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

Old St Thomas was a town originally settled by members of the Mormon Church.  When a land survey in 1871 shifted the Nevada state line to include the town and it was no longer in either Utah or Arizona, the church members abandoned it rather than pay the back taxes in gold that Nevada was demanding.  Soon others moved in and claimed both the lands and the buildings and the town continued on, booming to a population of 500.  Then the waters of Lake Mead began rising and it became apparent that Old St Thomas would soon be inundated.  Once again people began to leave.  Finally, on June 11, 1938, Hugh Lord, the last remaining resident left as well.  The "doors" to Old St Thomas were shut for good.
            I can't imagine a greater tragedy than the doors to the Lord's church closing.  Over our many years, several of the places we have been all those years ago have done exactly that.  In other places we know about, the membership has been cut in half and is continuing to dwindle.  The ones left are the elderly.  Where will they be in ten more years?  Sadly, they will probably go the way of Old St Thomas, with the doors closing after the last funeral has been held.  So what to do about it?
            The first thing is to realize that it is not the preacher's job alone.  What happened when the Jerusalem church was scattered?  …And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church which was in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles…They therefore that were scattered abroad, went about preaching the word (Acts 8:1,4).  Those who were scattered—the ordinary members—went everywhere spreading the Word.  The preachers, in this case the apostles, stayed in Jerusalem! 
            It is up to us.  If our coworkers and neighbors don't know we are Christians, why not?  We are to live in such a way that we look different and people ask about it.  If that has not happened to you, perhaps you need to examine your life.  We are to talk about our church family—not complain about them, but tell others how wonderful it is to be a part of a group who loves you and cares about you, who come running when there is a need, and that means we need to learn to be that group if we aren't.  And we should be so steeped in the Word of God that it cannot help but come out of our mouths any time we talk.  How else can we be ready always to give answer to every man that asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you (1Pet 3:15).
            Many gospel preachers labor valiantly in places where the growth has been slow or nonexistent for years, where the old-timers talk about how it used to be in the old days and blame the recent loss of numbers on anyone but their own lack of effort.  But even if the effort is there, the work may seem pointless.  Be careful about your judging.  Ultimately, we are not responsible for the numbers.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase, 1 Cor 3:6.  Just do your work, making no apologies for it, and trust God to do his part.  In one place Keith worked, he advertised a correspondence course and a young man obeyed the gospel because of it.  Every week after that he sat on a pew and worshipped with the others, but a couple of men in the business meeting wanted to do away with outreach programs like the correspondence course and an article in the local weekly paper.  "It does no good," they said, with that young man sitting there among them.  I wonder how that made him feel?  Even one soul is worth whatever effort it takes to save him. 
            Let's work the work, trust the Lord, and do our best to keep those doors open.  Interestingly, Old St Thomas has begun to reappear as the waters of Lake Mead recede.  It is now considered a historic site run by the National Park Service.  There are too many congregations relegated to history as it is.  Let's not add any more.
 
They then that received his word were baptized: and there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers…And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to them day by day those that were saved (Acts 2:41, 42, 46,47).
 
Dene Ward
 

In case you don't really understand Irma's magnitude, from east to west, it was 650 miles wide—the Florida peninsula averages 130 miles in width.  15,000,000 people in Florida alone were without power.  25% of the homes in Key West were completely destroyed, another 65% incurred major damage.  70,000 sq miles were impacted by at least tropical storm force winds.  The highest winds recorded were 185 mph.  That speed was maintained for 37 straight hours.  Over six million Floridians were told to evacuate.  Another few million did so voluntarily.  The score calculated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when measuring the power of hurricanes was 66.8, compared to 11.1 for Hurricane Harvey, and we all watched the devastation from that one (statistics from "Breaking Down Irma by the Numbers" on architecturaldigest.com).
            That is what we Floridians had to look forward to as Irma approached our coasts.  In the past we have had Category 2 and 3 storms hit the coast and, by the time they reached us, diminish to Category 1 or even mere tropical storm force (which is not as "mere" as it sounds when you are in the middle of it).  This one was to hit as a 5.  Everyone told us it would still be a 3 by the time it reached us.  That is why we counted our home as lost, carefully packing what was most important to us in the car and truck and moving them as far from the trees as we could, out into the field. 
            That is also why we spent the night that Irma came through in the car.  Would the car be blown over with us in it?  Possibly.  But far better that than being crushed under a thousand pound limb falling on the house, or being injured or maimed by the flying glass and debris when the roof blew off.  So as darkness fell and the wind and rain picked up, we scampered out to the car and climbed inside. 
            The backseat was crammed with a cooler and two boxes, so lowering the seat backs for a better sleeping position was minimal.  We clasped hands and said our final "together" prayer, and then did our best to go to sleep, which amounted to me being quiet for Keith, who was being quiet for me, as both of us sat/lay there with our eyes wide open, each praying our own continuous private prayer all night long.
            We had left the porch light on for our trip out into the field.  We are used to utter darkness out here in the country, no traffic lights, street lamps, or passing headlights, so that light was intrusive, but it also gave us a small sense of security.  Imagining what was going on would have been much worse.  Finally we both drifted off out of sheer exhaustion from the days of preparation before as well as a cold we had shared that week, and when I woke again I had to use the flashlight to see my watch.  It was 2:30 and the porch light was out.
            We had no idea what was happening, where the storm was, how strong it was.  Several times in the night, the wind howled a bit more loudly and the car rocked.  What surprised me was that behind those thick clouds a full moon actually cast a soft gray light and it was no longer black as pitch as it had been earlier.  Still, we could not tell what was happening.
            After a couple of hours we drifted back off again, rocking in our metal cradle.  At seven, almost as if an alarm had gone off, we both opened our eyes to dim daylight.  We looked out the rain-dribbled windshield and saw a 35 year old manufactured home all in one piece.  No debris, no missing roof, no broken windows.  Lots of yard trash, but no monster limbs crushing anything.  Keith got out into the rain to start up the generator and I flipped on the car radio.  The storm had weakened much more quickly than expected.  If it passed over Gainesville as a Category 1, by the time it reached us, it was to the west and down to tropical storm force winds, something no one had dare predict. 
            Keith came back for me then, and we rolled up our pant legs.  The waters were running off all around us nearly six to eight inches deep as the property drained, but we stood there and hugged each other and shouted a thank you over the slackening wind and rain, tears running down our faces.  God had answered all those prayers, and if you think one thank you was all He got from us, you still don't understand hurricanes and the One who made them.  Even now, over a month later, we are still saying thank you.
            And what did we learn from that?  A question popped up in our minds.  How many times have we said thank you for the sacrifice our Lord made to save our souls in the same fashion we said thank you for his saving our physical home, and a humble one at that?  How many times have we grabbed each other in pure, unadulterated joy and wept real tears over our salvation?  Once, maybe, at our baptism; another time or two when a particular sermon or talk hit us right between the eyes.
            We've been mulling that over for several weeks now.  I hope this week has helped you consider it, too.
 
Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift. (2Cor 9:15)
 
Dene Ward

I remember thinking once when I stepped into my sons' bedroom and saw toys lying everywhere, "It looks like a whirlwind came through here."  Actually, it didn't look half that bad.
            When daylight dawned after Irma blew through, the mess was astounding.  Trees had fallen across roads—huge water oaks bigger around than your kitchen table's width, pine trees taller than telephone poles, or enormous limbs from the live oaks.  Branches, limbs, moss and other air plants, brushwood and smaller sprigs of leaves, all lay across yards and fields.  For some folks shingles littered their property, for others pieces of eaves and white aluminum roof-overs lay twisted across the grass.  You could tell where the tornadoes had plowed through—trees lay in every direction like a pile of pickup sticks, their branches stripped bare of leaves.
            The clean-up started immediately.  First order of business was to start the generator so we didn't lose the almost thousand dollars' worth of food in the freezer and fridge.  It also gave us a couple of outlets for a lamp and a fan.  Then we set up the camp stove on the porch to avoid heating up an un-coolable house, and started the stovetop coffeepot.  After eating breakfast in a house we had deemed all but lost the night before, it was time to get to work.
            We tried to contact family.  For some reason we had a phone for a few minutes that morning and were able to reach our boys and my mother.  All were well and undamaged.  Then the landline went out and cell service was spotty and downright weird.  My phone kept trying to call out by itself, but of course, it couldn't.  Even on a good day I can only get one bar out here and only next to one window in the house.  Though the generator supplied those few outlets next to the fridge and freezer, my cell would not charge.  We lost it completely the third day. 
            Then it was time to check on neighbors.  We had heard the whine and rev of chainsaws earlier in the day, and because of them we were able to get down the highway, which was covered in sawdust from the tree and limb removal.  Everyone looked all right so we headed back to our own mess.
            And what do you do?  First, you haul in the water.  Heavy five gallon buckets, one next to each toilet for flushes, trying your best not to slosh it on the laminate floors.  They don't much like pools of water.
            Then you unpack.  All those things we had placed in the truck and car were unloaded, unpacked and put back into place.  Then we started on the outside.
            Keith swept off the roof, which was carpeted with twigs and leaves, and the carport which sat covered in an inch of blown-in water, and caked with mud on the edges.  We toweled off the outdoor furniture and unlashed the garbage cans.  We put the bird feeders back on their poles and filled them up.  Then came the hard part.
            Our garden cart holds about 10 cubic feet, Keith thinks, at least 6 five gallon buckets.  We filled it up half again as high as its sides sixteen times as we traversed the yard, back and forth for two days.  Bend over, lift, and drop; bend over, lift and drop.  Over and over and over until our backs ached and our heads swam from the changing height.  The temperature was slightly better than a usual September day in Florida—88 maybe instead of 93, but the humidity was nearly 100% from all the water everywhere.  It has been my experience with people that you really don't understand that until you have lived in it.  We were without an air conditioner for 9 days.  The doors swelled and became difficult to open and close.  The salt became one huge block, even in those "guaranteed" plastic sealed containers.  The dining chair backs were sticky in our hands and the table was covered with condensation every morning.  The bath towels would not dry out between uses unless they were hung out in direct sunlight for several hours with a good stiff breeze blowing.  And that's why 88 felt more like 98 and we wound up soaking wet.
            But remember what I said about the usual September day down here?  Normally the 90s don't leave us before October, and even then we might have a day or two when they return, all the way till November, with a heat index over 100.  Yet I have noticed that after every hurricane we get a little break.  A day in the 80s was a reprieve that we all needed.  And the weather continued that way for 3 or 4 days before the 90s began to show up again.  By then, for us, the brutal outdoor work was done. 
            I thought of the rainbow then, the one after the flood.  God gave them a sign that such a catastrophe would never happen again.  We know we will have more hurricanes, but we also know that God is aware of our needs.  Maybe those more moderate temperatures are His way of showing us that He cares.  We may be hurt by the warnings He has sent to a people who continually reject Him, but He will still show His mercy in ways that only the righteous may be able to understand.  For me, it led to far less griping about the inconveniences—no power, no running water, no means of communication.  It could have been so much worse, and for others it was, especially in the Caribbean, the Keys and South Florida.  But they, too, felt the cooler air for at least awhile, whether they acknowledged who sent it or not.
            God never promised to keep the storms of life away from us, but He has always promised to be with us as we endure them.
 
​For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat…(Isa 25:4)
 
Dene Ward

We woke Sunday, September 10, to the bluster of a nor'easter blowing in from the Atlantic to our east off the Jacksonville coast.  The wind tore at the tops of the trees and rain splattered against the house.  "Is this Irma?" I wondered at first, even though I knew it was too early, and soon discovered what it actually was.  From then on, things just got worse as Irma did approach us from the south.  Traffic on the highway ceased.  Children's voices as they played outside stopped.  I have never heard complete silence around this place.  Even before so many others moved in, something was always chirping, tweeting or crowing, mooing, bawling, or screeching.  But not that afternoon.  The birds knew what lay ahead, as did the animals.  Perhaps they even heard what I could not.
            Finally in the darkness we heard her come.  Rain didn't patter on the metal roof, it roared.  It came cruising across the field one white sheet at a time, crashing against the sides of the house like a giant had thrown an equally gigantic bucket of water against us.  It never came straight down.
            Then the winds began to out-roar the rain.  It seemed to start three or four sections over and come closer and closer and closer until it suddenly slammed us, only to start again.  That's when the whumps and thumps started.  The first time it was a limb, as big around as a man's thigh and about 8 feet long.  It missed the house.  The next time it was a slightly smaller limb and further from the house.  The third time it was a clatter as a green branch, the looks and size of a shrub hit the carport roof and bounced off. 
            It continued all night.  The house creaked, the metal screeched, and occasionally something we thought we had secured fell over or slid in the wind.  At 1:10 AM the lights flashed four times, but stayed on.  At 2:30 they went out completely.
            With all that going on, we did not get much sleep that night, but as the morning hours began to dawn, we both finally slept the sleep of exhaustion, hours of preparation and tension both bringing us at least a couple hours of rest.  We woke at 7 when the gray light finally gave us a view of the results.  And then the sounds completely changed.
            Chainsaws started almost immediately, clearing fallen trees from highways and driveways.  Generators roared to life all around us.  It isn't that we live that close to our neighbors, but generators are notoriously noisy monsters.  Big utility trucks rumbled by on the highways, surveying the damage and planning how to fix it.
            We got in the truck and tootled down the highway to check on our neighbors.  We passed mounds of sawdust where fallen trees had already been removed and then came to the Olustee Creek and heard another new sound—water lapping over the bridge.  It became apparent then that this would be a flood like we had never seen in our 35 years here.  Within a day the bridges over the Santa Fe River were inundated and round hay bales in normally dry fields bobbed like corks in the swelling currents.
            And gradually things returned to normal.  By September 12, the birds were back, tweeting in what seemed like joy, flitting through our trees in numbers larger than we had ever seen.  I filled the feeders and they came to celebrate with us—cardinals, chickadees, doves, titmice, blue jays and woodpeckers, and even a wild turkey that sauntered over from the woods to check out the remains of our now scraggly garden.  The storm that had taken so many days to arrive and had flummoxed so many meteorologists as to its path was finally over.
            It seems like nowadays everyone has something stuck in their ears.  If it isn't an earbud, it's a phone.  And at home, we seem afraid to let there be silence in our lives.  The television is always on, or the radio, or the stereo.  I wonder how many people hear what is happening in their world.  I wonder how many were completely freaked out by the things they heard when the power died.  This is life, people.   This is what you are missing. 
            Hearing is important.  Just ask my husband who began losing his at 24 and had his first hearing aid at 27.  Now labeled "profoundly deaf," he can no longer hear when the engine makes a funny noise in the car and assess it.  He cannot hear the smoke alarm or the ringing telephone.  We cannot whisper at night when the lights are out.  Once it's dark and he can no longer read my lips, we're done.  He would have loved to hear his children's voices and understood what they were saying.   And here the world goes, deafening itself to the sounds the Creator gave us to help us, to protect us, even to save us.
            And the Spirit bade me go with them, making no distinction. And these six brethren also accompanied me; and we entered into the man's house: and he told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house, and saying, Send to Joppa, and fetch Simon, whose surname is Peter; who shall speak unto you words, whereby you shall be saved, you and all your house. (Acts 11:12-14)
            So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Rom 10:17)
            It isn't just modern electronics that steal our hearing, it's the machinations of Satan who lies to us, who uses our culture and our selfishness against us.  That passage in Romans is followed by something we need to hear as well.  "Haven't they heard?  Yes, they have.  Didn't they understand?" but the answer to the problem is given in verse 20:  All day long I have held my hands out to a disobedient and contrary people."
            Open your ears to the Word of God and listen.  Those verses may have been said about the Jews, but that doesn't mean they cannot be true about us as well.
 
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. ​Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. (Isa 55:1-3)
 
Dene Ward

Six days before Irma arrived, we stood in line at Publix with our usual week's worth of groceries.  It was 8 AM on a Tuesday.  Behind us a lady guarded her cart like a Doberman, a cart crammed and stacked with as many cases of water bottles as it would hold.  In the aisle next to us another did the same.
            The next day nearly every store of every type in town was out of bottled water.  We had to stop at one of them and a lady stood shouting frantically into her phone, "They're totally out!  What are we going to do?" 
After she hung up, Keith offered, "Ma'am?  There is still plenty of water from the tap in your kitchen sink."
            Which is exactly what we did—pull the 20 empty gallon milk jugs that we keep in the shed and fill them up, along with my umpteen-quart pressure canner for drinking water and tooth brushing.  Then we filled a dozen five gallon buckets outside, plus a forty gallon barrel to use for flushes, baths, and dishwashing.  All we had to do was filter them through a cloth to get our dirt and leaves when it was time to use them. 
            I have never seen Florida prepare for a hurricane like she did for Irma.  Maybe it was the pictures coming out of Houston from hurricane Harvey a few weeks before.  Maybe it was the 185 mph winds.  Or maybe it was the sheer size of the storm.  At one point it covered the whole state except for the far western panhandle.
           I have never seen so many empty shelves in the stores.  I haven't seen long lines at the gas pumps since the gas shortage of the 1970s.  I have certainly never seen the National Guard handling those long lines when only one station out of 5 was open at an exit, the waiting cars trailing back down the off-ramp to the interstate itself.  I have never seen the evacuations, with the interstate at one point being opened to northbound traffic on both sides.
       "This is the one we never wanted to see," I heard more than one meteorologist say.  "You'd better prepare, Florida."  And prepare she did, all 21 million of her.
           And somewhere along the way I couldn't help but wonder, "Shouldn't we be preparing for the Lord this way?"  You may think you have plenty of time, but listen—for you, the Lord comes the day you die.  Once your life here is over, there are no second chances.
          And that life can end in a flash.  I have lost two cousins to automobile accidents, one in his 20s and the other at 16.  I have lost several close friends to disease in their 40s and 50s.  You just never know.
           And then there is this:  every day the Lord doesn't come is a day closer to the day He will. 
           Be prepared.
 
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ ​But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ​Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matt 25:1-13)
 
Dene Ward

Part 1 of five, the remainder being posted every day this week.  It's Hurricane Season and this is a remembrance from six years ago.

When you live in Florida, and probably anywhere in the Caribbean and along the Gulf Coast, you keep an eye on the weather from June 1 till November 30—hurricane season.  My earliest memory of hurricanes was Donna in 1960.  The next was Alma in 1966.  I know there were others that made a Florida landfall, Cleo and Dora, for instance, in 1964, Betsy in 65, and Inez in 66, but they must not have affected my very young life.  After that, we lived in Tampa which did not have a major hit for nearly 100 years, or so I recently heard.
            As a newlywed, we lived out of state for five years so I was hardly aware of Agnes in 72 and Eloise in 75, which created a 12-16 foot storm surge from Panama City to Ft Walton Beach.  Then we moved back to Florida and suddenly hurricanes were a fact of life again, one made more real because of the two little boys we now had to protect. 
            There was Elena in 85, which sent us to our first evacuation shelter.  Andrew in 92 was the one that really opened our eyes to the danger of hurricanes.  Good thing because Florida landfalls picked up suddenly after his arrival.  Gordon in 94 whipped around and made a U-turn, hitting Florida twice.  Erin in 95 followed suit with two landfalls in the state and then Opal arrived only a few weeks afterward with catastrophic damage.  Georges wiped out the Keys in 98 and Floyd came along the east coast in 99, giving us all a good scare.  Then 2004 brought four hurricanes over the state in only a few weeks—Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, and Ivan, which actually made its first landfall in Alabama, wiping out the Florida panhandle which sat on its dangerous eastern side, then crossing the southeast, heading back into the Atlantic, and traveling down to cross South Florida.  And those are just the highlights.
            So when Irma came rolling off the coast of Africa we kept an eye on her all the way across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean.  We watched as she grew from a tropical wave into a depression into a storm and finally into a hurricane.  We watched while her winds increased daily, peaking out at 185 mph—category 5.
            They kept telling us it would turn north—first, in time to miss the mainland altogether, then in time to miss Florida and bounce off the Carolinas, then in time to plow into Georgia.  Then we were told that Miami would take a direct hit and Irma would skirt our eastern coast and off to the northeast Atlantic.  Then the forecast moved west a bit, with this recalcitrant hurricane forecast to come straight up the spine of the state as a category 5.  By then she was really close, so that is what we had to plan for.
            If you have seen those Saffir-Simpson animations, you know what a category 5 will do to a house—destroy it.  That's what a category 2 will do to a mobile home.  We have lived in a doublewide "manufactured home" for 35 years.  Obviously we've taken care of it—a roofover, siding, skirting, hurricane tie-downs that were up to code at the time.  The inside has been practically rebuilt as the years passed and we saved enough money to do so.  But we were still facing the real possibility—probability—of losing it all.  That only took into consideration the winds, not the massive live oaks that spread their branches over us and make our air conditioning bill manageable.  Any one branch of those trees could destroy the house.
            And so we had some decisions to make.  What if we lost it all?  What would we try to save?  It surprised me how little it was.
            We packed a suitcase each of basics:  jeans, tees, underwear and socks, and a couple pairs of shoes.  After a hurricane there is neither time nor inclination for dressing up.  We packed photo albums, bank account ledgers and checks, 2 back-up thumb drives of files on the computer.
            We filled a box with our Bibles and all the notes from every class either of us has ever taught.  I added the September schedule for this blog in case I could find a way to keep it going.  Then we added probably a dozen books that were special to us, less than 5% of the total number we own.
            We are experienced campers.  If the house was destroyed, we planned to use the tent as housing until something permanent could be arranged.  So we packed a cooler, paper plates, paper towels, and cloth towels—things that needed to stay dry.  We figured we could find the rest of our camping gear in the debris.
            Everything we packed fit into the covered bed of the pickup, the trunk of the car, and its backseat. 
            I remember thinking, "We know that someday we will have to leave this place and downsize and we wondered what we would keep.  I guess we just found out."
            Keith nearly echoed my thoughts after our day of packing.  "We started from scratch 43 years ago.  We can do it again."
            There was a sadness about it, yes, and I shed a few tears, but that was all the time I had for that nonsense.  Irma was coming and time was short.  We had prayed for her demise for weeks and continued to for 24 more long hours.  But there was also a sense of acceptance as she came closer and closer.  When you pray, "Thy will be done," there must be, or it isn't really faith.
 
I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound; rottenness enters into my bones; my legs tremble beneath me. Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come... Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, ​yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places... (Hab 3:16-19). 

Dene Ward