I have a feeling that some of Bella and Chloe’s playtime might have been a little unsettling to Bella’s youngest master.  Young wild animal learn survival skills through play—how to hunt and how to fight.  Even domesticated animals learn some of these things.  Puppies always engage in rough and tumble play, including baby nips and growls.  Chloe and Bella did the same, and being larger and older, it looked much fiercer.

Teeth bared, growls ferocious, their muzzles tilted back and forth as if trying to find the best place to lock onto one another.  Larger Bella ran at Chloe and broadsided her, sending her rolling, then pounced on top.  In seconds, more experienced Chloe had her legs wrapped around Bella and flipped her over, like a wrestler reversing a pin.  Sometimes they ran headlong into one another like charging bulls and as they met, the saliva flew in all directions.  I learned to stand way back.

How did I know this wasn’t real, that it was simply an older dog teaching a younger through play?  Because they never drew blood.  If you watched their mouths, neither ever closed tightly on the other dog’s body anywhere.  And when they finished, they stood panting for a few moments, energy spent, both tongues dangling toward the ground, looking at one another.  Often they would touch noses, then walk shoulder to shoulder back to the shade, Chloe under the truck and Bella under a tree—lesson for the day over.

I remember a time when brethren could discuss things, even differing views on a passage, and each come away having learned something.  They could trust one another, not only to have each other’s best interest at heart, but also to listen and consider fairly, and never to become angry.  Even if voices rose, no blood was drawn, spiritually speaking, respect continued, and both left with more knowledge and insight.

What has happened to us?  If someone disagrees with me, it makes me mad or it hurts my feelings, and either way I don’t like him any more.  It is no longer about learning and growing—it about winning arguments and putting people down.  Instead of being able to trust a person because he is a brother, one must try to find a brother he can trust, and it isn’t easy.  That’s not just a shame, it’s a tragedy.  If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loves God love his brother also. 1 John 4:20-21

God meant us to learn and grow together, honing our skills and building one another up.  It might make us occasional sparring partners, but in that sparring we learn how to handle the word more accurately, we learn how to defeat the gainsayers who deny the Lord, and the false teachers who might be after our souls.  And after that sparring match, we “touch gloves” and leave with our love and respect intact.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Dene Ward

“Do you love me, Peter?”

“Lord, you know I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.”

Most of us are familiar with the scene on the seashore recorded in John 21.  I think we make a lot of fuss over the word “love” in its various permutations because we have read a Greek dictionary and think we have suddenly become scholars with great insight.  In reality there is considerable disagreement about what Jesus and Peter may or may not have intended. 

However, most people agree that Jesus repeats the question three times because of Peter’s three denials.  Peter had already repented in bitter tears and was surely forgiven, but this gave him the opportunity to make amends in another, more direct way.

Peter takes a lot of grief for his failings.  I have heard many say, and have more than likely said myself, “Peter gives me hope.  If the Lord will take him, surely he will take me.”   Why do we think we are any better than Peter? 

Is it any less a denial of the Lord as the master of my life when I fail to act as He would?  Is it any less a denial when I fail to speak His word in an age of political correctness?  Is it any less a denial when I fail to follow His example in forgiving my neighbor, my brother, my spouse, or simply the other driver or shopper or the waitress or store clerk?  Is it any less a denial when my life matches the world instead of my Savior’s?  I may stand up and confess His name on Sunday morning, but it’s how I live my life the rest of the week that truly tells the story, and neither the circumstances nor the provocation matter.  All of my reactions to the circumstances of life and to other people are either a confession or a denial of Jesus as the Lord of my life.

How many times should the Lord ask me, “Do you love me?”  How many second chances do I need?  How many will I need just today?

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isa 53:5,6.

Dene Ward

This is part 3 of the Monday series Whoso Findeth a Wife
             
In Psalms 128:3 the woman is called the fruitful vine. In the Psalm this refers primarily to bearing children, but it can also be true in other areas in which the wife acts as a producer for her husband.

The most important thing a homemaker produces is exactly what her title
says—a home.  Unfortunately, homemaking often has a bad name. 
The woman at home is portrayed as a leech on her husband’s arm—always
consuming and never producing.  In this portrait, she is sitting in her easy chair, a television in front of her, a telephone on one side, romance novels and sales catalogues on the other—or maybe a computer monitor or iPhone these days?.  On the one day a week she is not reading, gossiping, or staring, she is
out spending her husband’s hard-earned money on more clothes, a shampoo and set, and a basket full of overpriced convenience food. The beds are never made.  The clothes may be washed, but one always has to pick through the laundry basket for clean underwear.  Dinner varies from Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee to Stouffer’s, depending upon the occasion.  The children care for themselves,
coming and going as they please.  She does not know if they have done their homework or Bible lessons; she has no idea if they are being taught evolution, situation ethics, humanism, or any other atheistic –ism.  If her children were kidnapped, she wouldn’t know what they were last wearing, when they left the house, with whom, or in what direction—she sleeps in, you see.

That is our image, ladies, and some of it is our fault. We started believing our detractors when they told us how unfulfilling our lives were.  The asked us if
we work, and instead of proudly saying, “Of course, I work; I’m a homemaker,” we hung our heads and m uttered an apology about being “just a housewife.”  Titus 2:5 calls the woman a worker at home.  We have been so busy
emphasizing the “at home,” that we have forgotten to emphasize “worker.”  No, we do not punch a time clock, but that makes it more difficult, not less.  We have to make ourselves take the time and do the work.  We are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—no holidays.

It takes as many hours to stretch a dollar (gardening, canning, sewing,
coupon clipping, comparison shopping, baking from scratch) as it does to earn
one.  It takes more time to read and discuss a Bible story that it does to plop a child in front of a television set.  It takes extra time to read up on humanism and monitor our children’s schoolwork for its insidious signs; then it takes old-fashioned nerve to speak up about it. It takes more self-discipline and creativity to be a homemaker than any other career in the world!

But it is a most rewarding calling if it is handled as God intended.  When one truly produces a home, people notice, not just because the housework is done, but because the atmosphere of the home is carried everywhere with the family members.  A haven, peaceful and secure—the place you run to not from—that is a home.

The fruitful vine lives to produce.  She is never resentful or regretful.  When we do as Titus 2:4 says and learn to love our husbands (not just “fall” in love) and to love our children, the homes we produce for them will show our love because all the work we do is for them.  The fruitful vine asks nothing in return from those who pick her grapes.  Because the fruit is so plenteous and good, her loved ones shower her with care and attention.  
 
What kind of fruit are you producing, ladies?  Is it scarce?  Tough?  Undersized? Seedy?  Sour?  Does it come like a fortune cookie with a little message inside:  “(Sigh) and after all I’ve done for you….”

It takes extra effort to be a fruitful vine. Let’s get to work and change our image to what it used to be. 
 
Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates,” Prov 31:31.

Dene Ward

We had a second stint of puppysitting recently and this time Chloe adapted more quickly.  By the end of the first day, she and now six month old Bella were romping together in the field.  Chloe was still the boss and called the shots—including the play schedule—but play they did, especially in the evenings when Chloe would crawl out from under the porch, stretch, look over her shoulder at Bella and scamper off with a toss of the head—an open invitation to “catch me if you can.”       

Bella also came with us when I gave Chloe her morning walk around the
property.  Chloe usually accompanies me in a steady trot, stopping here and there to sniff at an armadillo hole or a depression at the bottom of the fence where a possum makes its nightly excursions.  Bella preferred to run everywhere, usually in the meandering lines of Billy, the little boy in the Family Circus comic.  Then when she suddenly looked up and found herself behind, she would come running, bulling her way past us in a brown blur.

It was one of those times that particular morning and I heard her overtaking us like a buffalo stampede.  The path at that point was narrow, just room for me, my two walking sticks, and Chloe.  As Bella drew near, I just happened to be looking down when she very neatly leapfrogged over Chloe without disturbing a fur on her head.  In a few seconds she was around the bend and out of sight.

I wonder how many we leapfrog over every day and leave in the dust behind
us because we’re too impatient to wait, too unconcerned to care, too impulsive
to even notice?  Sometimes the young with their new ideas, scriptural though they may be, have too little respect for the old warriors who need time to consider and be sure. Sometimes the more knowledgeable become too arrogant to slow their pace for the babes or those whose capacity may not be as deep.  Sometimes the strong forget that God expects them to help the weak, the ill, the faltering. All these people are just obstacles in our way, things to get past in our rush.

When you leapfrog over a brother and leave him behind, how do you know he
will make it?  God didn’t expect us to walk the path alone.  He meant
for us to walk it together.  When you lack to the love to walk it with your brother, you may as well not walk it at all.

Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.  Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me. Romans 15:1-3.

Dene Ward

We were standing on the carport one evening when I saw movement out of
the corner of my eye.  I turned just in time to push Keith out of the path of a garter snake determinedly chugging his way up the slope to the concrete slab. 
We called the dogs off and allowed him to meander under the mower and off
the edge of the pad to the cool darkness under the porch.  A few days later he made another appearance and we discovered his home when he wriggled away—the hollow pipes supporting the metal roofing of the carport.

I have come a long way in 35 years--from a city girl who screamed and ran from a foot long, pencil-thin, bright green garden snake to a country woman who understands the value of a snake on the property—God’s original mousetrap.  I will never be a snake lover.  I went out one afternoon and found him stretched out at the foot of my lounge chair. I got the broom and shooed him back into his pipe.  My dogs can sit at my feet and have their heads scratched, but with Mr. Snake it is only a matter of “live and let live.”

Too many times we take that attitude with Satan. Yes, he is out there every day. Sometimes we even bump elbows in passing, but we don’t have to stop and politely say, “Excuse me.”  Don’t give him a cool spot on the carport and an idle belly rub with your bare toes.

If this garter snake were one of the four poisonous varieties we have in
this area—all of which we have seen on our land—he would not be tolerated.  Although my guys may tell funny stories about me and snakes, they cannot deny that I know how to make like Annie Oakley when a bad one comes along.  I have killed them with a shotgun, a .22 rifle, and a .22 pistol.  I have killed them with rat shot and buckshot.  When necessary I have used a shovel.  I have lost count of how many poisonous snakes I have killed.  They get fewer every year.

How are we doing with Satan?  Does he think his presence is tolerated, even welcome?  Or does he know that it’s dangerous to be around us?  He is fighting a losing battle and he knows it, but that won’t keep his poison from killing us if we allow him to get too close.

Do not give opportunity to the Devil, Eph 4:27.

Dene Ward


 

            We are puppysitting for some friends, a four month old chocolate lab named Bella.  She is already taller than our full-grown Australian cattle dog, though not as heavy, a long-legged gangly dog still with a puppy mindset—which means faster is better than slower, all things are meant to be chewed upon, and play time is the only time. 

            Chloe, on the other hand, is middle-aged, 6½, or about 45 in dog years.  To her the best things in the world are a belly scratch, a chewy treat, and a nap, and one of the worst things in the world is a puppy being foisted upon her carefully controlled domain.  She learned quickly that Bella has difficulty getting under the truck—something about all those long knobby leg bones getting in the way—so she spends the vast majority of her day there while Bella roams about being a curious puppy.  Someone I know well has learned not to leave things lying about outside if he doesn’t want them ventilated with puppy-teeth holes, something I consider an unexpected benefit to Bella’s visit.

            Chloe is not a purely sedentary lap dog, though.  She enjoys nosing around some, and will run back and forth to the gate to greet us.  She walks around the property with me and often leaves me in the dust when she spies something interesting in the corner woods.  Bella is walking with us now.  Her nose is always in the air, and her ears cocked for any sounds that might drift our way—one neighbor’s baying bloodhound and the other’s crowing rooster, for example.  But she doesn’t listen long.  As soon as she determines the direction, she is off in a shot while Chloe listens a bit more, making a studied determination about whether the sound needs investigating or not.

            Bella thinks everything is a game.  She has no ability to distinguish when it’s time to be serious.  Chloe will stop for a drink and Bella will be all over her, standing in the water, stepping on the edge of the pan, causing it to tilt and spilling the water everywhere.  When a frog jumps in the old tubs Keith uses to soak his hickory wood for smoking meat, she jumps right in after it, NOT looking before she leaps, landing belly deep with a splash.  Reminds me of the puppy we had once who thought the rattlesnake next to the woodpile was a toy and tried to play with it.  We managed to get him away before he was bitten, but when we left for a camping trip, the neighbor found him one morning with fang marks in his neck.  Lucky for him, the skin there was loose and that’s all the snake got, not the muscle in his neck.

            Yet despite their own preferences, both of these dogs are adapting.  Chloe finally learned to quit running away and stand up for herself.  After a nip or two on the nose, Bella knows who the boss is now and she will actually “bow” before Chloe, lowering her height by crouching on her belly in front of her.  Chloe will now stand nose to nose with her, sniffing, and then suddenly take off in a run, looking behind to make sure Bella is chasing her.  Bella has learned to be a little more discreet and Chloe has learned that fun is still—well, fun, and it’s worth having some once in awhile.

            Older and younger people—older and younger Christians, no matter their physical age—need to learn from one another in the same way.  We teach our children not to go running down the halls, especially among older people who have issues with balance and might be knocked over.  A fall for the elderly could easily lead to a broken bone, and how many broken bones have led to a fatal case of pneumonia?  That’s not something a child would ever think of, which is why the adults must teach them.  In the same way, babes in Christ mustn’t go running helter-skelter down our spiritual halls with no concern about the fragile souls we might encounter.  Yet, the older ones need to learn that we must go out into those halls and encounter those souls, not sit quietly and safely in our pews.

            The younger must learn the need for wisdom and discretion and the value of quiet reverence, but the older must learn that “emotion” is not a four letter word. 

            The younger must learn respect for those they label “nay-sayers.”  They must realize that those old “fuddy-duddy” cautions come from concern for their younger souls’ safety and good, not from cowardice or a lack of faith.  The older must remind themselves that God called them to take a risk, to exercise their faith not to sit in dusty rooms discussing it.

            The younger in the faith and the older in the faith—we learn from each other, but not if we’re too busy putting one another down, refusing to listen to one another, with attitudes full of disrespect and disdain. 

The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their gray hair, Prov 20:29.

Dene Ward

            When we first moved here, the land was a pristine wilderness.  We were the only ones back here in the woods, half a mile off the highway.  People often asked, “How in the world did you even find this spot?”  If it hadn’t been for the sign on the highway, we never would have.

            Fast forward to the last few years.  The deeds on the rest of the parcels of acreage are finally clear and others have bought and moved in.  Oh, for the money to have bought it all way back then…

            As you come down our drive now, you pass one plot in particular where you wonder if you missed the “Junkyard” sign.  Empty fertilizer sacks, empty feed sacks, broken buckets with all their pieces, torn potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers, shattered plastic milk jugs, toys in various states of disrepair, gardening tools, rusty tractor parts and old horse trailers, torn screen segments, pieces of hose draped over fences, broken down appliances, seldom- or no longer-driven vehicles including a burnt-out semi tractor, and piles of pure garbage dot the landscape.  I knew we were in trouble the first week these folks moved in, when a used disposable diaper sat in the yard for days, and then they mowed over it, scattering it to the winds. 

            When you say anything to them, the standard reply is, “This is our land.  We can do with it what we want.  It’s no business of yours.”

            But it is, and do you know why?  Because every time the wind blows I must go around with a trash bag and pick up the litter than blows over or through the fence onto our property.  Every time a strong rain comes, more is washed down around the gate.  And should we ever decide to sell, the mere fact that any prospective buyer must go past that mess to get to us, will lower our property value.  Keith explained this last fact to them one day, and they said, “Huh?  Why?”

            Do you know what?  Sometimes I also fail to see how my life is anyone else’s business.  It’s easy to say, “This doesn’t hurt anyone, so why can’t I do it?” or, “Why does it matter how I let my attitude show?  They can just ignore me.”  In real life, that is impossible.  I do affect everyone who comes into contact with me.  I can make their days better or worse.  I can say something that will help or hinder.  I can do something that comforts or hurts.  What I cannot do is something that has no affect at all—it is simply impossible.

            My trashy neighbors have actually done me a lot of good.  I find myself thinking about these things more and more, wondering whom I am affecting every day, and hoping it is for the good.  I hope hearing about them will help you today too.

Your boasting is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Clean out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.  For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.  Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, 1 Cor 5:6-8.

Dene Ward

This is Part 2 of the new Monday series, "Whoso Findeth A Wife."

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing…Prov 18:22.

Does one become a good thing by simply saying, “I do?” In other words is every wife a good thing?  There might be a point to this we overlook.  Because we know the answer is “no,” we add a few words to the scripture.  “Whoso findeth a wife might have found a good thing.”  But that is not what it says!  A wife is something a man has to look for whereas women who want to marry are a dime a dozen.  We are also told that the worthy woman (wife) is hard to find (Prov 31:10).  Perhaps the point is that not every married woman deserves to be called a wife.

There was an era when society cast a blind eye on a man who had both a wife and a mistress.  Yet even then, most decent women would have been insulted to be asked to be a mistress instead of a wife. It was an honor to be a man’s wife, and one recognized the responsibilities it laid upon her in behavior and management of the home.  You’ve seen those old movies just like I have.  “You don’t think I’m good enough to marry!” the courtesan screams at the two-timing husband.  “Good enough to be a wife,” shows that the position was held in honor, even if not every man treated it that way. 

And nowadays?  It has become more important to assert and indulge self.  A woman may keep her own name, or add his as an appendage to it.  She may have a career, which he must realize takes precedence over the home they planned to make together, and which may even take precedence over his career.  She may farm out their children to someone else to raise, very often a stranger whose values may or may not reflect theirs.  And in many cases, she may not even marry him.  Why bother when society doesn’t even seem to care any more either?  Once again we see that attitude:  “What’s the big deal with being a wife?”

Management of the home has taken a bad rap.  When my husband tells people, “I have no idea what’s what.  She takes care of everything,” I don’t find it a bit demeaning.  Isn’t that what women say they want these days, some recognition and appreciation for the skills they use every day?  My husband comes to me when he runs out of toothpaste, when he can’t find his favorite jeans, and when he needs the receipt for the shoes whose sole separated after just a month’s wear.  I am the one who keeps supplies stocked, sorts and files the sales slips, and knows that he wore a hole in the seat of those jeans far too large to patch with anything but a quilt.  I am the one who knows which bill is due when, and whether we can afford that new chainsaw he thinks he needs.  That’s exactly what the word means in 1 Tim 5:14, the younger widow is to remarry and manage the home--oikodespoteo--to manage as a steward under a head.  It carries a lot of responsibility.  It is required in stewards that they be found faithful, 1 Cor 4:2.

But that isn’t the half of it.  What makes this wife a good thing is that he can trust her.  She does him good and not evil all the days of her life, Prov 31:12.  The modern woman is too worried about doing for herself to do for him.  I have heard far too many of them whine about needing “me time,” even Christians.  Jesus said to save your life you need to lose it in service to others.  We will never find “me time” if that’s all we ever look for.  To save your life, you must lose it.

Doing him good all the days of your life means whether he deserves it or not, whether he can do for you or not.  I watched my mother care for my father for twelve years before he died, day and night, sacrificing her own health and well-being, even though those final three or four years he had no idea who she was.  She remembered the vows she made, not just to him, but before God as well, sixty-four years before.  If anyone deserved to be called a wife, she did.

It is one thing to say, “I am this man’s wife.”  It is another to be his wife.  We should count it an honor to be our man’s wife.  Griping about the man or the job is not the way it’s done.

A worthy woman who can find? ...The heart of her husband trusts in her, And he shall have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life… She opens her mouth with wisdom; And the law of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, And eats not the bread of idleness, Prov 31:  10-12, 26,27.

Dene Ward

I married a firebug and raised two more.  All the camping we have done, I am sure, was just an excuse to build and sit around campfires, and since we moved to the country we have had a fire pit from the beginning.  Once the weather began to turn, we kept the hot dog and marshmallow industries in business almost single-handedly, sometimes with all the trimmings—chili, beans, slaw—other times with just a bag of chips on the side.  After the boys went away to college, any weekend they came home, they expected a hot dog roast at least once.  From October to April my grocery list always included those all-American sausages, “Nathan’s” hot dogs, of course.

Now that the boys are gone, Keith still likes to build a fire on cool nights.  Our partially wooded property always produces enough deadfall to keep the fires going, and even here in Florida, the weather is cool enough to make a fire pleasant, rotating yourself like a rotisserie, warming each side in turn. 

Keith will often throw a carefully collected and dried pile of Spanish moss on the flame.  At first the fire appears smothered, but the heat gradually burns through, producing thick billows of gray smoke that seem almost tactile, finally burning clear and shooting sparks and cinders up toward the sky.  We lean our heads on the lawn chair backs to see which will travel highest and glow longest before burning out in the cold blackness above the treetops.

Do you realize that is all an atheist believes life is? We are cinders in a bonfire.  Some of us simply dissolve in the fire.  Others rise on the updraft, some burning higher, larger, and longer than others, but burning out nonetheless, just like everyone else.  How can they survive believing this is all there is to it?  Some use that as an excuse to do whatever they want, regardless of who it hurts and the harm it causes.  Even then, as they grow older and realize the brevity of life, the pointlessness of it all takes its toll.  When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes; all he expected from his power comes to nothing, Prov 11:7.

But children of God know better. We are not just nameless cinders in the updraft of a brief blaze.  We have not only an eternal existence to look forward to, but a purpose here as well.  Very few of us will rise high enough and burn long enough for many to notice and fewer to remember, but we can all give warmth and light in a cold, dark world.  Maybe working so hard that we dissolve in the flame without ever rising above it is the better end.  How much warmth and light did you ever get out of a single spark anyway?

What are your plans for today?  Are you so busy you get tired just thinking about it?  And at what?  Is it something that will warm someone’s heart and light their way?  Even things that don’t seem likely can be made into an opportunity to do good.  If they cannot, maybe we should think twice about doing them.  We are all sparks in the fire, or else we are just trying to put it out.

You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hid.  Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand, and it shines unto all who are in the house.  Even so let your light shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven, Matt 5:14-16.

Dene Ward