Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

The title is the theme of the book of Leviticus. "And the LORD spoke to Aaron, saying . . . You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the LORD has spoken to them by Moses.” (Lev. 10:8, 10-11)  The most basic job of the priests was to learn the difference between the clean and unclean and the holy and common and teach that to the people of Israel. 
            Everything in Leviticus relates in one way or another to this central premise.  The first seven chapters detail the different types of sacrifices: how each is to be performed, which animals may be used, how they are presented to the Lord and exactly where they are to be slaughtered (some animals were presented/killed at the door of the tabernacle, others on the North side of the altar), which parts are to be burnt on the altar and which are to be eaten by the priests and/or the offeror.  The same animal might be offered in different ways depending on the type of sacrifice being made.  Every word of instruction for the sacrifices is about cleanliness and holiness.  Sacrifices to the Lord were not to be treated casually as if all that mattered was the heart of the worshipper. They were not common, but holy. the animals used must be clean animals, but also holy: not spotted or blemished, not halt or lame, not sick.   
            Chapters eight through ten instruct how to consecrate the priests.  The overriding emphasis here is on the holiness of their office and the absolute need to maintain their ceremonial cleanliness.  So holy was the High Priest that he was not allowed to even participate in the funeral of his own father because to handle a dead body would make him unclean. 
            Chapters eleven through 15 enumerate the laws of cleanliness (far more involved than just which animals belonged in which category) and chapters 18-27 contain the laws of holiness.  The holiness laws were different from the regular civil laws contained within the Law of Moses because the explanation of these laws was simply "I Am YHWH!"  Many don't even have punishments for breaking the law just the statement that the law is basic to the character of God.  Chapter eleven contains the famous command "For I am Jehovah your God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves" (vs 44) while in chapter 20 God says, "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am Jehovah your God." (vs 7) 
           Finally, chapters sixteen and seventeen describe the Day of Atonement.  This day was dedicated to the re-sanctification of Israel each year.  Atonement was made for the nation's sins.  The tabernacle was sanctified again.  This day and its events were emblematic of the effort to remain clean and holy before the Lord.  In like manner, the entire book of Leviticus teaches the people how to remain clean and holy and shows just what an effort that will take. 
            So why did I just waste your time going through all of that?  The priests were to learn all these arcane rules and teach them to the people, so what?  1 Peter 2:9  "But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light".  Just as the priests were to learn to distinguish between the clean and unclean, the holy and common and teach the people, so we, as part of Christ's new kingdom of priests, are to maintain our own holiness and proper standing before the Lord and teach the world about the expectations of God.  When people ask if it really matters to act only in the manner authorized in the New Testament we can say, "Yes!" because the authorized manner is the teaching of the Lord.  Just as in Leviticus, what the Lord teaches is the holy way He wants things to be done and any other way would be unholy, common.  Is maintaining my sexual purity really that important?  Yes, because we are to be holy, not commonly had by all in the world.  Our speech is to be clean, not vulgar, because we are the priests of God and the first responsibility of priests, even before teaching the people, was to maintain their own holiness.  Then, while maintaining our cleanliness before the Lord, we spread across the world His word, showing forth His excellencies. 
 
Psalms 24:3-5  "Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah? And who shall stand in his holy place?  He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; Who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood, And hath not sworn deceitfully.  He shall receive a blessing from Jehovah, And righteousness from the God of his salvation."
 
Lucas Ward 

I spend very little time on Facebook, just enough to check on my children and some close friends and run the Facebook page for this blog, maybe a half hour a day total, some days much less.  Occasionally a link someone has posted will catch my eye and I will take a quick look.  After all, I am always hoping someone will link my blog posts, even the ones I don't link myself, so I am willing to spend a little time looking at others.
            The other day I caught one that caused an almost visceral reaction.  I wasn't expecting that from the title—something about raising kids.  I don't even remember who wrote it or who posted it, but I do remember the phrase that sent my heart racing and the blood pounding in my ears:  "the drudgery of raising children."  Surely the writer didn't mean that, I thought.  Then I remembered half a dozen posts by several young mothers who bemoaned their lot in life—"Stuck in the house with these kids, is this all there is?"
            Let me quickly add some reality to the mix.  I know what it is like to be a mom.  I have had to find ways to do housework, laundry, and cooking around the sleeping (or not) schedule of an infant.  I realize what it is like to have more than one in diapers at the same time.  I know what it is like to hang those diapers up in the steam bath of a Florida summer, sweat running out of your hair and dripping off your nose, hoping those flapping white squares will dry out before you use the last clean one.  I comprehend having to practically pack for a trip whenever you go anywhere for even thirty minutes, lugging diaper bags, extra clothes, books and toys, and baby himself, while hanging onto a purse and the hand of yet another all-but-baby.  I know the terror of holding a seizing child while your husband races down the highway at 90, wondering if that little one will ever open those big blue eyes again.  I appreciate what it's like to wonder if you and your husband will ever again have an evening out or a night alone—for us it was eight years before that happened after the first one was born.  I know what it is like to sit next to a small hospital bed, trying to sleep in a straight chair, jumping up every time your child whimpers, doing your best not to let him see you cry.  I understand the months and months without a good night's sleep and the utter exhaustion that causes you to simply pass out on the arm of the sofa in the middle of folding clothes while your toddler runs toy trucks and cars up and down your arms.  Being a mother is hard.  I get it.
            But all it takes is a look into those sparkling eyes, a hug that nearly strangles you, and a precious little voice calling out, "Mommy!" to make it all worthwhile.  When you see in your child the image of the God who made him, you know that the work you do is anything but drudgery.  It is, as is said so often it has become hokey, the most important work in the world.  You have been given a soul to save.  You have been entrusted with a mission that will determine the eternal destiny of a human being.  Do you see that word?  God trusts you to get the job done.
            When we allow it to become drudgery we have spent too much time making ourselves the center of the universe.  It is not about "Me."  It never should have been for a disciple of a Lord who gave up everything for others and expects his followers to do the same.  His work was always his focus.  If he had been as selfish as I am sometimes, he would have never left Heaven, never "emptied himself" of Deity, in the first place.  I am forever grateful that he did.
            And so I am forever trying to do what I can, not to repay him, for when we have done all we can "we are still unprofitable servants," but to pass along that gift to others, especially the ones he created inside this body of mine and gave me the privilege of molding into a person "fit for the Master's use."
 He never told me life would be easy, but he did tell me that Heaven would be.  I want to be there with my children—forever.  I am sure you do too, and don't you ever forget it.
 
​Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” (Prov 31:25-29)
 
Dene Ward

If there was ever a new church that struggled with its spirituality, it was the church at Corinth.  Paul scolded them:  And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. [Read that:  “you are acting like a bunch of big babies,” and you will get the picture.]   I fed you with milk, not with meat, for you were not yet able to bear it, no, not even now are you able, for you are still carnal, 1 Cor 3:1-3.  We have a tendency to think of things sexual when we see that word “carnal,” but Paul tells us in the next phrase or two what it really means:  “walking after the manner of men,” in other words, being physically minded instead of spiritually minded.  He then spent most of that first letter telling them how to become more spiritually minded. 
            Their struggle over spiritual gifts surely has to be the most obvious example.  They actually rated them as to importance, using, of course, carnal measurements--the flashier and showier the better.  So Paul spends most of chapter 12 telling them that no one is more important than anyone else.  Everyone is useful in the body of Christ, and if any one of them was not there, something would be obviously missing.  In chapter 14, when their sense of importance is leading to a confused and disorderly assembly because none will yield his “gift” time to another, he actually gives them specific instructions about how to order things, all of which are pure common sense if you have the correct object in mind, the edification of the church rather than the glorification of the individual.  He even spells it out several times:  if there is no edification, let them keep silence. 
            And of course, there is the pitiful business with suing one another, letting things of this physical life effect how they dealt with spiritual brothers and sisters.
            Those poor Corinthians at whom we so often shake our heads are not the only ones with these problems.  We are beset by the same weaknesses, and the same feelings.  In fact, as I was reading and thinking about these things it suddenly struck me that almost any time I take an idle remark as a personal attack, it falls right into the same category. 
            I believe there is such a thing as being sinfully sensitive.  Think about it.  How many times could Jesus have “gotten his feelings hurt” or “felt insulted?”  You could make a list as long as an entire book in the Bible, but he did not allow his feelings to keep him from completing a mission that was more important than anything else in the world. 
            When I commit myself to being his disciple, don’t I promise to follow his example?  The problem with being too sensitive is that it causes me to stop what I am doing and spend time on nothing but myself, usually moping or pouting, or even beginning a campaign against the other person.  Nothing anyone says to me or about me, or that I might even possibly construe to be about me, is an excuse for setting myself up as more important than my mission as Jesus’ disciple.  As a mature Christian, those things should roll right off me, because my concern is God’s glorification, not my own.  That is what spirituality is all about.  And if we cannot even begin to get a handle on it here, why should we be allowed to live in that exalted state for an Eternity? 
            Something to think about as we interact with one another today.
 
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves, Phil 2:3.
The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult, Prov 12:16.
 
Dene Ward

One of the clearest evidences of a Spirit-filled Christian is his hunger for Scripture and his humble submissiveness to the authority of Scripture as God's written Word.  But show me a person who claims to be a Christian yet is not devoting himself to the apostles' teaching, who rather neglects or even disregards it, and you give me cause to question whether he has received the Holy Spirit at all.  For the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (as Jesus called him).  He is given us to be our teacher, and those who are filled with him have a keen appetite for his instruction.

John Stott, Authentic Christianity

A couple of weeks ago Keith had an appointment with the audiologist at the VA hospital.  This meant he was late arriving to work, heading up highway 231 about 9:30 that Friday morning.  It takes awhile to park, go through the search checkpoints and all the gates.  He arrived at his office in time to hear the news that had just filtered back.
            A man in the town had stabbed his girlfriend and fled down that very highway at speeds far exceeding the speed limit and, with apparent intent, hit a van head on.  Both drivers were killed instantly.  It had happened at 9:40.  A ten minute delay anywhere along the road and one of those dead drivers might have been Keith.
            Many times we go through life thinking God has not answered our prayers.  Because we are self-oriented and earthly minded, we see only what happens to us or to others right in front of us.  But occasionally we are reminded that God is out there answering prayers we did not even know to pray. 
            So many have asked me how I can stay positive in the circumstances in which I find myself.  They do not know what I have been told. 
            Five years ago was not the beginning of all this.  It is the ending.  Many times, many different medical personnel, including three or four doctors famous in their fields, have told me that as severe as my problem is, they do not know how my eyes have lasted this long, how I did not have a crisis long before.  God has been answering those unsaid prayers since I was born.  He has not let me down; he has given me far more than anyone else in my position had any right to expect.
            So today, while you are wondering why God has not answered a prayer you have prayed, when you think He has forsaken you in a time when you need Him most, take a moment to consider all the prayers He has answered that you are unaware of.  He knows far better than we what we most need.  He is, in fact, answering your other prayers too, but He is not required to keep to your timetable or your methods.  Just trust Him.  He is there, working while you sleep, while you work, while you play, and while you plan all those big plans that so often exclude Him. 
            You may never realize what He has truly done for you today, but then just think how horrible it might have been if He hadn’t.
 
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen. Eph 3:20,21
 
Dene Ward

It is almost surprising that this somewhat liberal theologian could write this excellent study on Habakkuk.  Perhaps, as he reveals in its pages, life has a way of making you face realities you might have otherwise reasoned away.  However it happened, this little book is worth your time, and it won't actually be much time at all.  I read it in three sittings, and could have done so in one if I had had a little over an hour to do so.
            Habakkuk, as you might know, is the prophet who dared to ask God why and then tell Him that his answer didn't make much sense to him.  And far from striking the prophet with leprosy or lightning either one, God answered him.  The author includes his own translation of the text, going so far as to tell us the words for which we really have no translation.  In the middle one of Habakkuk's three sections, he offers an interpretation that is intriguing but seems totally relevant.  And in the end, he tells us what that sentence found four times in the Bible means, The just shall live by faith. 
            And finally he answers those eternal questions about suffering with joy, those things we wonder in the black of night as we lie there unable to sleep for the constant roiling of our minds from the trials we endure.  If you have ever suffered—and who has not?—this book may be what you need.
            The Triumph of Faith in Habakkuk is published by Wipf and Stock Publishers.  It is available new on Amazon and used through SecondSale, Thiftbooks, and AbeBooks.
 
Dene Ward

We have been passing a lot of things down lately, and that includes a lot of our garden paraphernalia.  Keith has reached the age that he no longer feels safe working for hours in the heat and humidity of an oppressive Florida summer.  One of the things he gave away was his backpack garden sprayer.  Before, he had two sprayers—one for herbicide and one for insecticide.  The backpack sprayer has become extremely uncomfortable to his shot-up shoulder so that is the one that was passed on to a couple who are just discovering the joys of gardening.
            So the first time he went out to spray the tomatoes and peppers for bugs, he forgot to rinse it out from the time before when he sprayed for weeds around the fence.  He never had to do that before.  That is why he had two sprayers.  So he went right out and sprayed my miniature rose and his first tomato.  That's when he smelled the herbicide.  Uh-oh.  Even if he had rinsed it out, the wand still had plant killer in it.  And that is exactly what happened.  The next morning I went outside and my little rose was brown and dead.  So were the tomatoes, but the rose had been a gift from a voice student 20 years before. 
            I doubt that will ever happen again, but that doesn't change the results.  Or so I thought.  A few weeks later I went out to water my flower beds during the unseasonable dry weather we were having, and as I bent over the rose I saw it—one tiny red leaf, the color of new growth on a rose.  A day or two later, another showed up.  And today I had two small rose blooms.  The rose had risen from the dead.  Not two weeks ago I had snapped off all but one brittle brown stem, and now it is thriving once again.
            Do you realize that is exactly the figure the New Testament uses of a person who becomes a Christian? 
            Or are you ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin; for he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he lives, he lives unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:3-11).
            Too many times we use this to teach our neighbors that baptism is an immersion.  What we need to focus on is that we are supposed to have died to sin and now live a new life, raised from that death to live a life unto God.  Paul was writing to believers when he wrote those verses.  I have no right to make excuses when I sin, not when I have the power of Christ's resurrection in my life.  Speaking of which:
            And you did he make alive, when you were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:— but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:1-6).  Just as in Romans, you were dead, but now you have been made alive.  Live like it.
            We could go on and on with verses like these.  You may never have realized how many there are, in fact, but that in itself tells us how important this is.  It is also says, "There's no valid reason for having missed this, people!"  Just like my little rose, we were supposed to have come back to life at our baptism.  If we are still wallowing in the grave of sin, something is dreadfully wrong.
 
If you died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to [them] (Col 2:20).

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me (Gal 2:20).

…having been buried with him in baptism, wherein you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did he make alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses (Col 2:12-13).
 
Dene Ward

Man has been using tents since the dawn of civilization.  The oldest one found was in Moldava, a mammoth skin draped around mammoth bones.  Mammoth—that's the Ice Age, people.
            How did they make those ancient tents waterproof?  With animal fat, which made for a very stinky domicile.  Teepees and yurts were the next phase, and they were still stinky.  Finally nylon was invented in the 1930s and that became the material of choice for a long time.
            You can find all sorts of patents on tents, each claiming to be the next big step in comfort, ease in assembly, portability, size, whatever it is you want.  For this topic I chose the patent that was published on August 4, 1959 because of this phrase:  the said tent was "quite capable of standing up to any weather even without anchoring or reinforcement."  Remember that for a few minutes.
            Our first tent was a Camel dome.  The box said 10 x 12, which I never really understood since it was a hexagon.  It said “sleeps 6” so we thought two adults and two small children would fit just fine.  We learned to look at the fine print.  A diagram did indeed show six sleeping bags fitting in the tent floor—like sardines in a can, and the sleeping bags like mummy wrappings.  The only place even I could stand up straight was the direct center of the tent, where you could never stand because of the sleeping bags covering the floor, so you always stood bent over.
            Before long, the boys received a smaller dome as a gift and Keith and I had the larger one to ourselves.  Now that we are alone, and camp “in style” as our boys accuse, we have a 16 x 10.  A queen-size air mattress fits nicely and we can still stand up in more than one place inside.
            But tents are not houses.  The paper-thin walls mean you hear your neighbors all too well, and they would be absolutely no protection from wild animals.  So far we have only had to deal with raccoons, but if a bear came along we might be in trouble.
            Those walls also mean that in cold weather you are going to be cold too.  We have learned that with a waterproof rainfly overhead, we can plug in a small space heater and raise the temperature as much as 15 degrees inside—but when the temperature outside is 30, that’s not a lot of relief.
            Usually our tents are dry, but on our last trip we were suddenly leaking.  When we got home we found out why.  The seam sealer tape had come loose.  Rainwater simply rolled down the fly till it found a place where the tape hung unfastened.  Then it dripped through--on the floor, on the boxes we were trying to keep dry, and on our bed.  So much for "standing up to any weather," as that 1959 patent claimed.  As comfortable and advanced as they make them these days, there is no confusing a tent with a house.
            The Bible has a whole lot to say about tents.  Abraham and Sarah were called away from a comfortable home in a large city to live in tents for the rest of their lives.  Though God promised them that their descendants would someday own that land, they never owned any of it until Abraham bought a cave to bury Sarah in.  But one of the tests of their faith was those very tents they lived in.  Did they really believe God enough to stay in them?  Yes, they did, the Hebrew writer makes it plain.  They understood perfectly the temporary nature of those tents and the promise they stood for, Heb 11:8-16.
            The Israelites lived in tents for 40 years.  Their tents were punishment for a lack of faith. Yet even after they finally received their Promised Land, God insisted they remember those tents during the harvest feasts, to remind them who had given them the land and the bounty it produced, Lev 23:42,43.  But the people refused, until once again they were punished for refusing to rely on God. That feast was not observed until the return from captivity.  And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. Neh 8:17. 
            Paul calls our bodies tents in 1 Cor 15.  As amazing as the human body is because of its Creator, it is still a fragile thing compared to the immortal body we hope to receive.  We are often too wrapped up in the physical life those tents represent to remember that.  It seems like a long life.  It seems like everything that happens here is important.  It even seems like we can take care of ourselves.  WE make the living that feeds us and houses us and clothes these bodies.  We live on the retirement WE have carefully put away for the future.  Just like Israel we forget who really supplies our needs. 
            On several occasions I have wakened in the middle of the night on a camping trip to a storm blowing outside.  The wind billows the sides of the tent and the rain pours as if someone had upended huge buckets over our heads.  The lightning flashes and you suddenly wish you hadn’t so carefully chosen the shady spot under the big tree. 
            Once, in the middle of one of those storms, I suddenly heard a loud crack followed by a WHUMP!  The next morning, we crawled out of the tent and saw a huge limb lying on the ground about thirty feet away.  If that limb had fallen on our tent, we might not have survived it.  A tent would certainly not have stopped its fall.
            What are you trusting in today, the feeble tents of this life, or the house that God will give you?  A mortal body that, no matter how diligently you care for it, will eventually decay, or a celestial body that will last for eternity?  The things that "tent" can do for you, or the protection that God’s house provides?  From the beginning, God has meant a tent to symbolize instability and transience.  He has always meant us to trust him to someday supply us with a permanent home, one we will share with him.  Tents, even the Tabernacle itself, have always symbolized a glorious promise.
            Don’t choose a tent when God has something so much better waiting for you.
 
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, 2 Cor 5:1.\
 
Dene Ward

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

Croquet has a long and unsure history as a game.  The things we do know even seem to be in dispute.  Sometime in the early 1850s, a woman named Mary Workman-MacNaghten, whose father was a baronet in Ireland, went to a London toy maker named Isaac Spratt, and asked him to make a croquet set.  Her family had played the game long before she was born "by tradition," which means no written set of rules, using mallets made by local carpenters.  Her brother eventually wrote down the rules they used.  Spratt made some sets and printed out those rules.  He registered his creation with the Stationers' Company in 1856, but the copyright form gives the date as August 2, 1853, plenty of time for Lewis Carroll to make the game even more famous in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
            When our boys were in middle school we gave them a croquet set.  At first they seemed a little disappointed—croquet?  How boring.  Then we actually started playing and they discovered strategy, like whacking your opponent completely out of bounds with one of your free shots.  Now that was fun.
            We have settled down to annual games during the holidays whenever we get together.  It is the perfect way to let the turkey digest, and we usually wind up playing two or three times.  But that time of year means a less than clear playing field on what is already a rollercoaster lawn.  Our yard, you see, isn’t exactly a lawn.  It’s an old watermelon field, and though the rows have settled somewhat after thirty-odd years, we still have low spots, gopher holes, ant hills, and armadillo mounds.  But in the fall we also have sycamore leaves the size of paper plates, pine cones, piles of Spanish moss, and cast off twigs from the windy fronts that come through every few days between October and March.  You cannot keep it cleaned up if you want to do something besides yard work with your life.  So when you swing your mallet, no matter how carefully you have aimed, you never really know where your ball will end up.  We call it “ultimate croquet.”  Anyone who is used to a tabletop green lawn would be easy pickings for one of us—even me, the perennial loser.
            All those “hazards” make for an interesting game of croquet, but let me tell you something.  I have learned the hard way that an interesting life is not that great.  I have dug ditches in a flooding rainstorm, cowered over my children during a tornado, prayed all night during a hurricane, climbed out of a totaled car, followed an ambulance all the way to the hospital, hugged a seizing baby in my lap as we drove ninety down country roads to the doctor’s office, bandaged bullet wounds, hauled drinking water and bath water for a month, signed my life away before experimental surgeries—well, you get the picture. Give me dull and routine any day. 
            Dull and routine is exactly what Paul told Timothy to pray for.  I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings and all that are in high place; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Tim 2:1-5. 
            Did you catch that?  Pray that our leaders will do what is necessary for us to have a “tranquil and quiet life” so that all men can “come to a knowledge of the truth.”  God’s ministers cannot preach the gospel in a country where everyone is in hiding or running in terror from the enemy, where you never have enough security to sit down with a man and discuss something spiritual for an hour or so, where you wonder how you will feed your family that night, let alone the next day.  The Pax Romana was one of the reasons the gospel could spread—peace in the known world.  That along with the ease of travel because every country was part of the same empire and a worldwide language made the first century “the fullness of times” predicted in the prophets.
            I don’t have much sympathy for people who are easily bored, who seem to think that life must always be exciting or it isn’t worth living.  I am here to tell you that excitement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  And God gave us plenty to do during those dull, routine times.  It’s called serving others and spreading the Word.  If you want some excitement, try that.  It’s even better than Ultimate Croquet.
 
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 1 Thes 4:9-11.
 
Dene Ward