We often go out for breakfast every second or third month, usually after an early doctor appointment, one that also includes fasting labs.  By then, we are hungry enough to really enjoy it.  We have four favorite places to go and alternate as the mood strikes.  One is standard diner fare, but a diner with a lot of variety and imagination.  One is a little more upscale, including things like shrimp and grits and Eggs Benedict.  One is a simple café attached to a bakery, but they make their own bread, muffins, and bagels.  It is the only place I will ask for "wheat toast" instead of a biscuit because the bread is so good.  The fourth is a bit whimsical.  Every kind of French toast, every kind of waffle or pancake, all with toppings someone made up at midnight and possibly under the influence.   Caramel Turtle Waffles.  Bananas Foster Pancakes.  Raspberry Cream Cheese French Toast.  That sort of thing.
            So after a long hiatus from it, we went to that fourth restaurant one morning, fresh from the lab.  Our waitress was young and pretty and friendly beyond "greet the customers with a smile" friendly.  When she brought a refill on the coffee almost impossibly soon (yet we were ready for it) I said something on the order of, "Your parents must like coffee like we do."
            "Not so much," she said.  "I'm a single mom, putting myself through school.  I am the one who drinks so much coffee.  I need it!"  She said all this with a big friendly smile, poured our second cup and was on her way to her next table.
            It impressed Keith that she was not bemoaning her state, or griping about it.  It simply was her life and she did not let it ruin her day or affect her customers at all.  She maintained a good mood despite what must have been a weary mind and body.  So near the end of our meal, after she had filled us up at least five times, he handed her a $20 bill wrapped around one of my blog cards.  "I am going to put a tip on the bill like I always do, but this is for a single mom who is doing her best for her family." 
          She was stunned.  "But you don't have to do that," she managed to stammer.
          "I know," he said.  "But you aren't complaining or griping about things, just accepting life with a good attitude, and it made me want to help."  Her eyes filled, but she managed to say, "Thank you so much," before she left.  When we finally finished our meal, with her tip written in on the credit card slip, we left and she gave us a wave as she was waiting on another table, mouthing, "Thank you again."
          That, my dear readers, is grace.  Though she did an excellent job for us, but she did not earn a 100% tip, which is just about what that twenty and her regular tip added up to. 
          God gives us grace, too—not because we earn it.  That undoes the very meaning of the word.  We did not deserve it.  We were not perfect.  For by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory (Eph 2:8-9).  None of our righteous deeds mean that God now owes us.  For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom 3:23-24).
          Sometimes I hear people who are facing a trial say things like, "How can God let this happen after all I've done?"  That person has not yet learned the lesson of grace.  While it is true that the one who has been saved will show his gratitude by doing everything within his power to obey and serve God, he still has not, and never will, earn his salvation.  None of us will.  God owes us nothing.  Anything good in your life is His grace.  Maybe this little waitress will help teach us what that means.
 
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).
 
Dene Ward

A few years ago I went on a trip and, as I was packing, I pulled out my favorite earrings and put them in a plastic bag to take with me.  What I did with them after that I have still yet to recall.  When I arrived at my destination, they were nowhere in my suitcase or my purse.  After returning home, I checked my drawers, my closets, my suitcases—even bags I did not take with me—plus my jewelry box, and the trash can.  I thought to myself, I must have had my mind somewhere else and put them in a strange place—like the times I put the milk in the pantry and the peanut butter in the refrigerator—but they will turn up sooner or later.  Those earrings have yet to reappear.        
            Funny how we have such a hard time remembering things we really want to remember but cannot forget those things we ought to forget.  Forgiveness is a tricky thing.  While I suppose a hurt is impossible to actually forget, forgiveness means we don’t continue to dwell on the past, keeping account of wrongs done us by various ones like a bookkeeper with OCD.  Yet that is exactly what the Lord expects of us.
            When he told Peter his disciples should forgive unto “seventy-times seven” it was a hyperbole, an exaggeration for emphasis.  No matter how many times a brother hurts me, I am to forgive.  That large a number also emphasizes that I am to do my best to forget.  How else could you forgive someone 490 times unless you have forgotten the previous 489?  The Lord knew what He was asking of us—continual forgiveness for a brother, even for the same sin, as many times as it takes.  He certainly understands the difficulty in that little proposition because He does it for us far more times than that.  If we choose a number to stop at, He will too.  He has probably already passed 490 with us.           
           Wouldn’t it be great if we could forget as easily as we can forget where we put the car keys, or our glasses, or the reason we went into the bedroom to begin with?  We forget those things because we so often have our minds on something else and get sidetracked.  Do you suppose that might work for forgiving others too?    
 
Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness.
Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense, Col 3:12-14; Prov 19:11.
 
Dene Ward

I saw this post on Facebook recently: "’Let’s see who’ll read this’ at the beginning of your post virtually guarantees I won’t read it.  Ever.” 
          I’m a little the same way.  That phrase, “Let’s see who’ll read this,” is supposed to make you feel guilty if you pass it by, nagging at your conscience to the point that eventually you scroll right back up and read it.  The same thing is true of all those “Copy and paste this if you are a real Christian/patriot/friend, etc.”  Now that one really bugs me.  If copying and pasting something is how someone else judges my Christianity, or my patriotism, or my friendship, then I am not the one who needs to feel guilty.
            God never used either of those things to get people to read His Word.  He simply laid it out there and the ones who cared enough to read and learn from it gained more benefits than they could have ever imagined.  God never tried to “guilt” anyone into doing anything for Him—he knew it wouldn’t be sincere if He did.  Josiah tried that with the people of Judah.
            Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel and made all who were present in Israel serve the LORD their God. All his days they did not turn away from following the LORD, the God of their fathers. 2Chr 34:32-33.  No, they did not turn away from God—not as long as Josiah was alive to make them behave, but he was hardly cold in the grave before they were just as bad as before.
            A long time ago, my eleventh grade Advanced English teacher taught a unit on advertising and semantics.  I will forever be grateful to her.  I learned about the Straw Man, the Bandwagon, Bait and Switch, and a host of other sales/debate techniques I have forgotten the names of.  I see them on Facebook, on television and in flyers all the time, and thanks to her I seldom fall for them.
          But I never see them in the Bible, except when some evil man uses them to tempt God’s people away from Him, like the Rabshekah in Isaiah 36.  God never uses those deceitful techniques, his prophets never used them, his preachers never used them. 
         Jesus never used them.  In fact, he taught in parables to weed out the ones who would not care enough to try to understand them (Matt 13:13).  He didn’t want them if they didn’t want him.   Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you. Matt 7:6
         It’s up to us to read God’s Word ourselves, not to be forced into it by a guilt trip.  It’s up to us to live by them.  And a simple copy and paste won’t proclaim our faith in our Lord.  It takes a lifetime to do that.
 
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. ​For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. Matt 13:16-17
 
Dene Ward

My dogs brought me a present the other afternoon.  I walked out onto the carport and there by my chair, where I like to sit in the evening, lay a dead possum.  Not just any dead possum—this one they had buried for awhile so it would age properly, then dug up to lay before my “throne.”  I imagine that when the wind blew the right way, my neighbors knew about my present too.
            I have had cats bring me equally lovely gifts before, but this was a first for dogs.  As you can imagine, I did not jump for joy.  In fact, I hardly expressed any appreciation at all.  I had not felt very good that day—these medications do a number on my stomach, and this gift, no matter how sincerely it may have been meant, did not help.
            These two small creatures rely on me for everything.  I feed them, make sure they have their vaccinations and medications, care for them when they feel bad, and play with them when I have the chance.  And for that little bit they want nothing more in this world than to please me.  Red heelers are often called “Velcro dogs” because they stick next to their masters’ sides.  Magdi and Chloe will even turn their noses up at a treat just so I can pet them.  Loving is much more important to them than food. 
            And if for any reason I am displeased with them, their ears go down, their heads bow, their tails are tucked and they practically crawl on their knees to me.  Magdi will rub her head against my leg over and over.  I know she is saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”  If she isn’t, she certainly has me fooled.
            So how do I treat my Master?  Do I want nothing more in the world than to please Him?  Do I repent on my knees in abject sorrow when I know I don’t?  Or am I too proud for that?  Do I truly understand that any gift I give is really no more to Him than that dead possum was to me?  Do I appreciate that I can never repay what He has done for me, and therefore try my best to show gratitude and reverence with the gift of obedience and faith, a gift that still falls far short of repayment? 
            Sometimes I wonder if dogs show more respect for their masters than we do for ours, and their masters are anything but perfect, holy, and awesome.  Maybe we should take a lesson.
 
For we are all become as one who is unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away…
Even so you also, when you have done all the things that are commanded you say, “We are unprofitable servants.  We have done that which it was our duty to do,” Isa 64:6; Luke 17:10.
 
Dene Ward

Although I found more than one date in several different sources, finally I saw in a post from the Library of Congress, a photo of a notice for the trial of the British soldiers involved in what the American colonists referred to as the Boston Massacre.  With a little magnification, one can clearly see the date:  November 27, 1770.  Those eight men had been held in jail for seven months once the murder charges were filed.
            Most of us learned about that event in high school history classes, including the name of at least one of the men killed, Crispus Attucks.  But do we really know what happened?  The actual trial transcript still exists, and therefore the testimony of all those involved, including a deathbed statement by a colonist who was shot but lingered a bit before he died.  He stated that he understood why the soldiers fired.  Somehow, no one gave me that tidbit in high school.
            The times were already tense and edgy.  An eleven year old boy had been accidentally killed by an American when he entered his yard at night, evidently acting suspiciously.  Then on March 5, 1770, a lone British sentry was standing guard in Boston.  A group of colonists either led by or incited by a group called the Sons of Liberty began heckling him.  Before long, snowballs were thrown.  Captain Thomas Preston heard about what was going on and fearful of how the situation might escalate, gathered eight men and went to his sentry's defense.
            The situation did indeed escalate.  The crowd grew larger and the snowballs became chunks of ice and oyster shells.  The colonists crowded in until one soldier was separated from the others and hemmed in by a wall.  Finally his elbow was jostled and fearing that the worst was about to happen, he fired.  Another soldier hearing the shot, assumed the order to fire had been given and that in the shouting he had not heard it, so he fired, too.  According to the trial notice, five colonists were killed.  The British soldiers were charged with murder.
            John Adams led the defense.  Yes, one of the Founding Fathers, the second president of the United States of America, and the cousin of Samuel Adams who is thought to have founded and led the Sons of Liberty, defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.  Why would he do such a thing?  Because, he said, it was about law and justice and whether the upstart new country that many were hoping for, would begin their claim of liberty and justice for all with a failure in exactly that regard.
            And so the trial began.  Witness after witness reported the facts, unadorned with the passion and emotion that fed the mob that night, including the deathbed statement given by the doctor on behalf of the slain man, one exception to the hearsay ban in courtrooms.  Then Adams patiently, and completely, led the jury through the law, including the definition of murder, which involved "malice."
            Captain Preston and six of his men were found "not guilty" of murder.  The other two soldiers, the two who had fired, were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.  The people of Boston were somewhat confused, but they accepted the verdict without demonstration of any kind.  America had passed its first test, five and a half years before it even became a country.
            Isn't a fair judgment what we want from God?
            But the LORD sits enthroned forever; he has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with uprightness  (Ps 9:7-8).
            Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness (Ps 96:11-13).
            ​The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob (Ps 99:4).
            God is a fair and righteous Judge.  The Psalms are filled with praise for his justice.  But when it comes right down to it, fair is not really want we want from God, folks.  If God were being fair, we wouldn't stand a chance.  On the scales of justice, nothing we do can counterbalance the weight of our sin.  Our salvation does not come from equity but from mercy. 
            It's a downright shame when a Christian faces a downturn in his life, no matter how severe, and shouts, "This isn't fair!"  Our salvation certainly is not fair to either God, who gave His Son, or Christ, who made the sacrifice.  Stop talking about fair because if suddenly you received fairness, you would never again experience anything good in your life at all as the evil simply overwhelmed and crushed you.  Now that would be fair.
            Somehow, in America, we still believe in fair trials.  That's the way it's supposed to be.  But be careful what you wish for on Judgment Day.
 
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away (Isa 64:6).
 
Dene Ward        

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” 2Sam 12:13.
            I imagine you recognize the above scripture.  David’s statement immediately follows Nathan’s indictment, “Thou art the man.”  But do you know what immediately follows David’s confession?
            Because God through Nathan declares that David’s punishment will be the death of his child, David immediately begins a week long vigil asking God to spare his son.  “Who knows,” he says, “whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live?”
            How many times have you found yourself sorrowing over a sin in your life, even after a heartfelt repentance, but then felt it presumptuous to even ask God for the smallest thing in your prayers that same day?  How many times have you said, “Not now.  I need to show some real fruit of repentance before I ask God for anything at all.”   How many times have you thought, “Surely He won’t listen to me yet?”  Or even worse, “How can God forgive me?”
            David knew better than that.  He not only recognized his sin and his utter unworthiness (Psalms 32 and 51), he recognized the riches of God’s grace.  We may sing about “Amazing Grace,” but David knew about it.  Maybe it takes just as much faith to believe about grace as it does to believe in God.  I know this:  if you deny that God will forgive you and answer your prayers, you may as well deny Him.
 
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:4-7

Dene Ward
 

Could there be a more obvious lie in all of retail sales?  “One size fits all.”  Of course it does, if you call fitting one person like a circus tent around a beanpole and another like a sausage in a casing a couple of perfect fits.  There is a reason that a custom tailored suit costs about 200 times more than a one size fits all tee shirt, and it’s not just the material.
            Yet there is one instance where the phrase is as apt as can be.  Sin is a “one size fits all” commodity.  For we before laid charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin…For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Rom 3:9,23.  And we do not get that sin from some mystical contagion.  Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men for that all sinned, Rom 5:12.  We are under the charge of sin, because we sin, every one of us, no matter how good we think we are. 
            And sin is sin is sin:  For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all.  For He who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not kill.  Now if you do not commit adultery, but kill, you have become a transgressor of the law, James 2:10, 11.  And in that context, James was talking to people who discriminate against others.  Bigotry, he meant them to understand, is as bad as adultery and murder.
            Even righteous men in the Old Testament understood that the Law could not save them.  As sinners, they counted on the grace of God.  David wrote a Psalm about it, the fourteenth.  Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any who did understand.  They were all gone aside; they are together become filthy; there is none that does good, no, not one, v2,3.  We are all in the same boat—none of us deserve salvation.
            But Christ came to offer us a salvation that would fit all of us, too, no matter how many times we have sinned, no matter the heinousness of our sins, as men would categorize them.  Christ does indeed fit all, and not only that, His one size is available to all as well, no matter who we are or what our stations in life.  All we have to do is put it on.  The grace of God will always be a perfect fit.


For the love of Christ constrains us because we thus judge that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again, 2 Cor 5:14,15.



Dene Ward

On a recent camping trip, we had one full day of rain.  Twenty-three hours in a tent went faster than we had expected since we had taken books to read, crossword puzzles to do, and a Boggle game.  But at supper time we needed more room and a table to cook on, so we carried our food and our propane stove under the shelter of an umbrella through the steady drizzle and down to the pavilion in that State Park to prepare our meal. 
            A nine year old girl pulled her bike into the shelter as the rain picked up.  She talked for a few minutes, and then we asked her name.
            “Grace,” she replied.
            “”Hmmm,” began Keith, “that means full of mercy and compassion.  Is that you?”
            She gave a wry grin beyond her years and said, “I don’t think so.”
            We talked awhile longer, and then she politely excused herself.  Later I thought, “How incredibly honest.”  Could I look at myself and give such an assessment without making qualifications and rationalizations?  I doubt it.  And woe to anyone who tries to do it for me.  No grace to him!
            But here is the irony—as an innocent child, this little girl Grace is a whole lot closer to the ideal of grace than I am.  Yet as a child of the God who gives grace abundantly, I must strive the harder to emulate my Heavenly Father, giving grace to all I meet just as He does for us—even though, as the very definition of the word states, we do not deserve it. 
Today let us all remember to be as generous as our Father, giving grace where none is due.
 
By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Eph 2:8
 
Above all things be fervent in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins…minister among yourselves as good stewards of the grace of God. I Pet 4:8, 10