That was my reaction the first time I heard the word, “hermeneutics.”  Then Keith told me what it meant: rules of interpretation.  Immediately I was skeptical.  Just who determines these rules, especially when we are talking about interpreting the Bible?  So he bought me my own hermeneutics textbook entitled, appropriately enough, Hermeneutics, A Text-book, by D. R. Dungan.  For a textbook written by a professor it is one of the most practical books I have ever seen.  I was thrilled to discover that no one has determined the rules of hermeneutics.  The author simply sorted out and listed the rules we all follow every day without thinking about it.
            Last year I received a letter that told me I was to receive $700.  I could have approached that letter in many different ways.  I could have said, “This is a hoax,” and thrown it away.  I could have said, “This must be from a friend who knows we have a lot of medical bills,” and kept it, eagerly awaiting the gift.  I could have thought, “Keith must have applied for a loan,” and then sat down with the books and tried to figure out how we were going to repay it.
            So what did I do?  I looked at the return address—Internal Revenue Service.  I looked at the date—two weeks after I had mailed in our tax return.  I scoured the letter for clues about why I was to receive this money—I had made an error and they caught it.  Then, and only then, did I decide what to do about it.  Let them send me the extra money!
            I applied the principles of hermeneutics to that letter.  I asked myself, who is this from, when did they send it, why did they send it, and let that determine what it meant.  I do it every day.  So do you.  So does everyone else.  But for some reason people think you aren’t supposed to do that with the Bible.  They treat it like some big book of riddles that is impossible to figure out, or that each one of us can interpret to mean whatever we want.  Tell me, just how capricious do you think God is?  Will He say, “You have to please me to get to Heaven so here is an enigmatic book of rules.  Good luck figuring it out!” or will He give us a perfectly comprehensible guide for success?
            God is not willing that any should perish, Peter tells us.  He loved us enough to plan our salvation before he even made us, several writers say.  The Spirit, who knows the mind of God, inspired men to write the things we need to know so that we can say with full assurance, “I am saved.”  No one ever needs to wonder, or wish, or simply dream about having a relationship with their Creator.  It’s all down in black and white.  You can apply the same principles you apply every day of your life, and correctly interpret how to please God and receive the reward.  It may have been a mystery once, but now we know “whodunit” and why.
            Tomorrow we will talk a little more about how to interpret.
           
But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"-- these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 1 Cor 2:9-12
 
Dene Ward

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. (Acts 17:11)
 
            “Examining” the scriptures—think for a minute your reaction if you had been feeling ill for weeks--fever, nausea, exhaustion, pain in some specified location--and your doctor examined you the way you examine God’s word.  If you didn’t sue for malpractice, you would at least change doctors.  At least that’s the way most people study their Bibles. 
            We simply do not think it’s that important.  Don’t object—if it were important, you would find the time and do it that way, a deep examination.  Jesus said of the Jews, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, (John 5:39).  At least they had the right motive, eternal life.  At least they did the work.  We can’t even seem to get that part right—we’re too busy, and memory verses are for kids, right?  What their children memorized in the synagogue schools would put us to shame.
            But putting forth the effort is only half the battle.  In the next verse, Jesus says they missed the obvious—Him!  They could quote till Doomsday and still not get it right if they did not open their minds to what the Word teaches.  Opening the mind isn’t as easy as you think it is, and most of us not only don’t do so, we don't even realize we haven't.
            A few years ago I had a request for study tips.  I think now I am ready to share what has taken me so long to figure out myself.  A couple of years ago I had a five or six part series that took you through a basic method I use, step by step.  If you are interested, you can find it by clicking on Bible Study on the right sidebar and scrolling down till you find it.  This time I will be sharing little tips I use all the time almost without thinking because they have become so automatic, rules (yes, there are some), and also the results of my studies that might be new to you.  What is learning for, if you don’t share it? 
            Those posts were originally scattered throughout a couple of years, here and there.  Now I want to try to get them a little closer together for you.  This week we will cover the first four, and then I will try to do the same thing next month and the next, until we are finished.  Look for the opening tag “Study Time,” as in the title above.   If you think you might have missed some, you can always check the archives under Bible study.  I post five days a week, I just don’t link them all, so you can also check up on other articles about other subjects that you might have missed.
          Just remember this, if our opening passage means anything it means that God judges us by our Bible study.  If we want Him to find us “noble,” and if we want to “find Eternal Life,” the way we dig into the Word of God will show it.
 
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. (Ps 119:97-99)
 
Dene Ward

I imagine you have heard it being said yourself for the past two or three decades.  We are "dumbing down" America.  Because our education system has left the classical learning methods and begun to "teach to the test," because it is interested in having everyone pass, even if it leaves some 32,000,000 American adults still unable to read* (roughly 10%), many of them college graduates, we are no longer the leading country in public education.  In fact, we are way down the list.
            The term "dumbing down" is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content for some agenda or other.  It happens in many ways.
            "The term 'dumbing down' was a secret code used by film writers in the 1930s to revise scripts to appeal to viewers of lower intelligence…today's Americans are in serious intellectual trouble…in danger of losing all cultural and political capital because of illogical rationalism, diminished civic education, false idealism, and lowered expectations…Cogent knowledge is replaced with rumor, gossip, half-truths and non-truths."**
            This is not a political page and I do not ever intend it to become one, but this springboard will help us in a spiritual area as well.  In several ways, we have started "dumbing down" God's people. 
            Recently, I posted a quote which suggested that the Scriptures should make us uncomfortable, undermine our complacency, and upend our usual pattern of behavior.  It was meant to be a wakeup call, something we need in an era where no one wants to upset anyone, and certainly not warn them about God's righteous indignation.  And, as I should have expected, someone came in to remind us that God is a loving God and his Word will encourage and comfort us, too.  Of course it will, but that comment completely undermined the effects of a needed message.  A young man once told me that he listened to sermons his entire life that never made him straighten up despite the fact that they were entirely scriptural.  What finally changed him was sermon after sermon by a man who was not afraid to say, "Repent or perish," just like Jesus did.
            This has been a problem with God's people for centuries.  Look at these passages below, all of them spoken to the people of God by the inspired prophet Jeremiah.
            They have contradicted the LORD and insisted, “It won’t happen. Harm won’t come to us; we won’t see sword or famine.” The prophets become only wind, for the LORD’s word is not in them. This will in fact happen to them (Jer 5:12-13).  No matter what Jeremiah told them, they would not listen.  "God won't do that to us."
            Stand in the gate of the house of the LORD and there call out this word: Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah who enter through these gates to worship the LORD. “This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your deeds, and I will allow you to live in this place. Do not trust deceitful words, chanting: This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD (Jer 7:2-4).  They still had the Temple.  How could God ever destroy it and them, his chosen people, they asked in wide-eyed wonder?
            For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is making profit dishonestly. From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated My people’s brokenness superficially, claiming, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace (Jer 6:13-14). And I replied, “Oh no, Lord GOD! The prophets are telling them, ‘You won’t see sword or suffer famine. I will certainly give you true peace in this place.’ ” (Jer 14:13).  This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They are making you worthless. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the LORD’s mouth. They keep on saying to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD has said: You will have peace.’ They have said to everyone who follows the stubbornness of his heart, ‘No harm will come to you.’ ”  (Jer 23:16-17).  Just like today, they had people who wanted to focus only on the goodness and mercy of God.  "God is a loving God.  He would not want us to be unhappy."
            What did Jeremiah say about all of that?  Your prophets saw visions for you that were empty and deceptive; they did not reveal your guilt and so restore your fortunes. They saw oracles for you that were empty and misleading (Lam 2:14).  When we focus only on the kindness and mercy of God and forget his promise of punishment to the disobedient, when we do our best to take away the sting of some difficult passages because we "don't like them," or when we undo the warnings of the men of God who preach them, we are no better than the false prophets of old.  We have successfully "dumbed down the church" with a diet of pablum instead of the meat they need to chew, and chew hard on.
            The next time you see or hear a tough message, thank God that someone still has the chutzpah to preach it, and then make yourself a little uncomfortable by heeding it.
 
Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. (Rom 11:22).

*Statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
**William Haupt III, "The Dumbing Down of America" in The Center Square.
 
Dene Ward

I have been griping about it for years, and it used to be that several of my brothers and sisters did the same.  Nowadays, most people don't even see the problem.
            All those pictures we give our children to color in Bible classes to finish out the last five minutes or start the first five while we wait for latecomers to make it are usually inaccurate.  Why does it matter, you ask?  Because those pictures stay in your head and color everything about the Biblical narratives you read for the rest of your life, and that causes you to miss many others things as well.  Then there is the simple matter of being careless with the Bible.  How can you expect your friends and neighbors to trust you if they catch you in an obvious mistake?  It isn't "just being picky" if Jesus used the tense of a verb (Matt 22:31,32) to prove a Biblical point and the apostle Paul used the number of a noun (Gal 3:16) to do it as well.
            So which picture am I talking about, you ask.  Oh, if only it were one.  Let's start with the stable where Jesus was born.  Recent discoveries have shown that our Western idea of a stable was probably not at all what the Oriental writers had in mind.  And please—Jesus was not born in a manger, he was laid in one after his birth.  Can any of you women imagine giving birth in a box smaller than even a twin bed?  But besides that, when you see the wise men show up on Jesus' night of birth, along with the shepherds, you know someone has not read Matthew 2 often enough.  The wise men went to "a house," and Jesus had been born long enough, based on their first sighting of the star, that Herod ordered all babies two years old and younger to be killed.  I am sure he stretched things so he would not miss the one he wanted, but that still means that Jesus could have been 12-18 months old, I think, not a newborn.  Those wise men simply do not belong in the usual nativity scenes.  If we fail to make connections in something as simple as that, what else, perhaps more important, have we missed?
            Let's head to the Old Testament now, where probably the majority of these errors occur.  Every picture you see of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away depicts Hagar with a sweet little boy no more than 8 or 9.  Read Genesis.  Ishmael was 14 when Isaac was born.  He and his mother were not sent away until after Isaac's weaning celebration, which would not have been until he was between 3 and 5, all my cultural sources tell me.  Add that to 14 and Ishmael would have been a strapping young man between 17 and 19 at the least!  Yes, the verses afterward picture him as weak and helpless.  Now you have the task of figuring out why that was.  Did he gallantly give his mother all the water while he did without?  You can probably come up with other scenarios.  We simply do not know, but don't paint an obvious lie by using a picture that is inaccurate.
            Now let's look at Isaac himself.  Again, every picture shows a young Isaac, perhaps 8 to 10, carrying a few sticks of wood up Mt Moriah with his father.  As someone who has heated their home with wood for four decades now, let me tell you that wood is heavy.  My boys could not have carried enough wood to burn that wet a sacrifice, much less carry it up hill, until they were older teenagers, say 18 at least.  And that adds to our understanding that this was also a test of Isaac.  At some point, he surely must have figured out what was going on, yet he did not run. He did not overpower his aged father and leave.  He trusted him, just as Abraham trusted God.  Do your children trust you that much?  And has your example taught them to trust God that much?  Do you see the lessons we miss when we are not accurate about even the tiniest things?
            How about the ark?  You know, that ubiquitous travesty of a picture with the giraffe's head sticking out the top of it.  You certainly don't grasp the size of the thing and the incredible task Noah and his three sons had before them when they built it when you see that.  In the first place, an "ark" was a box, not a boat.  In fact, in Latin "arca" means "chest."  Think the Ark of the Covenant.  Noah probably built a giant box, and that is exactly what it should look like.  And none of the animals was as tall as it was, not even a giraffe!  No wonder everyone {probably} thought Noah was nuts.  Not only was that ark monumental, so was the strength of his faith to build it!
            I could go on and on, but here is one that knocks people's socks off.  When Jacob first met Rachel, we automatically think of a hormone-influenced young man falling madly in love at first sight.  Actually, Jacob should have known better by then because, you see, he was 77 years old!  And how do I know that?  You have to start from his age when he goes to Egypt.  Then you carefully back up, subtracting years, and trust me, if you read those last 20 chapters of Genesis, you will reach the same conclusion.  If I get enough requests for it, I will tell you the passages, but I still want you to do the work.  It will be good for you, and maybe, just maybe, you will get the point. 
         Don't be careless with the Word of God--especially when you are teaching our children!  No, not knowing Ishmael's age at Isaac's birth or his weaning probably won't cost you your soul, but an attitude that simply thinks it too trivial to care just might.  If God made it possible to figure it out, just maybe that is exactly what He wants us to care enough to do.
 
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts (Jer 15:16).
 
Dene Ward
 

A few years ago we lost our resident rodent killer, a three foot+ granddaddy of a garter snake that lived under the house.  For some reason, he decided to venture out one day while Keith was mowing and instead of turning the other direction, slithered right under the mower.  No more snake—well, actually a bazillion pieces of snake.  It was not long before we heard the noises begin beneath the floors—the scampering, the skittering, and the awful gnawing.  By the time the noises were noticeable and we could get into town for what we needed, we were infested.  At least they stayed under the house and never got inside. 
            So we brought home a couple of pails of rat poison and Keith crawled under the house and laid the small green blocks out on the bases of the pillars.  The next week, every block was gone.  He laid out more and the next week they were gone again.  Another trip to town and two more pails.  It took two months and $200 worth of poison for him to finally crawl under and find most of the poison still sitting there.  We had finally gotten them all.
            So why am I on about rat poison today?  Rat poison is 99% or more inactive ingredients.  In other words, the poison runs around half a percent of the product while the rest is good food for the rodents.  That's why they eat it.  It often has flavoring like peanut butter in it.  Again, that's why they eat it.  If it didn't look good, smell good, and taste good, it would not work!
            But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ (2Cor 11:3).
            False teaching looks good.  Much of it sounds right.  It's exciting and entertaining and just plain fun sometimes.  How could it possibly be wrong?  The same way rat poison can kill you.  The gospel is plain and simple and that's not enough for some people—they want more.  It has always been this way.  Look further on in that same passage above. 
            For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you had not received, or a different gospel, which you had not accepted, you accept it well enough  (2Cor 11:4).  They had the same problem then that so many today have.  Please don't fall for it.  If you do, that wonderful, exciting new (and different) teaching will kill your soul as easily as all that rat poison took care of my rodent problem.
 
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed (Gal 1:6-8).                                                                                                                    
Dene Ward

Now pay attention!  “Irregardless” is not a word; the word is “regardless.”  “Preventative” and “attentative” are not words; the words are “preventive” and “attentive” without the extra “ta” syllable.  You go to an “orientation” session to become “oriented,” not “orientated.” 
            You are not “laying” in bed.  If you were, there would be a pile of eggs there.  Today you “lie” there, yesterday you “lay” there, and in the past you “have lain” there.  However, if you are talking about something you put in the bed, then today you “lay” it there, yesterday you “laid” it there, and in the past you also “have laid” it there. 
            The words are not pronounced “comPARable” and “irrePARable,” they are pronounced “COMparable” and “irREParable.”  And at least until recently when the lexicographers finally gave up and put it in as an allowed pronunciation, the word was correctly pronounced “off-en” without the T, rather than “off-ten” with the T.  At least know that the pronunciation of the word “often” has been corrupted, please. 
            “Hopefully the weather will clear up” is an impossibility.  The weather cannot do anything hopefully, and that is the word being modified in that sentence.  What you mean to say is, “I hope the weather will clear up.”  “Hopefully” used at the beginning of a sentence is almost always wrong.
            You cannot “bring” something to a place you are not at; you TAKE it there.  When you feel ill, you feel “nauseated.”  When you are “nauseous,” you are causing nausea in others, although my dictionary tells me that it has been used wrong for so long that they have created a second definition for it.
            You know what is so aggravating about all of this?  I am not a grammarian.  I did not have a grammar class after ninth grade.  The English classes after that were all literature and writing.  Any real grammar scholar could find fault with me.  I was, in fact, re-reading an old devotional the other day and found a split infinitive in it.  I am just an ordinarily educated person when it comes to grammar.  So if I know all these things, what in the world happened?  I see and hear them in what purports to be professional speech and writing all the time.  It’s one thing for us common folks to be less than careful about how we speak, but shouldn’t the pros have standards?
            Before you start on me for being too picky and fussy, let me remind you that I am in good company.  Paul and Jesus both made arguments based on word choice and grammar.
            In Galatians 3:16 Paul uses the number of the noun “seed” to prove that Jesus was the fulfillment to the promise to Abraham.  Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed.  He said not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ.  In the first major controversy in the new kingdom, when Jewish Christians were attempting to force Judaism on Gentile Christians as necessary to salvation, that was important.  Pretty picky of Paul, wasn’t it?
            Jesus proved to the Sadducees the resurrection of the dead when he quoted God as He spoke to Moses on Mt Sinai from the burning bush, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  At that point, those men had been long dead, yet God spoke of them in the present tense.  Jesus said, But as regarding the resurrection of the dead, haven’t you read that which was spoken to you by God, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?  God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, Matt 22:31,32, an argument based solely on the tense of a verb.  Good thing it had nothing to do with “laying!”
            We have a tendency to think of those people in “Bible times” as primitive, ignorant folks.  Jesus made a claim of Divinity to them using two words, which of necessity were in the present tense.  Before Abraham was, I AM, John 8:58.  Did they catch something so fussy and nitpicky?  I think so.  They took up stones therefore to cast at him.  I wonder if today’s generation would have just shrugged their shoulders and walked on.
            It is permissible to be picky with the Scriptures.  We are in good company when we are.  Be careful however, that your pickiness is not about pettiness.  “Picky” and “petty” are not the same.  Jesus and the apostles were one, but not the other.  Study the difference, study your scriptures.  God did choose words to communicate with us, not subjective feelings.  Aren’t we glad?  There can be no mistake if you have it down in black and white.
           
Truly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law till all things are accomplished.  Whoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.  But whoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven, Matt 5:18,19.
 
Dene Ward

Sometimes the craziness people come up with, both scholar and layman, amazes me.  Yes, the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and must be followed to the letter, or why bother at all?  But God did spend over a millennium trying to communicate with us in our language, exactly the way we use language, so that we could understand exactly what that Word means and follow it.  And guess how we communicate?  We use idioms.  We use hyperboles.  We use all sorts of figurative language every day.  Yet still people think that every single word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally and ignore obvious figures to the point that entire convoluted false doctrines can come from it.
            Here is a simple example:  And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (she was of a great age, having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she had been a widow even unto fourscore and four years), who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day (Luke 2:36-37).
            We could spend a lot of time on those two verses alone.  We could talk about the family Anna came from, and their obvious devotion to God, a devotion that sometime in the distant past caused them leave their property in the northern kingdom and travel south at probably great loss.  We could talk about the difficulty translating her age and marriage so that we really are not sure if she was 84 or whether it had been 84 years since she became a widow—not really as far-fetched as you might imagine if you do some research.  But let's just concentrate on the last couple of phrases:  who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day. 
            Many would have her living at the Temple and doing nothing else in her life.  But look at the things she did "night and day."  I don't have to be a Greek scholar to know this:  if "night and day" means 24/7, she would not have lasted more than a few days because one of the things she did "night and day" was fast.  What applies to fasting applies to the rest.  She simply made a habit of fasting.  Not every single day all day long.  What does an exasperated mother mean when she says of her teenage son, "All he does is play video games?"  See?  We use the same sort of language all the time.  (See what I just did?)
            So this good woman made a habit of going to the Temple, of worshipping God with fasting and prayer.  We can do the same thing, except our temple is the body of Christ, the church.  Are you following Anna's example so well that someone would say of you, "She worships God all the time?"  That's what we should learn from Anna, if we learn nothing else at all.
 
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple (Ps 27:4).
 
Dene Ward

A long time ago when I was a young mother, a wise, older woman made me stop and think with a few words that might have sounded harsh, but which she couched with an attitude of love and concern.  I had not taken a meal to a sick or grieving family for a long time; I had not taught a children’s class for about a year; I had not had anyone in my home for several months; I hadn’t even sent a card or made a phone call for awhile.  I was a busy young mother.  I had laundry to do every day including piles of diapers that never seemed to diminish, meals to fix, a baby to nurse and tend and a toddler to care for and teach, and a home that needed putting in some sort of order if just so we could keep track of where we put things, like the bills that needed paying. 
            Had this woman had the same problems years before when she was a young mother?  I suppose so, but I never even thought about that—all I thought about was my own problems, all the things I needed to do, how tired I was, and how I could not possibly do any of those other things because of the demands of my family and home. 
            She knew all this, but she still asked this simple question.  “What if,” she quietly said, “God decided to help you out by taking away all of your excuses?”
            After a moment of shock, I suddenly saw my children and my home in another light.  Here I was claiming to love them more than anything else, while telling everyone what an obstacle they were in my life, maybe not in words, but certainly in deeds—or lack of them.  Yes, serving my family is also serving God, but isn’t it hypocritical to then turn around and use that service as a reason not to serve others?  The last thing in the world I wanted was for God to take them away from me, and I determined that they would no longer be the excuses I offered for not doing what I could. 
            No, I could not spend hours and hours away from them, nor several hours caring for others directly, but surely I could pick up the phone or write a note when the babies were napping.  Surely I could fix an extra casserole when I made one for my family, and send it with someone else to a home where a mother was too sick to do it and the father was out working all day.  Surely, I could find something I could do.
            I think something else happened to my attitude that day, too.  I was suddenly aware of all the things that needed doing for others, and looking forward to a time when I could, instead of sitting at home, selfishly wondering when I would ever have “me time” again.  My home was where I wanted to be, but I also knew that I wanted to be doing what I could for others, when I could, for as long as I could, just like that kind sister who taught me a lesson with a simple question. 
            What kind of excuses have already come out of our mouths today?  What if God took them away in the blink of an eye so we could do those things we claim to want to do “if only…?”
 
But he said unto him, A certain man made a great supper; and he bade many: and he sent forth his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for things are now ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a field, and I must needs go out and see it; I pray have me excused.  And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them; I pray have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant came, and told his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame... For I say unto you, that none of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper. Luke 14:16-21,24.
 
Dene Ward

This is one of those announcements that is difficult to make without it sounding like something it is not.  It is not meant to be an advertisement or solicitation of any sort, and certainly not a plea for sympathy.  I hope you will understand as I explain.
            If you know me personally, or have simply read the About Dene page on the Flight Paths blog, you know that I have vision issues.  God has been gracious to me, allowing a very long reprieve as these issues have progressed.  As always, my prayers have been, "Thy will be done," so if He chooses to end this reprieve I can only thank Him for the extra time He has given me to teach and write, when I have been told that I should not have been able to see past the age of twenty, and, "This usually lasts 3 to 5 years" fifteen years ago. Things are beginning to change.  I am praying that these "things" are inconsequential as they have been for so long, but when your doctor says, "You are no longer stable—you are worsening," they might have more meaning than one would wish.
            That means I have new motivation to teach and write.  I am now working harder on a new lesson series after having several ask me to have it printed.  The Teacher's Manual is in progress and I am hoping for everything to be ready to go to print next summer.  And now that Covid is also slowing down and things are getting back to normal, I actually have speaking engagements on my calendar.  As to that…
            If you have ever considered it, let me encourage you, due to my doctor's warning, to stop putting it off.  Nothing thrills me more than to meet the people who read my blog and others who just love to learn about the Word of God.  There are so many hungering for deeper study and meditation.  But let me quickly talk about some of the questions you may have.
            It doesn't matter how many.  I have spoken to as few as 9 or 10 or as many as 300 women.
            It doesn't matter where we do it.  I have spoken in college auditoriums and in church auditoriums.  I have spoken in lodges and in Bible class rooms.  I have spoken in hotel ballrooms and even in a rented monastery.  One of the church "auditoriums" I spoke in was actually the family room of a house the church was then meeting in.  I will emulate Lydia and meet by the river if we need to.
            It needn't be elaborate.  Sometimes it is an overnight affair in a hotel.  Sometimes it is a morning of two or three sessions followed by a potluck put on by the class members.  Sometimes we all go out to a local restaurant afterward and enjoy a Dutch treat lunch together.  More than once I have shaken everyone's hand as they left and that was that.  See?  Anything goes with these things.  As long as I get to teach I am happy.
            You do not have to scour the landscape looking for other speakers.  Several times I have done the whole day all by myself, as many as three sessions with 10 minute breaks in between.  And I now have a daughter-in-law, a professor, who has begun doing these things as well.  We laughed and said we could do a whole day together and bill ourselves as "Ward Women for the Word!"
            Timing is not that much of an issue.  One time I taught all Saturday morning in one place, then got in the car and taught all Sunday afternoon 200 miles south of there.  I am very flexible and we can work things out.
            You do not have to come up with elaborate themes unless you want to.  I can certainly do a requested topic, but I also have twenty+ years' worth of speeches I can sift through and give you choices from.  Or you can just trust me to know what is needed everywhere, because believe me, people are all the same—except maybe whether or not they like sweet tea or grits.
            And it doesn't matter if I have been there before.  I have been to several areas more than once.
            If you have other questions, please put them in the comments section.  I am sure someone else has the same questions.  And remember, I have no idea how much time I may have.  My eyes are already "living on borrowed time," and I want to help as many as possible before it is too late.  And let's make this the lesson for the day—none of us knows what changes tomorrow may bring to our lives, and none of us knows how much time we have left.  Act today as if you knew there would be no tomorrow, because there might not be.
            Thank you all for your support and the kind messages and comments you often send.  Meanwhile I am praying harder for this notice to have been totally unnecessary.  On the other hand, if I get to meet more of you wonderful sisters sooner, well, maybe it was worth writing.
 
I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my [eyes may] be soon… (2Pet 1:13-14).
 
Dene Ward

"Why do you have to know that stuff anyway?"
            This one I heard after we had studied the Minor Prophets on Wednesday evenings several years ago.  Why should we be studying all these old stuffy hellfire and brimstone preachers when they aren't even talking about us anyway?
            Aren't they?  The biggest mistake we can make is to assume that things in the Bible do not apply to us.  Why in the world do we think God saved them for us?  For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope (Rom 15:4).  By studying how God dealt with those people we can learn the character and nature of God.  We can learn what pleases and displeases him.  Sadly, we can learn that we aren't really any different from those people and our nation is going the way of that one.  That makes those passages a warning we need to heed if we hope to survive where they did not.
            But sometimes I hear from young women teaching my own Bible study material in other places that they not only hear that question, they also have people actually becoming upset because things are being taught that they never heard before, and that their old view of a specific Bible event was inaccurate.  Never mind that these "new things" are solidly supported by scripture or other documentation.  If they didn't know it or never heard it, it can't be true or if it is, it can't be important.  That is exactly what our friends and neighbors do when we try to teach them the truth of the Bible.  Any excuse is good enough if it gets us off the hook.
            But why would anyone want to find an excuse not to learn something new?  Yes, it changes a lot of preconceived notions and wrong pictures we have in our heads about Biblical narratives when we do a little study of culture, when we carefully read and reread the scripture and actually find things we have missed all these years.  And that means we have probably been teaching our children wrong things, too.  Check those Bible story pictures we put out for them to color.  A lot of them are just plain wrong!  Don't we want to teach our children correctly?  We had better because God will hold us accountable for what we teach.  Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness (Jas 3:1).
            "But it's such a little thing," I often hear about some of the things that I point out.  Well, it may be, but what about the next thing and the next?  As one of my newer students said in class one day, "You keep getting the little things wrong and soon the whole thing is wrong."  As another one put it, "Knowing things like ages [that take time and math to figure out] can help you understand motivations better.  Suddenly it makes sense that Rebekah would follow her husband's instructions about pretending to be his sister when you know he was old enough to be her father and she was very young."  It might not make it right, but you can see how it would happen much more easily.
            And really, how can anyone ever say about the Word of God, "Why do we have to know that stuff anyway?"  Doesn't that display an attitude we should abhor?  There may be deeper things that we can learn over time because they do not affect the "now" urgency of salvation, but that doesn't mean we ignore them forever.  It should mean we are more eager to get to them than ever before.
 
Give instruction to a wise person, and he will become wiser still; ​​​​​​teach a righteous person and he will add to his learning. Prov 9:9
 
Dene Ward