My Daddy did not have Alzheimer's, but he did end his life with dementia.  What he did and did not remember was mystifying.  One day he asked about Silas, a great-grandchild he never saw past the age of 2, and the next he would ask me to take him to visit his mother, who died when Silas's uncle was not quite a year old and his daddy not even born.  One day he showed me all his important papers so I would know where to find them when he passed, and the next he did not know how to write a check.  Seeing this intelligent man reach the point that he did not even know how to use a toothbrush was devastating.
            But he never forgot the Lord.  With his severe heart disease, some days he could not get out of his chair.  Some days he was exhausted from just putting on a pair of socks.  My mother had to make hard decisions about what he could and could not do, where he could and could not go due to his health.  But any time he felt reasonably able and she told him it was Sunday, he would ask, "Can we go assemble with the saints today?"
            Yes, that is exactly how he said it:  "Can we go assemble with the saints?"  He was so steeped in the Word of God that he talked like the Word of God.  And he never forgot how to do that. 
            I hear a lot of people fussing about the older hymns, especially the somewhat stilted wording.  They make fun of the "King James lingo."  Do you know why those hymns are worded that way?  Because the poets who wrote them were steeped in the Word, and all they had was the King James Version in the 18th and 19th century.  Just like my Daddy, they knew their way inside out and upside down through that Bible.  They could quote more scriptures than most of us read in a whole day.  They made allusions to verses that go completely over our heads because we are so ignorant of the Word we claim to love.  "Ebenezer?!" I heard someone say with a snort one time.  "Who in the world even knows what that means?  Why do we have to sing such archaic songs?"  I would be ashamed for anyone to hear me say such a thing.
            This is not a diatribe against the newer songs.  I like some of them, but not all of them, just as I don't like all of the old ones.  It's about content.  Seems that today when someone lauds a song as one that comes straight from the Bible, most of the time it does—one verse, or even one phrase, repeated a dozen times.  Well, I think, at least it does come from the Bible, and there is a lot to be said for that, even if it can't compare with the quotes and allusions in the older hymns (like "Ebenezer").
            No, what I am saying this morning is that I need to be so steeped in the Word of God that I talk like it.  I should be able to make allusions to verses or even quote them as a normal part of my speech.  I should be able to use "the lingo," just like my Daddy did, without a second thought.  It just came out of him and it should just come that way for me, and you, as well.  Do you really love the Word of God?  Then talk like it.  You might use a newer version, but you can still sound a whole lot different than all the unbelievers out there.  In fact, that's what the Lord expects of you.
 
if any man speaketh, let him speak as the oracles of God… (1Pet 4:11).
 
Dene Ward
 

Our first morning in Apalachicola I peeked out our wooden blinds toward the Apalachicola Bay and onward to the Gulf.  The sun was just creeping up out of the water and lighting up the second floor veranda below us with a golden sheen.  Looking down and across the street with its sparse and slow moving traffic was a shop we had seen as we wandered the afternoon before.  "Old Stuff" the sign proclaimed and we could hardly wait to cross the street and give it a look.
            As we walked in a local policeman was coming out.  "If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere," he told us, and I believe he might have been right—assuming you were indeed looking for "old stuff."
            The shop area was not huge, but the owner had lined up table after table jammed against each other, and you could walk up and down the single-file-wide aisles and look at the things he had piled on them and beside them, and in some cases above or below them.  We saw huge old ice tongs—the kind the iceman would have used when he brought that block for your icebox.  We saw a real scythe.  This city girl is not sure she would have known what it was if Keith hadn't told me.  There was an old adding machine with what looked like at least 100 buttons on it.  A stack of LPs sat next to another of comic books, including the original "Iron Man," and behind them stood a crossbow.
            There was carnival glass, Depression glass, candy dishes of every size and shape, and an antique 8 place setting of china for a mere $75.  There were pull-up metal ice trays, metal serving trays with painted ads for Coca-Cola, and cast iron implements of every sort.  There were old soda bottles, bowls full of old silverware, and Emily Post's book, Etiquette.  A pile of early 20th century sheet music sat next to an ancient accordion.  Old dolls with porcelain heads and eyes that close when they recline, sat next to toy trains and model planes, jacks, and tiddly winks.  And that's not even the half.  One separate room held tools I had never seen, and probably never heard of, in my entire life.
            Keith asked the old gentleman about the soda bottles and what he got for them.  "Depends on their age," he said.  "The later ones go for about $5, and the older ones for up to $25."  Each.  We have a couple dozen of those $5 bottles ourselves.  The kind you used to pay a 10 cent deposit on.
            If respect and honor are measured in dollars, isn't it funny, or not, that the same old gentleman could probably walk down any street in our country and not command half the respect those old things in his shop do?  And why?  For the same reason his "old stuff" does get respect--because he is old.  In any other venue, our society wants nothing to do with the old.  Even those who are old want nothing to do with it—they do their best to get rid of its evidence with hair color, plastic surgery, and wrinkle cream.
            But the Bible is full of commands to respect the elderly—or else.  “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. (Lev 19:32)
            And more than that it tells us to walk, to live our lives, in the old paths.  Thus says the LORD: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls... (Jer 6:16)
            There is much value in old things.  But there is even more in older people, and in older ways of doing things—if they are old because they come from the Ancient of Days, a God who has been and always will be, and to whom we owe the utmost glory, honor, and respect—not by shouting, "Hallelujah!" but by obeying his ancient and everlasting word.
 
“As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. ​A stream of fire issued and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. (Dan 7:9-10)
 
Dene Ward

As mentioned yesterday, we recently spent a few lovely days in Apalachicola.  Our children pooled their resources and gave us an anniversary gift certificate for a turn of the 20th century inn, Florida cracker style with large windows and wrap-around verandas and white wooden rockers, antique furniture, narrow, steep stairways (no elevators!), and a widow's walk.  Our room had a four poster bed with bars for mosquito netting, wooden-slat blinds, a chamber pot (just for decor), a clawfoot iron tub and a pedestal sink.  The floors were all original long leaf pine and black cypress, complete with creaks!  Despite the authenticity, it was completely comfortable, well, except maybe for Keith having to carry our suitcases up three flights of stairs.
            Located in the center of this small fishing town, we were able to park at the inn and simply walk everywhere.  One day we went to the Orman house, an old home originally owned by the man who practically put Apalachicola on the map.  It is now a "state park" and the ranger was our guide.  This place is not just his job, it is his life.  He has written books on it, and he knows it like it is his own childhood home.  We saw all the furniture, dishes, and even clothes from the original family, up three stories all the way to the locked entrance to the widow's walk. As nice as this home must have been in the 1800s, it amazed us more to find out that it had been the guest house.  When the family's main home was destroyed they had moved into this one.  Being this family's guests was a privilege indeed.
            After we left the house, we began our walk back to the center of town down the residential streets.  Most of the houses were beautiful old frame homes in the same style as the inn—large windows, high ceilings, wrap around porches, and widow's walks, with professionally landscaped lawns. Before long we were taking pictures of ordinary peoples' homes instead of those in the historic district.
            After a few blocks we came upon the Chestnut Street Cemetery.  The cemetery is the oldest burial ground in the town.  It is said to have 560 marked graves as well as many unmarked ones.  Certainly it appeared full to me as we walked around what looked like a haphazard layout on a rough, uneven path shaded by old live oaks.  We had been given a map but it was almost impossible to find some of the graves.  It was equally impossible to read some of the gravestones because they were so old.  We found at least one grave of a woman born in 1700s. 
          Our wandering showed us the final resting sites of people who died in their 60s, 50s, 40s, and even 20s and teens.  We found Confederate soldiers and Union sympathizers lying not 50 yards apart.   We found large plots where the remains of wealthy family members all rested together, and small insignificant stones marking the graves of the poor, among them a marker reading "Rose, a Faithful Servant."  Then, not far from another large family enclave, we found the grave of a woman who had cut her husband's throat—and then her own. 
          We found many, many tiny stones marking the graves of infants, often several from the same family.  In one spot we found three names on one marker, a 40 year old father, his 2 year old child, and 6 month old baby, all victims the same year of a yellow fever epidemic.
          All this reminded me of the fourth Lamentation.  The whole focus of that psalm of lament seems to be that the destruction of Jerusalem did something no reformer ever could—it made all the people equal. 
         Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, the beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now their face is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. (Lam 4:7-8).  The wealthy among them, who neglected and even mistreated the poor, now looked no different and suffered no differently than the poor they had once looked down upon.
          Death does the same thing.  The large, ornate markers over the graves we saw were just as difficult to read due to age as the smaller plain markers, and the bodies beneath them would not have looked one bit better had they been dug up. 
          But death does do this:  it separates the righteous from the unrighteous.  The final destination of the former is far better than that of the latter.  In that they are not equal.  And if anything can finally make us realize that all these things we spend our lives on are pointless unless our work and service is directed toward God, perhaps it is that.  Unfortunately, too many of us learn this a little bit too late.
          If you can find the Chestnut Street cemetery, or one like it, maybe it would do you a world of good to walk through it soon.
 
One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them. (Job 21:23-26)
 
Dene Ward