Joseph Lodge opened his first foundry in South Pittsburg, Tennessee in 1896, naming it after a friend:  The Blacklock Foundry.  In May 1910 it burned to the ground, but he opened again a few blocks south with an initial filing date as a For Profit Corporation on August 19, 1910, naming it the Lodge Manufacturing Company.  It has been going strong for over 100 years, and my own skillet came from that company.

            I grew up watching my mother use her cast iron skillet.  She fried chicken, hamburgers, eggs, country fried steak, pork chops, and hash in it.  I suppose I began with grilled cheese sandwiches, something I still love but have to limit now.  Some days, though, a crisp on the outside, gooey on the inside, hot all over, buttered pair of bread slices (usually multi-grain in a nod to health) is the only thing that will satisfy.

              When I received my own cast iron skillet as a wedding present I was confused.  My mother’s was deep black, smooth and shiny.  This thing was the same shape, the same heft, but gray, dull, and rough.  “You have to season it,” she told me, and even though I followed the directions exactly, greasing and heating it over and over and over, it was probably ten years before my skillet finally began to look like hers.  Seasoning cannot be done quickly, no matter what they say, and in the early stages can be undone with a moment’s carelessness—like scrubbing it in a sink full of hot soapy water.  A good skillet is never scrubbed, never even wet, but simply wiped out, a thin patina of oil left on the surface.             

              Faith is a little like a cast iron skillet—it has to be seasoned.  Let me explain.

              In the middle of some study a few weeks ago I made a discovery that made me laugh out loud.  “…the churches were strengthened in the faith,” we are told in Acts 16:5.  I am not a Greek scholar, but sometimes just looking at a word gives you a clue.  The word translated “strengthened” is stereoo.  “Stereo?” I thought, automatically anglicizing it, and a moment later got the point.  Faith may begin as “mono”—undoubtedly the Philippian jailor who believed and was baptized “in the same hour of the night” had a one dimensional faith.  He hadn’t had time to develop beyond the point of “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” but I imagine after awhile he had seasoned his faith with layer after layer of growth.  It had become a “stereo” faith.

              Think about it.  The Abraham who left Ur at the word of God, giving up far more than we usually realize in worldly goods and prominence, was not the same Abraham who offered his son over forty years later.  That first Abraham was still so timid he would willingly deceive people about the woman traveling with him.  Yet God did not give up on him, and he did not give up on God.  He grew, adding layer after layer to a faith that eventually made him the father of the faithful.

              The Peter who tried to walk on water may have shortly thereafter confessed Christ, but he wasn’t the same Peter who sat in Herod’s prison in Acts 12, and he certainly wasn’t the same Peter who ultimately lost his life for his Lord.  He used all the earlier experiences to season a faith that endured to the end.

              It isn’t that God is not satisfied with the faith we have at any given moment, but He does expect us to grow, to season that faith with years of endurance and service.  Seasoning takes heat, and the heat of affliction may be the thing that seasons us.  We never know what may be required, but God expects us to keep adding those layers, to get beyond the “mono” faith to a “stereo” faith, a multi-faceted, deeply layered condition, not just a little saying we repeat when we want to prove we are Christians.

              How does your skillet look today?  Is it still gray and rough, or have you taken the time to season it with prayer and study, enduring the heat of toil and affliction, and turned it into an indispensable tool, one you use everyday to feed and strengthen your soul?
 
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! Job 19:25-27
 
Dene Ward

Man has been using tents since the dawn of civilization.  The oldest one found was in Moldava, a mammoth skin draped around mammoth bones.  Mammoth—that's the Ice Age, people.

             How did they make those ancient tents waterproof?  With animal fat, which made for a very stinky domicile.  Teepees and yurts were the next phase, and they were still stinky.  Finally nylon was invented in the 1930s and that became the material of choice for a long time.

              You can find all sorts of patents on tents, each claiming to be the next big step in comfort, ease in assembly, portability, size, whatever it is you want.  For this topic I chose the patent that was published on August 4, 1959 because of this phrase:  the said tent was "quite capable of standing up to any weather even without anchoring or reinforcement."  Remember that for a few minutes.

              Our first tent was a Camel dome.  The box said 10 x 12, which I never really understood since it was a hexagon.  It said “sleeps 6” so we thought two adults and two small children would fit just fine.  We learned to look at the fine print.  A diagram did indeed show six sleeping bags fitting in the tent floor—like sardines in a can, and the sleeping bags like mummy wrappings.  The only place even I could stand up straight was the direct center of the tent, where you could never stand because of the sleeping bags covering the floor, so you always stood bent over.

              Before long, the boys received a smaller dome as a gift and Keith and I had the larger one to ourselves.  Now that we are alone, and camp “in style” as our boys accuse, we have a 16 x 10.  A queen-size air mattress fits nicely and we can still stand up in more than one place inside.

              But tents are not houses.  The paper-thin walls mean you hear your neighbors all too well, and they would be absolutely no protection from wild animals.  So far we have only had to deal with raccoons, but if a bear came along we might be in trouble.

              Those walls also mean that in cold weather you are going to be cold too.  We have learned that with a waterproof rainfly overhead, we can plug in a small space heater and raise the temperature as much as 15 degrees inside—but when the temperature outside is 30, that’s not a lot of relief.

              Usually our tents are dry, but on our last trip we were suddenly leaking.  When we got home we found out why.  The seam sealer tape had come loose.  Rainwater simply rolled down the fly till it found a place where the tape hung unfastened.  Then it dripped through--on the floor, on the boxes we were trying to keep dry, and on our bed.  So much for "standing up to any weather," as that 1959 patent claimed.  As comfortable and advanced as they make them these days, there is no confusing a tent with a house.

              The Bible has a whole lot to say about tents.  Abraham and Sarah were called away from a comfortable home in a large city to live in tents for the rest of their lives.  Though God promised them their descendants would someday own that land, they never owned one acre of it.  But one of the tests of their faith was those very tents they lived in.  Did they really believe God enough to stay in them?  Yes, they did, the Hebrew writer makes it plain.  They understood perfectly the temporary nature of those tents and the promise they stood for, Heb 11:8-16.

              The Israelites lived in tents for 40 years.  Their tents were punishment for a lack of faith. Yet even after they finally received their Promised Land, God insisted they remember those tents during the harvest feasts, to remind them who had given them the land and the bounty it produced, Lev 23:42,43.  But the people refused, until once again they were punished for refusing to rely on God. That feast was not observed until the return from captivity.  And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. Neh 8:17. 

              Paul calls our bodies tents in 1 Cor 15.  As amazing as the human body is because of its Creator, it is still a fragile thing compared to the immortal body we hope to receive.  We are often too wrapped up in the physical life those tents represent to remember that.  It seems like a long life.  It seems like everything that happens here is important.  It even seems like we can take care of ourselves.  WE make the living that feeds us and houses us and clothes these bodies.  We live on the retirement WE have carefully put away for the future.  Just like Israel we forget who really supplies our needs. 

              On several occasions I have wakened in the middle of the night on a camping trip to a storm blowing outside.  The wind billows the sides of the tent and the rain pours as if someone had upended huge buckets over our heads.  The lightning flashes and you suddenly wish you hadn’t so carefully chosen the shady spot under the big tree. 

              Once, in the middle of one of those storms, I suddenly heard a loud crack followed by a WHUMP!  The next morning, we crawled out of the tent and saw a huge limb lying on the ground about thirty feet away.  If that limb had fallen on our tent, we might not have survived it.  A tent would certainly not have stopped its fall.

              What are you trusting in today, the feeble tents of this life, or the house that God will give you?  A mortal body that, no matter how diligently you care for it, will eventually decay, or a celestial body that will last for eternity?  The things that "tent" can do for you, or the protection that God’s house provides?  From the beginning, God has meant a tent to symbolize instability and transience.  He has always meant us to trust him to someday supply us with a permanent home, one we will share with him.  Tents, even the Tabernacle itself, have always symbolized a glorious promise.

              Don’t choose a tent when God has something so much better waiting for you.
 
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, 2 Cor 5:1.\
 
Dene Ward

We raised pigs when the boys were growing up.  A pig a year in the freezer went a long way toward making our grocery bill manageable, everything from bacon and sausage in the morning to chops and steaks on the supper table, ribs on the grill, and roasts and hams on our holiday table.  The first time the butcher sent the head home in a clear plastic bag and I opened the freezer to find it staring at me nearly undid me, though.  After that Keith made sure to tell them to “keep the head.”

            We bought our pigs from a farmer when they were no more than 30 pounds.  That created a problem that usually the boys and I were the only ones home to deal with.  Once the pigs were over 100 pounds they could no longer root their way under the pen, but those young ones did it with regularity, especially the first week or so when they had not yet learned this was their new home and they could count on being fed.  More than one morning I went out to feed them and found the pen empty, spending the remainder of my morning looking for the pig out in the woods.

            One Wednesday evening when Keith had to work, the boys and I stepped outside to load us and our books into the car for the thirty mile trip to Bible study, only to see the young pig, probably 40 pounds by that time, rooting in the flower beds.  We spent the next forty-five minutes chasing it.  You would think three smart people, two of them young and agile and me not exactly decrepit in those earlier days, could corner a pig and herd him back to the pen.  No, that pig gave chase any time any one of us got within twenty feet of him, and they are much faster than they look.

            You see things in cartoons and laugh at the pratfalls exactly as the cartoonist wanted you to, knowing in your mind that such things never could happen.  When you chase a pig you find out otherwise. 

            Once we did manage to corner the thing between a fence post and a ditch and Lucas, who was about 12, leapt for him with his arms outstretched.  Somehow that pig managed to move and Lucas landed flat on the ground on his stomach while the pig ended up trotting past all of us on his merry way, wagging his head in what looked like amusement.

            Another time Lucas actually got his arms around the pig’s stomach, but even an un-greased pig is a slippery creature.  Nathan and I never had a chance to grab on ourselves before it was loose again and off we all ran around the property for the umpteenth time, dressed for Bible study by the way, which made the sight much more ridiculous, especially my billowing skirt.

            We never did catch that pig.  He simply got tired and decided to go back into the pen.  I had opened the gate and as he trotted toward it, we all gratefully jogged behind him, winded and filthy and caring not a hoot that it was his idea instead of ours.  Still, he had to have the last word.  Instead of going through the open gate, at the last minute he ran back to where he had gotten out in the first place and slunk under the rooted out segment of the pen.  Then he turned around and looked at us.  “Heh, heh,” I could almost hear with the look he gave us.  We shut the gate, filled in the hole, loaded up the feed trough, and went inside to clean up, arriving at Bible study thirty minutes late and too exhausted and traumatized to learn much that night.

            God is a promise maker.  He has given us so many promises I could never list them all here.  We have a habit of treating those promises like a pig on the loose, like something we can’t really get a good hold of, certainly not a secure one. 

            I grew up in a time when it was considered wrong to say, “I know I am going to Heaven.”  Regardless the fact that John plainly said in his first epistle, “These things I have written that you may know you have eternal life,” (5:13), actually saying such a thing would get you a scolding about pride, and a remonstrance like, “Let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall!”  We were too busy fighting false doctrine to lay hold of a hope described as “sure” in Heb 6:19.  

            That word is the same one used in Matt 27:64-66.  The priests and Pharisees implored Pilate to make Jesus’ tomb “sure” so his disciples could not steal the body and claim a resurrection.  He told the guards, “Make it as sure as you can.”  Do you think they would have been careless about it?  Do you think there was anything at all uncertain about the seal on that tomb?  Not if you understand the disciplinary habits of the Roman army.  It is not quite as obvious because of the different translation choice, but the Philippian jailor was given the same order, using the same word, when Paul and Silas were put in prison:  “Charging the jailor to keep them safely [sure],” and he was ready to kill himself when he thought they had escaped.

            That is how sure our hope is—“an anchor…steadfast and sure.”  It isn’t like a pig we have to chase down.  It isn’t going to slip through our fingers if we don’t want it to.  Paul told the Thessalonians that “sure” hope would comfort them, 2 Thes 2:16.  How comforting is it to be fretting all the time about whether or not you’re going to Heaven?  How reassuring is it to picture God as someone who sits up there waiting for you to slip so He can say, “Gotcha!”  That is how we treat Him when we talk about our hope as anything less than certain.

            I never knew what to expect when I stepped out of my door the first few weeks with a new piglet.  If we hadn’t needed it, I would not have put myself through the anxiety and the ordeal.  Why in the world would anyone think that God wants us to feel that way about our salvation?
 
…in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal, Titus 1:2.
 
Dene Ward         

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

              The above sentence is not the official motto of the United States Postal Service.  Yes, it does appear on the James A. Farley Building—the New York City Post Office—in Manhattan.  But the line came from Book 8 of The Persian Wars by the Greek historian Herodotus.  The Persians had created something similar to our Pony Express and it was said that a message could go from one side of the empire to the other—roughly India to Greece and Egypt—in a week's time.  The architect for the New York Post Office Building was the son of a Greek scholar.  He read Greek just for fun, and he was the one who decided to have the line placed on that particular post office.

              Still, it was the line I thought of that December of 1989 when we had ice on the roads and an inch of sticking snow on the ground—here in north Florida!  That particular Saturday we tromped through the white stuff to the highway where our mailboxes were all lined up to save the letter carrier some time.  While we waited, my three guys got a kick out of running down the road then stopping and sliding as much as ten or fifteen feet on the icy patch in the middle of it.  It was a cold, gray day, never rising above 30 as I recall and the sun never peeking through for an instant.  Our lightweight jackets, by Northern standards, barely kept us warm.  Finally we gave up and went back home, freezing feet, runny red noses, chapped hands and all.  The mail never did run that day.  So much for "Neither snow…"

              As I was doing all this research on the "motto," I came across another interesting tidbit.  During the Cold War of the 80s, the public was understandably worried.  People believed that nuclear war would destroy the world as we know it, that it was not survivable at all.  They were probably correct, but the administration of the time did their best to dispel that idea. 

              Nuclear war is not nearly as devastating as Americans have been led to believe, said Thomas K Jones, Deputy-Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.  To that end, the Federal Civil Defense Administration began their campaign to show people how to survive the Bomb.  They created scenarios for ways they would care for "all the survivors," tacitly promising that there would be a great many of them.  Two of their more ridiculous promises were:
1) Nuclear war would not prevent checks from clearing banks—including those drawn on destroyed banks—or their credit cards from being accepted. 
And, the one we are most interested in,
2) Postal employees would be moved to remote areas in order to maintain service.  They would have in reserve millions of emergency change-of-address forms, including a line to complete if the recipient were dead.  Imagine that.

              Most people who are aware of this inanity know it like this:  On July 12, 1983, FEMA promised that survivors of a nuclear war would still get their mail!  (If you want to read more on this, look up "Thinking the Unthinkable" by Professor Jon Timothy Kelly, Ph. D., West Valley College.  The original paper should pop up.)

              Talk about outrageous promises.  But understand this, that is exactly what many of your friends and neighbors think about you and your faith in God's promises.  What they do not understand, and simply will not see, is all the evidence we have of God keeping His promises for millennia. 

              Abraham waited twenty-five years before he began to see even a shadow of the promises God had made come true in the birth of Isaac.  His descendants waited another 430 years before they received the land.  The Jewish nation waited another millennium and a half for the Messiah, and are waiting still, while we enjoy being in his kingdom and under his watchful care and leadership. 

             Then there are the many instances of fulfilled prophecy.  Nation after nation came and went as God said they would, again and again.  "The most High rules in the kingdoms of men," Daniel says four times, and then proves it.
But those are only the big promises.  God makes us promises every day—and keeps them.  If we don't see them, we simply do not want to.

              No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1Cor 10:13)

              Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name…Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. (1Pet 4:16-19)

              Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Heb 13:5-6)

              For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38-39)

              But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2Cor 12:9-10)

              I could keep going, but do you know what the problem is?  We don't like the things these promises imply.  In order to receive these promises we have to suffer for His name's sake.  We must be tempted, we must endure hardships, we must be content with a life that may not be what we had imagined, especially in this wealthy country.  We must be willing to be persecuted.  We must face tragedies.  That is when we see His promises come true.

             I no longer have absolute faith in the postal system—I saw it fail that December of 89.  But I have never seen my God fail me in a lifetime of ups and downs, good and bad, happiness and sorrow.  My neighbors have sometimes failed me.  My government has failed me.  Even my brethren have failed me.  But never God. 

            Maturity has helped me see that.  A growth in spirituality has made it easier.  Knowledge of the Word has been the greatest help.  You will never understand His help, nor will you even recognize it, until you learn about Him and how He works, until you become more like Him and see things as He does—not in a carnal way, but in a spiritual way. 

            For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; ​but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” (Heb 10:36-38)

            God has yet more promises waiting for you.  Nothing will stop Him from delivering them.
 
In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began (Titus 1:2)
 
Dene Ward

One of the prettiest views of our property is coming down the shady lane late in the afternoon as the western sun sets behind the tall pines.  The live oaks spread their arms over the house and carport and most of the yard, dripping with Spanish moss and providing an even deeper shade over the lush green grass.  It isn’t fancy by any means.  It isn’t the grandeur of mountains and valleys that dwarf the human spirit.  It isn’t the sculptured and manicured lawn of a great mansion.  But it’s homey and comfortable and inviting.
              All that moss is part of the charm.  We’ve had people try to tell us to remove it.  “It’s a parasite,” they tell us, a common misconception.  Actually, it’s a bromeliad, related to the pineapple.  According to the Sarasota County Forestry Division, Spanish moss, the beard of ancient live oaks, does not jeopardize the trees.  It does not steal nutrients.  It is an air plant that prefers to perch on horizontal limbs like those of live oaks, which provide more access to sunlight and water than vertical limbs.  It processes its food from the rainwater that runs off the leaves and limbs of the trees.  Nothing is stolen from the tree.  Just look around.  Moss even hangs from power lines and fences, and it seems to prefer dead trees to live ones.  So much for the myth that it’s a parasite.
              However, the moss can become so thick that it shades the leaves of the trees from the sunshine, the thing necessary for photosynthesis.  During the rainy season, thick moss can become so heavy that it breaks branches. 
              I think Spanish moss must be a little like worry.  Let’s dismiss the notion that any worry at all is a sin.  Paul talks about “the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches,” 2 Cor 11:28.  He may not use the word “worry,” but that is exactly what he is talking about—anxiety, care, concern, the “daily pressure.”  Sometimes that emotion is legitimate and we become petty when we start forbidding certain words while accepting the feelings as long as we call it something else.
              Yet worldly care and worry can rob us of our spirituality and our usefulness to God.  It can make us “unfruitful,” Mark 4:19.  It can “entangle” us in worldly pursuits, 2 Tim 2:4.  It can tell tales about our hearts with misplaced priorities, Luke 12:22,23, doubt, Luke 12:29, and lack of faith, Matt 6:30.  All of that can choke the word right out of us and when trials come, instead of trusting a God who loves us and provides our needs, we may break from the stress.
              If you have trouble with worry, camp awhile in Matthew 6.  Don’t you understand, Jesus asks, that life is more than food and clothing, v 25?  Don’t you know that God loves you even more than he loves the birds and the flowers, vv 26,30?  Are you so arrogant that you think your worry will fix anything, v 27?  Don’t you have more faith than the heathens, vv 30,32?  Jesus always has a way of laying it on the line, doesn’t he?
              While there may be legitimate concerns, things we pray about even in agony as Jesus did in Gethsemane, and there may be good things that occupy our minds, like our care for the spread of the gospel and the growth of the church and the spiritual progress of our children, don’t let the trivial things, the things of this life that you can’t do anything about anyway, become such a heavy burden that you break under its weight.  Rid yourself of the moss that robs you of the Light.  “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said, John 14:27.  He came to bring us peace instead.
 
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27
 
Dene Ward

Nathan has done the impossible—he has turned me into a baseball fan.  Admittedly I don’t watch but one team, the Rays, but that’s still a lot more than I ever watched before. 

            Now that I know more about the game, the statistics mean more too.  I recently ran across this one:  On June 2, 1922, Stuffy (John Phelan) McInnis, a first baseman for the Indians, ended an errorless streak of 1700 chances.  That means 1700 times in a row he caught every ball or tagged every player or threw every ball straight to get a man out.  The streak began in 1921 when he was still with the Red Sox, and ended 163 games later.  I have watched games this year alone where a Gold Glove winner had two or more errors in a single game.

            All Stuffy McInnis had to rely on was himself and his own unaided ability.  Why is it that we can’t run rings around this statistic?  Why can’t we go more than a single day without a sin?  “But I’m only human,” I keep hearing, and yes, I understand the concept of being too sure of oneself (1 Cor 10:12).  But it isn’t me I am counting on, is it?

            No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Cor 10:13)  Tell me, don’t you think God is faithful?

            Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  (1 Pet 1:5)  For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.  (2 Cor 10:4)  Do you doubt the power of God?

            Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials… (2 Pe 2:9).  Do you think God doesn’t know what he is doing?

            Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, (Jude 24).  Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.  (Heb 7:25)  Are you questioning God’s ability?

            Yes, those passages speak of things we have to do too, but if you think what you do is the main ingredient in overcoming sin, you are already thinking too highly of yourself.  When we try to overcome sin, it isn’t our own skill we are counting on, it’s the power of God.  He has promised he will help us and that nothing will happen that we cannot handle.  He has promised us everything we need, every weapon available, to fight the adversary, and he has promised that those weapons are more than sufficient to get us through any ordeal.  If we don’t make it, it’s because we forgot to rely on him and his help.  We may never go 1700 chances without a sin, but surely we can do better than we have in the past.

            Stuffy McInnis got his nickname because every time he made an amazing defensive play people said, “That’s the stuff!”  God has all the “stuff” we need.  Now let’s get out there and use it.
 
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:4-5
 
Dene Ward

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education that “the doctrine of separate but equal has no place in public education.”  Do you know who “Brown” was?  She was Linda Brown, a black third-grader who had to walk a mile to the all-black elementary school, right through a railroad switching yard, instead of a much shorter seven blocks to an all-white school where she was not allowed.

            Although that decision was a giant step in desegregating American schools, it did not change things immediately.  It was over 11 years later when I had my first black classmate, a seventh grader named Diana White.  She was well-spoken, well-dressed, friendly, smart, and pretty, and I liked her instantly.  At that point, nothing about the Supreme Court ruling had affected me personally at all.  I still walked across the street to school every morning.

            The next year we moved from that small town where grades seven through twelve were all housed in a small school labeled “high school” to the biggest city I had ever lived in, a melting pot of cultures and beliefs that made me feel like I had moved to another country altogether.  Schoolyard fights were common and the bathrooms billowed with cigarette and marijuana smoke. 

            I hated those first two years of what they called junior high, more than twice the number of students I had been with the year before in one-third the number of grades—8th and 9th.  I had discovered that the school year consisted of 120 days and that first year I kept a small notebook in my desk in which every afternoon I marked off a day, from day one to day 120, four vertical lines and a crossbar every week.

            That was also my first experience with busing, which was how that city handled the new laws, and it was not a kind experience.  Instead of riding safely with a parent to the school near my house, I was hauled off five miles in the opposite direction. 

            Most of the upholstery on that old bus was dried out and cracked from the Florida heat, some of the foam padding spilling out, or torn out by bored students, the walls and seatbacks scratched with rusting graffiti, the floors scuffed and covered with gum wads and other sticky things I really didn’t want to contemplate.  The windows stuck either up or down, depending upon who sat there last and how strong he was.  I suppose the engine was in reasonable shape.  It certainly spewed out enough fumes, which then wafted back around the bus and in through the windows.  But that acted as a sort of buffer for the odors of adolescent sweat and far too much Brut and Tabu.

            The first morning I stepped on that bus was like something out of a nightmare.  Even though the county had tacked up a list of rules for all to see, rules that included, “No more than two people per seat,” and, “No standing on the bus,” most of the seats were crammed with three people and the unlucky few who had no friends to save them a seat, stood in the middle.  (It was deemed better to break bus safety rules than to break the federal law that required the busing in the first place.)  I was near the end of the pickup route and I knew no one else on board, so I stood.

            What a ride that was.  I always carried several thick textbooks stacked on the slanted top of a loose-leaf notebook—no backpacks back then.  It was either hold onto the books or hold myself up as we swung around corners and bounced over railroad tracks.  Somehow I managed to grab the metal back of a seat with my right hand while using my left arm to hold my notebook and books tightly up against me so they wouldn’t slide into the floor on the nearly thirty minute ride across town, made so much longer by the frequent stops for railroad crossings and the multitude of traffic lights and school zones we passed through. 

            Before a week was out, though, I had made a friend, another quiet girl as much a fish out of water as I.  She got on the bus three stops before me, when there were still seats available, and she started saving one for me.  That one little thing made the days bearable—I had a place, I belonged.  It meant so much that on the mornings she was absent and I discovered it when I climbed aboard that reeking bus, I nearly cried.

            God understands our longing for a place.  He knows we want to belong, we want to matter to someone.  Into a world where the best you could hope for from capricious, petty, spiteful gods was to go unnoticed, the apostles came preaching about a God who actually cared.  Jesus came preaching about a God who knew you so intimately that he could number the hairs on your head, and who willingly provided you the necessities of life.  The disciples spread the word about a God who sacrificed himself to save, who helped bear burdens, and who offered rest and refreshing from a world sometimes too difficult to bear alone.

            God is saving you a seat on the bus.  Sometimes the bus hits a bump in the road, just as it did for Job.  Sometimes the driver takes a detour you never planned on, just as happened with Joseph.  Sometimes the route is long and the day hot and stifling as you sit among people who reek of the stench of this world, just as has happened to so many who have taken the ride before you.  But you are not alone.  The Lord got on that bus before you.  He will always be there saving you a seat, and after you count off that last day of “school,” he will give you a place where you can “belong” forever.
           
I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Acts 26:18
 
Dene Ward

We usually think of enablers in a negative sense—people who allow others to engage in destructive behaviors by their avoidance of the issues.  But enablers can be positive influences as well.  Teachers and coaches are enablers.

            I once had a student who, by the time she reached her high school years, had convinced herself that she could not memorize music.  We discussed the various types of memory—muscle memory, aural memory, visual memory, and intellectual memory, all of which are involved in memorizing music.  All of our competitions involved memorizing, and though I always gave my students a choice about participating, she wanted to do so, even though the process of memorizing seemed to elude her. 

            She would only attempt one type of memorizing—muscle memory.  “That’s the only way I can do it,” she said, over and over as if it were a mantra.  The problem with relying on muscle memory alone is that when you are nervous, you tense up and suddenly everything “feels” different.  She wouldn’t even try to work on the other methods.  So I took things into my own hands to prove to her she could.

            Every quarter we had a class instead of a private lesson.  For that quarter class I arranged learning stations.  The students moved from station to station, accomplishing tasks in the various areas of music, keeping track of their scores as they went.  As one student left a station, another took his place. 

            At one station I placed an eight bar piece from a beginner book on a music stand.  They were to sit and study the music making mental note of beginning notes, the way the music moved, and the rhythm pattern, then try to play it without the music, having made use of both visual and intellectual memory.  I stood at this station since I had to be the one to look at the music and tell them if they got it right.  If it was correct the first try, they got 10 points, the second try they got 5 and the third they got 3.  If they still did not play it correctly, they got 1 point for trying and then moved on.  This was a class of teenagers, students who performed at the moderately difficult level in the state competition, so playing this simple five finger melody with a two chord accompaniment was like asking a college math professor to do the multiplication tables.  Only one student took 2 tries and it was NOT the young lady in question.  She accomplished the task on her first attempt.

            “I know what you were trying to do,” she said afterward, “but you’re wrong.  I can’t memorize that way.”  I wanted to scream at her stubbornness.  I had just proven that she had the intellectual capacity for more than basic muscle memory and she was still arguing with me.

            I imagine God must feel the same way about us sometimes.

            May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, Col 1:12.

            To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 2 Thes 1:11.

            For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Tim 1:7.

            Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Pet 1:5.

            “Yes, but…” I hear you saying.  It isn’t me you are saying that to—it’s God.  It’s his power that has been granted to you, to endure, to overcome, to fulfill every good work, to last until the end.  It’s the same power, Paul says in Eph 1:20, which raised Christ from the dead.  That power will enlighten you, give you hope, wisdom, knowledge, and a rich inheritance; it is “immeasurable” (vv 14-19).  To deny it with a “yes but” is to call God a liar.

            Maybe the problem is that we want God’s power to do it for us, with no effort required on our parts.  It doesn’t work that way.  We must patiently endure.  We must do good and stay faithful no matter how difficult it becomes.  That is what God’s power, not our own, enables us to do.  And that means, “I can’t,” is no longer a valid excuse.
 
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:20,21.
 
Dene Ward
 

             I will think I have it figured out. 

            I will say, “Yes, life is hard, but God never promised otherwise (despite Joel Osteen).  I can do this.” 

            Then suddenly something happens I did not expect, something that seems the opposite of everything I have prayed for, and I wilt.  That’s when it is all too easy to fall into the “Why me?” trap.  The “I’ve done all this for you and look what I get in return,” con.  Jeremiah fell too.

           The prophets never had easy lives.  Hosea, Ezekiel, Amos, and Jeremiah are prime examples, and maybe Jeremiah more than any of them.  Check out 15:10-21.  Because of the poetic and figurative language it can be difficult to get the full impact, so if you will allow, I am going to paraphrase for you.

              In many versions this is labeled “Jeremiah’s Complaint.”  That ought to give you a clue about what’s going on.

              Jeremiah says, “Everyone hates me [because of what I’ve preached on your behalf, which is implied not spoken] v 10.

              God says, “Haven’t I delivered you?” v 11.

              Jeremiah says, “I did just what you told me to and YOU have deceived me” vv15-18.

              Uh-oh, Jeremiah has gone a step too far.  God will always hear His children’s cries.  Elsewhere on this blog we studied the Psalms and discovered that there are far more lament psalms than any other kind (including praise psalms)!  But Jeremiah has accused God of sin against him.

              How do I know?  Because God tells him, “If you repent, I will restore you.  Do not become like the very people I have sent you to” v 19.

              There are two lessons in this conversation that we need to hear.  First, other people’s bad behavior never justifies bad behavior in us.  Somehow we think that we can get away with anything as long as we can say, “But look how he treated me.”  No, we can’t, and if we claim to be Jesus’ disciples, the one who When…reviled…did not revile in return; when he suffered…did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1Pet 2:23), then we should know that.

              And that last phrase, “entrusting himself” to God segues nicely into the second lesson.

              “I delivered you,” God told Jeremiah.  Somehow, Jeremiah missed it.  Maybe it’s because he kept winding up imprisoned or thrown into a muddy cistern and left to die, and threatened with death almost constantly.  But God did deliver him.  Someone always came to the rescue providentially, people who just happened to be there with memory and logic, or on one occasion a foreigner who somehow had influence over the king.

            Jeremiah’s problem was that God’s idea of deliverance didn’t match his.  Here I am up to my armpits in a filthy, dank well and this is deliverance?  Yes, it was.  Instead of being killed instantly, he was left to die, which gave his rescuer an opportunity to save him.  Eventually he was pulled out of that hole to relative safety so he could preach even more.  Do you see that?  He was delivered so he could continue a hard and dangerous mission, not so he could live in luxury.

            And for us, deliverance may not look like our version of deliverance.  It may not match what we have prayed for, but that’s because God’s version often involves things we haven’t even been spiritual enough to think of.

            Do you want an example?  If you know my eye story, you know it has been going on a long, long time.  Longer than any doctor thought possible.  No, my vision is not what it used to be, but I still have some!  And what has that done for me?  It has taken away a lot things that used to take up my time, and suddenly, I am able to write, to teach, and to speak.  I have done more of that in the past ten years than in the thirty years before combined.
 
           And even now, it appears that my remaining distance vision is dimming.  But with the aid of lenses and large print, I can still manage the close things.  I can still study.  I can still type.  I may not be able to see the individual features of the crowd of faces in front of me, but I can still see my notes and my mouth works just fine.

            God’s idea of deliverance cost me a few things, like a music studio and some independence.  But it also delivered me to do so much more.

            Don’t whine when your deliverance is not what you hoped.  Don’t mope when your plans don’t work out, when you feel used and abused, when you think all is lost.  You may be shoulder deep in the mire right now, but that will make the deliverance even more amazing when it comes.  Just stop expecting your version and look for God’s.  In the words of the old joke, “I sent a boat and I sent a helicopter.  It’s not my fault you didn’t take me up on it.”
 
Therefore thus says the LORD: “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. ​And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the LORD. ​I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.” (Jer 15:19-21)
 
Dene Ward

I remember once when the boys came asking for something.  I don’t remember what it was, I just remember that the way they asked made it obvious they did not expect to receive a positive response from me.  It probably cost money, which was always in short supply in those years.  I vaguely remember that their father and I had already discussed this thing, and had decided it was worth it, that we would just sacrifice in another area.  So I thoroughly enjoyed answering in an offhanded way, “Sure.”

            Their hanging heads snapped back, their eyes widened, and their jaws dropped.  It was a moment before they could utter, “Reeeeeeally?”  Being able to give them what they wanted so much was a wonderful feeling.  Although I am certain that most children doubt this, most parents want to give their children everything their hearts desire.  They just have enough sense not to. 

            Sometimes I think we approach God in exactly the same way my boys came to me that day.  We have already decided what God will and won’t do.  Or maybe it’s that we have decided what God can and cannot do—a far more serious crime.  When we know the doctors have said the illness is terminal, for some reason we don’t think we can ask God to heal.  God can do whatever he wants to do, regardless of what the doctors say.  Don’t we believe that?

            Put yourself in the place of those Christians in Acts 12.  They were all in danger.  Herod had put Peter and James in prison, and had already killed James.  When he saw the public opinion polls swing in his direction, he planned to kill Peter too.  Yet those Christians risked life and limb to gather at Mary’s house and pray for him.  If it were us, I am afraid we would have prayed that his death be swift so he wouldn’t suffer.  We would have already given up on his life being spared. 

            After my first surgeries, the doctor told me it was the first time anyone had performed that operation on a nanophthalmic eye without losing the eye.  I am glad he didn’t tell me that beforehand.  It isn’t just the extra fear I would have felt.  I am afraid it would have changed my prayers because I, too, grew up with the idea that you must not ask God for the impossible.

            Mark records Jesus saying, Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that
you have received it and it will be yours, 11:24.  Did you catch that?  “Believe that you have received it.”  Your faith should be such that you know he has already said yes—asking for it is simply a formality. 

            Jesus died so we could boldly come before the throne of God (Heb 4:16).  Too many times we come before God with a hangdog expression, a forlorn hope that he will have any time to spare for us and that our requests will be too petty to catch his attention.  We remind him how many outs he has, we lower our expectations to something that won’t be too hard for him, and we always add a “Thy will be done,” not because of our humility and acceptance of his will, but because, like my boys that day, we really don’t expect to get a yes and our weak faith needs a prop.  Just exactly how much more insulting do we think we can be to our Divine Creator?

            When you pray today, pray “nothing doubting” (James 1:6), and remember that with God “all things are possible” (Matt 19:26).  Think about the gift he has already given you—his Son.  Why in the world do we think he would withhold anything else?
 
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him, 1 John 5:14,15.
 
Dene Ward