Flight Paths

“For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”
           
Benjamin Franklin included the above words in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1758, along with the proverb, "A little neglect may breed great mischief."  It hung on the wall of the Anglo-American Supply Headquarters in London to remind people of the importance of what seemed like trivial parts (citadel.edu).  A machine may be made of a literal million parts, including small nuts and bolts, but lose one of them and the machine will no longer operate at full capacity.
            The same is true of people.  In God's kingdom, everyone is important.  Everyone has a function, a role, a purpose in His plan, according to his abilities.  I might think my ability so small that it won't matter if I ignore it, and so just sit back and watch everyone else work.  Jesus said, "And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward" (Matt 10:42).  So if I don't do that small insignificant thing, what does that mean about my reward? 
            For the next several weeks, usually Monday or Wednesday, we will have a series I call "Some Really Big Little Lessons."  Each one includes a Bible person we seldom think much about because so little is said about them, but we will discover how important they really were in the things they did and especially the examples they set for us today.  And in the process, I hope we will all learn that judging our abilities and actions is not our job, but God's, and that if we just have the faith to do what little we can, He is powerful enough to use it in a way we could never have imagined.
 
But now finish the task as well, that just as there was eagerness to desire it, so there may also be a completion from what you have. For if the eagerness is there, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have (2Cor 8:11-12).
 
Dene Ward

The Battle of Springfield, during the American Revolution, was fought on June 23, 1780, in Essex County, New Jersey.  Though not completely documented, it is widely believed that George Washington, the Commander of the Continental Army, slept at the Timothy Ball home during that battle, as well as on other occasions.  Since he was considered a fugitive who, had he been captured by the British, would have been hung for treason, he was careful about writing down exactly where he stayed.  Yet the rumor persists that he not only stayed at that house, but to keep his horse from being seen outside by enemy spies, he actually kept it in the home's kitchen! 
            The Bible tells us of another person who opened her home to an important man.  And it fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunem where was a great woman, 2 Kings 4:8.
            Shunem was a town in the tribal lands of Issachar, three and a half miles north of Jezreel, the home of the summer palace for the kings of Israel.  If you have a newer translation, you already know that, at least in this passage, “great” means “wealthy.”  Yet this woman was great in our own vernacular as well.
            The very fact that she recognized Elisha as a man of God and wanted to help him was amazing in itself.  Israel was headed headlong into rampant idolatry and immorality.  Jehoram reigned, a son of Ahab, a king of whom the scriptures say, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.  Although he put away Ahab’s pillar to Baal, nevertheless he clung to the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat which he made Israel to sin; he did not depart from it (3:2,3).
            This woman, in the midst of an apostate people, managed to remain faithful to Jehovah, to recognize his servant and to offer him a permanent room on his journeys.  This was not a spare room in the house, but one she added, increasing the expense of it.  It began with her invitation to a meal, then another, and another any time he passed by.  He couldn’t offer her a schedule or phone ahead.  The terms were always “whenever.”  Thus it began and grew to the greater commitment of a furnished room.
            Unlike so many other examples of Biblical hospitality, she was the instigator, not her husband, and she did it without looking for a return.  Indeed, when a thank you gift was offered, she was surprised.  I dwell among my own people, she said, indicating she did not think herself special or worthy at all.  This utter humility of a wealthy person is amazing when you see the opposite in so many today.  And how many of us would be expecting not only a hostess gift, but the singing of our praises to others as well?  She seemed to view Elisha as the worthy one, not herself.
            Truly, her greatness was about her faith.  She served Elisha, not to gain glory but because he was “a man of God.”  She recognized that wealth was to be used in service to God not to self.
            Several years later Elisha did her a great favor, warning her of a coming famine.  Arise and depart with your household and sojourn wherever you can, he told her.  It will come upon the land for seven years (8:1).
            How many of us would have the faith to leave everything at one word, not knowing whether we would ever get it all back?  Wealth was measured in belongings in those days, land and crops and flocks and herds, not in bank accounts, investments, and stock portfolios.  She could take none of it with her.  When she left, she virtually impoverished herself.  Would we do the same, or does it all mean just a little too much to us?
            God in his providence took care of this faithful woman.  When she returned to the land seven years later and made petition to the country’s wicked king, Elisha’s old dishonored servant Gehazi “just happened” to be there, entertaining the king with stories about his days with the old prophet.
            “Why look here!” he told the king.  “This is the woman I told you about,” and being in a generous frame of mind, the king restored her land along with all the produce of the fields from the day she left till now (8:3-6).
            That “great” woman had no idea she would get it all back.  Elisha had never promised her anything except her life and her family’s lives if she left.  But she was so “great”—wealthy—in faith that God chose to reward her.
            Don’t make any mistake about it.  We fit the bill; we are the wealthy ones the scriptures talk about.  How is our faith these days?  Is it “great” or impoverished?  Are we rich toward the world or “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21)?  We show the answer by how we use our monetary wealth.  We show it by how we expect to be treated by others who are less fortunate.  We show it by the importance we place on it.
            Timothy Ball was willing to house a man important in only worldly terms.  But how would we measure up against this “great” woman who understood the spiritual far better than we sometimes do?
 
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 1 Tim 6:17-19
 
Dene Ward
 

We love this season.  You never know what will pop up where.
            Several years ago we started planting wildflowers, a patch here one year and a patch there the next, babying them for exactly one summer, then letting them do their own thing.  Every spring we eagerly await the results.  Last year black-eyed Susans sprang up where we had never planted them.  This year rain lilies rose in a larger clump and farther from the original bed than you would have thought possible.  The year before a bright yellow coreopsis suddenly bloomed way out in the field amid nothing but grass.  It’s exciting to see what can happen over the years from just one seed sown in the middle of five acres.
            I have had the same experience lately with my old Bible class literature.  Suddenly I received a drop ship order from one of the Bible book stores to an address nearly 2000 miles distant.  Yet the last name, an uncommon one especially considering the relatively small size of the brotherhood, was familiar.  It was the first name I didn’t know.  Was this the daughter, or maybe the daughter-in-law of a woman I taught thirty years ago?  Imagine that.
            Don’t you think the apostles had the same feelings when, years after they had sown the seed in a rough Gentile town, they had news of another group of disciples, or maybe several groups, in the same vicinity?  The power of God’s word screams out from the growth of the church in the ancient world and the way it changed history itself.
            I have had people who knew my parents in their younger years tell me of the things they did for them, things they still remembered and that obviously meant a lot.  Keith has had people come up to him and say, “I still have that letter you wrote me years ago.  It changed my life.”  And, “I remember that class you taught.  It helped me through a rough time.”
            We have opportunities every day to make a difference in someone’s life.  Too many times we ignore them because we don’t believe anything we say or do will make that much difference.  Let me tell you something.  It isn’t yourself you are demeaning by thinking that way—it’s God’s word and His power through that word.  When you help someone, when you speak a word of encouragement, when you act with kindness in a situation where no one else would have bothered, you are tapping into that power yourself and spreading the grace of God to others.  It may be just the “cup of cold water” Jesus mentions in Matt 10:42, but that cup can change a life. 
            I have lost count of the times people have said to me, “I remember when you…”   You know what?  Most of the time, I don’t remember it, but I thank God for sending some small amount of inspiration for me to say the right thing, even though I was perfectly oblivious at the time.  Truly He helps us in every circumstance.   
            When our lives are over, we should be able to walk out into the field and find little patches of grace that came from some seed we sowed, however inadvertently, years before.  Yellow daisies, white rain lilies, blue bachelors’ buttons, pink phlox, red cypress vines—you never know what you will get when you spread the word with an act of kindness or word of compassion--no matter how small it may seem to you!
            So put on your gardening gloves this morning and start planting.
 
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isa 55:10,11.
 
Dene Ward

We are a connected and disconnected culture at the same time, but not in the same sense. We have so much technology to connect us, but our personal relationships are suffering. Together time is spent apart. We sit two feet from one another while we engage in what is separated by miles. We love without loving and care without caring. We have every advantage to be united but are being destroyed by our advantages because we use them to our detriment.
"Love one another." How will you connect with and love another today?

Doy Moyer

Growing tomatoes can be easy, but if you must deal with poor soil instead of rich loam, it isn’t.  If you have bacteria-infected soil, it isn’t.  If blights, mildews, and fungi abound, it isn’t.  If the insects rise in swarms every time you bump a plant, it isn’t.  We have all of the above, so growing tomatoes here in our sub-tropical “paradise” is certainly not easy.
            Every year a few of our plants grow to about a foot’s height, then stop.  Their leaves curl and they never set a bloom.  They remain green and don’t die outright, but they don’t grow and they don’t produce fruit.  We call them the “frizzled plants” because of the curled leaves and the stunted growth.  If we are not careful, our spiritual growth can be stunted in the same way.
            Listening and considering new ideas is imperative to spiritual growth, to improving our attitudes and characters.  Keith has actually come across a couple of people who have told him, “Even if you could show me in the Bible where I’m wrong, I wouldn’t change.  I’m comfortable where I am.”  A comfort zone is prime territory for stunted growth.  What do you do but sit there and watch their leaves curl?
            Others have a pride issue.  They can’t possibly be wrong about anything.  Hear the sarcasm in Job’s voice as he deals with his so-called friends: “No doubt you are the [only wise] people, and wisdom will die with you,” 12:2.  When people will not listen to anyone else, they will only grow as far as their own knowledge will reach, and then stop.
            Parents can stifle growth when they view differing opinions as disrespect.  Even parents who don’t mean to do so are used as an excuse not to listen.  “But my daddy said…”  Don’t you think Daddy had enough personal integrity to change his mind if someone showed him he was in error?
            Indifference can stunt your growth.  In fact, it is a wonder some people managed to germinate a seed at all, much less grow enough to look at least a little like a Christian.  Their apathy prevents them from getting any farther.
            Wealth can strangle you so that the seed never receives the nourishment it needs. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. Mark 4:19.
            Immaturity, which Paul repeatedly calls carnality in 1 Corinthians, can stunt your growth.  When you are concerned about the wrong things and your perspective is distorted, when you can’t see beyond the instant gratification of things, status and the opinion of others, you will never comprehend the true necessities of spiritual life.  You certainly won’t grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord.
            We need to look at ourselves and the things that matter most to us.  Examine your spiritual growth in the past year or two.  Can you see a difference, or are you still sitting in exactly the same place with curled leaves and no fruit on your limbs?  Are you stretching those limbs upward, or do they droop to the earth, where the only things that matter to you happen to be?
            What is getting in the way of your growth?  Don’t be a frizzled tomato plant.
 
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Jehovah; And on his law does he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also doth not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper. Psalms 1:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

Tom Gilson has written a modern day version of Atticus Haygood's Man of Galilee.  He certainly gives Haygood plenty of credit, along with several other writers who have used the very personality of Jesus as evidence of his veracity, or as the subtitle states "How Jesus' Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality."  Gilson seems to take things a step further, in an easy-to-read conversational style.
            First, he studies the personality of Jesus in all areas, covering passages you have heard all your life but never thought of that way.  Then he takes on the skeptics, using his method to answer all their challenges.  And finally, he meets head-on the inescapable conclusion of all of this:  Jesus is the only way to God and deserves our complete devotion.  If you have never studied the gospels through this lens, you will be even more convinced of who and what Jesus is after you read this book.
            The end of the book includes study questions for those who want to use it in classes, as well as an eye-opening section on the apocryphal gospels, the so-called missing gospels, which were neither missing nor gospels.  You will agree.
            Too Good to Be False is published by DeWard Publishing.
 
Dene Ward
           

If you haven't heard this old spiritual, you need to.  The words say it all, and it ought to be our mantra every day.  Just a few of them as an example:

Lord, I keep so busy servin' my Master
Keep so busy servin' my Master
Keep so busy servin' my Master
Ain't got time.
'Cause when I'm givin' my all, I'm serving my Master,
When I'm givin' my all, Lord I ain't got time to die.

            I am supposed to be so busy fulfilling my purpose for God that I don't have time for carnal things.  John understood perfectly.  When his disciples seemed jealous of the success of Jesus' teaching, he told them, He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).Not long afterward, Herod had him killed, but he had used his entire life fulfilling a purpose for God.  Just because ours doesn't seem as important to us, and usually seems completely unknowable, doesn't mean we don't have one.  ​The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble (Prov 16:4), reminds us that not only do we have a purpose to fulfill, but when we choose not to, God will use us somehow or other anyway. 
            And exactly what is that purpose?  We may never know.  My job is to do what God puts in front of me, knowing that he will never give me an opportunity I am unable to handle, and then let Him make the proper use of it.  But that means I am "so busy working for my Master" that "I ain't got time to die."  I am not serving myself, spending my last hours and dollars trying to give myself one more fling to make myself happy.  Instead, I am spending my last hours working for the Lord until I can no longer do so.
            David made a lot more mistakes than we seem to talk about.  Not only did he fail with Bathsheba and Uriah, he failed when he numbered the people, he failed with Absalom, he failed with Amnon, he failed his daughter Tamar, and he failed with Adonijah.  Sounds like a normal man, just like one of us, doesn't he?  But he served God with all his might until he couldn't serve any more.  For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption (Acts 13:36).
             Contrast that with our culture's "Bucket List"—things you want to do before you "kick the bucket."  Something about that has always bothered me a little.  God made a beautiful world, probably close to 99% of which I will never see—even if I don't go blind.  But what will it matter when we see the glories of Heaven?  How in the world can anything be more glorious than God's dwelling place?  When God decides He is finished with me, then I will be happy to go and see it.  Meanwhile, "I ain't got time to die!"
 
​Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand (Prov 19:21).
 
Dene Ward

We kept seeing them on the side of the road—two to three feet high, blue flowers clustered at the top of tall stems with long narrow leaves.  We called them wild irises because that’s what they looked like, and I wished aloud that we had some.  So Keith stopped one afternoon on the way home from work and dug up a few.  I looked them up in my wildflower book and found their true name—spiderwort.  What an ugly name, I thought, and called them my wild irises instead. 
            Then we learned about them.  They spread faster than anything we had ever planted, in places we really didn’t want them, but the worst was this—they were only beautiful early in the morning or right after a rain.  Otherwise those blooms turned black and ugly by noon, earlier in the heat of summer.  If ever there was a fair weather flower, this was it. 
            Just as I misjudged the beauty of those wildflowers, I fear that some of us may be mistaken about how God judges our beauty.  Dressing up on Sunday morning is not what matters to God.  Having a tie on is not what makes a man worthy to serve at the Lord’s Table.  While I dress carefully on Sundays, one of the few times I get to wear a pretty dress these days, it has little to do with whether God thinks I am beautiful.  To God, beauty is seen in faithfulness, in righteous and holy lives, and in kindness shown to others.  In many cases, we don’t look particularly pretty while doing those things. 
            We never look better to God than when we are bruised and bloody from a fight with Satan, battered from overcoming the temptation to sin.  We are pretty when we are clad in old clothes cleaning up after our families, and handsome when plastered with sweat and dirt from doing the yard work for a widow.  We are lovely to God when we sit around in our old blue jeans talking about the Bible to a friend who asked a question, or inviting a neighbor to a Bible study.  We are beautiful to Him when our bodies are thin and our eyes sunken from facing an illness that came only because so many years ago the Devil succeeded with Adam, yet we face it with trust in a God who has a plan.  We are especially gorgeous to Him when our bodies are old and bent, and our hair gray and thin, having lived a life of faithfulness.
            Spiderworts are pretty only when things are easy, only when life is fun.  When that’s over, they live up to their name—black and ugly, a weed everyone could do without.  Don’t make God feel that way about you.
 
I am faint and sore bruised: I have groaned because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before you; And my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me: As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague; And my kinsmen stand afar off… in you, O Jehovah, do I hope: You will answer, O Lord my God.  Psa 38:8-11,15.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

Heb. 13:8  "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, (yea) and for ever." 
            I have read all kinds of ridiculous mental gymnastics regarding this verse.  "Christ never changes" is confidently affirmed until we get to Philippians 2 when He emptied Himself, or Luke 2 when He grew in wisdom, or John 4 when He was hungry and tired, or earlier in Hebrews when it says He learned obedience (chapter 5).  Then the panic begins.  How does the All-Mighty who created all things (Col. 1:16, John 1:3) get tired and hungry?  How does the source of all wisdom (Job 28, 1 Cor. 1:24) need to learn wisdom?  Or the Omniscient God need to learn anything?   How is the God who cannot be tempted (James 1:13) tempted in all points like we are (Heb. 4:15)?  What's more, Heb. 4:15 teaches that being tempted is what allows Jesus to be our perfect High Priest, which strongly implies that He wasn't able to be that High Priest until He was tempted, which clearly indicates that the temptation in some way changed Him. 
            If Hebrews 13 means that Jesus never changed in any way, then Paul is lying to us in Philippians 2.  Emptying oneself is change.  The Gospels, which speak to us of the omnipresent God as being in one place, the eternal God as being born and dying, the omniscient God as learning, and the omnipotent God as being tired, are all lies if Hebrews 13 means Jesus never changed.  And here all the mental backflips begin.  Maybe I'm just too simple minded but this doesn't seem that difficult to me.  If my understanding of Hebrews 13:8 causes serious contradictions with the rest of revealed scripture, then my understanding of Hebrews 13:8 must be wrong.  So, if Hebrews doesn't teach that Jesus never changed in any aspect at all, what is it teaching?
            Let me ask you a question.  Have you ever run into an old friend whom you haven't seen in 20-30 years and later told your spouse, "He hasn't changed at all!"?  Of course he's changed!  He lost most of his hair, what is left is gray, he weighs 80 pounds more than he did in high school and, when playing basketball, he can't get nearly as high off the court as he used to.  He has changed, so why do you say he hasn't?  His personality hasn't changed.  His trustworthiness, his sense of humor, his loving nature hasn't changed.  Or, for another example, if I were to become paralyzed from the waist down, would that necessarily change who I am?  It would change my abilities quite a lot.  No more running.  The top shelf at the grocery store is now permanently out of reach, but those things shouldn't change whether or not I'm a good friend.  The loss of physical abilities shouldn't change my devotion to God or love for His people.  So, isn't it possible that Jesus could voluntarily undergo a reduction of abilities without it changing who He is?   That He could even learn something from His experiences as a temptable man (Heb. 4:15) without it fundamentally altering His personality?    We talk this way all the time about our friends, why can't we understand this simple concept when it refers to Jesus? 
            What is the purpose of Heb. 13:8?  And of the plethora of passages that teach that God never changes?  An example from my childhood might illustrate this idea.  My dad was a great dad in most ways.  Present and purposeful in our lives, he played with us, taught us about God, about work, and about being men.  So, I mean no disrespect when I say he wasn't always easy to grow up under.  For example, in two successive years we were doing the chore of clearing some brush from the property Mom and Dad still own.  The first year, Dad told me to do it "this way".  So, the next year we are doing the same job and I'm following the same instructions from the previous year when he begins to scream, "Why are you doing it that way?  That is the stupidest way I can imagine anyone ever thinking to do that job?"  I'm dumbfounded.  He forgot what he had said, changed his mind about how it should be done without realizing it, and is now scolding me for doing this job his old way.  There were times I was totally confused and didn't know how to proceed because Dad changed his instructions on a whim.  We all could tell similar stories about bosses/spouses/parents who were inconsistent.  And they could tell those stories on us as well.
            And that is the importance of Jesus being "the same yesterday and to-day, (yea) and for ever."  Could you imagine if God's instructions for serving Him changed without notice from year to year, or even month to month?  If the priest was struck dead by a bolt of lightning for offering a lamb when God suddenly decided, without warning, that only a goat would do?  We would all be cowering in fear, unsure of what would make our capricious god happy.  Thanks be to God that He does not change, that His Son is the same forever!  We can rely on His eternal nature.  In this we can have peace.
 
Mal. 3:6  "For I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed."   
 
Lucas Ward

Several years ago I received a pot of rust colored chrysanthemums as a gift.  I enjoyed them for many days before they began to fade.
            “Well that’s that,” I thought as I placed them on the outside workbench so Keith could salvage the dark green plastic pot for other uses.  By the time he got to them, they were brown and withered, as dead looking as any plant I had ever seen.
            Keith cannot stand to throw things away.  “It might come in handy,” he always says as he pulls things out of the trash.  That is why he stuck those dried out flowers in the ground beneath the dining room window.  Yet even he was amazed when a few days later green leaves sprouted on those black stems.  It was fall, a mum’s favorite season, and before long I had twice as many as I had started with.
            Fast forward to Thanksgiving, a year later.  I now had a bed full of rust colored mums about two feet square.  The next year the bed was four feet wide and my amaryllises were swamped.  Keith built a raised bed about eight feet square, half of it for the mums and the rest for a plumbago, a miniature rose, and a blue sage.  That has lasted exactly one year.  The plumbago, rose, and sage have been evicted by the mums and need a new home.
            What started as one six inch pot of mums, withered and brown, has become 64 square feet of blooms so thick they sprawl over the timbers of the raised bed into the field surrounding it.  Whenever I cut an armful for a vase inside, you cannot even tell where I cut them. 
            We often fall prey to the defeatist attitude, “What can one person do?” Much to the delight of our Adversary we sit alone in the nursery pot, wither, and die.  Yet the influence we have as Christians can spread through our families, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and our communities.  The good deeds we do, the moral character we show, the words we do—and don’t—say make an impression on others.  Those are the seeds we plant, never giving in to the notion that one person cannot accomplish anything.  The attitudes we show when mistreated and the peace with which we face life’s trials will make others ask, “Why?  Can I have this too?  How?”
            Plant a seed every chance you get.  If a six inch pot of dried up mums can spread so quickly, just think what the living Word of God shown through your life can accomplish.
 
And he said, How shall we liken the kingdom of God?  Or in what parable shall we set it forth?  It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth,  yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof, Mark 4:30-32.
 
Dene Ward