I love students who ask questions, and most of mine do.   Please ask your questions.  Many times when one of my students asks a question, someone speaks up and says, “I was wondering that too.”  A teacher who doesn’t welcome questions ought to have a seat and stay there.  Questions show you have been listening, and even better, thinking about what you have heard, the answer to every good teacher’s prayer. 

              My classes are peppered with questions.  I am thrilled that these ladies are not too embarrassed to ask, and confident in how I will accept those questions.  Yes, there are unwelcome questions, but the difference between them and the good questions should be obvious to anyone. 

              This guideline takes care of almost everything: don’t be selfish in your questions.  Consider the effects on the other class members.  Consider who might be listening to you, including babes in Christ and outsiders from the community.  Remember that there may be visitors passing through or people moving in, “shopping” for a new church home.  Consideration for others should be the main characteristic of a Christian, even in Bible classes.  I seldom have a problem with questions like that, unlike my brothers who teach auditorium classes, and my wonderful students deserve all the credit for that.  Here are some other guidelines, most of which I have never had to deal with.

              Questions that are so far off the subject they give everyone mental whiplash are not appropriate.  One wonders, in fact, if the student has been listening and considering the class material at all, or simply letting his mind wander.  A good teacher arrives with a goal and a plan to reach it.  When you dig a pothole in the road with an unrelated question, you can seriously hinder progress in the journey to that goal. 

              Recently a teacher I know was asked, “Would you please comment on…” and because the subject was totally removed from the point of the lesson and not one he could have intelligently answered without study, he simply said, “No, that’s not something I am prepared to talk about.”  Some might criticize him, but I won’t.  He had the best interests of the class at heart.  As their leader, it was up to him to reach the goal of the lesson, not be sidetracked by something that didn’t even have a black and white answer in the scriptures.  It’s time we supported our teachers and the risks they take to their reputation, when anything they say can be misconstrued and often is, instead of sitting back taking the easy, judgmental way out and joining the bandwagon in criticizing them.  If you have one of those questions, please save it for private conversations with the teacher.  Do not disrupt the learning of others because you have a private problem. 

              This is especially true in the Sunday morning adult class where you never know who may be there.  A smaller class with a defined sub-purpose of encouragement may stop for a moment if someone is in need.  Many of my women’s classes have done exactly that, but even then, we were conscious of who was present.  If I deemed it inappropriate at that particular moment, I gently suggested a private moment after class.  Usually several others, mature women who made it a point to be aware of what was going on, stayed with me and the one in need received the attention she required.  I learned this the hard way, after allowing classes to continue on a distracting course, which ultimately led to damaged relationships because I was too afraid of hurting feelings.  Tell me which is worse, a permanently injured bond between sisters in the Lord or a momentarily bruised ego that was soothed as soon as possible?  We have said this before—teachers must sometimes make hard, spur-of-the-moment decisions.  If you can’t, then you shouldn’t teach.

              Then there are those who seek to mask an agenda with their questions, or who have a major hobby they wish to broach at every opportunity, or who have a vendetta against the teacher.  I would assume that none of those even care to be reading this, so we won’t deal with them here.  Let me just add this:  I have seen young teachers in adult classes discouraged to the point of never teaching again because no one but him was brave enough to take on a sinner.  Shame on the leadership of a church when that happens.

              As I said, the wrong questions are usually obvious.  Sometimes, though, an honest person simply needs a little direction.  It is easy when you are in the middle of a personal problem, to forget one’s obligations to others. 

              A class full of questioners is a teacher’s dream, a dream I have fulfilled every week by some wonderful women.  Don’t be embarrassed to ask the questions that need asking.
 
After three days they found [Jesus] sitting in the Temple, listening to them and asking them questions, Luke 2:46.
 
Dene Ward

One thing I seldom have is an unprepared student.  I don’t think it’s because my lessons are so interesting.  I don’t think it’s because they are so much fun to do.  Most of the time they take a good hour, and often more.  Yet my students show up again and again with something written down.  It may not always be what I am after, and usually that is my fault, but at least they tried and I am grateful to them for the effort. 

              Every teacher appreciates a prepared student.  If you are given something to read, then read it.  If you are given an outline, then go over it.  Make a few notes, look up the scriptures cited, and list any questions that might have risen in your mind.  The teacher may answer them in the class, but then again, s/he may not. 

              I usually write my own Bible class material, including scriptures to read and questions to answer.  I try to design questions that will lead the students to their own discoveries.  I know it has worked when they arrive excited, hardly able to contain themselves over the things they have learned and the ideas they have unearthed in all that digging.  Usually those ideas are what I am aimed at, but we cannot get there if the preparation wasn’t done beforehand, and these women usually have.  If we had to spend the time on the fundamentals for the unprepared, the excitement would die in those who have done the work.  In fact, I usually continue on for the sake of the prepared.  If someone is left behind because of their own laziness, why should the others suffer?  Maybe they will do better the next time.  Sometimes being a teacher means you must make hard decisions, and sometimes it means a little discipline toward the student.  But I seldom have that problem due to these dedicated students.

              As to those who do prepare but feel like they must have missed something: it may very well be the fault of the person who wrote the material—in this case, me.  Sometimes a question is poorly worded.  I know that despite copious and careful editing, I still cannot see every way that a question might be interpreted.  So answer to the best of your ability—that’s what my ladies do.  Why should you be embarrassed if it’s the questioner’s fault and not yours?  I can guarantee you that even if you missed the point, you still learned something from reading the Word of God and thinking about it.

              But there is an even more important preparation—an open mind.  An openly skeptical student usually thinks he is keeping a teacher humble, or being careful with the truth, either of which excuses his behavior, to him anyway.  What he’s really doing is hurting himself because he is refusing to consider anything he hasn’t already learned.  Certainly a student should “beware of false teachers,” but everyone deserves a fair hearing.  Skepticism has already judged and convicted before hearing a word.  Any teacher who has spent hours preparing and dares to put himself in front of a group deserves better than that.

              Especially in an ongoing class of busy women, teachers understand when preparation time is sometimes impossible.  As a teacher whose lessons are more complicated than most, I understand better than most.  So should the student stay away if she is not prepared?

              Absolutely not.  Many have come on anyway, and for that I thank them.  If you have that open mindset, you can still learn.  They always bring a pen and listen and write.  If you have done this and still find yourself hopelessly lost, rather than delay the rest of the class, ask for a private session.  I have held those more than once, and teachers should be happy to do it.  But don’t ever deprive yourself of an hour of encouragement and exhortation with your sisters because you feel embarrassed.  Have you caught onto this yet?  Embarrassment will get in the way of your being a good student more than practically anything else.  Don’t let the Devil have his way with you.  You can still learn something, even if you have not prepared the lesson.  Your mind will be stimulated to greater understanding and insights. 

              So here is your first lesson, care of my wonderful students:  Prepare your lesson as well as you are able; prepare your mind every time.
 
…and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, Eph 6:15.
 
Dene Ward

I taught my first Bible class when I was sixteen and an elder pulled me out of the high school class because the third grade teacher hadn’t shown up.  I had no material and no prep time.  Why he chose me when there were plenty of able-bodied adults in a congregation of 150, I still don’t know, but the children and I got through the ten plagues with a combination of raucous laughter and wide-eyed amazement—them at God’s power, and me at having survived those forty-five minutes.

              I’ve been teaching ever since, from the baby class when mine were that size—and don’t let anyone tell you a one year old can’t learn anything—all the way up to middle school—another place we seriously underestimate the capabilities of our children.  I wrote a workbook for them called “Did You Ever Wonder?” exploring all those things you wonder about in Bible class but are afraid to ask.  It was given to someone else to teach once, who said, “There’s no way these kids will get this,” even after I had taught it twice myself.  So the book came back to me and I taught it yet again to a group who “got” every bit of it. 

              I’ve taught at least one women’s class everywhere I have been.  That’s a group not only underestimated, but which often underestimates itself.  Most of the material for women, a sister I recently met said, is “spun sugar.”  In some places women’s studies are limited to being a good wife and mother, which leaves a lot of women out.  Yes, those things ought to be taught, and recently have not been.  It has become too popular to follow the mainstream media and disparage the men, which is exactly why I have written a study for wives.  It, too, is deeper than the standard work on the subject, because women can dig just as deeply as the men.  Their minds are just as capable of complex reasoning.  They must be or they couldn’t run their homes.  That’s exactly who I cater to in my classes—meat eaters who are tired of milk, or even the glorified milk called custard.  Women are not spiritual invalids.

              I have had to drop my children’s classes since 2005.  Children need dependable continuity, and with my health issues and increasing disability, I cannot be counted on.  Adults can understand if an emergency arises, if a weak body just cannot manage on a particular day, or if a medication wreaks havoc instead of comfort.  Children can’t.  I nearly cried when a recent group graduated that I had never taught.  But such is life; things change, and most of the time people get along just fine without you.

              Along the way I have had some wonderful students, and it seemed good to tell you about them, so they will get the thanks they deserve, but also so you can learn from them how to be a good Bible class student yourselves.  Don’t think that this is self-serving.  By emulating these women, you will get far more out of your classes, and so will your classmates.  People who disrupt classes, even accidentally, are hindering others, not helping, and we all know how Jesus felt about people who cast stumbling blocks in front of others, particularly the babes. 

              So please join me this week.  I hope that what you learn from these remarkable women will help far beyond these few weeks.
 
Help me to understand what your precepts mean.  Then I can meditate on your marvelous teachings, Psalm 119:27, NET.
 
Dene Ward

“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

We have put up several new feeders and the bird population has exploded.  We see more new kinds and more of them than ever before.  We have also seen a few new bird antics as well.

              Yesterday we looked out in time to see two doves running around the pole one of the feeders hangs from.  While cardinals and titmice usually fly the four feet up from the ground to the feeders, the doves are content to peck off the ground what falls, and a great deal does.  Pick up the binoculars and watch the seeds fly every time one of the birds “on high” pecks at it.  Meanwhile, down below, the doves revel in the raining plenty.

              Except those two.  For several minutes they chased one another around and around and around that pole, the one trying to shoo the other away from the free meal.  Occasionally the one in front got far enough ahead to stop and peck a seed, but the one behind, running literally ankle deep in food, never got a bite.

              Kind of reminds me of a few Bible classes I have sat in.  Two men wrapped up in their own opinions, chase one another around in circles with their “logic,” and neither one of them get any of the spiritual nourishment being offered that morning.  Or one man desperately tries to have his meal while another of differing opinion cannot allow it and pursues him with “arguments about words.”  In fact, if the man isn’t careful, he will usually be cornered right after class as the chase continues.  Like those two birds I watched that day, neither one is fed, despite the banquet laid right in front of them.

              Paul calls that sort of behavior “carnal” and immature, 1 Cor 3:1-3.  He equates it with orgies and drunkenness, Rom 13:13.  James puts it on a par with “every vile practice,” 3:16.  All of them link quarreling with things like jealousy, envy, hostility, and selfishness.  James even adds murder and adultery to the mix, 4:1-4.  It is one thing to have a spirited discussion of the Scriptures.  It is another entirely to refuse to consider new ideas, clinging to beliefs out of pride or dismissing a point simply because of who presented it, all cloaked in concern for words and their correct meanings while patently ignoring basic spiritual concepts like Divine authority and holiness. 

              Our spiritual meals are presented to help us glorify God, not to exalt ourselves over others.  They are food for the soul, not ammunition for the spiteful.   They are nourishment for the kind, not fodder for the vindictive.  If all we can do is chase one another in circles with the Word of God, we don’t deserve to hold those sacred writings in our hands.

              I laughed at those two stupid doves under my feeder.  Then I just shook my head and sighed.  I have seen too many Christians just like them.
 
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, Galatians 5:14-16.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

The teacher said something about the baptism of John being for the remission of sins.  An older man spoke up to correct him with the usual line, "John's baptism was for repentance and Jesus' baptism was for the remission of sins; John's was not for the remission of sins."

The teacher replied, "Read Mark 1:4 please."

The man continued his explanations of John's baptism in the tone of correcting a slow student.

"Please read Mark 1:4 aloud for the class."

He continued his points, but the teacher interrupted, "Look, this class is going no further until you read Mark 1:4 aloud for us."

Muttering that he had already studied the issue thoroughly, the man turned and read, "John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." The man looked up and in a quiet voice said, "I never knew that was in there."

Now, the man was a serious Bible student and had read his Bible many times in his life, so he had to have read that verse many times.  But, he had heard John's baptism explained away so many times that he did not see what was clearly stated.  What he thought he knew blinded him to learning.  That incident made me begin questioning how many ways and times I had done the same sort of thing.

First, this is the reason my main study Bible has no notes or underlining or highlighting.  As useful as those can be, they put your mind in the groove of things you already know.  They can keep one from seeing anything new in the passage.  I have notebooks full of notes, but my Bible is read anew each time I pick it up.

Another useful tool is to read a numberless Bible.  At 71, I have been reading Bibles 65 years.  When I first read a text without the verse and chapter numbers, I was amazed at how easy and quick it was, and also how many new connections I made without those speed bump numbers.  I created and printed that first text on a computer.  Now such Bibles are available, some with chapter numbers in the margin and at least one where one must turn to the Table of Contents to find the beginning of a book.  They all are useful to open our eyes to things we "never knew were in there."

Another useful tool is to read the same paragraph in more than one translation, then move on to do the same with the next paragraph.  Be aware that modern translations have broken large paragraphs up into "sound-bite" pieces to suit the fashion of our times.  That often breaks one thought into 3 or 4 and the reader fails to see the point made by the inspired writer.  Use the paragraphing of the 1901 ASV whatever translations you may be reading.  Available online, it is rarely wrong in this.  Just like chapter breaks can obscure connections, so can wrong paragraph breaks.  For example, 1 Cor 9 is one paragraph, one thought. The ESV & NASB divide it into 6.  In a study, one will discover 6 thoughts and possibly miss the one over-riding thought that is the theme of the whole paragraph/chapter.

Read to discover what one paragraph's main thought has to do with the one before and the one after and where that chain ends.  Often, the interpretation of a particular phrase will depend on its place in an extended argument.  For example, 1 Cor 8 – 11:1a is one theme.  That effects a reader's understanding of the purpose and meaning of many of the links that make up that chain.
God bless you in finding jewels of truth you "never knew were in there."
 
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. (2Tim 2:15)
 
Keith Ward

I was reading the Q and A column in a cooking magazine based in Boston.  “You’re kidding,” I spoke aloud when a reader asked how to dispose of bacon grease without clogging her sink.  Dispose of bacon grease?  Keith was equally appalled, but on a whim he asked a friend, who is originally from New England, what he did with his bacon grease.

              “Why?’ he asked with a suspicious look on his face.  “What’s it good for?”

              What’s it good for?  I guess this is one of those cultural things.  Bacon grease to a Northerner must mean “garbage.”  Bacon grease to a Southerner means “gold.”

              My mother kept a coffee can of it in her refrigerator.  I do the same.  My grandmothers both kept a tin of it on their stoves.  They used it every day, just as their mothers had.  In the South bacon grease is the fat of choice.  In the old days only better-off farmers had cows and butter.  The poorer families had a pig, and they used every square inch of that animal.  Even the bones were put into a pot of beans and many times the few flecks of meat that fell off of them into the pot were all the meat they had for a week.  In a time when people needed fat in their diets (imagine that!), the lard was used as shortening in everything from biscuits to pie crust.  And the grease?  A big spoonful for seasoning every pot of peas, beans, and greens, more to fry okra, potatoes, and squash in, a few spoonfuls stirred into a pan of cornbread batter, and sometimes it was spread on bread in place of butter.

              I use it to shorten cornbread, flavor vegetables, and even to pop popcorn.  Forget that microwave stuff.  If you have never popped real popcorn in bacon grease, you haven’t lived.  I am more health-conscious than my predecessors—in fact, we don’t even eat that much bacon any more.  But when we do, I save the drippings, scraping every drop from the pan, and while most of the time I use a mere teaspoon of olive oil to sauté my squash from the summer garden, once a year we get it with dollop of bacon grease.  Any artery can stand once a year, right?

              As I said, it’s a cultural thing.  Things that are precious to Southerners may not be so to Northerners, and vice versa.  Don’t you think the same should be true with Christians?  What’s garbage to the world should be gold to Christians.

              One thing that comes to mind is the Word of God.  In a day when it is labeled a book of myths, when it is belittled and its integrity challenged, that Word should be precious to God’s people.  David wrote a psalm in which at least seven times he speaks of loving God’s word, Psalm 119.

              We often speak of “loving God” or “loving Jesus,” but you cannot do either without a love of the Word, a love shown in obedience.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the words that you hear are not mine, but the Father’s who sent me, John 14:24.  Jesus even defined family, the people you love more than anyone or anything else, as “those who hear my word and do it,” Luke 8:21.  Surely the ultimate love was shown by the martyrs depicted in Rev 6:9 who were slain “for the Word of God.”

              Do we love God’s Word that much?  Then why isn’t it in our hands several times a day?  Why aren’t we reading more than a quota chapter a day?  Why can’t we cite more than one or two proof-texts, memorized only to show our neighbors they are wrong? 

              Bacon grease may be gold to a Southern cook, but it is hardly in the same category.  Yet I think I may have heard Christians arguing more about when to use bacon grease than when to read the Bible.  Maybe we are showing the effects of a culture other than a Christian’s.
 
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." John 14:21
 
Dene Ward

We just spent a week with the grandkids.  When it comes to food, they are just like mine were at that age.  They prefer their oranges out of a can, their macaroni and cheese out of the blue box, their chicken cut into processed squares, and their potatoes long and fried.  Forget the complex and strong flavors of Parmagiana Reggiano, feta, and blue—they want American cheese, thank you.  And all their sauces must be sweet—about half corn syrup.  True, these two enjoy olives—but they need to be canned and black.  A strong, briny kalamata is summarily thrown across the table.

              Children have immature palates.  For the most part strong flavors are out and bland ones are in.  Sugar, salt and fat make up their favorite seasonings.  And it must be easy to eat.  When you can barely hold a spoon and get the food on it and into your mouth, you prefer things that are solid without being hard and which fit the hand.  We would never give a child a fresh artichoke to eat, with instructions like “Peel off the leaf, dip it into lemon juice and melted butter, put it between your teeth and pull it out of your mouth, scraping the good part off as you pull, then discard the leaf.” 

              One day they will understand the pleasure of different tastes and textures.  Their palates will become educated to appreciate different foods and even different cuisines.  Even the pickiest of childhood eaters usually learn as adults to eat new things, if for no other reason than to be polite or keep harmony in the home.  When a woman spends hours a day cooking, she wants more than a grunt and food being shoved around the plate in an attempt to disguise the fact that very little of it was eaten. 

              But sometimes people become set in their ways.  They decide they don’t like something, even if they have never tried it.  They won’t entertain the possibility that their palates have changed, and so won’t keep trying things as they become older.  When I was a child I hated every kind of cheese, raw onions, and anything that contained a cooked tomato.  Now I eat them all.  Imagine if I had never found that out.  No pizza!

              What about your spiritual nourishment?  Are you still slurping down canned oranges and packaged mac and cheese?  Do you still think instant mashed potatoes are as good as real ones, and Log Cabin as good as real maple syrup?  What if the Bible class teacher taught a book you had never studied before?  Would you learn with relish or complain because you actually had to read it instead of relying on your old canned knowledge?  What if he showed you a different interpretation of a passage than you usually hear?  Would you chew on it a little and really consider it, or just dismiss it out of hand because it wasn’t what you already thought you knew?

              Keith and I have both experienced complaints from people because our classes were “too deep” or “too hard” or “took too much study time.”  Really?  It’s one thing to have an immature palate because you are still a babe.  It’s another to have one because you haven’t grown up in twenty, thirty, forty years of claiming discipleship. 

              The spiritual palate can tell tales on our spiritual maturity in every other area.  Jesus expected his disciples to mature in just a few short years.  “Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me?” he asked Philip (John 14:9).  If we don’t know his word, we don’t know him.  If we don’t know him, we have no clue how to behave as Christians.

              An educated palate for spiritual food is far more important than whether you have learned to like liver yet.  Become an adventurous spiritual eater.  You will find this paradox: though you become hungrier for more, you are always satisfied with your meal.
 
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14.
 
Dene Ward

Lines of wooden tables covered with red checked cloths, yellowed cotton cloths, handmade crocheted cloths, loaded till sagging, every square inch laden with stoneware bowls full of red potato salad, yellow with mustard, and studded with chopped celery, sweet pickle nuggets, and chunks of hard-boiled egg; bright orange carrot salad polka-dotted with black raisins; clear glass bowls of layered salads, various shades of green, orange, white, and yellow; finely chopped slaws, pale green with orange and purple flecks and dressed in a white dressing or a sweet vinegar; chipped china platters of golden-eyed deviled eggs, some bloodshot with paprika; luscious pink ham slices, and piles of fried chicken covered with a homemade breading redolent with spices and herbs, the chicken itself tangy and moist from a buttermilk brine; club aluminum Dutch ovens filled with pole beans, green beans, speckled butterbeans, and white acres, mustard, turnip and collard greens, all sporting a sheen of bacon drippings and shreds of pork; cast iron pots of bubbling baked beans spiked with molasses and the contents of every bottle in the refrigerator; others loaded with fall apart pot roast, pork roast, or chicken and bright yellow rice; others still steaming with chicken and slicker style dumplings; spoons sticking up akimbo from mason jars full of the jewel colors of various pickles, everything from deep red to chartreuse to layers of emerald green, canary yellow, and white; baskets of fluffy, tan buttermilk biscuits, soft yeast rolls, and black skillets of cornbread wedges; pies billowing with meringue, dense with pecans, or fruit bubbling from a vented golden crust; moist cake layers enrobed in swirls of chocolate or cream cheese or clouds of seven minute frosting, some cloaked in coconut, others with nuts peeking out from the coating—none of them exactly perfect because everything is homemade.

              That’s what potluck was like when I was a child.  It was far superior to today’s offerings, at least half of which are purchased on the way—fold-up boxes of fried chicken and take-out pizza, plastic containers of salads and slaws, and bakery boxes of cakes and pies, all entirely too perfect to be made from scratch.  Is it any wonder that everyone rushes for the obviously homemade goodies and even snatches slices of cake early, before going through the regular line, and hides them for a later dessert?

              Potluck originally referred to feeding drop-in guests or folks passing through who needed a meal whatever was in the pot that evening.  Drop-ins were not considered rude in those days.  I remember my parents thoroughly enjoying the evenings when someone just happened to stop by.  We didn’t load our lives down with extra-curricular activities back then--people were the activities.

              Potluck eventually came to mean “You bring what you have and I’ll bring what I have and we’ll eat together.”  It didn’t really involve any extra work—that was the point.  When no one has enough of one thing but you pool it together, there is plenty for everyone, and plenty of time left to visit.

              We often speak of “feasting on the word of God.”  I wonder what would happen if we had a potluck?  What would I have to offer?  Anything at all?  Do I spend enough time in the word of God to have thoughts on it readily at hand?  Most of us are too embarrassed to show up at a real potluck with nothing in our hands, but think nothing of showing up to a Bible study with nothing to share.

              Would my spiritual table be loaded down with good food or store-bought, processed, preservative-laden grub because I had no time left in my day to cook something up?  Would my offering be fresh and nutritious or calorie-laden and fatty?  Would it be a gracious plenty mounded high in the bowl or spooned into a plastic cup barely big enough to feed one?  Would it be piping hot or lukewarm?  Would people go away satisfied or determined to avoid my table at all costs in the future?

             Think about it tonight when you look at the meal you feed your family. What’s in that spiritual pot of yours should someone happen by?  Would they be lucky or not? 
 
"Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David, Isaiah 55:1-3.
 
Dene Ward
 

Along time ago we lived near a man who raised a little livestock.  He had a sow down the fence line from us, and one summer morning we woke to find piglets rooting their way through our yard, trying to find mama. Mama was too big to get under the pen, but the babies weren’t.  After that we kept tabs on those piglets, and the boys, who were about 6 and 4, loved going to see them.  Baby animals, as a general rule, are cute—even pigs.
 
             One evening I stuck my head out the door and hollered extra loudly, “Dinner!” because I knew that’s where they were.  Keith said they started back immediately, Nathan on his shoulders, and Lucas walking along side.  About halfway back he swapped boys, and told Nathan to run on ahead and wash his hands. As he watched, Nathan ran along the sandy path toward our driveway, then veered to the left instead of to the right toward the house.  Immediately his father yelled, ‘What did I tell you to do?!” and Nathan instantly changed his direction and ran for the house without even a backward look.

              As he approached the deep shade of the drive himself, Keith felt an inch tall.  Nathan’s tricycle was off to the left, parked in the hedgerow by our chicken pen.  That’s what he had been headed for because his father had taught him to always put up his tricycle.

              He put Lucas down on the ground and sent him on into the house as he went for the tricycle himself, to put it up for his younger son, who had only been trying to obey his father in all things.  Just as he got there, a gray-green cottonmouth as thick as a bike tire tube charged from the bushes.  Keith was able to grab a shovel in time and kill it. 

              Imagine if he had been a four year old.  Would he have seen the snake in time?  Would he have even known to be on the look out as one should here in the north Florida piney woods?  Cottonmouths are not shy—not only will they charge, they will change direction and come after you.  A snake that size could easily have struck above Nathan’s waist, and at only forty pounds he was probably dead on his feet.

              Now let me ask you this—does your child obey you instantly?  Or do you have to argue, threaten, bribe, or cajole him into doing what you tell him to do?  Do you think it doesn’t matter?  The world is filled with dangerous things, even if you don’t live where I do—traffic, electricity, deep water, high drop offs—predators.  If you don’t teach him instant obedience, you could be responsible for his injury or death some day--you, because you didn’t teach him to obey.  Because you thought it wasn’t that important.  Because you thought it would make him hate you.  Because you thought it made you sound mean.  Or dozens of other excuses.

              We put our boys in child car seats before it was required by law.  We actually had other people ask us, “How do you get him to sit in the seat?”  Excuse me? Isn’t it funny that when the law started requiring it, those parents figured it out?  Not getting in trouble with the law was evidently more important to them than the welfare of their children.

              The hedgerows don’t go away when your child grows up.  In fact, they become even more dangerous if you haven’t taught him as you should have.  Isn’t it sad when the elders of the church have to nag people to get them to do one simple thing for the betterment of the church or the visitors whose souls they are supposed to care about, like sitting somewhere besides the two back pews?  Those are probably the same people who as children had to be begged to obey their parents. 

              Do you want to know what someone was like as a child?  I can show you the ones who threw tantrums; they’re the ones who threaten to leave if things aren’t done their way.  I can point out the ones who wouldn’t share their toys; they won’t give up anything now either, especially not their “rights.”  The snake in the hedgerow has bitten them, and this time it poisoned their souls, not their bodies.

              Look around you Sunday morning.  Decide which of those adults you want your children to be like when they grow up.  It doesn’t happen automatically.  It happens when loving parents work hard, sometimes enduring a whole lot of unpleasantness and even criticism, to mold their children into disciples of the Lord.

              Danger hides in the hedgerows.  Make sure your child’s soul stays safe.
 
Now Adonijah [David’s son and] the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, "I will be king." And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. His father had never at any time displeased him by asking, "Why have you done thus and so?" 1 Kings 1:5-6.
On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them, 1 Samuel 3:12-13.
 
Dene Ward