Bug Eaters

12/5/2014 0 Comments

We have recently discovered phoebes on our property, seven inch gray birds with light olive bellies and a slightly darker head.  Even though we have been birding for eight years now, this is the first we have seen of these.  Being insect eaters, seed-filled feeders hold no interest for them, so I have never seen one from my chair by the window.  They are strictly carnivores.
    Their behavior is what gives them away—their “hawking.”  They sit on a bare tree branch and watch the ground below.  When a bug catches their eye, they swoop down for the kill, then fly right back to the same branch, and wait for another.  Sort of bloodthirsty for such a cute little bird.
    They have been using the trees on the edge of the garden, a place where insects abound and we are happy to have their help ridding the plants of them.  Now we have a much smaller fall garden, a few peppers and tomatoes, and the cooler temperatures mean fewer bugs.  Maybe that is why they have moved in closer, sitting atop tomato posts, waiting for their prey to creep by.
    And last week we saw yet another new bug eater.  Keith planted about 70% of the garden in sorghum.  The huge seed heads on these plants attract both wildlife and birds.  That was his main intention—to help feed the seed-eating birds and perhaps attract even more to the feeders closer to the house.  That sorghum patch is where we saw the new bird, a five inch olive green bird, with a yellow throat, a black mask, and a long thin beak.  My bird books tell us he is a yellowthroat, one of the many varieties of warbler.  He, too, practices hawking and being smaller and lighter he can perch on the head of those thin-stemmed sorghum plants without bending them over.  He is not there for the seeds but, like the phoebes, to watch for any bugs that crawl by.  Sometimes he is lucky and one will be deeply imbedded in the seed head itself.  All he has to do is lean over and probe with that long thin beak deep between those seeds.  Lunch, without even having to dive for it.
    That is not why we planted sorghum.  It is not why we put posts by the tomatoes.  Yet right now, the phoebes and the yellowthroats are getting more out of the garden than we are.
    Sometimes Satan gets more use out of the good things we try to do than God does.  How many times has a healthy pastime become more important to us than our spiritual health?  I’ve seen women so concerned about their figures that they would no longer offer or accept meal invitations from other Christians, nor cook and take a meal to the needy.  I’ve seen Christian men spend more time toning up their physical muscles than studying to tone up their spiritual ones.  They won’t miss a work-out, but personal Bible study is a sometime thing.
    How many times has the job which was meant to support the family become an all-consuming career that robbed a home of involved parents or a spouse of a supposedly committed and devoted mate?  How many times has the money earned led to greed instead of generosity, and a dependence upon self rather than God?
    Just because something is not inherently sinful, doesn’t mean evil cannot come from it.  Just because you intend good from it, doesn’t mean the Devil can’t find a way to produce the opposite.
    One thing about those phoebes and yellowthroats—they make an excellent example of careful watching; their lives depend upon it.  Take a moment today to sit still and quiet and really look at the things in your life and what they are producing.  Your spiritual life depends upon it.

His beautiful ornament they used for pride, and they made their abominable images and their detestable things of it. Therefore I make it an unclean thing to them, Ezek 7:20.

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Automatic Pilot

12/4/2014 0 Comments

Did you brush your teeth this morning?  Are you sure?  Do you really remember it, or are you remembering yesterday morning, or a morning last week?  How many other things do we do automatically, without thinking?  How about those scary times when you have been driving 10 or 15 minutes and suddenly realize you don’t remember that stop sign half a mile from the house or anything else between there and here?
    How about your spiritual life?  How many things do we do automatically?  We have a tendency to condemn that sort of thing, acting without thinking, as if it is hypocrisy, but is that always the case?
    I have always been in the same place every Sunday morning of my life, barring illness or injury.  No, the physical location may not be the same, but anyone who knows me, knows that on Sunday mornings I am assembling with my brothers and sisters in the Lord at wherever I happen to be.  There is never any question what I will do on Sunday if I am at all able.
    I used to worry about falling asleep in the middle of my final prayer of the day.  Surely, “pillow talk” is a close, intimate form of communication.  In fact, it is one thing we miss in our marriage—you cannot whisper to a deaf man.  So why should I be remorseful about falling asleep while having a comfortable, private moment with my Father?  Yes, there are times for more formal, reverential prayers, but who else would I rather be speaking to in my last conscious moments of the day, and why should He be upset with me if I feel so comfortable and easy with Him?  It’s not like it’s the only time we speak.  It is, in fact, second nature for me to do so.
    “Second nature” is defined as an acquired behavior or trait that is so long practiced as to seem natural or inborn.  It comes from an old proverb, “Custom (or usage) is a second nature,” which was first recorded in 1390. 
    “First” nature, then, would be things we do instinctively, that are inborn.  When we are born again into the kingdom of God, it becomes our responsibility to change our behavior, practicing it so frequently, that it eventually becomes our “second” nature, something we do automatically, with hardly any thought at all, but which we had to learn. 
    In the beginning of my life as a Christian I must consciously make decisions about how to react to others and how to order my new life.  Eventually, though, if I am practicing these things on a regular basis, that should become easier and easier.  How long have I been a Christian yet I still fly off the handle, still say things I should not say, still lower myself to the level of the world by seeking revenge over the silliest things in the most childish ways?  I must not be working hard enough to change those habits, for that is what they are, and they can be changed with enough effort, and with the help of Christ.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me, Phil 4:13.
    This does not mean there will no longer be moments of weakness, times when I am more susceptible to my old behaviors.  But if those old behaviors are still constant in my life, where is the transformation Paul talks about in Romans 12?  Why have I not become more closely conformed to the image of his son, (Rom 8:29)?  Something about me is supposed to have undergone a permanent change!
    Certainly, I must have my mind on my prayers and the words I sing.  I must listen consciously and carefully to those who seek to edify me.  My worship must not be rote.  But there is something to be said for operating on automatic pilot in my spiritual life. At some point it must reach past what I do, and become a matter of who I am.  If this never happens, then something is missing, and I need to find it—and fix it—soon.

Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new, 2 Cor 5:17.

Dene Ward

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The Sheltered Side of the House

12/3/2014 0 Comments

We live under a couple of huge live oaks, trees so big it would take half a dozen people holding hands to reach around them.  That means when I planted a flower bed on the west side of the house under one of those trees, the lee side so to speak, I had to be careful what I put there.  Anything with a “full sun” tag wouldn’t make it.  But it also means that I can grow things outside that others might need to take inside on a frosty morning.  The tree protects them with both the extra degree or two of heat it gives off and its shelter from the settling dew that crisps into frost on a winter morning.
    Isn’t that how we raise our children, on the sheltered side of life, and even on the sheltered side of the church?  That is as it should be.  Children shouldn’t need to worry about where their next meal is coming from.  They shouldn’t be concerned with the office politics their parents must put up with.  They certainly shouldn’t hear about church squabbles.  Your job as a parent is to protect them from those things.  
    But you can’t do that forever.  Sooner or later they need to learn about people, about their imperfections, maybe even the danger they pose to others.  That’s why we teach them that no one should touch them in certain places, that they should never get in the car with a stranger, or accept candy, or look for lost puppies.  It’s unfortunate, but we do it because we love our children.
    I am afraid we are not that smart about teaching our children about problems among brethren.  It isn’t just the false teaching wolves we need to teach them about, though more of that would be helpful.  We seem to have raised a generation that thinks everyone out there is harmless and means well because they speak in syrupy tones and sentimental mush-mouth.  No, the thing we must be most careful about is how they see us handling the disappointments with our brethren.  What they see us do and say can make or break their spiritual survival.
    When Keith was preaching full time, we saw people who claimed to be Christians acting in every way but that.  We saw couples at each other’s throats.  We saw family cliques.  We received physical threats.  We were tossed out on our ears more than once for his preaching the truth.  It may be that the only thing that kept us both faithful was realizing how these things might affect our children if we didn’t handle them carefully.  
    When they were old enough to understand what was happening, we never blamed the church.  We never blamed God.  We told them that sometimes people were not perfect, even good people--sometimes they just made a mistake.  I was NOT going to let what those people had done to us cost my children their souls.  They were what mattered.  
    As they grew older, we talked often about being faithful to God, not to a place or a group.  We reminded them about Judas.  What would have happened if the other apostles had let Judas’s monumental failure run them off?  What about Peter, their erstwhile leader?  If everyone had given up because of his denial there would have been nothing for him to return to upon his repentance.  The mission of the church depended upon those men staying faithful regardless.  God was counting on them.  We told them over and over, you never let what someone else does determine your faithfulness.  God expects you to do the right thing no matter what those people do.  I had to learn to control my depression and discouragement and not give my children cause to leave the Lord.  
    We planted our children on the sheltered side of the house, but then we moved them slowly one foot at a time to a place where the sun would beat down on them and the cold would leave frost on their leaves.  Finally they were as inured as possible from the effects of other people’s failures, including our own.  If they ever fall away, they know better than to blame someone else.
    Be careful what your children hear you say about your brethren.  Be careful what they see in your actions and attitudes.  Sooner or later they will need to stand the heat of the noonday sun and the bitter cold of a spiritual winter.  Don’t give them an easy excuse not to.

For there must be also factions among you, that they that are approved may be made manifest among you. 1 Corinthians 11:19

Dene Ward

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Laryngitis

12/2/2014 0 Comments

Keith got a reprieve yesterday—I woke up with laryngitis.  A deaf man and a woman barely able to utter a whisper do not make a compatible couple.  We struggled through the evening after he came home from work.  He would ask a question then walk away until I finally threw something at him to get his attention so he could read my lips as I answered.  We would sit at the table together and I would talk without first making eye contact—I had to throw something at him then too.  You get the picture.  Most of the time a pillow or napkin was within reach, otherwise we might have had a real mess to clean up.
    Our biggest problems in life are usually caused by speaking when we should have been quiet.  On the other hand, there are times we should speak that we do not, times we get a case of spiritual laryngitis.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that my only motivation for having kept quiet at those times was fear.
    We preach to our young people about peer pressure, encouraging them to speak up about friends doing wrong, about believing unpopular beliefs, or to simply stand up for those everyone else is picking on as if these were easy things to do.  Do we do any better when certain subjects arise among our own peers?  Is it so easy to risk losing a friend, losing a sale, losing status in the community, losing the good opinion of people we want to impress?  No, we don’t do any better most of the time.  We are just as afraid to speak out as our children are.
    The thing we need to convince our young people of—and ourselves—is that we are afraid of the wrong thing.  With knowledge comes responsibility.  
    If I see you about to do something I know will hurt you and do not say anything, I am guilty of hurting you as much as if I did that hurtful thing to you myself. If I say to the wicked,  'You shall surely die,'  and you give him no warning,  nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life,  that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Ezek 3:18.
    If I fail to tell others that I am a Christian, if, like Peter during Jesus’ trial, I am afraid of the consequences that might bring me, I have denied my Lord,  Every one therefore who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven, Matt 10:32,33.
    If I see a wrong and fail to speak out, I am nothing more than a coward.  I have become a friend of the unjust man rather than a champion of his victim, and will be included in his curse.  (Prov 29:24.)
    Truly, fear gives you spiritual laryngitis.  It totally disables you.  You become useless to the Lord.  That is the thing you should fear more than anything else.  

What I tell you in the darkness, speak it in the light; and what you hear in the ear, proclaim upon the house-tops. And be not afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell, Matt 10:27, 28.

Dene Ward

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The Waters Prevailed

12/1/2014 2 Comments

We live on a hillside.  You don’t really notice it when you first drive onto the property.  The hill is shallow as hills go, dropping about twenty feet in five hundred.  In another climate one would seldom think anything of it.  But in Florida, in the summer, torrential downpours are common.  Not too long ago we had two and a half inches come down in less than thirty minutes.  Two or three days before we had six inches, but it took all day to accumulate that.  When nearly half that much pours out of the sky in such a short time, you feel like ten have fallen instead.
    It was as if a giant bucket were being upended over us.  We could hardly see the blueberries only hundred feet away.  The roar on the metal roof was deafening.  The rushing water overwhelmed the culvert in the drive and washed over the road and out to the garden where it ran against the berm in a narrow creek.  We had built that berm precisely because of rains like this one—we were tired of wading “downstream” to rescue washed away garden plants. 
    Eventually we left the porch which was not much shelter in a rain like that—the merest breeze left us damp and shivering, even in the summer.  So we stepped back inside and looked out the windows to the north.  Now you could really tell—we are definitely on a hill.  Water ran like a river across the entire width of the yard, from the front steps to the fence, ten to twelve inches deep.  We watched leaves, twigs, and moss float “downstream” to the run on the east side of the property.  After the rain stopped, it kept running, draining the whole hillside, for another hour.
    A week after that rain, I walked the path the water had taken.  Leaves were washed into piles a foot deep along the runnel.  Limbs hung up on some of the bushes but others, dragged by the running water, lay piled up against the fence which had acted as a sieve as the water ran through it.  Channels several inches deep marked the dried mud, and the grass was still bent over in the direction the water had flowed.  Running water is powerful.
    The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep, Gen 7:17-20.
    The waters of the great Flood “prevailed.”  Those waters not only covered the earth, they drowned every living creature on it that was not in the ark or swimming in the newly created worldwide ocean.  Have you ever seen a flash flood?  Have you ever heard the stories of one?  No one can win against those “prevailing” waters.  If you try to hang on to something, you simply wear out and are washed downstream. 
    The same word is used in Ex 17:11: So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.  We are talking about winning a war with that word; that’s the strength implied in its use.  It should be no surprise that “prevailed” is also translated “strong” and “mighty.”
    So why is that important?  Because the same Hebrew word is used in Psalm 117:2.  For great is His steadfast love toward us.  God’s love for us is strong; it is mighty.  It is like rushing water that carries along everything in its path.  It is like an army winning a war.  Sometimes we seem to doubt that.  “But I’ve been so bad,” we say, “how can God love me?”  He can love you because His love is great. It can prevail against the worst of sins.
    The next time you doubt it, think about flood waters, think about an army that can win a war.  God’s love is just like those things.  It prevails over all.

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 8:38,39.

Dene Ward

The Cafe

11/28/2014 2 Comments

Today’s post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

How do you measure things?  

We went to a favorite café for breakfast the other day. We cannot eat before our doctor appointments due to one or the other of us needing lab work. We see our friend/doctor together. So, even with an early morning appointment by the time we get there, we are ready to pig out on what is my favorite meal of the day. As usual, I had the “monster-everything” and she ordered small and nibbled on mine.  A main reason the place got to be our favorite is because the sausage gravy is about the best we’ve had anywhere. Well, last week, it was mediocre at best.  Not bad, but far from the usual excellent.  I looked at Dene and said, well, if this were our first visit, I doubt we would be back.  Since we have experience there, we will give them another chance and hope this was an aberration.

So is my life.  I would hate to be judged by the worst I have done.  I am seldom THAT bad.  Nor do I wish to be judged by the best.  I am seldom that good.  We understand that with people we know well and make allowances for their bad days or moments. But, if it is a first impression, we all too often write that person off.  He may not even know why, ever.

I take my business where service is good and the product meets my desires.  But I now resolve that with my brother, I will be more willing to believe that any bad is abnormal and treat him so.  Will you?

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment, James 2:12,13..

Keith Ward

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Sand Pears

11/26/2014 0 Comments

The first time I received a bushel of pears from a neighbor out here in the country I was disappointed.  I was used to the pears in the store, especially juicy Bartletts, and creamy, vanilla-scented Boscs.  As with a great many things here in this odd state, only certain types grow well, and they are nothing like the varieties you see in the seed and plant catalogues or on the Food Network shows.  We always called them Florida Pears, but recently learned they were Sand Pears, and in this sandy state that makes good sense.  They are hard and tasteless.  In fact, Keith and I decided you could stone someone to death with them.  We nearly threw them away.  
    Then an older friend told me what to do with them.  They make the best pear preserves you ever dripped over a biscuit—amber colored, clear chunks of fruit swimming in a sea of thick, caramel flavored syrup.  Then she made a cobbler and I thought I was eating apples instead of pears.  No, you don’t want to eat them out of hand unless they are almost overripe, but you most certainly do want to spoon out those preserves and dig into that cinnamon-scented, crunchy topped cobbler.  They aren’t pretty; they are hard to peel and chop; but don’t give up on them if you are ever lucky enough to get some.
    A lot of us give up on people out there.  We see the open sin in their lives and the culture they come from and decide they could never change.  Have you ever studied the Herods in the New Testament?  If ever there was a soap opera family, one that would even make Jerry Springer blush, it’s them.  They were completely devoid of “natural affection,” sons trying to assassinate fathers, and fathers putting sons and wives to death.  Their sex lives were an open sewer—swapping husbands at a whim; a brother and sister living together as a married couple; leaving marriages without even a Roman divorce and solely for the sake of power and influence.
    Yet Paul approaches Herod Agrippa II, the son of Herod Agrippa I who had James killed and Peter imprisoned, the grandnephew of Antipas who had John the Baptist imprisoned and killed after taking his brother’s wife, great-grandson of Herod the Great who had the babies killed at Jesus’ birth, a man who even then was living with his sister, almost as if he expected to convert him.  Listen to this:
    I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews. Therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently, Acts 26:2,3.
    Yes, I am sure there was some tact involved there, but did you know that Agrippa had been appointed advisor in Jewish social and religious customs?  Somehow the Romans knew that he had spent time becoming familiar with his adopted religion—during the time between the Testaments the Herods were forced to become Jews and then later married into the family of John Hyrcanus, a priest.  No, he didn’t live Judaism very well, but then neither did many of the Pharisees nor half the priesthood at that point.  But Agrippa knew Judaism, and Paul was counting on that.
    Paul then spends verses 9 through 23 telling Agrippa of the monumental change he had made in his own life.  Here was a man educated at the feet of the most famous teacher of his times, the rising star of Judaism, destined to the Sanhedrin at the very least, fame and probably fortune as well.  Look at the list of things he “counts as loss” in Philippians 3.  Yet this man gives it all up and becomes one of the hated group he had formerly imprisoned and persecuted to the death, forced to live on the charity of the very group he had hated along with a pittance from making a tent here and there.  Talk about a turnaround.  Do you think he told Agrippa his story just to entertain him?  Maybe he was making this point—yes, you have a lot to change, but if I could do it, so can you.
    In verse 27, he makes his final plea--King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you believe!  Paul had not given up on changing this man whom many of us would never have even tried to convert.  And it “almost” worked.
    Who have you given up on?  Who has a hard heart, a lifestyle that would be useless to anyone but God?  Who, like these pears, needs the heat of preaching and the sweet of compassion?  Who could change if someone just believed in them enough?
    Sand pears seem tasteless to people who don’t work with them, who don’t spend the time necessary to treat them in the way they require.  Are we too busy to save a soul that is a little harder than most?  Who took the time to cook you into a malleable heart for God?  It’s time to return the favor.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses... Ezek 36:26-29.

Dene Ward

The Hero of the Story

11/25/2014 0 Comments

I have a problem.  I believe that life is a book and I am the hero of the story.  Everything anyone does is done with me in mind because I am the central character.  Any time I rub shoulders with another person in my daily life, that person did it solely because he wanted to hurt me, or inconvenience me, or insult me, or otherwise bother my life. 
    What is really happening is that person thinks his life is a book and he is the hero, and I am the one causing him trouble.  The things I often get so upset about are nothing more than an accidental crossing of paths or an idiosyncrasy that, in my own self-centeredness, I have decided to take as a personal offense when the other person was not directing it toward me at all.
    And in the same vein, I think everything is supposed to turn out wonderfully, a happily ever after for all my goodness and faithfulness, because I am the hero after all.  Admit it:  you have the same problem, and it can cost us our souls if we are not careful.
    I think of John the Baptist, a man whose birth was announced by the same angel who announced Jesus’ birth.  He gave up any semblance of a normal life to fulfill the mission God gave him.  If not for John’s preaching, what would have become of Christianity?  If it took several years for the men who actually walked with Jesus to figure things out, what of the masses if John had not worked so hard to prepare them for the coming of the kingdom?  The thought of 3000 being baptized on the Day of Pentecost would have been nothing more than a pipe dream.
    John also gave up what others might have expected in the way of glory.  He watched Jesus begin his ministry and gradually take away many of his own disciples.  For all his sacrifice this is the thanks he gets?  John did not look for thanks.  Indeed, as his ministry waned and an unjust death at about the age of 31 loomed, his remaining disciples came to him complaining about Jesus’ growing popularity as if it were an affront to John.  John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it have been given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but, that I am sent before him. He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:27-30.
    It may have been written many years after his death, but John understood the true meaning of to them that love God all things work together for good, Rom 8:28.  He understood because he recognized the part that we ignore:  according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified, vv 29,30.  John knew he was not the hero of the story.  He knew that he need not expect this life to be a bed of roses with a happy ending. 
    He also knew that the purpose of God for which he worked was to give everyone the opportunity to be saved, and that was the good for which all things worked together.  If it took his not being able to have a family, if it took living a meager existence in the wilderness, if it took his murder, he was willing to bear it.
    If John could have that attitude, a man who lived a short, strange, sacrificial life and died a martyr by the hand of a ruthless woman and her weak husband, why can’t we who live relatively normal, happy, safe lives? 
    There will be trials.  There will be moments of grief.  The life we live here may not have the happy ending we always dreamed of, but the purpose of God will make it seem like a mere trifle if we just stop thinking everything is about us, and remember who the real Hero is. 

Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, Heb 12:1,2.

Dene Ward

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The Naomi Project 5--Grandchildren

11/24/2014 0 Comments

If you really want to hurt a woman, hurt her children.  If you think no one would do such a thing, you haven’t been to as many places as I have nor lived as long. 
    I have seen grandmothers pass their favoritism on to the next generation.  If one child is not particularly liked, then his children won’t be either.
    I have seen grandmothers show that favoritism in gifts, in words, and most shameful of all, in hugs.  I have seen grandchildren pitted against one another, one side always believed over the other, regardless of evidence.  I have seen grandchildren used to create tension between their parents, either siblings of one another, or spouses.
    Children should be sacred ground when it comes to family squabbles.  You never hurt a child, regardless whose he is.  If there is something unnatural about a mother hurting her own child, there is something just plain loathsome about a grandmother doing it.  Isn’t that why the story of Athaliah, the wicked queen who had all her grandchildren killed to secure her own reign, horrifies us?  Women like that deserve the worst of punishments, and God made sure Athaliah got hers.
    Then there is the matter of “blood.”  I have seen blood grandchildren obviously favored over adopted.  I have seen step-grandchildren totally ignored.  A child cannot help where he came from.  If he has been specially chosen to be in the family, he should be treated as family as much as any other child—he IS family.
    Naomi is the perfect example.  Ruth was her daughter-in-law, not her daughter.  Boaz may have been a distant relative, but he was not her son.  Yet how did she accept their child?  So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son…Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse, Ruth 4:13,16.  According to Keil, “became his nurse” is tantamount to adopting him as her own son, not just her grandson.  Could she have made her love and acceptance of this child any clearer?
    Surely a grandmother should not need to be told to love her grandchildren.  Even if there is some legitimate reason for an estrangement with their parents, do not take it out on the children.  It is not their fault how their parents act.  The list of pagan sins in Romans 1:28-32 includes “without natural affection” in the KJV and ASV.  That is translated “heartless” in the ESV.  Only a heartless grandmother refuses her grandchildren.  Only a heartless mother-in-law does it to retaliate against a daughter- or son-in-law. 
    Naomi’s love and acceptance of Ruth in all the ways we have discussed made for a relationship that has transcended the ages.  Ruth returned that love with her own genuine affection, with acceptance, and with the physical care every older parent has a right to expect.  Naomi and Ruth were not physically related in any way at all, but they treated one another as if they were, in fact, better than some blood relatives treat one another.  This is the way it is supposed to work.  May we all work harder to make it happen in our own homes.

So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife; and he went in unto her, and Jehovah gave her conception, and she bare a son. And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be Jehovah, who has not left you this day without a near kinsman; and let his name be famous in Israel. And he shall be unto you a restorer of life, and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, who is better to you than seven sons, has borne him, Ruth 4:13-15

Dene Ward

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Read the Buttons!

11/21/2014 0 Comments

“Buttons! Buttons! Read the buttons!” and so for the fortieth time that week I sit down with my two year old grandson Judah and read Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  And every time we reach the page where Pete loses his last button but doesn’t let it get him down because “buttons come and buttons go,” and where Pete looks down at his buttonless shirt hanging open and the author asks, “what does he see?” Judah springs up, holds his little arms high over his head with a big grin on his face and says, “His bel-ly but-ton!” with exactly the same amount of glee and excitement as the first time he ever heard the book read.
    He loves that book and the other two Pete the Cat books he has, as well as the one called Click, Clack, Boo, plus the one based on Ezekiel 37 called Dem Bones.  That week we babysat we learned by the third day to be careful what we said or it would remind him of one of those books and he would toddle off to find it and ask for it to be read not once again, but three, four, five times again.
    Yet here we sit with a shelf full of Bibles, every version you can imagine, amplified and not, written in and bare, paragraphed and versed, and now even some in large print, and do we ever have the same amount of desire to read it as a two year old who can’t even read it to himself yet?  He knows those “Pete” books so well you can leave off a word and he will fill it in.  You can say the wrong word and he will shout, “No! No! It’s ______!”  You can mention one word completely out of context and he will immediately think of that book and go looking for it.  
    Yet we seem loathe to pick up what is supposed to be our spiritual food and drink, the lamp that lights our way in the dark, and the weapon to fight our spiritual battles.  We moan over daily reading programs, especially when we get to Leviticus or the genealogies.  We complain when the scripture reading at church is longer than 5 verses, especially if we are one of those congregations that, like the people in Nehemiah, stand at the reading of God’s Word.  We gripe when the Bible class teacher asks us to read more than one chapter before next week’s class.  What in the world is wrong with us?
    This little two-year-old puts us to shame.  Just from hearing it read, he can quote practically a whole book, several of them, in fact.  His whole face lights up when you read it to him yet again.  I have to admit, Keith and I would occasionally try to hide those books by the end of a day.  We may not do that with God’s Word, at least not literally, but leaving it to sit on the shelf and gather dust isn’t much different.

I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules. Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble, Psalms 119:162-165.

Dene Ward

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