Flight Paths

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

 I’m sure the general reaction to the title is, “well, doesn’t everyone?”  My experience among churches of Christ is that a great number of Christians are so determined to be anti-Calvinistic that, no, they don’t believe in the grace of God.  They read Eph. 2:8-9  “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast,” and they immediately turn to James 2 to explain away the clear teaching of Paul.  They read Rom. 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and are explaining how it doesn’t really mean Christians can’t be condemned before they even finish the verse.  They sit up nights in terror of the Judgment Day because they aren’t sure they’ve done enough to be saved.  They cannot understand the joy of hope in God’s grace because they believe, whether or not they’d admit this, that they have to earn their salvation. 

 First, a proper understanding of James 2 shows that our works validate our faith, they don’t take the place of it.  By our works we show our faith.  This is the “obedience of faith” concept that is the theme of the book of Romans.  That phrase begins and ends the book (Rom. 1:5; 16:26) and the faith taught in Romans is an active faith, just like in James. Then, in Ephesians 2:10, right after Paul says we are saved by grace and not of ourselves, he goes on to say that God has prepared works for us to do, now that we are saved.  We work, because we are saved, i.e., because we have faith. Still, no amount of work keeps us saved. Still, we all fall short and sometimes in ways we are not even aware of.  I’d be ashamed to admit the number of times I’ve studied out some chapter or concept and then thought, “Hey!  I need to change how I’m living!”  And then a few months later it happens again.  And then again.  If listening to my 79 year old father speak of the constancy of finding new ways to get closer to the person God demands us be is any indication, this process never stops. Were we lost before we discovered the newest way we needed to repent before God?  No! Because we are not saved by works, but by God’s grace!

 As is hardly unusual, David’s life is instructive.  When we think of David’s sins, we typically think of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah.  Some might remember when David counted the Israelites.  In each of those cases, we have accounts of David’s repenting of those sins, writing Psalms, and offering his life for his people’s.  But what about when he lied to the High Priest about being on a mission for Saul when he was running from Saul?  That lie led directly to the slaughter of the priests who helped him.  There is no record of David even feeling remorse over that.  David was a lousy father.  Far from the description of a father’s duties in Deut. 6:7  “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise,” David never told his children “no”. (1 Kings 1:6) The results were disastrous:  one son raped his half-sister, and two sons led revolts and tried to seize the throne.  Even in all this, David never punished his wicked sons.  David truly failed as a father, never coming close to what the Law taught about fatherhood.  I could go on.  There were significant, unrepented sins in David’s life (No record of penitence).  Does anyone doubt that David will be in heaven?  He was the man after God’s heart.  He was both the type and ancestor of the Messiah.  How is it that David could be saved with such obvious faults?  How could he be forgiven for sins that had no means of forgiveness in the law?  There is only one answer:  God’s grace.

 David was after God’s heart.  He was always hunting for God’s wishes, always closing in on who God wanted him to be. Because of David’s total faith in and commitment to God, God applied His grace to David.  This is not to excuse deliberate sin.  In all ways we know we should be better, we had need to be doing better.  This is to say that “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)  To understand that we are saved by grace through faith is to understand that God is not watching us with an eagle eye looking for an excuse to send us to Hell. In His grace and mercy He is looking for an excuse to bring us home with Him.  To understand grace is to truly come to love God and “perfect love casts out fear”. (1 John 4:18) 

 I believe in the grace of God.

Romans 8:1  “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Lucas Ward

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,
 All His wonderful passion and purity.
 May His Spirit divine all my being refine
 Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.
 
 When your burden is heavy and hard to bear
 When your neighbors refuse all your load to share
 When you're feeling so blue, Don't know just what to do
 Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.
 
 When somebody has been so unkind to you,
 Some word spoken that pierces you through and through.
 Think how He was beguiled, spat upon and reviled,
 Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you
 
 From the dawn of the morning till close of day,
 In example in deeds and in all you say,
 Lay your gifts at His feet, ever strive to keep sweet
 Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in you.

This one will probably go in a direction you never expected.  Look at the third verse.  Read it through once, twice, or as many times as it takes to find the problem. 

If you haven’t found it after half a dozen readings, don’t be too hard on yourself.  After all, I sang this song for five decades before I saw it.  Will it help to tell you the problem is in the third line of that verse?

Hardly anyone I have spoken to sees it.  But tell me this, when was Jesus ever “beguiled?”  I have checked over half a dozen dictionaries, and that word always has something to do with being “deceived.”  Look at 2 Cor 11:3:  But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness.... 

I looked up every usage of that Greek word in the New Testament (5) and they all mean the same thing, sometimes even translated “deceived.”  In fact, Rom 7:11, says sin beguiled us.  Now tell me that has anything at all to do with our Lord.

What I really do not understand is the extent people will go to in order to make this lyric scriptural.  One person frantically searched more and more dictionaries until he found some “forty-fifth” definition that might possibly make the word mean something besides deception.  But tell me, is it a good word choice if I have to stand on my head and do cartwheels in order to find anything that will make the concept correct, when the easy, normal use of the word is anything but?  Why would anyone be so desperate to prove a hymn written by a man did not have an error in it?  (No, he was not related to the man.) 

I find I cannot sing that line in the song any longer.  The rest is perfectly fine and full of wonderful thoughts and I sing them “with the spirit and the understanding.” 

But all this trouble over one word makes me wonder what else we try to hang onto that might be a whole lot more important.  We have things to say about friends and neighbors who cannot seem to let go of a doctrine they have believed all their lives, even when we show them a clear passage on the subject.  Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves if we would really be any better.

But I am afraid that as the serpent beguiled Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2Cor 11:3

Dene Ward

 “Hi!  My name is Moe and I will be your server today.  What can I get you to drink?”

 We had received a gift card to an Italian restaurant we had never been to before and were using it after a doctor appointment one afternoon.  Moe was slightly shorter than average, but a dark-haired, good looking young man, probably working his way through college, it being a college town.  We enjoyed our meal and Moe served us well.  Our first course came lickety-split and when the second took a little bit longer, he stopped to tell us we were “next” and to see if we needed anything else while we waited—like another loaf of warm bread, an offer we were happy to take him up on.  All through the meal he checked on our progress, on whether we were happy or not, and whether things were prepared to our liking.

 When we had finished and were sated enough to turn down dessert, he stood another moment and said, “Is there anything else I can get you?”  Then a half second later, “I really mean that.  You are the kindest table I have waited on all day and I would do anything in the world for you.”

 I had noticed that the booth behind Keith had called him over half a dozen times, and another table had sent something back.  No one raised a voice, but evidently their words and manner showed they might as well have. 

 And us?  We didn’t really think about what we were doing or how we were acting.  We were just—us.  Maybe it’s that we learned a long time ago that people in the service industry are often mistreated and verbally abused, made to pay for someone else’s failures—in this case, maybe the chef’s—and treated just like furniture as far as any personal interaction goes.  Maybe I learned it from my daddy—he always called people he dealt with by their names, and waiters and waitresses, car salesmen and mechanics all remembered him and went out of their way for him.

 But Moe’s words of gratitude have made me actually think about what I am doing and saying, trying to be even kinder than usual, and maybe even developing a short—but sweet—relationship with those people.  Isn’t that the way Christians are supposed to treat those who serve them?

 Masters, treat your servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven…and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. Col 4:1; Eph 6:9

 Why shouldn’t those passages apply to how we treat waiters and waitresses, plumbers and mechanics, cashiers and pizza delivery guys?  These people serve us as part of their daily work, and we can make or break their reputations with their bosses and even cost them their jobs.  We can also brighten their day if we treat them as we ought to, and who knows, maybe someday we can help bring them to Christ. 

 My boys have worked in service industries over summer semesters.  Even all these years later they can tell you stories about certain customers.  Do you really think it is Christlike to be a customer remembered for his sour disposition and rude words over twenty years later?

 Did you go out to eat yesterday?  How would your server remember you?  If you walked in again today, how would he feel?  How does your cashier at the grocery store greet you?  Does she ignore you unless you go through her line, or does she smile and wave when she sees you walk through the door? 

 So thank you, Moe, for reminding me that we are supposed to be reflections of our Lord to everyone.  Thank you for reminding me that my actions and attitudes can glorify or shame Him.

You shall not rule over [your servants] ruthlessly but shall fear your God. Lev 25:43

Dene Ward

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps, Matt 25:1-4.

Every time we hear this parable the same point is made—it was foolish to have no oil for their lamps.  But one thing has always struck me from the outset of this little story.  Why were they carrying lamps in the first place if they didn’t also pick up some oil?  It’s like carrying a gun in a dangerous place but no ammunition.  It’s like carrying a hair dryer to a primitive campsite.  It’s like peeling a five pound bag of potatoes with no pot to cook them in.  Why bother? 

Does that mean the story isn’t valid?  Nope.  I see those same foolish people every Sunday.  They get up early to come to church and sit on a pew and a listen to the preacher—but they have made no commitment to God, to their Lord, or to their brothers and sisters.  They do absolutely nothing all week long—no Bible reading, no praying, no serving.  They live exactly the way they want to live, and usually don’t get caught.  Or maybe they are relatively moral, having been taught by their parents to be good people—not because God requires righteousness of His servants.  In fact, God is the last person on their minds in every decision they make.

What’s going to happen when the trumpet sounds?  They will suddenly realize they did not bring any oil.  They carried a lamp every Sunday and somehow thought it would light itself or give off light simply because it was a lamp, or who knows what irrational reason. 

You know that word translated foolish?  It means “stupid.”  It’s the word moros.  Look familiar?  I think it’s the word we get “moron” from.  Don’t be a moron.  If you plan to carry a lamp, put some oil in it.  And, according to the parable, carry some extra.  Sitting on the pew never has saved anyone, and it won’t save you.

​“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. ​Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause, Isa 1:11-17.

Dene Ward

I have been a regular subscriber of several different cooking magazines for many years.  When we moved I let a couple of subscriptions go and I have had a lot of fun going through the older issues to discover recipes I never even tried because there were simply too many to get to in a month’s time.  One of those recipes was for Two Fat Biscuits. As you might suspect, the biscuits use two different shortenings—both butter and lard.  Finding the lard eventually required an Amazon order, but finally I was able to give this recipe a whirl. 

 I looked through the ingredients a little more carefully and immediately had misgivings.  What was said to make 9 biscuits required 4 1/2 cups of flour!  I have made biscuits for well over 50 years now and my usual recipe that produces about 8 biscuits, uses only 2 cups of flour!  What was up with these biscuits?  Must be something about the two fats, I thought, or something in the procedure that changes things somehow, so I kept on going.

 First, you chop both the butter and lard into half inch cubes and freeze them.  Well, that’s a nuisance, but I worked on the rest of the meal while the cubes sat in the freezer for the requisite 30 minutes.  Then you put them in the food processor with the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar (I never put sugar in my biscuits, but I was being very careful with this recipe).  When I turned on the food processor, it only took a couple of spins for the cubes to get caught under the blade and stop the whole thing!  I unplugged it, fixed the problem and tried again—only to have the same problem.  After a good dozen tries, I gave up and dumped it all into a large bowl and went at it with a pastry blender.  Nope, the cubes were too frozen.  Usually a recipe like this will tell you to keep cutting the flour into the fat(s) until it “looks like peas.”  Well, mine looked like overripe lima beans, but it was the best I could do.

 Next came the buttermilk and I experienced another “are you kidding me?” moment.  One and a quarter cups, the recipe said, for four cups of flour?  I ended up just as I thought I would—with a pile of dry crumbs.  By this point I was going on instinct.  I kept adding buttermilk—at least another half cup—until the crumbs became a dough I could pat out and cut.

 But wait!  We have another problem.  The picture showed the nine biscuits on an 11 x 7 sheet pan.  I looked at the mound of dough and thought, “unh, unh—cannot possibly fit.”  Yet I got out my pan, cut the dough exactly as told to and put the resulting biscuit behemoths on it.  25 minutes the recipe said, but I no longer questioned my intuition—I knew it would be longer. I also thought the biscuits would grow completely together.  That was the only thing I was wrong about, though they did get within an eighth inch of each other.  At the 32 minute mark, they were done enough, but I did worry about the one in the middle. 

 What I learned from that experience was to “trust my gut.”  After nearly 60 years of cooking and baking I have a pretty good idea of what will and won’t work.  Knowledge and experience will do that for you.

 May I suggest that the same is true of the Bible?  Read it.  Over and over, again and again, every day of your life.  When you know something that well, false doctrine will not be so likely to fool you, in fact; it will jump right out at you.  Something inside you will say, “This isn’t right.  This isn’t the God I have learned through His Word.  Let’s check this out before believing it and certainly before sharing it.”  God told His people that if a prophet told them something other than His Word, or lived a life contrary to His Word, that he was a false prophet and they should not listen to him (Deut 13 and 18).  That means the obligation is upon us to know His Word and through it to know Him.  Falling for false doctrine is simply inexcusable.

 Those biscuits tasted pretty good once I fixed all the problems with the recipe, but I will never follow that recipe again without considerable adjustment, adjustment that experience has taught me.  Now is the time to get that experience with God and His Word before someone hands you a recipe that will lead you to disaster.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness Eph 4:17-24

Dene Ward

 Before we were even a country, two families had a dispute about the boundary line between their lands, the Penns and the Calverts.  Eventually it led to actual violence at the borders, including an eight year conflict called Cresap’s War.  Finally the families hired Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, English astronomers and surveyors, to settle the matter, resulting in what is now the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, plus what would become West Virginia and Delaware.  Neither family got all of what they claimed; they both gave up ground.  We now know the line those men created as the Mason-Dixon line, a line which separated the North and the South during the Civil War.  (Smithsonian Magazine, May 25, 2017)

 It seems that people are always fussing about something.  Even in the early church, in a time when their unity was crucial, someone always found something to pick a fight about.  All of those people who had come for the Jewish holidays but wound up spending far more time than expected when they heard the gospel and believed, being baptized into that first group of Christians in Jerusalem, found themselves short of funds.  They had probably saved all year for the trip, and had left behind homes, businesses, and other assets, expecting to return home as soon as possible.  Staying in Jerusalem meant no work for many, and no way to feed their families.  Many sold lands and made huge donations to feed those families, but someone evidently saw and made a difference between the Jews who lived in Palestine and those who lived elsewhere in the world:   Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution Acts6:1.  Hellenists, mind you, were still Jews—they were just Jews from somewhere else.  “Somewhere else” has long been a source of trouble for many.  Remember in the Law God had to make sure He told His people to be kind to the “sojourners,” people living in the Promised Land temporarily.  Some of His people didn’t like that.

 Then, of course, once Gentiles were made part of the new kingdom people had issues with that.  “Well, I guess it’s okay, but they need to be good Jews first.”  At least that is the gist of the feelings—read Acts 15 and Galatians, especially.  Then in 1 Corinthians we find people creating groups over who baptized them and even who had which spiritual gift—”as if you had anything to do with which gift you received” Paul tells them, more or less, in 1 Cor 4:7. 

 The last great prayer Jesus left us with spends much of its time on this very topic, unity:  that they may be one even as we are one John 17:11.  And why is it so important?    That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent meJohn17:21.  A lack of unity will impede the great mission that the Lord gave His kingdom—saving the world.  If we are busy fussing and fighting among ourselves, why should anyone else want to join us?  And what a monumental waste of the precious time we have been given to complete the job.  It is nothing short of selfishness and arrogance to put our differences and preferences and opinions ahead of the commands of the Lord to go and teach, and make disciples.

 If you are seeing differences between you and a brother or sister in the Lord, fix it now.  You do not want to have to explain your refusal to do so to a Lord who gave up everything for you.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise Gal3: 28,29

Dene Ward

Sometimes the people who become involved in prison ministries are too idealistic.  They wind up being taken advantage of by the very people they are trying to save, usually because those people see that idealism and know exactly how to exploit it.  Either those idealists become disenchanted and leave the field entirely, or they learn a little pragmatism—they become adept at recognizing the signs and usually avoid being manipulated.  Keith has been working with convicted felons for a long time, so he knows exactly how to deal with them.  First as a probation officer, then a classifications officer, and now as a volunteer Bible class teacher, he has learned to read his audience fairly well.

 “But has all this work ever resulted in anything good?” someone asked once.

 Well, besides the lives that he has influenced for the better, the young men who have learned a little self-discipline and gotten good jobs and become good citizens—and there were a few—besides that, many have become Christians and useful members of the Lord's body.  You should see the surprised looks when I mention that.

 And here is the thing that might surprise you more.  The larger problem when this happens is wondering how the brethren will receive such a one.  In one place we lived, the church found out we might possibly have a newly released, and newly baptized, ex-convict among us and they were not happy at all.  We heard comments ranging from, “I won’t ever allow myself to be alone with him,” to, “I don’t want him around my children.”

 Reminds me a little of Acts 9:26:  And when he was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.  Yes, a murderer had come into their midst and they didn’t want to have anything to do with him.  In fact, this man had seen to the deaths of their very own friends and relatives.  Their fear and loathing sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

 But not to Barnabas.  He took that man around and assured everyone that he had changed.  Did he know him better than they?  Not that I can tell from any reading I’ve ever found.  He did not know Saul of Tarsus from Levi of Persepolis.  What he did know was his Savior and the power of his gospel.  For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes… Rom 1:16.

 And the more our culture becomes like the culture of that time, the more likely that we will not be dealing with upstanding middle class nuclear families when we evangelize, but with people who come to us with immoral backgrounds, with addictions, and with criminal records.  Or know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you… 1Cor 6:9-11.

 And it will be up to us to show them that we truly believe the rest of that citation:  but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. 

 We talk a good fight when we talk about “God saving me, the sinner,” and how we don’t deserve our salvation and need the grace of God, “just like everyone else.”  But too often there is an exception clause in our thinking.  The Lord has made it perfectly clear through his brother James, murder equals adultery equals prejudice (James 2:8-11).  The same law says they are all sin.  None of us will be a step ahead of our brothers with convictions on their records when we stand before God.  We have all been washed, sanctified and justified, and we will all be judged “as we judge others.”

For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Jas 2:13

Dene Ward

A few mornings back Keith and I took our last cup of coffee to the carport and sat in our nylon lounge chairs, the kind with the attached pillow you can flip over the back if you do not care to use it. We did use them, both of us, and leaned back, watching the mockingbird flit back and forth to its nest in the bloom-laden rose trellis and the hummingbirds guard their two feeders like Fort Knox. A couple of squirrels ran along the “highway,” a route they use every day from one live oak top to another, down the limbs and across the fence.  Off in the distance a hawk screamed, a rooster crowed, and a wild turkey gobbled.  Occasionally we flipped a treat out for Chloe to chase.  It was still the middle of spring, cool and bugless, humidity low for a Florida morning, low enough that the scent of jasmine reached us from the vine 75 feet down the drive. 

After twenty minutes or so, we got up to start our morning. As soon as Keith stood, a snake slithered out from under his pillow, down the back of the chair and dropped onto the carport. Our chairs are only six inches apart. If that thing had stuck its head out between us from under the pillow, judging by the roar when he saw it, Keith might have had a heart attack, and I might still be running.  Talk about “Flight Paths”—I would have made a good one.

Guess what we do every morning now?  That’s right. We flip those pillows back and look under them before we sit down.  People say habits are hard to break.  We didn’t have a bit of trouble breaking ourselves of sitting down before we looked.  Depends upon the motivation, I guess.  Maybe that’s why we have such a hard time breaking ourselves of sinful habits—we enjoy them too much, or we just don’t think they are that important.

From another perspective, we didn’t have a bit of trouble creating a new habit either.  Same reason—motivation.  I really do not want to think about a snake lying under the pillow I am leaning my head against, or the possibility of it slithering down my back, do you?

So why can’t we make new habits to rid ourselves of that besetting sin in our lives?  Can’t I learn to pray for self-control before I leave the house when I know I have trouble behind the wheel?  Can’t I learn to recite a few passages about longsuffering and kindness just before I walk into a meeting with that particularly obnoxious colleague?  Can’t I learn to avoid situations that I know will tempt me instead of purposefully putting my soul in harm’s way?  Of course I can, if I care enough, if I believe God would want me to do so, if I think of Him instead of me and my stubborn will. 

AND, if I believe that Satan is real, that he is out there trying to find a way to make me fall.  He is, you know.  He is right under that pillow, waiting for you to sit down without a care in the world and lean your vulnerable neck back into reach of his fangs.

Change a habit today.  LOOK! before you sit down.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Rom 13:14

Dene Ward

I sat by the window today and marveled at the birds that had come to my feeder—the usual cardinals, titmice and chickadees, plus two kinds of doves, a wren, four catbirds, dozens of sparrows, a small flock of brown-headed cowbirds, a painted bunting, two goldfinch couples, a few pine warblers, a yellow-rumped warbler, new to the group this year, and a hummingbird buzzing above them all at his own special watering hole.  All these on the same day and that’s not all just in the past week.  We even had a ring-nosed gull drop by yesterday.

 What may be the most satisfying is seeing those we can recognize from times past.    Remember the cardinal with the broken wing?  He kept coming back for well over a year.  It has only been the past month or so that we haven’t seen him and it may well be he has lived out his lifespan, but he lived it far longer and better for coming here to fill his plate, heal, and grow strong again. His wing was never quite straight after his mishap, but it grew plenty strong enough to fly him where he needed to go. He wasn’t the first sad and sick bird we have had.  You may remember the one-legged sparrow, and the brewer’s blackbird that was left behind when her flock flew northwest again—she was too sick to join them.

 I wonder what God sees when He looks out on His “feeder.”  We forget, I’m afraid, what our lives were like when we decided to take Him up on His offer. The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; ​to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified (Isa 61:1-3).

It is too easy, when life has taken a good turn and we are so much healthier in spirit, to think it might possibly have been our own doing.  He is the one who comforted our mourning, who gave us a garland to replace our ashes, who took away our spirits of heaviness and gave us the oil of joy and a garment of praise (Isa 61:2,3) to replace the sackcloth life had thrown on us.

 The Lord came looking for us at the worst time of our lives, and because of that we now live in the best times, no matter what our physical circumstances may be.  We were all bruised reeds, but with tenderness and care He granted us the greatest of gifts, a spiritual healing that is eternal.  It is right to praise Him, to stand in awe, and to marvel.  But once in a while it wouldn’t hurt to remember the broken wings, the near fatal spiritual illnesses, the missing pieces of our hearts that He restored and what it cost.  Maybe our healed wings stay a little bent just to remind us where we were and what might have been without His amazing love.

 And always, we need to look for the others who need Him too.  There is room on the feeder for as many weak, sick, and dying birds as we can bring with us.  And then He can look with satisfaction one day on those who laid their burdens on Him, who allowed Him to care for them, who accepted His offer of love and grace.  And together we can marvel for Eternity.

Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth. Isa 42:1-3

Dene Ward

 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth . And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood  Gen 7:6,7. 

I have missed this for decades and I bet you have too.  Noah was 600 when the flood began.  Now back up into chapter 6 of Genesis.  Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years” Gen 6:3.  Most commentaries believe this means that from that time God would wait 120 years before the flood came.  Noah had that long to build the ark and be “a preacher of righteousness,” as Peter calls him in 2 Peter 2:5.  That means he was 480 when God told him about the Flood. Now here is the interesting thing:  Noah did not have his first child until he was 500 years old, Gen 5:32.  That means that he and his wife knew for 20 years that the world was so wicked that God was going to destroy it in the foreseeable (for them) future, yet they had the faith to conceive and raise three righteous sons.

 How many Christians have you heard say that they were not going to have children because of how wicked the world was?  Maybe not often, but in my lifetime at least three or four couples or individuals have told me that or asked my opinion about it  In Noah’s day, it wasn’t just a wicked world.  It was a completely wicked world.  God only found eight to save, a fact Peter states in each of his epistles, 1 Pet 3:20; 2 Pet 2:5.  Their world was, according to Moses, “only evil continually” Gen 6:5.  Yet they not only brought children into it, they successfully raised them when, if anyone had an excuse not to do so, they did.

 If Noah and his wife could do it in a world like that, surely we can do it now.  At least this world has more than 8 righteous people in it, and I know a few others who may not sit on a pew with you, but are still good and decent people.  In our North Florida home, we had some pretty wonderful neighbors.

   If the state of this world causes you to do anything, it should cause you not to avoid having those children but to be especially diligent about how you raise them, like their souls depended upon it because, even if this world is not as bad as Noah’s, they still do. 

...when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water1Pet 3:19,20.

Dene Ward