I seem to be reacting a lot lately, and here I go again. 

            I understand that the divorce rate in this country is atrocious.  I understand that this insidious practice of hard-hearted men has even infected God’s people, just as it did thousands of years ago.  But I think it is time we fought it in a different way.  Telling our children that Christians are leaving their mates by the score so they need to be careful is not the way to battle this ungodliness, and I will show you how I know.

            Jesus grew up in a time similar to ours.  Even among God’s people scholars argued about the acceptable reasons for divorce.  Among the very conservative, adultery was the only “scriptural cause,” while among the more liberal almost any dissatisfaction was deemed suitable.  Evidently the divorce rate was sky high because when Jesus made his pronouncement, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery,” Matt 19:9, even his own disciples were shocked.  “If this is the case, it is better for a man not to marry!” they exclaimed a verse later.

            Do you see what rampant divorce triggers in the young?  Do you see how hearing the negatives warps their perspective of the way God intended people to live?  They think a happy marriage is impossible.  No wonder the world says, “You can always get out of it if it doesn’t work.”  When you grow up hearing that over 50% of all marriages fail, and that the church is just as bad, what else will you believe when you hit the first little bump in the road but, “I guess this means it’s over.”

            Everyone ought to know by now that statistics can lie.  They may be facts, but they can be skewed any which way the researcher wants to skew them.  What if we count your successful marriage, the successful marriages of two other friends, plus the marriages of Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor.  Between you all that’s 20 marriages, only three of which lasted, a 15% success rate.  Now that’s depressing unless you know who is being counted.

            Yes, over 50% of marriages in our country end in divorce, but that lumps them all in, first marriages, second, third, etc.  Let’s separate them and see if things change a little.  60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.  And first time marriages for both parties? Only 41% end in divorce.  It is still a terrible statistic, but it is quite a bit lower than when you count in all those folks who have either failed once or shown a propensity to fail, and it means well over half of first time marriages survive.

            Some more good news:  you can actually reduce your risk.  If one set of parents is happily married, the couple’s risk decreases 14%.  (I couldn’t find statistics if both sets of parents were still married to the first spouse, but it stands to reason the risk would decrease even more.)  If the couple attended college (they don’t even have to have graduated), their risk decreases 13%.   The older they are, the less the risk until by age 25, the risk decreases 24%.  And let me add another one that just goes to show that God knew what He was talking about:  if a couple lives together before marriage, their risk of divorce increases by a whopping 40%!

            Now to those who want to mourn over the state of marriage in the church, even granting that this malady will touch us, please count how many first marriages are still intact in your congregation.  I doubt the failures are anywhere near the national average.  Simply put, when two people understand that they make a commitment not just to each other, but to God, they stand a far better chance of “making it.”  Let’s share these statistics with our young people.

            Yes, divorce exists among God’s people.  Yes, you can find bad marriages among Christians.  So let’s start nipping them in the bud.  Several times Keith and I have taught a “Preparation for Marriage” class.  We don’t sugar-coat anything.  We tell them what can go wrong and how to fix it, but we also show them how to prevent those things from happening in the first place.  We show them how to have a happy marriage from the beginning.  We impress upon them the need for seeking advice when necessary, and usually before they even think it’s necessary.  Several young couples have thanked us for the class, even after being married several years.  They knew what to look for in a mate and they know how to spot problems before they become impossible to deal with.

            And let’s also start giving our young people a reason for optimism.  You can do this!  You can live as one flesh for decades and have your love grow deeper and more meaningful with every passing year.  You can avoid the common pitfalls and make it through the trials of life.  No, it will not always be easy, but those difficulties are not a sign that your marriage is over.  They simply mean it’s time to work a little harder for awhile.

            I may be a cockeyed optimist, but do not let the pessimists out there ruin your view of marriage.  Don’t let them make you sigh along with the apostles, “It is better not to marry at all!”   God said you can do it, the two of you, living and loving together for a lifetime.  Just who do you believe anyway?

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Ecclesiastes 9:9

All statistics come from McKinleyIrvin.com, a family law website.

Dene Ward           

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            Do people even know what Mason jars are any more?  My favorite store has stopped carrying them, and when I finally found them at the local discount store, I could have bought out their entire stock without overdrawing my bank account.

            I have a large supply of those clear sturdy jars.  Every year I stuff them with pickles, jams, tomatoes, and salsa, place them in a canner and subject them to more heat and pressure than a football coach in the midst of a losing season.  Every year they seal and protect as they sit on my shelves for the next few months, then are emptied, washed, and placed back in the shed until I need them again.

            This year three or four of them broke.  I lifted the lid off the canner, and as I peered into the steam, there they sat, emptied of liquid but looking intact until I tried to lift them out and the bottom stayed in the water, while the sides and lid hung from the canning ring.  The contents, now limp and useless, toppled into the canning water.  I could hardly complain.  These jars have served me well for years.  Now that we are only two and I don’t need as much, I have plenty of others to take their places on the shelves.

            Those broken jars have made canning especially exciting this past year.  I never know what I will find when I lift the lids off my two canners.  They have also made me think about the way God uses the image of jars in the Bible.  As with many other things, He presents them in two ways, one I want and the other I don’t.

            He tells Isaiah in chapter 30:12-14, Wherefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely thereon; therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly in an instant.  And he shall break it as a potter's vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing; so that there shall not be found among the pieces thereof a shard wherewith to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.  God’s promise of destruction for his rebellious people is frightening, and we must be careful for it does not need to be a national destruction.  He can do the same thing to rebellious individuals.

            But God also holds out a reward for faithful service that is almost too amazing to believe. And he who overcomes, and he who keeps my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of my Father:  and I will give him the morning star. He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Rev 2:26-29.

            I do believe in that reward, and so should you.  God has shown us that He will fulfill His promises.  That promise in Isaiah is historically verifiable down to the last detail.  This one would be too, if history were to continue after it occurs.  It won’t, but we will.

 

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honor, and some unto dishonor.  If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, meet for the master's use, prepared unto every good work, 2 Tim 2:20-21.

Dene Ward

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            We planted them late by Florida standards, so I was just pulling carrots the first week of June.  It wasn’t difficult; I pulled the whole row in about 15 minutes.  Still, it was disappointing—a twenty foot row yielded a two and a half gallon bucket of carrots that turned into a two quart pot full when they were cleaned and sorted, cutting off the tops and tossing those that were pencil thin or bug-eaten.

            Then I thought, well, consider the remnant principle in the Bible.  Out of all the people in the world, even granting that the population was much less than it is now, only eight were saved at the Flood.  Out of all the nations in the world, God only chose one as His people.  Out of all those, only one tribe survived the Assyrians, and out of all those, only a few survived the Babylonians and only some of those eventually returned to the land.

            Jesus spoke of the wide gate and the narrow gate.  Surely that tells us that though God wishes all to be saved, only a few will be.  So out of a twenty foot row of carrots, I probably threw out half.  Then we threw out a third of those that were too small to even try to scrub and peel.  Yet, we probably did better with our carrots than the Lord will manage with people!  And I learned other principles too.

            When I pulled those carrots some of them had full beautiful tops, green, thick-stemmed, and smelling of cooked carrots when I lopped them off.  Yet under all that lush greenery several had very little carrot at all.  They were superficial carrots—all show and no substance.  Others were pale and bitter, hardly good for eating without adding a substantial amount of sugar.  Then under some thin, sparse tops, I often found a good-sized root, deep orange and sweet.  Yes, they were all the same variety, but something happened to them in the growth process.

            Some of us are all top and no root.  It always surprises me when a man who is so regular in his attendance has so little depth to his faith.  Surely sitting in a place where the Word is taught on a consistent basis should have given him something, even if just by osmosis.  But no, it takes effort to absorb the Word of God and more effort to put it into practice, delving deeper and deeper into its pages and considering its concepts.  The Pharisees could quote scripture all day, but they lacked the honesty to look at themselves in its reflection.

            And there are some of us who have little to show on the outside, but a depth no one will know until a tragedy strikes, or an attack on the faith arises, or a need presents itself, and suddenly they are there, standing for the truth, showing their faith, answering the call.           

            I knew one man who surprised us all with his strength in the midst of trial, a quiet man hardly anyone ever noticed.  Yet his steadfastness under pressure was remarkable.  I knew another who had been loud with his faith, nearly boasting in his confidence that he was strong, yet who shocked us all with his inability to accept the will of God, his assertions that he shouldn’t have to bear such a burden when he had been so faithful for so long.  Truly those carrot tops will fool you if you aren’t careful.  “Judge not by appearance,” Jesus said, “but judge righteous judgment.”  Look beneath those leafy greens and see where and how your root lies.

            Evidently the principles stand both for man and carrots.  Don’t count on your outward show, your pedigree in the faith.  Develop a deep root, one that will grow sweeter as time passes and strong enough to stand the heat of trial. 

            And don’t assume you are in the righteous remnant if that righteousness hasn’t been tested lately.  God hates more to throw out people than I hate to throw out carrots, but He will.  Don’t spend so much time preening your tops that your root withers.  And finally, only a few will make it to the table; make sure you are one of them.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20

Dene Ward        

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            I saw him first in the early spring, the days still cool and breezy, the sun only barely warming the greening grass.  I am not sure exactly how he reached the feeder next to my window, but later I saw him hopping down one limb at a time to the ground.  His right wing was broken, dragging on whatever surface he stood; he was unable to lift it at all.  Yet by hopping upward one limb at a time, I surmised, he had managed to get to a plentiful food supply and ate as much as he needed.

            All spring he came, usually after the other birds had eaten their fill and left.  I made sure he had plenty and he seemed to appreciate it, eying me from the safety beyond the window where I sat as he pecked the seed.  Finally his wing began to mend.  After a couple of weeks he was able to pull it up a bit.  Gradually he pulled it closer and closer to his body, and suddenly one afternoon he gave it a try and flew to the feeders out in the yard, the ones on straight poles that he couldn’t reach before.  His flight was wobbly, swooping down toward the grass in a dive I thought would crash-land, but then he managed to flap a bit and rise to land on the red plastic perch.

            His wing and his maneuvers have both improved.  I can still tell which one he is, though, because that wing healed crookedly and still bows out from his body as if he has his hand in his pocket, elbow stuck out, but his flying is straight and sure now.  He survived what might have brought death to any other bird probably because of the free and easy meal he could still manage to reach while he healed.

            Isn’t that why God put us here together?  When one of us has a broken wing, the rest of us do what we can to help.  It may be physical—taking meals to the ill or injured or those recovering from surgeries.  But far more often it is a spiritual break, a soul in jeopardy from the pitfalls of life that have left him maimed and unable to care for himself.

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 1 Thessalonians 5:14

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Romans 15:1

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2.

            In this way we follow the example of our Lord:  a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench…Matt 12:20.  Just as he healed so many broken souls, he expects us to do the same.

            Sometimes it is difficult to deal with these broken souls.  It takes time, it takes effort, sometimes it even takes heartache and tears. It means we might miss a planned outing, a meal, or maybe some sleep.  Taking care of those in pain can take up your life—but then, isn’t service supposed to be our life when we give it all to the Lord?  Service by definition is never convenient. 

            Look around for those broken wings.  God expects you to be His agent in taking care of His ailing children.  Feed them, care for them, listen, advise, and if necessary, correct.  Above all, be patient—healing takes time.  If you aren’t willing to do that, then maybe the broken wing is yours.


Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, "Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you." Isaiah 35:3-4

Dene Ward

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            After my herb bed gave me fits one year, Keith spent some time completely digging it out and replacing the dirt with potting soil and composted manure.  That was $90 worth of dirt!  That means I am spending a lot more time, and even more money, caring for it so the original costs won’t be wasted.

            I have gone to a real nursery to find plants, larger and more established (and more expensive) than the discount store 99 cent pots.  I have dug trenches for some scalloped stone borders to help keep the encroaching lily bed out of it, and to dissuade any critters that might hide beneath the shed behind the bed from using it as a back door.

            I water it every day, and fertilize it every other week.  I pull out anything that somehow blows in and seeds itself in my precious black soil. 

            I have seedlings planted to finish the bed, varieties of herbs that are difficult to find as plants, which I had to carry in and out of the house time and time again due to the fluctuating spring temperatures.  Then they were transplanted into ever-increasing sized cups as they outgrew their tiny seed sponges, before finally reaching their permanent home in the herb garden bed. 

            I have invested so much time, energy, and money into this herb garden that I am not about to let it die.

            Why is it that we will work ourselves silly because of a monetary investment, while at the same time neglecting other things much more important to our lives?

            How about your marriage?  I say to every young couple I know, “Marriage is a high maintenance relationship.”  Right now, they think they will always be this close, always share every joy and every care.  They think there will never come a time when she wonders if he still loves her, or he wonders if she cares at all about the problems he must deal with at work.

            Life gets in the way.  If you want to stay as close as you are during that honeymoon phase, you have to tend your little garden.  Fix his favorite meal.  Send her flowers.  Put a love note in his lunchbox.  Take out the garbage without being asked.  Find a babysitter and go out on a date.  Just sit down after the kids are in bed--make them go to bed, people--and talk to each other.  And listen!  Pray together.  Study together.  Worship together.  Laugh together.  Cry together.

            What about your relationship with God?  Do you think you can maintain a close relationship with someone you don’t know?  He gave you a whole book telling you who He is, 1 Cor 2:11-13.  How much time do you spend with it?  How often do you talk to Him?  How can He help you when you never ask?  How can you enjoy being in the presence of someone with whom you have nothing in common?  Disciples want nothing more than to become like their teachers, 1 Pet 2:21,22; 2 Pet 3:18.

            None of that comes without effort.  You must spend some time and energy, maybe even make a few sacrifices to cultivate your relationship with God.  When you have invested nothing, it means nothing to you, and it shows. 

            Spend some time today improving your marriage, tending to your family relationships, cultivating your love and care for your brethren, and most of all, caring for your soul—pulling out the weeds, feeding it, nursing it along--so it will grow into a deeper, stronger, more fruitful relationship with your God.

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to kindness; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek Jehovah, till he come and rain righteousness upon you, Hosea 10:12.

Dene Ward

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(Today’s blog is by guest writer Lucas Ward)

Snakes are a fact of life in North Central Florida. Out in the rural area I grew up in -- a mix of cow fields, piney woods and swamplands -- we had eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, timber rattlesnakes, cottonmouth moccasins, pygmy rattlesnakes, coral snakes and the occasional copperhead. Not to mention the many varieties of non-venomous snakes. One of the first things Dad taught us was to watch where we were walking. You kept your eyes on the ground 10-15 feet ahead of you and swept your eyes back and forth 7-8 feet on each side of the path you were walking. If you wanted to look up and admire the sky/clouds/trees then you stopped walking and looked up. You then looked back down at the ground before taking your first step. Since snakes are very well camouflaged, you don't look for snakes, you look for smoothness and roundness. Whether walking through high grass or brambles or through the forest, smooth, round things stand out of you are looking for them. While you may not see that diamondback rattler as a snake in the pile of leaves under the shrub, you will likely notice something smooth against the more jagged background. Nathan and I got very good at seeing the snakes and staying away from them. Whenever we had people from church over, we often took the poor, deprived city kids on walks through the woods that surrounded our property. Before we left, however, we always warned them to stay behind us and stop if we stopped. We knew that they weren't aware of the potential dangers and that our parents and theirs were counting on us to keep them away from the snakes. 

I was taking a walk with my roommate one night about a year ago. We walked down the road to the bridge over the Santa Rosa Sound and then came back. Suddenly, he says "look out, snake!" and I jump because the thing is right between my feet. We then notice that it was dead -- and not poisonous anyway -- and of no danger. But it kind of got to me that I had almost stepped on a snake. ME! The North Florida backwoods boy who was watching for snakes since I was 7 or 8 years old. Wow, that's not good. That's almost as unbelievable as Dad hitting himself with an axe, but, then again, that has happened recently too. You see, I've been living in town for the last 18 years. I've gotten out of the habit of always watching every footfall. There just aren't snakes in town. Not with anything near the frequency there was back home. (We used to regularly kill 4-5 rattlesnakes a year and about as many of the other poisonous varieties.) So, I had gotten complacent. Now, if I was in the woods for some reason, taking a hike, or whatever, then I still have enough of the country boy in me to watch where I'm going, but in town I was careless. 

The big snake, Satan, sometimes catches us in the same way. When we are in a situation where the temptation level is high, we are on guard. When we think things are safe, we sometimes slip up. We don't lose our tempers and scream at the jerks at work or the jerks on the road, or the general jerks we meet in the world, but then we come home and our wife/husband or kids says something a little off and we lose it big time. At the beach, surrounded by people in skimpy bathing suits, we are careful to keep our libidos in check, then at church on Sunday one of our sisters leans over and her blouse hangs loose and before you know it we are considering things that are best left unpondered. Just like snakes can sometimes find their way into the biggest of cities, The Snake can attack us when we least expect it. We can never let our guard down too far, no matter how safe we feel. 

There's one thing I know, though. The streets of gold are snake free.

Lucas Ward

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            As odd as it may seem for a native Floridian, I am not a beach person.  Maybe that is why I made the mistake I did.

            I was away to a camp retreat for women, when it suddenly dawned on me en route that I had forgotten to pack a bath towel.  Rather than delay our progress shopping, we swung by a pharmacy at an exit where we had already stopped for gas, and I picked up the only type of towel they had available--a beach towel.

            The next night as I took my turn with the shower shared by thirty other women in our cabin, I discovered that beach towels do not work like ordinary towels.   I blotted my wet skin and lifted it to discover all the water droplets sitting on my arm exactly as they had before I used the towel.  I tried again, same result.  Finally I tried pushing off the water.  Some, but very little, rolled onto the floor.  Slightly encouraged I kept wiping.  Eventually I was--well, dry is not the word--but damp instead of soaked.  I am positive, though, that most of the drying was a matter of evaporation because I worked at it for nearly 15 minutes.

            The strangest things can bring me a moment of inspiration.  So when I got home, I did a quick study on the word “wipe.”  It is an interesting word, in both Testaments. 

            In the Old Testament the Hebrew word is machah.  Jehovah said to Moses, whoever has sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book, Ex 32:33.  “Blot out” is the same word often translated “wiped.”  Yet in Psalm 51, David uses it when he asks God to “blot out” his transgressions, and in Isaiah 25, God says in a Messianic prophecy that he will “wipe away” his people’s tears.

            In the New Testament, the word is exaleipho. Peter says in Acts 3:19 that we must repent if we expect our sins to be “blotted out.”  Jesus tells John in Rev 3:5 that he will not “blot out” the names of those who repent. Then we are told that when we reach our reward God will wipe away all tears from [our] eyes, Rev 21:4, all the same Greek word in exactly the same three uses as the Hebrew.

            God’s mercy is not like a beach towel.  He will blot out my sins completely.  On the other hand, if I do not live as I should, he will blot me out completely.  You cannot use “completely” in one phrase without using it in the other.  I cannot say, “Don’t blot me out completely. Don’t wipe my name out of your book,” while expecting God to wipe away my sins as completely as an expensive, absorbent towel wipes the water from my body because his Holy Spirit chose the same word for both actions in two separate languages. 

            Justice demands that something be blotted out.  God’s grace makes it possible that it not be the sinner, but merely his sins.  Amazing grace indeed.

And in this mountain will Jehovah of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that covers all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He has swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people will he take away from off all the earth: for Jehovah has spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is Jehovah; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. Isa 25:6-9.

Dene Ward

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The psalms are poetry.  By definition poetry is full of figurative language.  The psalms, therefore, must be full of figurative language.

Simile:  As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God, 42:1.

Metaphor:  The Lord is my rock, 18:2.  The Lord is my shepherd, 23:1.

Personification:  When the waters saw you they were afraid, 77:16.

Hyperbole:  God looks down on the children of men to see if there are any…who seek after God. They have all fallen away…there is none who does good, not even one, 53:2,3.

            We all use figurative language every day of our lives:  “He’ll give you the shirt off his back.”  “I need a new set of wheels.”  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.”  But for some reason we don’t get it when we find it in the scriptures.  We make up some weird gate in Jerusalem that archaeologists have never found, nor that the disciples had ever heard of, instead of understanding that Jesus was using hyperbole when he said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.”  We are not any better than our religious friends who want every item in the book of Revelation to be literal.  Maybe we should take the log out of our own eyes before we talk about them.

            We do the same thing with our hymns.  Granted there are lines in some hymns that we probably should not sing.  They teach religious dogma that is not found in the New Testament.  But far more often I have picky brethren who ignore the authority the book of Psalms gives us to use poetry, the hallmark of which is figurative language.  We follow the examples of our neighbors and make it all literal, then ban it from our assemblies. Hymns are poetry set to music just as the psalms were.  We should treat them as such.

            It would be helpful if we recognize that a figure of speech is meant to address only one specific point and stop trying to carry it beyond reason.  “A sower went forth to sow,” Jesus taught.  The point of the parable was how the seed grew based on the ground it fell on.  Who would be so silly as to ask what the bag in which the sower carried seed represented?  The same ones who wonder about camels and needles.  The same ones who want a literal thousand year kingdom on the earth instead of an eternal kingdom in Heaven.  The reason one group didn’t fall for the other fallacy was not their understanding of how to use figurative language, i.e., the same way we use it every day of lives.  The reason they stayed “sound” on one and not the other is they were indoctrinated otherwise.  It’s time we fixed that problem.

            Even denominational preachers understand the uses and abuses of figurative language when it comes down to brass tacks.  Just read Dungan’s Hermeneutics.  He has a great list of exactly how to interpret figurative language (Chapter 8).  If you follow it, you won’t fall for the strange gate OR the millennium.

            So let’s stop being ridiculous with our hymns, too.  We would not stand for anyone interpreting the things we say the way we interpret those poets. “Whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do you also unto them.”

            And, more to the point, if we banned poetic language, we would miss a whole lot of wonderful teaching that reaches the heart in ways that straight prose never could.  Funny how God knew that so many thousands of years ago.

Jehovah, I have called upon you; make haste unto me:
Give ear unto my voice, when I call unto thee.
Let my prayer be set forth as incense before you;
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth;
Keep the door of my lips.
Incline not my heart to any evil thing,
To practice deeds of wickedness
with men that work iniquity:
And let me not eat of their dainties.
Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness;
And let him reprove me, it shall be as oil upon the head;
Let not my head refuse it:
For even in their wickedness shall my prayer continue.
Their judges are thrown down by the sides of the rock;
And they shall hear my words; For they are sweet.
As when one plows and cleaves the earth,
Our bones are scattered at the mouth of Sheol.
For my eyes are unto you, O Jehovah the Lord:
In you do I take refuge; leave not my soul destitute.
Keep me from the snare which they have laid for me,
And from the gins of the workers of iniquity.
Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
While I escape.
Psalms 141:1-10

Dene Ward

            Keith had major surgery this past spring and because of his profound deafness I was with him in the hospital as caregiver 24/7.  We don’t do real sign language, but it is easier for me to communicate with him after 40 years of gradually adapting to his increasing disability.  People who are not used to it simply do not know how, and reading lips is not the easy fix to the problem that most think.

            Unfortunately, this hospital stay coincided with the garden harvest.  The beans, squash, and cucumbers had already begun coming in.  While we were away that week, those vegetables continued to grow.  When we got home, the beans were a lost cause--thick, tough, stringy and totally inedible.  The squash looked like a brass band had marched through, discarding their bright yellow tubas beneath the large green leaves, and the cucumbers as if a blimp had flown over in labor and dropped a litter.  If we expected the plants to continue to produce, I had to pull those huge gourds.  That first morning home I picked and dumped 8 buckets full.

            Gardens are taskmasters.  They don’t stop when it doesn’t suit your schedule.  They don’t wait till you have a free moment.  You must reap the harvest when it is ready or you lose it.  Every morning in late May and early June I go out to see what the day holds for me.  Will I be putting up beans or corn or tomatoes?  Will we have okra for supper or do I need to pickle it?  Are the jalapenos ready for this year’s salsa?  Are the bell peppers big enough to stuff or do I need to chop some for the freezer?  Do I need to make pesto before the basil completely takes over the herb bed? 

            And then you look for other problems.  Has blight struck the tomatoes?  Do the vining plants have a fungus?  Have the monarch butterflies laid their progeny on the parsley plants?  Have the cutworms attacked the peppers?  Has the ground developed a bacteria that is killing off half the garden almost overnight?  Do things just need watering?

            Childrearing can be the same way.  Children don’t stop growing until it suits your schedule. They don’t wait till you have a free moment.  You must reap the harvest when it is ready or you lose it.

            God expects you to carefully watch those small plants.  He expects you to check for problems before they kill the plants, and nip them in the bud.  It is perfectly normal for a toddler to be self-centered, but somewhere along the way you must teach him consideration for others.  Are you watching for ways to overcome his innate selfishness and teach him to share? Do you have a plan to teach him generosity?  It won’t happen by itself--you have to do it.

           Are you examining your children every day for those little diseases—stubbornness, a hot temper, whining, disrespect, or the other side of the “leaf”—inordinate shyness, self-deprecation, pessimism.  God expects you to look for problems from the beginning and try to fix them so your child will grow into a happy, well-adjusted adult, able to serve Him without the baggage of character flaws that should have been caught when he was very small.  Parents who ignore these things, thinking they will somehow go away when he grows up, are failing in their duties as gardeners of God’s young souls.  Those things will not disappear on their own any more than nematodes and mole crickets will.

            He also expects you to make clear-eyed judgments.  He may be your precious little cutie-pie, but you need to take off your tinted glasses and take a good look at him.  If you ignore his problems because you are too smitten to see them, you do not love your child as much as you claim.  Whoever spares the rod, hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him, Prov 13:24.  When I ignore the blight in my garden it’s because saving the garden isn’t important to me.

            Have you and your spouse ever just sat and watched your children play?  Have you ever given any thought at all to the things you might need to correct in them?  If your schedule is too busy for that, then you are too busy.  Period.  Your children will keep right on growing, and without your attentive care they may rot on the vine. 

            You are a steward of God’s garden.  The most important thing you can do today is take care of it.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table… Psalms 128:3.

Dene Ward

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