Today's post if by guest writer Lucas Ward.

            In Deuteronomy 29, Moses reinstitutes the Covenant between God and the Israelites.  He begins by reminding the people of the extraordinary care God gave them while they were in the wilderness (vs 2-9).  For 40 years their clothes nor their shoes ever wore out.  Food and drink were also difficult to come by in the wilderness, and Moses says they, in fact, didn't eat bread.  They literally ate manna from Heaven and drank water provided by God. 
            After extolling the care of the Lord, Moses tells the people that he had called them together that day so that he could renew the covenant between them and God:  "So that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is making with you today, that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." (Deut. 29:12-13, emphasis mine).  Like a married couple who might want to renew their vows after going through a tough stretch, God is wanting to renew His covenant with the people and re-establish the relationship they were to have.  They were to be His, and He was to be theirs. 
            This close relationship offered blessings beyond belief, enumerated in chapter 27, and was to be a source of national pride.  Moses offers a quick warning, however.  "Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike." (vs 18b-19)  The covenant has been renewed.  The Israelites are God's chosen people.  That national relationship will not, however, save an individual who sins.  They could not rely on being born into the right nation to save them if they chose to live a sinful life.  In fact, Moses goes on to say, "The LORD will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man. . ." (vs 20).  The corporate relationship between God and Israel would not save the individual who chose to sin.
            I hope I barely need to make the application.  The Church, as the Kingdom of God on earth, has a close relationship with God as His chosen people (e.g. 1 Pet. 2:9).  That does not give me (or you) carte blanche to sin however I want.  Just because I show up on the right day to the right building and sing the right songs, eat the right ritual meal, and listen to true Gospel preaching doesn't mean I get into heaven if I chose "in the stubbornness of my heart" to live a sinful lifestyle.  Eph. 5:27  "so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." Therefore, if I am a spot or blemish on the Church, what is going to happen?  I'll be removed.  Nobody in going to sneak into heaven on the coat tails of others. 
            The blessings of being part of the chosen people of God are immense.  Just don't let it make you start feeling "too big for your britches". 
 
1Pe 4:17  For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God;
 
Lucas Ward

We have a neighbor who loves to fish.  In fact, he fishes so much that he cannot possibly use all the fish he brings home.  Lucky for us!  I now have an unending supply, usually of sea trout and shrimp, some of the best stuff out there.  When he brings it home, he even cleans it before he calls.  Amazing!  But someone has to do some messy work in order for anyone to enjoy the fruits of fishing.  Unless you go to a fish market, or the seafood section of your local grocer, or, even easier, the freezer case.
            Maybe that’s our problem—we’ve been to too many fish markets.
            Seems like when we go fishing for men, we don’t want anything messy.  The only ones we look for are the WASPs with nuclear families, unfettered by problems of any sort.  That’s where we build our meetinghouses, pass out our meeting announcements, and do our mass mailings.  We don’t want people with built-in problems, people overcoming addictions, people with messy family lives, people with “big bad sins” in their history.  No one wants a “high maintenance” convert who needs our support, our encouragement, our patience, and certainly not our time!  In fact, once a long time ago, Keith was chastised for “bringing the wrong class of people to church.”
            To whom did Jesus go?  Now all the publicans and sinners were drawing near to him to hear him, Luke 15:1, and I seem to remember a woman who had been married five times and was living with another man, John 4:18.  Would we have even given them the time of day?
            Jesus only appeals to those who need him, and unfortunately, people who have no “big” problems, no obvious needs, seldom think they need anyone.  It usually takes a crisis to wake them up.  So why are we so insistent upon turning our efforts to teach the gospel to the very ones who are least likely to listen?
            Maybe we no longer want to be fishers of men.  The “cleaning” is too messy, too difficult, too heart-wrenching, and too time-consuming. Instead of being fishers of men, as the old saying goes, we just want to be keepers of the aquarium, with a built-in filter (preacher) and someone else to feed the fish (elders and class teachers) so we can swim around in a pretty glass box with plastic mermaids and divers, and live our lives unbothered by things like helping one another grow to spirituality, and scraping the algae off our souls. 
            Maybe we have forgotten, or never even knew, the mindset of the first century church—a dynamic group of people, spreading God’s word to everyone they met, trying to take as many “fish” as they could to Heaven with them, regardless of how messy their lives were. 
            Maybe someone needs to come fishing for us again.
 
And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with the sinners and the publicans, said unto his disciples, “How is it that he eats and drinks with publicans and sinners?”  And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” Mark 2:16,17.
 
Dene Ward

A few weeks ago I started going through some old cooking magazines making a note of some recipes I had never gotten around to the first time I read them, intending to try several of them this time through.  One of the first things I tried was a Linzertorte. Although these pastries are usually reserved for the holidays—and I did find this one in a November/December issue—when I read through the ingredients I wasn't sure why.  Basically, it's a souped-up fruit pie, so wouldn't spring and summer be better?
            I pulled out the ingredients, most of which I had on hand, and went to work.  The crust was short and sweet.  I am sure trained pastry chefs have a name for it, but I just called it fancy shortbread: lots of butter, plus flour, spices, and ground up almonds and hazelnuts.  You roll half of it into the bottom of a 10 inch tart pan, then add about an inch more up the sides of the pan.  Then you spread most of a jar of red currant or red raspberry or apricot preserves on the bottom.  So far it had been simple, but as I rolled out the rest of the dough, cut it into strips, and attempted a lattice top, the only real problem I had arose.  Unlike regular pie dough, these strips were so tender I had a horrible time getting them off the counter in one piece.  They kept breaking on me.  Nearly every strip became two or more pieces of a strip pinched together.  But after brushing with egg wash, sprinkling with sparkling sugar, and baking, most of the piecing together was well camouflaged and it looked almost pretty.
            So, was it any good?  Well, yes, it tasted fine.  But this was neither Keith's nor my idea of a fruit pie and I suppose that is what we thought we were getting.  The "fruit" wasn't juicy enough and despite its shortness, the pastry wasn't flaky enough to suit us.  I doubt I will go to the trouble again.  Maybe it just comes down to tastes and expectations.  These recipes wouldn't keep showing up if someone somewhere didn't like them.
            And I find that similar to the denominations.  People want certain things and they go where they can get it.  The thing that keeps bothering me is why no one seems to think that God has the right to a choice—in fact, He's the only one who has the right since He is the one being worshipped.  Or is He?  Maybe that's the issue when all is said and done.  I want what I want and I don't much care whether He likes it or not, and besides, God wants me to be happy, spiritually fulfilled, and feeling good when I leave so of course He will like what I offer.  Really?  Try that the next time you give your husband tickets to the opera for his birthday.
            Here is the bottom line:  if God asked for a Linzertorte I would make him one, despite the fact that I don't much care for them and think my own blueberry pie with a homemade flaky pie crust is much better.  Because what He wants should be the only thing that really matters.
 
You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him (Deut 13:4).                                   
 
Dene Ward

I had an up close and personal encounter with a wildflower a couple of years ago.  When we plant a new bed out in the field, we baby it the first year.  The point is for them to grow up scattered in the grasses and among other wildflowers in a natural way, but if you don’t get them off to a good start, they won’t stand a chance with all the competition out there for ground space and rainwater.
            So I was weeding the latest patch, which we had let go far beyond the normal time span.  I had difficulty even finding some of the small plants amid all the waist high grass and weeds.  I had nearly finished, was soaking wet and black up to my elbows, when I noticed one more low-growing weed and bent over to pull it.  I did not see the bare stalk of the wildflower right between my feet, leafless and flowerless, standing three feet high.  I did not know it was there until, as I bent over, it slid right into my eye like a hot wire.  Which eye?  The one which most lately has been operated on, the one with the shunt, the capsular tension ring, and the silicone lens, the one that already hurts the most. 
            The doctor and I spent nearly two weeks fixing me up after this little mishap, checking to see if there was any permanent damage, checking to see if the shunt had been knocked out of place, checking for infection, and worse, for plant fungus.  As it turns out, all I had was a hematoma and a laceration, but it was an exciting couple of weeks.
            That was too close and personal an encounter with a flower, but we can never be too close and personal with God.  I have had to learn that.  The prevailing sentiment many years ago seemed to be that we did not want to do or say anything that might make someone apply a religious pejorative to us indicating belief in something other than correct Bible teaching about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  Instead of saying, “I’m blessed,” instead of saying, “God took care of me,” indeed, instead of attributing anything to the providence of God, we said, “I’m lucky.”  We wouldn’t want someone to get the wrong idea, would we?
            Where did we come up with that?  Read some of David’s psalms.  He gave God the credit for everything.  Read Hannah’s song, or Moses and Miriam’s after crossing the Red Sea.  Since when don’t the people of God tell everyone what God has done for them?
            Read some of Paul’s sermons.  He does not seem a bit concerned that someone might use what he says to give credence to false teaching.  “You know that idol you have out there?” he asks the Athenians, “the one to the Unknown God?  Let me tell you about him.”  He tells Felix, But this I confess to you that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers, Acts 24:14.  It didn’t matter a bit what people called it, as long as he could talk about it.  In fact, he used their misconceptions as opportunities to preach the Gospel.
            Maybe that is my problem—I don’t want to talk about it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  It has nothing to do with whether someone gets the wrong idea about the Truth, but everything to do with me feeling ill at ease, or downright embarrassed.  I don’t want to be called a religious fanatic and certainly not a “Holy Roller!”  Yes, I want a close, personal relationship with God, as long as no one else knows about it.
            But here is the deal:  If I am too embarrassed by my relationship with God to even acknowledge it, then He won’t acknowledge me either, and I am the one with everything to lose. 
            Go out there today and say or do something that will make someone else curious enough to ask you a question.  Then open your mouth and unashamedly tell them how wonderful an up close and personal relationship with your Creator and Savior really is.
 
Everyone therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in Heaven.  But whoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in Heaven, Matt 10:32,33.
 
Dene Ward

Maybe it will say a lot if I tell you that the cover of this book looks like something you would pick up on the bookstand at the grocery store.  Both the title and the picture, a decidedly naughty looking woman peering at you over her veil upon which the title is printed, would grab the attention of anyone who thinks they are spiritual but wants an easy read to prove it.
            Let's give Ms. Higgs her due.  As she tells us in her introduction, she researched all these women—you can name them yourself and not miss a one—in over fifty commentaries and used 10 translations of the Bible.  She did work at it.  But it seems to me that she is more an entertainer than a teacher.  Each chapter begins with a fictional account that is supposed to be a modern day equivalent of that particular woman in the Bible.  Immediately following, is her commentary on the Biblical narrative, often interspersed with humor or sarcasm.  She does keep your interest even when, as I did not one fourth of the way through it, you wish you didn't have to finish it.
            Here is my problem with her fictional introductions:  absolutely none of them is applicable to me or anyone I know.  These made-up situations are hardly commonplace.  A couple are downright ridiculous.  And they are too long.  The first one takes up 12 pages when the Biblical narrative itself only takes 17.  A few more run 8 and 12, or thereabouts.  At least one is actually longer than the Biblical portion.  I would far prefer her to use those pages giving me several different modern, everyday applications in the same amount of pages, situations that people are a whole lot more likely to face.  That way she would have come much closer to touching everyone's life.   She does offer discussion questions at the end of each chapter, some good, some so-so.
            Another plus for her:  she got a few of the trivial things correct that many do not.  On the other hand, all those commentaries have led her to make some speculations that she then treats as fact.  I make speculations all the time when I teach, carefully labelling them as such and always saying, "We just don't know for sure."  I do this to make the characters real people with real reactions and real emotions, not some spiritual super-hero(ines) about whom I can then excuse myself by saying, "I could never do that."  When you speculate, you must be very, very careful, and I do not feel she was careful enough.
            My bottom line is:  if you are interested in real Bible study, do not buy this book.
            Bad Girls of the Bible is published by Waterbrook Press.
 
Dene Ward

Chloe is growing quickly.  She is now seven months old and about two-thirds the size of our seven year old Australian cattle dog Magdi.  Sometimes I have to look twice to tell which one I am looking at.  Yes, I know that does not mean much considering the state of my vision these days, but I know these dogs.
            Chloe, however, is still very much a puppy.  She will bring her small football to you to throw over and over, or her old rag to play tug-o-war again and again after she manages to yank it away from you.  You will always wear out before she does.  She prances and cavorts, romps and darts, and any other word in a thesaurus describing playfulness. 
            A few weeks ago she started chasing butterflies.  We have all sorts our here in the country, black and orange monarchs, yellow and black swallowtails, sapphire blue and black hairstreaks, and the ubiquitous canary yellow sulphurs that flit all over, changing direction almost faster than your eye can follow.  Those are Chloe’s favorites to chase, maybe because they are smaller.  Some of the swallowtails are nearly as big as her head.
            One morning, after Magdi had already left my side, and Chloe was still prancing along, another yellow butterfly flitted into our path.  Just as usual, Chloe chased it.  And then, when she least expected it, she caught it.  The look on her face was shock, then panic as the butterfly evidently kept on flitting inside her mouth.  Without hesitation, she opened her mouth and the butterfly flew out, none the worse for wear, and Chloe happily resumed the chase.
            I thought then, once again, of Jesus’ admonition to become as little children.  Was this yet another way that children are superior to adults, at least in the kingdom?  They do not realize that, with their feet firmly planted on the ground, they should not be able to catch something that can fly.  They do not know when something is supposed to be impossible.  They do not know the meaning of “illogical.”  They do not know what science has and has not discovered.  How often do we let our maturity in the world rob of us our childhood in the kingdom?  How often have I uttered that pessimistic comment, “It’ll never work?”  How often do we look at a new Christian, especially one who has come from a difficult background, and say, “He won’t last?”  How often do we look at the physical to judge the spiritual--placing our trust in things that look strong and effective on the outside, and never allowing childlike trust to take a chance on God’s power—and why, oh why, do we even consider that “taking a chance?”  Why do we refuse to pray for the impossible? 
            Magdi often plays with Chloe, especially in the cool of the evening, but more often she is content to sit and watch.  She keeps a good humor about her most of the time, but sometimes Chloe’s high spirits annoy her.  When Chloe is chasing a butterfly, not paying attention to where her romps take her, and she runs right over Magdi, she is often rewarded with a growl, or even a nip.  When Magdi actually snorts, it seems for all the world like a grumpy old woman saying, “When will she grow up?  She will never catch the thing, and she is always getting in the way and causing me trouble.”
            I suppose Magdi doesn’t remember the day she jumped over three feet off the ground and caught a bird on the wing.  I mourned the beautiful cardinal, but her form was beautiful, elegant, and to see a dog jump higher off the ground than she is tall and catch a flying bird is amazing.  You see, Magdi was a puppy once, too.
            Maybe only silly little puppies chase butterflies and birds; but then, only puppies catch them.
 
Woe to those that…rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek Jehovah, Isa 31:1.
 
Jesus, looking upon them said, With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God, Mark 10:27.        
 
Dene Ward

My husband never knew this and now he will be impossible to live with on this day, demanding tomatoes at every meal, as well as snacks and desserts as a celebratory measure.  April 6th is National Fresh Tomato Day.  For 40 years he has planted enough tomatoes in our garden to feed the entire county.  To his credit, he has shared probably a literal ton with church members, neighbors, piano students, and doctors.  His favorite thing in the world is a platter of the things sliced several inches deep on the dinner table every night for as long as the season lasts.  And that means I have to do something with the ones that don't fit on that platter before they go bad.  So while the boys were still home, I canned forty quarts or more every year, plus a few pints of tomato sauce, plus tomato juice, and once or twice, even some ketchup and tomato jam.  All of those things involved a huge amount of work.
            Canning tomatoes is one of the more difficult garden season chores.  You wash each and every tomato.  You scald each and every tomato.  You pound ice blocks till your arms ache in order to shock and cool each and every scalded tomato.  You peel each and every tomato and finally you cut up each and every tomato.  Then you sterilize jars, pack jars, and process jars.  Only 7 jars fit in the canner at a time, so you go through that at least 6 times for canned tomatoes alone.
            And you will have more failures to seal with canned tomatoes than any other thing you can.  As you pack them in, pushing down to make room, you must be very careful not to let the juice spill over into the threads of the jar.  And just in case you did that heinous crime, you take a damp cloth and wipe each thread of each jar.  Tomato pulp will keep a perfectly good jar, lid, and ring from sealing.
            In order to have that many tomatoes you must be willing to cut up a few that are half-rotten, disposing of the soft, pulpy, stinky parts in order to save sometimes just a bite or two of tomato.  Now that there are only two of us, I usually limit myself to 20+ quarts.  I still put one in every pot of spaghetti sauce, one in every pot of chili, and one in every pot of minestrone, as well as a few other recipes, it’s just that I don’t make as many of those things as I did with two big boys in the house.  Now I can afford to be a little profligate.  If I pick up a tomato with a large bad spot, I am just as likely to toss the whole thing rather than try to save the bite or two that is good, especially if it is a small tomato to begin with.  Why go to all that work—washing, scalding, shocking, peeling, cutting up, packing—for a mere teaspoon of tomato?
            But isn’t that what God and Jesus did for us?  For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leads unto life, and few are they that find it. Matt 7:14.
            The Son of God, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:6-8.  And he did that for a half—no!--for a more than half rotten tomato of a world.  He did that to save a remnant, a mere teaspoon of souls who would care enough to listen and obey the call. 
            Sometimes, by the end of the day, when my arms are aching, my fingers are nicked and the cuts burning from acidic tomato juice, my back and feet are killing me from standing for hours, and I am drenched with sweat from the steamy kitchen, I am ready to toss even the mostly good tomatoes, the ones with only a tiny bad spot, because it means extra work beyond a quick slice or two.  Aren’t you glad God did not feel that way about us?  It wasn’t just a half rotten world he came to save, it was every half rotten individual in that world, of which you and I are just a few.
 
But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Rom 11:4-5
 
Dene Ward
 

Before one of the surgeries, Keith built a bird feeder outside the window next to my favorite chair--a metal trough about five feet long on a wooden frame.  I must admit I have enjoyed this thing a whole lot more than I expected to.  We keep it filled with birdseed and Keith hung a cylinder of suet over it as well. 
            First the cardinal couple came to dine. They spend their time in the trough with the seed.  The suet is not their cup of tea, so to speak, but several others seem to prefer it   A hummingbird came and hovered next to it, trying his best to figure out how to get the nectar out of it, but finally gave up and flew back to the hummingbird feeder on the other side of the house.
            Then the catbird came calling.  He stood under it, with the bottom of it just out of reach.  First, he tried the hummingbird’s trick, but a catbird cannot hover, he quickly found out as he fell with a splat into the trough.  Then he started jumping up and down, trying to peck when he reached the height of his jump, once again falling into the trough, this time nearly doing a backward somersault.  Poor bird, I hope he didn’t hear me laughing at him, but you never think about a bird being so awkward as to fall on his backside.  Maybe he did hear me, because he left and did not come back for a long time.
            The next morning I looked out and a wren had landed on top of the hanging suet and calmly leaned down, pecking away.  Every so often he looked around as if to say, “See?  This isn’t so hard.”  After a few days he had pecked away most of his sure-footing.  The top of the suet was no longer flat, so gradually one foot would slide down and hang onto the side.  Every morning he pecked away until finally there was no room at all on the top and both feet clung to the side of the suet.  Then came the day he got a little too self-confident.  I looked out and he was hanging upside down from the bottom of the suet.  His little feet curled in tightly and deeply and he seemed to have a good hold, but he had not reckoned with his desire to eat.  He pecked so hard that he pushed himself off the suet and he, too, landed on his back in the trough.  Was he embarrassed?  No way.  He just hopped back up on the side and kept pecking.  There are things more important than saving face.
            Along came a little gray titmouse with his gray crest, big ringed eye, and the slimmest breast I had ever seen on a bird.  He too, figured out how to land on the suet, hang on, and peck.  Then one morning the suet cylinder fell and lay across the trough.  Here comes the catbird ready for an easy meal. The titmouse arrived shortly after and must have known something about catbirds.  He sat in the azalea and squealed ferociously until he finally scared the catbird away.  As soon as the titmouse had eaten and left, the big coward came back, but not long afterward the cardinal couple flew at him and off he went again.
            All of this makes me think about our efforts to feast on the bread of life.  Do we mind looking a little foolish sometimes in our eagerness to learn and grow spiritually?  Do we give up after one or two tries if things are more difficult than we expected?  Are we too frightened to admit we live on the Word of God—afraid we won’t be accepted by our peers, afraid we will be ridiculed, afraid no one will like us any more, afraid it may cost us socially, economically, or maybe some day, even physically?
            The little birds at my feeder teach me profound lessons every day.  Sometimes I need a prod to be more like the feisty little titmouse or the ingenious little wren who couldn’t care less how his hunger for suet makes him look.  Sometimes I need to be reminded that there are more important things than what everyone thinks about me, and that fear of others can make you look the most ridiculous of all.  Indeed, if a tiny little titmouse can scare away a big old catbird all by himself, why can’t I make Satan’s minions run away, especially with all the Help I have at hand?
 
As newborn babes long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that you may grow thereby unto salvation, 1 Pet 2:2.
 
Dene Ward
 

National Carrot Day was begun in 2003 in an effort to increase awareness of the beneficial compounds of carrots.  I am told it is celebrated around the world with carrot parties, featuring carrot dishes and guests dressed in orange or in some cases in carrot costumes.
            Carrots do far better up north than down here in Florida.  Whether it's the climate or the lack of nutrition in the sandy soil, I don't know, but we seldom bother planting them.  One year we did though, planting them late by Florida standards, so I was just pulling carrots the first week of June.  It wasn’t difficult; I pulled the whole row in about 15 minutes.  Still, it was disappointing—a twenty foot row yielded a two and a half gallon bucket of carrots that turned into a two quart pot when they were cleaned and sorted, cutting off the tops and tossing those that were pencil thin or bug-eaten.
            Then I thought, well, consider the remnant principle in the Bible.  Out of all the people in the world, even granting that the population was much less than it is now, only eight were saved at the Flood.  Out of all the nations in the world, God only chose one as His people.  Out of all those, only one tribe survived the Assyrians, and out of all those, only a few survived the Babylonians and only 42,000 of those returned to the land out of the 1,000,000 or so in Babylon.  What's that?  4.2%?
            Jesus spoke of the wide gate and the narrow gate.  Surely that tells us that though God wishes all to be saved, only a few will be.  So out of a twenty foot row of carrots, I probably threw out half.  Then we threw out a third of those that were too small to even try to scrub and peel.  Yet we probably did better with our carrots than the Lord will manage with people!  And I learned other principles that carrot-pulling day, too.
            When I pulled those carrots some of them had full beautiful tops, green, thick-stemmed, and smelling of cooked carrots when I lopped them off.  Yet under all that lush greenery several had very little carrot at all.  They were superficial carrots—all show and no substance.  Others were pale and bitter, hardly good for eating without adding a substantial amount of sugar.  Then under some thin, sparse tops, I often found a good-sized root, deep orange and sweet.  Yes, they were all the same variety, but something happened to them in the growth process.
            Some of us are all top and no root.  It always surprises me when a man who is so regular in his attendance has so little depth to his faith.  Surely sitting in a place where the Word is taught on a consistent basis should have given him something, even if just by osmosis.  But no, it takes effort to absorb the Word of God and more effort to put it into practice, delving deeper and deeper into its pages and considering its concepts.  The Pharisees could quote scripture all day, but they lacked the honesty to look at themselves in its reflection.
            And there are some of us who have little to show on the outside, but a depth no one will know until a tragedy strikes, or an attack on the faith arises, or a need presents itself, and suddenly they are there, standing for the truth, showing their faith, answering the call.  I knew one man who surprised us all with his strength in the midst of trial, a quiet man hardly anyone ever noticed.  Yet his steadfastness under pressure was remarkable.  I knew another who had been loud with his faith, nearly boasting in his confidence that he was strong, yet who shocked us all with his inability to accept the will of God, his assertions that he shouldn’t have to bear such a burden when he had been so faithful for so long.  Truly those carrot tops will fool you if you aren’t careful.  “Judge not by appearance,” Jesus said, “but judge righteous judgment.”  Look beneath those leafy greens and see where and how your root lies.
            Evidently the principles stand both for man and carrots.  Don’t count on your outward show, your pedigree in the faith.  Develop a deep root, one that will grow sweeter as time passes and strong enough to stand the heat of trial. 
            And don’t assume you are in the righteous remnant if that righteousness hasn’t been tested lately.  God hates more to throw out people than I hate to throw out carrots, but He will.  Don’t spend so much time preening your tops that your root withers.  And finally, only a few will make it to the table; make sure you are one of them.
 
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20            
 
Dene Ward          

Out here in the sticks we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of pine woods planted by the paper companies.  Do not let anyone tell you that we are depleting our forests by using so much paper.  Old growth forests are not used for paper goods; they are used for that pretty furniture you own.  The paper companies regularly plant the trees they eventually send to the mills. 
            I always get a start when I pass a wooded section that has been standing for several years, and find that it has been taken down, soon to be replanted with small saplings.  And I have noticed several times that when the trees are removed, a rundown wooden shack sits in the open, formerly hidden by the rows and rows of sixty foot tall pines.  The porch sags, the roof waffles, the windows are paneless, with dangling shutters or none at all.  There are no power lines and no well tanks.  These dilapidated houses may have been empty nearly a hundred years.
            I find myself wondering who lived there.  None of these places could be more than twenty by twenty, many smaller, probably with one or two rooms, three at the most.  Kitchens were often on the back porch because of the heat and humidity in this area; families bathed in wash tubs in the kitchen or on the back porch, and outhouses were the plumbing of the day.  Did a young couple raise a family there?  In those days, they often had as many as nine or ten children.  When it rained they all had to play inside! 
            And when it rained the roof leaked.  When the winter wind blew, it seeped in between the board or log walls.  And no telling what might crawl in through the cracks in the floor boards—if there was even a floor.  Yet I know happy families lived there, and good citizens grew up from such poverty.  I know some of those elderly people and they talk of those days with a lot of smiles and chuckles.
            Yet here I sit, complaining because sometimes on a clear, still day in the country your electricity goes out for no apparent reason, and if the wind blows at all you can count on it.  No electricity means no air conditioning and no well pump.  Whenever a new neighbor moves in between me and the highway, the phone company will inevitably cut my line when they put in the new one.  And I don’t have a thing to wear!  Well, if I lost ten pounds I might.  I wonder if those folks who lived in that shack had enough food to even worry about getting too heavy. 
            These little shacks are reminders to me to be grateful for what I have, and not to covet the material blessings of another.  I can be happy anywhere.  I can raise godly children anywhere.  I can make a good marriage anywhere.  I can be a child of God no matter where I live or how.  But no mansion on earth will make me happy if that is all I care about. 
 
Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world for neither can we carry anything out; but having food and covering we shall with that be content. 1 Tim 6:6-8.
 
Dene Ward