We were driving a hilly section of North Georgia on a winding backroad between small Southern towns, the kind with steepled churches, brick town halls on green grass-carpeted squares, and railroad tracks running right down the middle of Main Street between diagonal parking on either side of the road.  Away from the towns farmland tufted with white cotton bolls, metals barns housing lumberyards, and firewood stands with cords stacked for sale were nestled among single wide and double wide trailers, old frame farmhouses and the occasional red brick ranch style home of the younger generation.
            Then we passed a deserted house.  You can always tell.  The paint is peeling, the gutters are full of leaves, and the naked windows stare out at you, no light of life within them.  A house left to itself always deteriorates far more quickly than one that is lived in.
            And the yard?  Weedy, strewn with wind-blown trash, gardens filled with dried up flower heads or bolted vegetables, everything withered from lack of care.  A garden left to itself always goes to seed.
            So how did some primordial soup produce even one cell of life where there was none before, and how did that cell evolve into something more and more complex, and finally become an intelligent creature conscious of its own existence and that of others outside itself, able to reason, to create, and to appreciate art of all kinds, and strategize plots of great complexity? 
            Until someone can show me a vacant house that keeps itself clean and void of rot, and a garden that never needs weeding or watering, I just won’t believe it.  I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but God made me smart enough to see through that one.
 
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, Rom 1:18-22.
 
Dene Ward

On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie, AKA Mickey Mouse, made his film debut in the animated short called by that name.  Although he had appeared in two other cartoons before that, Walt Disney considered this one his "birthday" possibly because it was the first to use synchronized sound.  The "sound" was actually Walt Disney himself making an assortment of grunts, whistles, and laughs—there was actually no dialogue at all.  Steamboat Willie was a smash, and Walt Disney began a career that led to at least 142 films earning Walt Disney himself 26 Oscars, and eventually to Disneyland and Disneyworld.
            Those two amusement parks earn their big, big dollars with the concept of making dreams come true.  Where else would you find the castle that inhabits every little girl's dreams and the spaceships that fly little boys into space?  Where else can you see ghosts and not be harmed, fly in a magic car, and wander around a treehouse for castaways that has all the comforts of home?  "If you can dream it," Walt Disney famously said, "you can do it."  And everyone has heard Jiminy Cricket advise us that "If you keep on believing, the dream that you wish can come true."  Maybe it depends upon what you are dreaming about.
             We have done a lot of babysitting for the grandchildren over the years.  The spring Judah was twenty months old, we kept them for a week.  Every evening he climbed into my lap as I drank my last cup of coffee.  It took me a minute to figure it out the first time his little hand reached out into the air.  Finally I realized he was trying to catch the steam wafting over my mug, and was completely mystified when it disappeared between his little fingers.
            A lot of people spend their lives trying to catch the steam, vapors that seem solid but disintegrate in their grasping hands.  They do it in all sorts of ways, and all of them are useless. 
            Do they really think they can stop time?  Over 11,000,000 surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures were performed in this country in 2013, and we aren’t talking medically necessary procedures.  The top five were liposuctions, breast augmentations, eyelid surgeries, tummy tucks, and nose surgeries.*  I doubt the number has decreased any.
            Then there are the folks chasing wealth and security.  Didn’t the recent Great Recession, as it is now called, and the economic problems of 2020 teach them anything? 
            Others are striving to make a name for themselves.  These are usually the same folks who tell Christians how pathetic we are to believe that some Higher Power would ever notice we even exist on this puny blue dot in the universe.  Yet there they all go, looking for fame, fortune, notoriety, beauty, or even their version of eternal life.  All of it is nothing more than a dream.  It will disappear, if not in a natural disaster or an economic meltdown, then the day they die—and they will die no matter how hard they try not to.  They are the ones grasping at dreams which are only a vapor that disappears in a flash.
            Our dream isn’t a dream at all.  It is a hope, which in the Biblical sense means it is all but realized.  Sin and death have been conquered by a force we can only try to comprehend, by a love we can never repay, and by a will we can but do our best to imitate.  Yet there it is, not a wisp of white floating over a warm porcelain mug, but a solid foundation upon which we base our faith.  Heb 6:19 calls it “an anchor.”  Have you ever seen a real anchor?  If there is anything the opposite of a wisp of steam, that’s it—solid and strong, able to hold us steady in the worst winds of life.  Tell me how a pert nose and a full bank account can do that!
            It's time to leave the amusement parks and the words of cartoon characters.  The world thinks it knows what is real while we sit like a toddler grasping at steam.  When eternity comes, they will finally see that they are wrong.  Spiritual things are the only things that last, the only real things at all.
 
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal, 2 Cor 4:6-8.
 
*Information from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
 
Dene Ward

I wish I had a dollar for every hour I have sat in waiting rooms in the past five years, especially at the eye clinic.  I had a 3:30 appointment once, and finally saw the doctor at 7 pm.  Then there was the time we discovered that I needed an emergency procedure.  My appointment had been at 11:00.  I was finally pronounced fit to leave at 5:30. 
            The shortest amount of time I have ever spent at the clinic is two hours.  Sometimes the doctor is overbooked because he has critical patients who simply must be seen that day; I have been one of those patients.  Sometimes he runs late because an emergency arrives that must be worked in; I have been one of those emergencies.  I can hardly complain when someone does it to me.
            Yet, even the night I had to wait until 7:00, I never doubted that I would be seen.  I have never worried that someone would forget I was there and the doctor would leave.
            It makes no sense to doubt God either.  Sometimes we must wait a long time for the answer to a prayer, but it will come.  Sometimes we must endure a trial far longer than we ever expected, but He has not forsaken us.  How long did those faithful Jews wait for their Messiah?  I have never waited that long for God, have you?
            The world thinks that because the promised second coming has not happened in 2000 years it won’t happen at all.  They think that proves God doesn’t even exist, completely ignoring the evidence of His existence all around them.  That makes about as much sense as me deciding my doctor doesn’t exist because I have been sitting here waiting for three hours now, and my fellow patient in the next seat has waited four.
            My doctor is worth the wait.
            If ever anyone was worth a longer wait, it’s God.
 
Knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God; by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, 2 Pet 3:3-9.
 
Dene Ward

A couple of years ago, Keith received a veteran’s pass to a Tampa Bay Rays game in St Petersburg.  (By the way, there may be a Green Bay, but there is no such town as Tampa Bay.  Tampa Bay signifies an area on the central west coast of Florida, usually including Tampa, St Petersburg, Clearwater and their suburbs.) 
            But the game was at the end of the season after the Rays’ play-off hopes were gone.  At first you would think it wouldn’t be much of a game, but you would be wrong.  Young players who had been called up from farm teams for the expanded September rosters were playing for a place on the major league team next season.  Older players were playing to show their worth, either for a contract renewal or for another team to show some interest in a trade.  Established players were playing for personal records—a better ERA, consecutive years with a certain number of home runs and RBIs.  I knew it would still be a game worth watching.  No one would be “phoning it in.”
            But imagine there was nothing left to play for.  Imagine they were just playing out the season because it was a contract requirement.  How many home runs would you expect?  How many wins?  And how many fans would bother to show up at all?
            Some of us play at the game of life like that.  We look at our meager accomplishments, at the few years we have left, and decide there is nothing worth living for, nothing worth working for, nothing to look forward to but day after day of waking up to uselessness until one morning you don’t wake up at all.  And as far as heaven goes?  We seem to hope we have enough warning before death to shoot off a last prayer for forgiveness because surely that’s the only “hope” we have.
            Too many of us have bought into the world’s idea of hope—something insecure, uncertain, and probably not going to happen at all. Go out tomorrow and plant a seed.  Now read 1 Cor 9:10:  the plowman plows in hope.  What do you think is going to happen to that seed you planted?  You “hope” it will grow.  If a farmer hoped the way most of us hope, he would never plant in the first place.  “Hope” in the Bible means something is going to happen, and you are simply waiting for it, waiting like someone standing at an established bus stop at the established time, not someone who just guessed what route the bus takes and which corner it might stop at and when, and “hoping” you guessed correctly.
            By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations who builder and designer is God…these all died not having received the promises but having seen and greeted them from afar, Heb 11:8,10,13.  Could wealthy Abraham have given up a comfortable home to live in tents the last half of his life, could he have stood on that mountain ready to sacrifice his son if he had just crossed his fingers and “hoped” he had a future beyond this life?  No, he had Biblical hope.  He knew he had a reward waiting.
            And so do you—something even better than moving up from Double A, or even Triple A, to a permanent place on the roster of a major league team, and something a whole lot more certain—even if your batting average isn’t quite as high as the next guy’s, even if all they can count on you for is a sac-fly every so often instead of a grand slam.  You still have something to play for, a place “prepared from the foundation of the world,” one that will be there no matter who wins the pennant.
 
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, Heb 6:11-12.
 
Dene Ward
 

I’m seeing a lot my brothers and sisters running around beating their breasts and wailing like the Little Red Hen, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” The world is about to end, they are sure.  All is lost for the people of God.  Nonsense.
            And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here: for God did send me before you to preserve life, (Gen 45:4-5.
            Would you have thought twenty years before that statement that God was doing anything?  Here is the one He has sent to preserve the chosen people of God, the forbears of the Messiah, and he is sold as a slave and then falsely accused and thrown into prison and forgotten by the man he helped.  And now those chosen people are in danger of death from a famine.  But yes, God was accomplishing exactly what He set out to do, using the imperfect and illogical actions of men.
            Years later the people of God are under constant attack from marauding Midianites who regularly swoop in and take the produce of their farming and herding, leaving them barely able to survive and afraid to perform even menial day to day tasks.
            Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor,” Judges 6:11-12.
            O mighty man of valor?  A man so scared he is trying to thresh wheat deep in a hole?  A man whose first task he would only try in the middle of the night?  A man who needed sign after sign to reassure him?  And then he has only an army of 300 against a host of 135,000 (Judges 8:10)?  Yes, that was the man and the method God chose and that man ultimately came through, delivering the people and acting as judge for forty years after.
            They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!” For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant-- Ps 83:3-5.  Imagine how it looked to the few faithful throughout Israel’s history—the 7000 who did not bow their knee to Baal, the righteous remnant that watched as the city of God fell to invaders who performed sacrilege after sacrilege to prove that their god was more powerful than Jehovah.  And that is exactly how it looked.
            And then think of those disciples as Jesus was carried away, tortured, and killed.  Here was the Messiah, they believed, and how could this be happening?  They had placed all their hopes in him and now that hope was lost.
            But that too turned into the most unlikely victory—11 men standing on a mountain wondering how in the world they could fulfill the mission they had just been given.  Once again God managed, not to just eke out a victory, but to overwhelmingly conquer as Christianity swept the world. 
            Did they give up when persecution hit them almost immediately?  Did they give up thirty years later when Nero tried it again? Or the next time, or the next?
            Just who do we think God is?  He is not a loser.  He is in control.  His ways are not ours—surely you’ve quoted that verse yourself.  It may look like things are going south, but what has happened throughout history, over and over and over?  GOD WINS.  The victory is not always easy for His people.  Sometimes they are hurt.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes they die horrible deaths.  When you committed your life to Him, what did you think you signed up for?  Comfort and ease?  Riches and popularity? 
            Stop wailing and whining because things are bad.  The first century church came into a world every bit as bad—or worse!  It was a hard victory, but it was a victory.  Some of them celebrated it in another plane, and that may yet be our future too.  But do not ever doubt who is in control and who will win. 
 
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations…Psalm 145:13.
 
Dene Ward

Roller coasters were never my favorite ride.  I much preferred Ferris wheels.  Riding it at night was a special treat—the cool air, always nice in Florida, whipping my hair around my face, the little flip my stomach gave as we came up and over the top and down to the ground, and, if I was really lucky, being at the top while the operator stopped to empty each swinging bench while I looked over the entire fairground and even saw deep into the streetlight-brightened city around us.
            But roller coasters?  They rattled my teeth, slung my head around painfully on my neck and didn't just flip my stomach, they yanked it up nearly into my throat.  I had boys, however, and Ferris wheels were far too calm and boring for them.  So roller coaster we did, up and down and around till I just knew the flimsy little car we sat in would fly off the track at any moment.
            Roller coasters have been around a long time.  They are direct descendants of huge ice slides, sometimes as high as 70 feet, which were popular in Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Riders slid down them on sleds, crashing into a pile of sand at the bottom.  The French imported the idea, but since France was much warmer, they began using wax instead of ice.  They eventually added wheels to the sleds.  Then back in Russia, in 1817, the cars were finally attached to tracks.
            On August 16, 1896, Edwin Prescott was awarded a patent for the first Loop-de-Loop roller coaster, or as it was also called, a vertical loop.  In an attempt to improve comfort, he added rubber wheels and an elliptical shape to the loop rather than a circle.  Still, a lot of people complained.  The forces on the human body caused aches and pains that many did not care to experience.
            The same is true of living on a roller coaster in life.  While it is true that we will have our ups and downs, that peaks and valleys in life are normal, letting them have constant sway in our lives will make our faith vulnerable and the steadfastness God asks of us only an impossible dream.  Yes, we may falter once in a while.  Many passages speak of faith in flux, but as we mature in that faith, the flux should become smaller and smaller.  David speaks of the opposite of a roller coaster faith, even when he is running for his life in Psalm 57:7.  “My heart is steadfast, O God,” or, in several other versions, “My heart is fixed.”  In a time of fear when others would have wavered, David is able to keep his faith in God steady. 
            So the question is, how do we avoid the roller coasters in life?  First, let’s make it clear—you can’t avoid the park altogether.  I hear people talking about life as if it is always supposed to be fun, always easy, always good, and something is wrong when anything bad happens.  Nonsense.  We live on an earth that has been cursed because man sinned.  When God curses something, he does a bang-up job of it.  To think we would still be living in something resembling Eden is ridiculous. 
            We are all dying from the moment we are born.  Some of us just manage to hang on longer than others.  Some of us catch diseases because they are out there due to sin and Satan.  Some of us become injured.  Some of us have disabilities.  Some of us are never able to lead a normal life.  It has nothing to do with God being mean, or not loving us, or not paying attention to us one way or the other, and everything to do with being alive.  Everyone receives bad news once in a while—it isn’t out of the ordinary.  Everyone experiences moments of fear and doubt.  We all go through trials.  But just because you are in the park, doesn’t mean you have to get on the roller coaster.
            We must have a steadfast faith no matter what happens to us.  “The Lord is faithful; He will establish you…” 2 Thes 3:3.  Our hearts can be “established by grace,” Heb 13:9.  But those things are nebulous, nothing we can really lay our hands on in our daily struggles.  Am I supposed to just think real hard about God and grace and somehow get stronger?  Yes, it will help, but God knows we are tethered to this life through tangible things and He gives us plenty of that sort of help as well, help we sometimes do not want to recognize because of the responsibility it places upon us to act.  Why, if God gives us help, I no longer have an excuse for my failure, do I?
            We must be willing to be guided to that steadfastness by faithful leaders, 2 Thes 3:3-5.  We must be willing to obey God’s law, James 1:22-24, and live a life of righteousness, Psa 112:6, before steadfastness makes an appearance.  We must become a part of God’s people and associate with them as much as possible, Heb 10:19-25.  We must study the lives of those who have gone before and imitate their steadfastness, laying aside sin if we hope to endure as they did, Heb 12:1-2.  Every one of those things will keep us off the roller coaster.
            Yeah, right, the world says--to change one’s life and become part of God’s people, the church—for some reason those are the very things they will laugh to scorn.  And we fall for what they preach--a Jesus who “loves me as I am” without demanding any change, and divides His body from His being, labeling it a manmade placeholder for the true kingdom to come.  “I can have a relationship with God without having a relationship with anyone else,” we say, and promptly climb aboard the roller coaster, Satan laughing gleefully at us from the control booth.  Guess what?  That’s who we are having a relationship with.
            Get off the roller coaster now before he has you riding up and down so fast, with your head whipping back and forth at every dip and turn, that you are unable to reach the grounding your faith needs.  You may still have moments of weakness and doubt, but those things will grow less and less if you make use of the help God has given you.  You can have a steadfast faith, even if it finds you, like David, hiding in a cave from your enemies.  My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast…For your steadfast love is great to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds. Psa 57:7,10
 
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58.
 
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

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
 

You would think that after well over ten years of watching these birds outside my window that I would have seen everything, but such is not the case.  I imagine I will still be sharing experiences with you for years to come.
            Take the latest.  Besides the trough outside my window, we also have two hanging feeders out in the yard, another on the corner of the field on the other side of the house, and two suet cages hanging by the window next to the trough.  The suet blocks in those cages get the most traffic in the cooler weather.  Suddenly, not just meat eaters (bug meat, this is) but also seed eaters who need more fat in the cold are thronging the things.  Access can be a problem.  With sparrows or wrens, several can and will hang onto the cages containing the suet all at one time, happily pecking away, share and share alike.  But larger birds take up too much room for that.  With a 4 by 4 inch block of suet, an 8 inch cardinal, or a 9 inch catbird, or a 10 inch blue jay have no room to share, even if they wanted to—which most of those varieties don't.
            Then there is the swing factor.  One cage is hooked to a tiny bar by a five inch chain, similar to a charm bracelet chain.  It sways back and forth a bit when a bird lands, takes off, or simply sits on the old TV antenna next to it and pecks at it, but the arc is fairly small and the swing barely noticeable.  The other one is hooked to a higher bar by a cord a good 2 feet long.  Now this one can really get to moving, both in a back and forth arc and also in rotation.
            The catbird loves suet, but he much prefers the cage on the short chain.  Devious me, when that one runs out, I leave it empty for a while and force the birds to use the one on the longer cord.  Otherwise it would never be eaten.  The first time that catbird landed on that cage it started turning like a merry-go-round.  He moved back a forth a bit, trying to counterbalance the rotation, but the more he moved, the faster it turned.  Finally, he became so upset that he started flapping his wings while still hanging on with his feet and before long the centrifugal force had nearly flung him off.  He flew away in self-defense.  But he does love that suet, so he keeps coming back.
            Yesterday he made a breakthrough.  He has finally learned that if he lands on it and stands totally still, it will eventually slow down enough for him to be able to lean over and peck the suet with very little sway factor or rotation.  He overcame his panic and let the laws of physics and gravity slow the turn simply by being still.  Can birds learn these things?  Well, I guess he learned something because we no longer break out in fits of laughter watching him rotate like a spinning top and somehow avoid being slung off into the azaleas.
            Sometimes we get just like that catbird.  Life starts throwing us around, flinging us back and forth, trying to completely throw us away from the very thing that can stabilize us and feed our souls—God.  If we just stop flailing about, stop going in all directions, stop trying to take care of things ourselves and just let God take control, many times the situations we find ourselves in will completely disappear, and the ones that don't will suddenly become more manageable.  I  know for myself that the very things that have kept me awake all night suddenly have simple solutions the next day when I just quit trying to control everything myself and hand them over to God.
            Back in the early 1960s a musical ran in London called "Stop the World I Want to Get Off."  It follows the life of a man who, every time something happened which he didn't like, cried out that title line.  In fact, the whole show stopped and he would talk to the audience about it.  The catbird, if he could have talked, might have said the same thing, and in the beginning did "get off" the suet cage, but he knew he needed that suet so he kept coming back and learned how to deal with it. 
            We can't get off the cage—or the world.  We have to learn, just like that catbird, how to cope, and we have a Father who will help us if we will only let Him.  So be still and let Him.
 
Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! ​The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. — Selah (Pause) (Ps 46:10-11)
 
Dene Ward

You might recognize the slogan above, at least the first part of it, from the masthead of the New York Times.  It was created by then-owner Adolph Ochs in 1896, as a way of distinguishing that paper from the tabloids.  The Times was trying to reach the cultured, intellectual class as opposed to the uneducated masses (shades of John 7:49), so they attempted to set a high moral tone with this slogan.  It got them into trouble a time or two, enough that they actually ran a contest to find a better slogan, but none of the ones submitted made the cut, so there it sits, right at the top of the paper, as it has for over a century.
            Keith and I have not had the best relationship with journalists.  After an event he was involved in that made the news and rocked our lives, four local papers covered it, and none of them got it correct.  In one it was made to sound like something out of a crime drama, and in the best of them, they couldn't even get his age right—and that is a matter of public record.  Then I had a reporter call me while Keith was still incapacitated.  Naïve and trusting as I am, it took a few minutes for me to realize that his questions were designed to elicit a comment from me that would give him a scoop and make his story more sensational.  As it happens, the powers that be got hold of him and squelched the story, while I learned the value of that two word phrase, "No comment."
            So pardon me if I don't believe much that I read on the internet, or in the papers, or on the television news, during this virus outbreak and do not get as alarmed as people think I should.  I am a skeptic, and it's the media's own fault.  For example, I am not stupid so I had been following the directions that a real, certified doctor put out about how to clean the produce from the stores, only to have another story come out a few weeks later telling me that was the worst thing I could do.  That second story even had the first doctor backtracking as fast as possible in his advice.  At least the garden is coming in now, and we know not only where it comes from but who has handled it. 
            My advice to you is, don't believe everything you read.  Except for one thing:  the Word of God.  People have tried their best to discredit it, but the facts keep getting in the way.  "All we have are copies," they say, completely ignoring the fact that is all we have of many ancient writings.  Then come the numbers.  While they have changed significantly since the first apologetics scholars counted, the Bible still wins by a huge margin.  According to Dr. Josh McDowell and Dr. Clay Jones in "The Bibliographical Test—Update 8-13-2014" we have 96 copies of Thucydides' History, 109 copies of Herodotus' History, 193 copies of Sophocles' Plays, 210 copies of Plato's Tetralogies, and a bit over 1800 copies of Homer's Iliad.  Sound impressive?  Well, we have 66,362 copies of Bible manuscripts!  No one ever questions the accuracy of those secular manuscripts, so how in the world can they question the accuracy of the Bible and be logically consistent?
            In addition, the Bible was written by about 40 different authors over a period of about 1500 years, and yet it hangs together as a unified text with no contradictions.  Those who think they have found one usually wind up just showing their ignorance of that Book and embarrassing themselves.
            This just scratches the surface of the evidences for the infallibility of the Bible.  Josh McDowell is an excellent source, by the way, as well as others, including my own son Nathan, one of whose degrees is in Biblical evidences. 
            So yes, I will believe what I find in the Bible a whole lot sooner than I believe what I read or hear in the news.  I learned the hard way on that one, but God I can stake my life on, and already have.
 
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.  (Isa 55:10-11).

Dene Ward