   Why did it have to be his tree that was struck and his brother or sister who was killed?  Why did he wind up in a plastic box instead of his cozy, parent-built nest?  This is not the way it is supposed to be with hawks!

            And we wonder the same things when our life plans are suddenly altered through circumstances we had never even considered—accident, illness, career changes, death of a spouse at a young age.  This is not the way we had planned it, this is not what we had wanted for our lives. 

            I had a dear friend who lived here for several years.  This is not where she expected to be, but her husband was killed in a work-related accident, and her only child died suddenly and unexpectedly at a young age.  None of this was what she had planned, yet through it all she maintained a level of faith I have yet to reach, and an attitude I want to imitate for the rest of my life. 

            “I don’t understand why God put me here,” she once said.  

            “Charlotte,” I told her, “He put you here for me.”  I can name half a dozen others who feel the same way.  Every day, remembering her example helps me cope with the changes that have come my way in the past five years.

            Don’t ever think that because your plans went awry that you have been forsaken by God.  It could very well be that He put you where He did for a reason you may never truly understand, just like that hawk was undoubtedly mystified by what happened to him.  But you have the ability to accept your circumstances and make the most of them.  God puts you where He wants you for a reason, and giving up hope and ceasing to serve is not the solution.

            Trust God.  Keep serving your neighbors in any way you can, even if it is just to smile and set an example of endurance and peace.  Refuse to make excuses for yourself, as Satan would have you do.  So your plans were changed?  They should not have been that important to you anyway—Christians have far better plans for the future than anything anyone can think up in this life, in this place.  Believe it.

Out of my distress I called upon Jehovah: Jehovah answered me and set me in a large place.  Jehovah is on my side; I will not fear: What can man do unto me? Psalm 118:5,6.

Dene Ward

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