A long time ago we moved to a small farming community where Keith preached full time.  Most of the church members lived out from the town in white two story Midwestern farmhouses in the middle of acres and acres of corn and soybean fields, so they didn’t know many of the townsfolk either.  Because we had few prospects given to us, Keith spent a lot of time knocking on doors. 
 
           We saw in the weekly newspaper a notice about a Bible study being held in a home in the middle of town on Thursday mornings.  The item said all were welcome, so being at loose ends yet again one Thursday, Keith and I drove the few blocks to the dark brown frame house and knocked on the door.  We were welcomed warmly, though looks were exchanged among the room full of women.  Keith was the only man there.

            In the middle of the tiny living room sat a white-haired woman in her 70s, slim and well-kept in her blue flowered shirtwaist dress.  Her manner left no doubt that she considered herself the Bible authority in the class and her word was not to be questioned. 

She started the class, which it seemed had reached the third chapter of Exodus—the burning bush.  She proceeded to tell us that the Holy Spirit had visited her the night before and told her that Moses had not known who he really was that day in the desert, and that the reason for this visit from God was to tell him, then persuade him to return to help the Israelites, who were after all his own people.

            After a few minutes of this, I raised my hand and said that was odd since the Holy Spirit tells us in the book of Hebrews that Moses knew exactly who he was from his early years, his mother having been his nurse after all.  Then I read aloud Heb 11:23-27. 

An embarrassed silence followed.  I was only 21.  I still thought that people who were honestly seeking the Lord would change the minute they heard the truth read from God’s word.  Instead we were told that she had no idea why the Spirit told her these things, but since he did they were obviously the real truth and I was wrong.  Then the class continued for another hour.  As we left we were politely told that troublemakers were not welcome and it would be best if we did not return.

It did not take long before I found others who would not listen to the plain truth of God’s word.  I even discovered that good-hearted Christians will not always see the truth as easily as I had thought.  And then one day not more than ten years ago I was slapped in the face with the realization that I had read a passage for years and completely missed a vital truth in it.  When someone rubbed my nose in it I was appalled at how I could ever have missed it.

So what has this taught me?  It has not taught me that as long as you are a good-hearted person you can believe a lie and still be perfectly fine with God.  Jesus said of the Pharisees, you compass sea and land to make one proselyte and when he has become so, you make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves, Matt 23:15.

But it has taught me not to be so judgmental of others.  Things can be difficult to see, not because we have hard hearts but because we have always looked at it one way and never even thought there might be another way.  They can be hard to understand because we have put all the emphasis on one phrase and totally overlooked another. 

And it has certainly taught me to listen to others, to weigh their words carefully, not simply dismiss them with a sneer or a tone of outrage.  I may say I don’t believe I am always right, but when I refuse to even consider what others have to say, I am putting the lie to my words.

Now back to the lady who listened to whoever it was she thought she saw the night before.  God cannot lie, the scriptures tell us.  He will not contradict himself.  If this woman had the knowledge of the scriptures she claimed, she would not have made such an obvious mistake.  She needed to have heeded the warning of Paul in Galatians 1:8, Though we or an angel from heaven preach to you any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be accursed.  The Holy Spirit would never change the word of God.
Jude tells us in verse 3 that the word was once for all delivered to the saints. 
Can you imagine how discouraging it would be to think that God might be changing things around night after night and no one ever told you about it?

He isn’t, and he won’t.  Our job is to make certain we know it well, to check out those who teach it, and to never allow preconceived notions to keep us from seeing the obvious in it.
 
Every word of God is tried; he is a shield unto those who take refuge in him.  Add not to his words, lest he reprove you and you be found a liar, Prov 30:5,6.
 
Dene Ward

We were hiking a mountain trail, sometimes straight up, sometimes straight down.  A babbling brook ran to our left at the bottom of a fifty foot ravine, making miniature waterfalls over rocks and roots long before we reached the larger and taller falls, weeping into a pool and running on down the hill.  As we made our way over another rise and around a bend, the leaf-strewn trail suddenly dipped and we found ourselves in a cypress swamp.  What?
 
           Oh yes, I remembered, we were not in the mountains after all; we were in Florida.  Yet it would have been easy to have fooled a person who had slept through the trip over rivers with names like Suwannee and Ocklockonee, traveling deep into the piney woods of the Big Bend, down to the swamplands.  If they had wakened in the campground on the ridge overlooking the river valley below, and walked the first mile of the path, they would have thought they were on the Appalachian Trail somewhere.

            But the sight of those huge cypresses, the bottoms of their trunks billowing like the folds of a skirt in the water, their knees standing two and three feet high around them, would have given pause.  Suddenly they would realize the shrubbery beneath the trees in the woods wasn’t rhododendron and mountain aster, but palmetto and needle palms.  The ground wasn’t hardwood leaf mold over rock, but pine straw matting over red or yellow clay and sand.  This is Florida—perhaps different from most other places in the state, but Florida nevertheless. 

            Where are you spiritually?  Are you where you think you are?  Or did you sleep through the first half of your life, and when your spirituality awakened, look around and at first glance think, “Yes, this is the right place,” when it was only a close facsimile?  Did you find yourself among people who seemed to be doing the right thing and so fail to take a really close look at your surroundings? 

            Why are you where you are?  Is it just because this is where Mom and Dad put you, or because you checked the map and stayed awake for the trip, knowing why you made which turns, and not only how to tell others to get here, but why they should be here with you?

            If you are in the mountains of Appalachia, you will need to look out for a few rattlesnakes and copperheads, but those are shy reptiles that will usually run if given the opportunity.  In a Florida swamp you will also need to watch out for cottonmouths and alligators.  Cottonmouths are notoriously aggressive—they will charge from cover, and then chase you.  And alligators move faster than anything that ungainly has a right to.  If you are wary of the wrong dangers, you are much more likely to be taken unawares. 

            God expects you to know where you are spiritually and why you are there.  He doesn’t want people who are where they are simply out of convenience and family tradition.  Where is the service in that? 

            He expects you to look out for the dangers that might surround you.  How can you be alert if the dangers you expect are not the ones in that area?

            And how will you ever find God if you are not where you thought you were?
 
From there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find Him if you search after Him with all your heart and with all your soul, Deut 4:29.
 
Dene Ward

On our recent camping trip we had a lot of wildlife for company.  Yet it was neither frightening nor bothersome.  The only animal we saw besides the usual birds and squirrels that lived in the campground itself was a young raccoon who moseyed up to the woodpile, so interested in the spot where Keith had slung some cold coffee that he didn’t see us until about the same time we saw him.  All of us were startled and he fled for cover.  Yet I am positive we had much more company out in the woods.
 
           If I did not see them, how do I know?  Because as we hiked the park’s fifteen miles of trails over the next four days, we saw their tracks: the cloven hoof prints of many deer, the tiny handprints of other raccoons, the small padded paws of bobcats, and the deep, heavy prints of wild boars, along with places they had torn up the ground rooting and wallowing.  There were not just a few of these tracks either.  We saw far more animal tracks than people tracks on our daily hikes.

            I bet you believe me now, don’t you?  Yet God’s fingerprints are all over this world of ours and it seems that every year fewer people believe in Him.  They might as well believe that animals don’t exist in the forest; it would make about as much sense. 

            But people have been behaving this way for thousands of years. I am reminded of Moses performing his signs before Pharaoh.  The Egyptian ruler did not want to believe in Jehovah as the one true God.  He had his many magicians replicate Moses’ signs with their tricks.  Finally though, they reached a point where they could not do so. 

            “This,” they said to Pharaoh, “is the finger of God.”

            Would that men would be so honest today.
 
For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may without excuse, because that knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.  Wherefore God gave them up…Rom 1:20-24.
 
Dene Ward

When we go on a one week camping vacation, we always stay Saturday night in a hotel in the closest town we can find with a church.  There are seldom any groups of God’s people within 50 miles of a mountain campground, and many of these are small groups.  A couple of times Keith has even preached for them.
 
           One time we were returning to the same area two years in a row and he was able to make those preaching arrangements ahead of time.  We wanted to be sure we were on time so those poor brethren would not be frantic, but we had accidentally left the directions at home.  So we asked the hotel desk clerk to Google the church website for the address and meeting times.  When he did, all three of us were in for a surprise.

            He gave us the address then said, “6429?  I grew up at 6425 on the same street.  I know where that church is.  It’s two doors down from my dad.”

            Yet he had not recognized the “name.”  He did not know the service times, which were posted on the sign when we got there.  He didn’t know they had a website, though a large banner hung outside the building.  So much for the importance of “signs.”  He was in his mid-20s, had grown up practically next door, and knew none of those things.  Do you know why?  Because he didn’t know the names of any who assembled in that building.

            The building does not draw people.

            The sign does not draw people.

            The website does not draw people.

            All those things are for people who are already looking, many of whom even know what they are looking for--like Christians traveling through on vacation.  Since when is the mission of the church to make sure that traveling brethren can find us? 

            The gospel is what draws people, but as Paul asks in Romans 10:14, how shall they hear without a preacher?  Since we no longer have miracles to “confirm the word,” the world has to know us and know our lives before they will listen.

            It took me years to learn to talk about my wonderful brothers and sisters instead of just spouting scriptures or waiting for someone to ask me a Bible question.  I have invited many to services and to Bible studies, but forgot to tell them that being with these people was half the reason for going and in the beginning, it might be their main reason for wanting to come back.  And I forgot to tell them how much better my life was simply for allowing the Lord to lead my way.  I was too busy making sure I had some scriptures memorized for appropriate occasions and waiting for those circumstances to somehow pop up on their own.

            What does your meetinghouse mean to the neighborhood it sits in?  Do they know anything about you?  Even if all they think is, “Those people believe you have to follow the Bible exactly,” that’s better than nothing.  It means they have had contact with a person, not just a sign or a building.

            Don’t let your meetinghouse be nothing more than a landmark.  The church is supposed to show people the way.  “Go past the church and we are the second house on the right,” is not what the Lord had in mind.
 
 From you has sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith to God-ward is gone forth…1 Thes 1:8.   
The righteous is a guide to his neighbor…Prov 12:26.   Dene Ward

When we camp in the fall, we must make our reservations several weeks in advance.  With my precarious eye condition, we never know when we might need to cancel, but it’s our philosophy that you hope and pray for the best, then deal with life as it happens.
 
           Then there is the weather.  There are no 2-3 month forecasts, at least none you can count on.  Only once in 28 years have we hit a solid week of rain, but that was also the week we passed around a stomach virus—first Nathan, then Keith, then me, and finally Lucas—so the rain was the least of our problems.

            In the other years, though, we have noticed this:  it always rains on Tuesday.  No matter where we camp or what year, Tuesday is the day for rain.  Sometimes it’s one hour-long storm; sometimes it’s a day of passing showers; once in a while it happens at night while we sleep warm and dry in the tent.  Those are the best years.

            We have come to plan for it ahead of time.  Sometimes we go on a day of shopping in a nearby town, replenishing the ice supply and picking up anything circumstances create a need for, like duct tape, batteries, a new air mattress once when we woke up flat on the tent floor one morning.  Sometimes it’s browsing at a flea market, a used bookstore, or an antique shop.  Sometimes it’s a scenic drive through a national forest.  We know when we leave the house on Saturday that on Tuesday we will be doing one of these things.

            One year we really hit the jackpot.  Monday night at 11 pm, shortly after we were tucked into our sleeping bags for the night, the rain started and did not stop until 11 pm Tuesday night—24 hours straight of cold drizzle.  We were in an unfamiliar campground in an unfamiliar area.  The nearest town with decent shops was over 50 miles away.  There were no indoor tourist spots nearby either.  By breakfast Tuesday morning the “water resistant” screen-house over the table was saturated and had started dripping through.  We obviously couldn’t sit there all day.  So we gathered up books, Bibles, notebooks, a Boggle game with plenty of paper and pencils, a propane lamp and stove, and headed for the tent.  We spent the entire day in that 16 x 10 tent reading, studying, playing games, talking, drinking hot chocolate, napping, and then starting the list over again.  The day passed quickly for that kind of day, and the next we were back to sunny skies, hiking, and evening campfires.

            Wouldn’t it be foolish for us to expect to be able to choose one week three months in advance, and think we could live outdoors without a chance of rain?  Instead we go on, knowing it will happen, prepared for it, and determined to have a good time anyway.

            Peter told those first century Christians not to be so naïve as to expect to never suffer.  Paul told Timothy, Yea all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, 2 Tim 3:12.  We are promised all spiritual blessings, but health and wealth do not fall into that category.  We are promised “a hundredfold” brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children, but often their greatest worth is in the encouragement they offer during the trials of life.  We are promised that God will never forsake us, but that matters far more in times of difficulty than in times of ease.  In fact, it is usually in those difficult times that we come to realize our greatest blessings.

            Only the shallowest of Christians expects God to make sure he leads a “charmed” life.  We are called to be disciples of a Lord who suffered.  A disciple follows in his Master’s footsteps.  Why would we ever think we should be immune to the same suffering?

            As long as you expect a week without rain, your life will be one of constant disappointment.  Hope and pray for the best, prepare for the trials and tribulations, then live a life of joy when it rains on Tuesday.
 
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which comes upon you to prove you as though a strange thing happened to you; but insomuch as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also you may rejoice with exceeding joy, 1 Pet 4:12,13.
 
Dene Ward

We enjoy our camping vacations, which is good since it is the only kind we can afford.  Maybe we like to pretend we are rugged individualists, the kind this country was founded by, when we “rough it” in our tent and sleeping bags, cooking our food over an open fire, and sitting by a campfire to stay warm.  “Hah!” I think I heard our sons say.  We stay in the regular campground, not the primitive one, so we can run an outdoor extension cord to the electric blanket in our sleeping bag, which lies atop the queen size air mattress, and have access to the hot and cold running water in the bathhouses for a shower every night. 
           
It is a relaxing stay.  No televisions, no telephones, no radios, no news, most of which seems bad these days, no list of chores, no deadlines—no stress of any sort at all.  Even cooking and cleaning up, because it must be done in a different way and by necessity involves fewer dishes, does not seem like work.  We get up when we want to, usually not before there is enough light to see by, go to bed when we get tired of reading by dangling trouble light, hike when we want to, as far as we want to, play games, do crossword puzzles, talk, plan, look at birds and flowers, and then look them up in our wildlife book. It is peaceful, calming, and relaxing.

            But getting there?  Now that’s another story.  It takes two full days to pack, using a three page list.  There are arrangements to be made for the animals, the mail, bills that are due, and any duties for the church that need to be covered.  We have to plan the route, which always goes through Atlanta, and after Atlanta, the hilly, winding roads that often leave me carsick. 
We must find a church in some of the most “churchless” areas of the south, a task we usually take care of before we leave home.  Once we arrive we must find a hotel that isn’t exorbitant so we can worship with our newfound brothers and sisters before heading up the mountain afterward.  We have to plan what we need to take into the hotel room with us without having to unpack the whole pickup bed, and then what we will need for clothes changing afterward, and have them all easily accessible.

We must reach the park not long after checkout time so we can find a good spot—one with a level spot big enough to accommodate a 16 x 10 tent, with a fire ring placed not too close to the tent site, a good place for the firewood, which provides not only our heat but also the fuel for cooking all week, and more privacy than an RV needs due to the paper-thin tent walls.  It must have shade, especially in the afternoon, and the table must be wooden if at all possible.  Some of my equipment racks will not fasten to the extra thick cement picnic tables, and you cannot move cement tables if needed to fit everything into the site.

Then we have to set up, a process which takes two and a half to three hours.  It has to be done before dark, and once it is done, we have to reload the back of the pickup with the items we will constantly need—the food boxes, the suitcases, the linen box, and the “book” box, which contains not only the books we will be reading that week, but the notebooks and Bibles we use for writing and studying, the crossword puzzles, the journal, the camera, the binoculars, and the Boggle game.

Finally, we get to sit down and start relaxing.  Is it worth it?  You bet it is.  For nine days we experience the peace and beauty of God’s creation, and let it soothe our aching spirits.

All of that is somewhat like the life of a Christian.  Some days are difficult.  Some days are full of stress.  Some days have lists of things that need to be done and not enough hours to do them.  Some days are not bad—time spent with brethren and family, time preparing for things we know we will enjoy, but we are all looking forward to something better, no matter how good the days here sometimes are.  We all want to reach the vacation spot, where the stress evaporates and eternal peace soothes our souls.  But just as that camping trip would not be restful if we didn’t prepare for it properly, waiting till the last minute and tossing things willy-nilly into the pickup, hoping we got it all, neither will eternity. 

Start preparing yourself today, remembering that this life is the journey, not the goal, and begin to look forward to the bliss that awaits a faithful child of God.
 
For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day. There remains therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his. Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience. Heb 4:8-11.
 
Dene Ward

I am different from most women, I guess.  I do not enjoy those cutesy-pie sayings that sound like they came straight out of a sugar canister.  For one thing, I think they can engender the opposite feeling they are intending to--guilt, mainly.  How many times have you heard that even if you don’t feel good, you should go to the assembly because it will make you feel better when you leave?  Yes, on occasion, it does just that, mainly because I was too busy having a pity party and the services put my mind on things besides me. 
But what about the person who is genuinely ill, or who is so old and feeble that he needs to rest after putting one sock on?  Do I really think that going to church and spreading germs to the elderly and small children is going to make me feel better, and even if it did, wasn’t that awfully selfish of me?  Or if pushing myself too hard could cause me to collapse during the services, what great good did that accomplish for anyone else?  Yet sometimes these people do push themselves—they are in fact the ones most likely to push themselves--so they come and infect everyone else, because they have been made to feel guilty for not doing so by things I have come to call duck-billed platitudes.
 
           I see another problem with some of these things—they smack a little of the health and wealth gospel.  “Sacrifice for the Lord isn’t sacrifice if you really love the Lord.”  Nonsense.  Try that one on a first century Christian who is about to have his throat chomped on and his belly ripped open by the lions in the Coliseum.  Sacrifice feels like sacrifice and God never promised anything else.  What He did promise was that sacrifice is worth it.  That doesn’t mean anything if you have annulled the pain of the sacrifice.

            The things we need to hear are the true things.  Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution...For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps, 2Tim 3:12; 1Pet 2:20-21.  What we need is to be told how to endure what will surely come if we live like Christ did, not how to avoid it or worse yet, how to make it “fun.”

            Sometimes life is just plain hard.  That was the punishment we got when we were thrown out of Eden.  Christians are not immune to that penalty, we are just forgiven for it.

            Be strong, God is always telling us in His Word.  Be courageous.  It isn’t courage to turn everything into one giant tea party.  That’s denial, and I see too many Christians living in that state.  And this is what it leads to when you finally realize you cannot platitude your way out of it—“Why did this happen to me?”  This is why:  We live in an imperfect world, made that way by sin, which, no matter how much we like to believe otherwise, we have participated in.  And it won’t get any better.  Tragedies are a part of life.  BUT---

            We live in hope of a better world, a better place that will be perfect and will never end.  That is what you need to remember, not a bunch of saccharine sayings on poster after poster after poster.  I have something much better, and so do you if you will take hold of it.  It does not tell us that everything will be wonderful in this life, that God will spare us from anything painful.  Instead it promises pain, but it also says this:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:35-39.
 
Dene Ward

Suppose someone places a blank piece of paper in front of you.  How would you feel about it?  What thoughts come to mind?  It all depends upon the circumstances, doesn’t it?
  
        If you are in a classroom on the day of final exams and that piece of paper is meant for your answers to half a dozen essay questions, it might raise your blood pressure a little.  If you were prepared for that test, maybe it would not rise quite as high.

            If that blank paper were a signed blank check, your excitement might know no bounds, unless, of course, it was a check drawn on your own meager bank account.  That could be disappointing.  

            A blank sheet might signify good news—no demerits, no criminal record, no symptoms.  What a relief!

            A blank piece of paper might mean writer’s block if it has been sitting there awhile.  I know from experience that frustration usually accompanies that problem.  It could also mean great potential if inspiration has suddenly struck.  When that happens I am eager to get to work, usually stopping whatever else I am doing immediately to do so.

            Even with God that blank piece of paper could mean different things.  It might mean a lack of authority.  Jesus said in Matt 21:25 that there are two places from which to receive authority—from Heaven or from men.  Either God authorized the action or men did, and the people he spoke to, who neither liked nor respected him, didn’t bother to argue because the point was axiomatic.  God expects every aspect of our lives to be lived according to His authority.  Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus…Col 3:17.

            He expects us to respect that authority, doing exactly what it gives us permission to do, but, in the case of a blank piece of paper, doing nothing.  When God told the Israelites that the priests were to come from the tribe of Levi, he did not have to list all the tribes they could NOT come from.  That is the Hebrew writer’s precise point when he says of Jesus, For it is evident that our Lord has sprung out of Judah, as to which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests, Heb 7:14.  The very fact that God said in the Law of Moses, “Levi,” meant Judah was excluded, and that in turn means that for Jesus to be our new High Priest the law itself had to change.  We could go on and on with this point, but suffice it to say that when God gives you a blank piece of paper, He does not expect you to fill it in with your own choices.

            But He does give us a blank piece of paper that is amazing and wonderful—a paper wiped clean of its list of sins, so clean there are not even any erasure smudges on it.  When God forgives it is as if He crumpled the old list and destroyed it, pulling out a fresh new clean sheet from an endless supply.

            Start today with that blank piece of paper.  Fill it with as much good as you can because, you see, a blank piece of paper is one thing God will never accept from us.
 
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean.  Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes.  Cease to do evil; learn to do well:  seek justice, relieve the oppressed, bring justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow.  Come now and let us reason together, says Jehovah.  Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red, they shall be as wool, Isa 1:16-18.    Dene Ward

I am constantly shocked by the way people, including Christians, treat the Bible.  We act like God wrote it in some way other than normal communication.  I have actually heard these things come out of the mouths of believers:  “Jesus never used figurative language.”  “You won’t find irony in the Bible.”  “Sarcasm is neither present nor allowed in the scriptures.”  And because of that you will hear some of the weirdest interpretations of scripture imaginable.

            We knew a man once who said that since Jesus said you should not “let your right hand know what your left hand doeth,” that you should reach into your pocket before the plate is passed and take out whatever you find without looking at it.  I wonder how he got whatever was in his pocket in there that morning without knowing what it was, or did he make sure nothing over $10 was lying on top of his dresser?         

            But you will also find those who deny there is any literary aspect to the scriptures at all.  Try studying the psalms in detail and see if you think that’s so.  The psalms are poetry.  Like all poets, those inspired poets used poetic elements to make them catch our fancy, speak to us more keenly than prose would, and make us think deeper thoughts than we might have otherwise.  You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.  Doesn’t that say more to you than, “These people are really upset”?

            One place this is obvious are the fifteen Psalms of Ascents.  Psalms 120-134 are presumed to have been sung while the Jews traveled up the hill to Jerusalem to worship on the various feast days.  The word for “ascents” is the same Hebrew word translated “steps” in Ezek 40:26 and 31, as in the steps of a staircase.  One psalm in particular uses words to show these steps.

            Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.  Psalm 130.

            Imagine each of the following words, taken in order from the psalm above, sitting on the steps of a staircase from bottom to top:  depths, pleas, iniquities, wait, hope, steadfast love, plentiful redemption.  Now add this to the mix:  the word for “depths” is used several times in the scripture for the deepest places on earth, including the very bottom of the ocean.  And that implies a man’s complete inability to get himself “out of the depths.”  All through this psalm we see the literary devices of the poet, gradually pulling us out of the mire we are stuck in and up the staircase to the place of full—and even more than necessary, “plentiful”—redemption.  God didn’t barely save us, He pulled us up on top of the mountains.  Read through that psalm again now.  Can you see it?  Can feel it? 

            God is the one who made us able to appreciate art of all kinds, including literary art.  He gave us the emotions that a good artist of any type can evoke.  It’s one of the things that makes you different from your dog!  God wrote the Bible.  He made you and made you able to communicate.  He speaks to us the way He knows is best for our understanding.  Who am I to say otherwise?
 
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person discerns all things…1Cor 2:14-15.
 
Dene Ward

We have had several dogs of several different breeds, usually several different breeds in one dog.  But Chloe, a full-blooded Australian cattle dog, is the first to actually chase her tail.  I always thought that was just something people said until one day there was a commotion at my feet, and I looked down and spotted her doing exactly that—revolving like a top, chasing her tail. 

            She looked ridiculous.  Around and around she went, stirring up dust and creating a depression in the sand.  Usually she lost her balance and fell over on her side, or, when she tried to stand up afterward, reeled like a drunk and sprawled on the ground, all thoughts of dignity abandoned.  It was so much fun, who cared how silly she looked?

            One day she actually caught her tail, and plopped down with it between her two front paws and started chewing.  After just a few minutes, though, reality checked in and she let it go.  It may have been fun to chase, but actually eating it was another matter entirely.  Even Little Miss Butterball, who loves to eat, was not about to endure the pain.

            For some reason, we often lack that good sense.  I have seen married couples carp and bicker, criticize and complain, even in front of others, to the point that you check the legal column the next morning to see if a divorce decree was filed the night before.  Anyone with sense, we think, would see how such words and actions would eat away at the bonds of their union.  Indeed, marriage takes constant maintenance to insure that those bonds remain intact.  They certainly won’t survive such destructive behavior, but people continue to behave that way, impervious to the embarrassment they cause anyone with earshot, and heedless to the effect on their relationship. 

            We sometimes treat the body of Christ the same way.  One person has a disagreement with another, about most anything, and that one is his target from then on.  All he can see is the bad, never the good.  All he can hear are the things that rankle, never the things that help and encourage, and so he is certain his behavior is justified.  Not only does he chase his tail in a fruitless circle, but he gathers as many as he can to join the pursuit.  In some cases, he actually catches the other person—because he now has so many on his “side” and they, too, are so dizzy from running in circles that their vision is skewed—and so he takes a big chomp and chews to his heart’s content, passing it on for others to share in as well.  Ah, what a grand meal—yum, yum, yum! 

            His distorted vision keeps him from seeing the harm he is causing the body of the Lord by his arrogant, self-centered attitude, and the good that might have been accomplished in spreading the gospel in the community is put on the back burner for the sake of “winning,” even when the contest is petty and of no spiritual value.  It also keeps him from seeing exactly how foolish he looks as he destroys the things he claims to be trying to save.

            Do you know what an anthropophagus is?  It is a cannibal, perhaps one of the worst things we can imagine being, especially in our enlightened and civilized age.  Yet the Bible says that is exactly what we are when we reach this point.  Take a look at the relationships you have in your family and in the kingdom today.  Make sure you are not partaking of a meal that God would consider abominable.
 
For you, brethren, were called for freedom, only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this:  you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  But if you bite and devour one another, make sure you be not consumed one of another, Gal 5:13-15
           
Dene Ward