Recently Keith’s sister came to visit and we took her to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.  We have lived here since before the exhibit even opened and never managed to get there.  When we went in, we saw what we have been missing.

 In the first place you cannot go inside with anything that cannot be closed properly, which means I had to leave my purse behind—it has a snap across the top, but is not sealed with a zipper.  Then you enter one door and cannot open the second until the first door has closed.  When you leave, you go through the same process—through one door, wait, close the door, then through the second door—but with an added precaution:  you check each other over for hitchhikers.  The butterflies will land on you, especially, it seemed from our experience that day, if you have on bright colors or large floral prints.  They will also land on your bare head and arms.  You must walk the paths carefully so as not to trod upon one that has landed there.  You sit on benches only after inspecting them.  But mainly, you just look and look and look, up and over and around.  They are everywhere.

 The colors and patterns are breathtaking.  Scarlet and black, Halloween orange and black, an intricate black and white that looks for all the world like a tatted doily; olive and black, chartreuse and black, emerald green and aqua; pale blue, royal blue, teal and blue violet; solid brown, spotted brown, banded brown, and a brown design that looks like it belongs on the walls of ancient Aztec ruins—and that’s not the half of it.

Many of these beauties were brought from other places as pupae, and as they hatch are let go every day while the visitors watch.  It was a wonderful couple of hours.  And after I got home I started wondering if there were any butterflies in the Bible.  Well, yes, in a way.

First of all I found that back in the early days, the butterfly symbolized the resurrection of Jesus and later the resurrection of his saints.  That makes a certain amount of sense.  The caterpillar spins its pupa, which hangs there looking dead for a couple of weeks.  Then suddenly the adult emerges, alive again, or so it appears.

But it seems to me that the better Biblical image comes from Romans 12:2:    Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.  Just as the caterpillar is transformed into something completely different, we should be too.  I am, in the words of 2 Cor 5:17, “a new creature.”  Those butterflies were beautiful, but when we walked the exhibits in the halls outside their “rainforest,” the pupa on display there were mottled gray-brown and just plain ugly.

I looked up that word “transformed” and guess what the Greek word is?  Metamorphoo.  I would be surprised if you haven’t heard that in a sermon sometime in your life, but maybe you have never really thought about the change that insect makes from worm to butterfly.  Looking at those beautiful things that morning, and then seeing those ugly pupae hanging by the score really brought the message home to me.  I am not just to change a little bit; I am to change drastically.  That may be difficult for you to comprehend if you were “brought up in the church” as we are prone to say, and have never really done any “big bad sins” as we tend to define them.  Yet it is my obligation to find the things that need changing. 

I may not read pornography, but I might become insensitive to the sin around me, especially when our culture deems it “appropriate” for television.  I may not steal, but my selfishness can rob others of any time or service they might need from me.  I may not commit idolatry, but I can become so celebrity-conscious that what those people say, do and wear becomes my model instead of Christ.  I may not murder, but I commit character assassination every time I call, text, or post.

Those butterflies we saw that day were almost too pretty for this sin-sick, ugly world.  That’s what people should be thinking about us.  We are not like the world, and we don’t like the world.  There is a better place coming, a “Butterfly Rainforest” for all those who have transformed their lives to be like their Lord.  Don’t land on the coat of a passerby and allow yourself to be removed from that hope.
 
…put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:22-24.
 
Dene Ward

I came across an interesting proverb the other day:  As a madman who casts firebrands, arrows and death, so is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “Am I not in sport?” Proverbs 26:18, 19.
 
           My understanding of that proverb is that a man who vents his malice toward his neighbor with all sorts of slanderous accusations is like a man who is so enraged he just shoots at everything, and then claims he was only joking and didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

            I know you’ve seen it happen--someone makes a snide comment, then when it becomes obvious that his words will get him into trouble, he smiles and says, “I was only teasing.”  But anyone close to the situation, who knows it well, knows that it was anything but teasing.  We women have a special word for remarks like that:  “catty.”  They are instantly recognizable and, in our embarrassed silence, those of us within earshot become complicit because no one wants to make a scene.  It would just embarrass the victim further, we rationalize.  But doesn’t that just reward the miscreant so that he continues on to hurt others?  I wonder sometimes if a woman shouldn’t say to the smug little tabby cat, “That was an ugly thing to say;” if an honorable man shouldn’t stand up to the smirking tom in question and say, “That isn’t funny—you have crossed a line.” Would it really cause more embarrassment than has been forced on everyone already?

            God wants a joyful people.  He wants people who enjoy their lives here as much as possible, and who enjoy each other as well, even joking and teasing one another.  Jesus, with his hilarious metaphors—running around with a log sticking out of your eye, or straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel--showed us that a sense of humor is not sinful, that we do not have to live with a sober, serious look on our faces all the time.  Sometimes a sense of humor is the only thing that gets us through a difficult situation—perhaps that is one reason God gave us one, as a defense against Satan and the trials of life.  To use it maliciously seems, well, irreverent somehow. 

            Today I will be especially careful to watch my tongue and how I use that wonderful sense God gave me.  All you have to do is look at a hippopotamus to know that He has it too.
 
Behold this is the joy of his way; and out of the earth shall others spring.  He will fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouting.  They that hate you shall be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked shall be no more.  Job 8:19,21,22
 
Dene Ward

We have had several dogs of several different breeds, usually several different breeds in one dog.  But Chloe, a full-blooded Australian cattle dog, is the first to actually chase her tail.  I always thought that was just something people said until one day there was a commotion at my feet, and I looked down and spotted her doing exactly that—revolving like a top, chasing her tail. 

            She looked ridiculous.  Around and around she went, stirring up dust and creating a depression in the sand.  Usually she lost her balance and fell over on her side, or, when she tried to stand up afterward, reeled like a drunk and sprawled on the ground, all thoughts of dignity abandoned.  It was so much fun, who cared how silly she looked?

            One day she actually caught her tail, and plopped down with it between her two front paws and started chewing.  After just a few minutes, though, reality checked in and she let it go.  It may have been fun to chase, but actually eating it was another matter entirely.  Even Little Miss Butterball, who loves to eat, was not about to endure the pain.

            For some reason, we often lack that good sense.  I have seen married couples carp and bicker, criticize and complain, even in front of others, to the point that you check the legal column the next morning to see if a divorce decree was filed the night before.  Anyone with sense, we think, would see how such words and actions would eat away at the bonds of their union.  Indeed, marriage takes constant maintenance to insure that those bonds remain intact.  They certainly won’t survive such destructive behavior, but people continue to behave that way, impervious to the embarrassment they cause anyone with earshot, and heedless to the effect on their relationship. 

            We sometimes treat the body of Christ the same way.  One person has a disagreement with another, about most anything, and that one is his target from then on.  All he can see is the bad, never the good.  All he can hear are the things that rankle, never the things that help and encourage, and so he is certain his behavior is justified.  Not only does he chase his tail in a fruitless circle, but he gathers as many as he can to join the pursuit.  In some cases, he actually catches the other person—because he now has so many on his “side” and they, too, are so dizzy from running in circles that their vision is skewed—and so he takes a big chomp and chews to his heart’s content, passing it on for others to share in as well.  Ah, what a grand meal—yum, yum, yum! 

            His distorted vision keeps him from seeing the harm he is causing the body of the Lord by his arrogant, self-centered attitude, and the good that might have been accomplished in spreading the gospel in the community is put on the back burner for the sake of “winning,” even when the contest is petty and of no spiritual value.  It also keeps him from seeing exactly how foolish he looks as he destroys the things he claims to be trying to save.

            Do you know what an anthropophagus is?  It is a cannibal, perhaps one of the worst things we can imagine being, especially in our enlightened and civilized age.  Yet the Bible says that is exactly what we are when we reach this point.  Take a look at the relationships you have in your family and in the kingdom today.  Make sure you are not partaking of a meal that God would consider abominable.
 
For you, brethren, were called for freedom, only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this:  you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  But if you bite and devour one another, make sure you be not consumed one of another, Gal 5:13-15
           
Dene Ward

Keith noticed it first, a dove that sat quiet and almost still on the ground beneath one of the hanging bird feeders.  While other doves and a bevy of cardinals hopped around him pecking at the ground, then flying up and down from the feeder, he barely moved a foot in two hours, and always one small, hesitant hop at a time.  By early evening most of the other birds were gone, finished with their free supper and off to find a good roosting place for the night, but he still sat there.
           
            By then I was a little worried.  I grabbed the binoculars for a closer look.  He had puffed himself up twice his size as birds will do in the winter to keep warm.  But it was still early September and the humid evening air hovered in the upper 80s.  Suddenly his head popped up, stretching out his neck just a bit, and then immediately back into the folds of feathers around his shoulders.  As I continued to watch I noticed it every five minutes or so.  It almost looked like he had hiccups, but somehow I did not think that was the problem.  Something worse was happening.

            Near dusk he suddenly flew straight up to the feeder itself.  Instead of perching on the outer rung designed for a bird to curl its feet around and be able to lean forward to eat from the small trough that ran around the bottom of the feeder, he flew into the trough itself, hunched down, and leaned against the clear plastic walls of the feeder.  Then he became completely still—no more twitching or bouncing.  I watched until it was too dark to see any longer. 

            The next morning I went out with my pail of birdseed to refill all the feeders around the house.  There beneath the feeder lay the now much smaller body of the dove.  Sometime in the night he had died and fallen off the feeder.  We carefully disposed of the small body for the sake of the other birds and our Chloe just in case it had carried a contagious illness.  It was a sad moment.  I couldn’t help but think, “You weren’t alone, little guy.  We watched you and we cared.”

            We weren’t the only ones watching.  Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father, Matt 10:29.  God notices when every little bird falls to the ground.  And never forget the lesson Jesus draws from that:  But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows, Matt 10:30-31.

            Dying alone has become a metaphor for a purposeless existence. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone,” (Orson Welles).

            It’s used to depict life and death as a beginning and end that you cannot effect one way or the other.  “Don’t expect anyone to stick around.  You were born alone and you will die alone,” (Anonymous).

            It’s used as a desperate pitiful plea for someone to care:  “I just don’t want to die alone, that’s all.  That’s not too much to ask for, is it?  It would be nice to have someone care for me, for who I am, not about my wallet,” (Richard Pryor).

            It’s used to show the meaninglessness of life:  “At the end, we all die alone,” (Anonymous).

            Is it any wonder that skeptics and atheists commit suicide?  None of these things is true for a Christian. 

            For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever… Ps 37:28.

            Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you, Heb 13:5.

            Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go, Josh 1:9.

            Sometimes we can quote passages like these until we are blue in the face, but when the hour of trial comes, any sort of trial, and no one stands with us, we allow the physical eye to fool us into believing we are alone.  We need to learn to see with spiritual eyes like our Lord did:  Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me, John 16:32.  We are the only ones who can take that promise away—when we don’t believe it.  With God a believer is never alone no matter how much vacant space surrounds him.

            If God promised to watch for every fallen bird, He will watch for me.  Even if some day I breathe my last breath in an otherwise empty room, I can know that Someone cares enough to be nearby, watching and waiting to take me home.
 
Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints, Ps 116:15.
And I will gather you to your fathers…2 Chron 34:28.
 
Dene Ward

            Retirement is a wonderful thing.  No more rushing around every morning, swallowing a quick breakfast whole, throwing on an outfit, and rushing out the door after a quick peck on your wife’s cheek.  At least that’s the way it was for Keith for several decades. 

            Now it’s a leisurely breakfast in your pajamas with a second cup of coffee, and then a third out on the carport, watching the birds swoop down in front of us to the bird feeder, hummingbirds battling over their feeder like tiny pilots in fighter planes, and Chloe sitting next to us, her tail swishing sparkly grains of sand over the concrete. 

We have a little ritual with her—three or four doggie treats that Keith sails out toward the flower bed one at a time with her tearing after them, sniffing around in the grass until she finds the morsel, then rolling in the dew wet grass in doggy euphoria before returning to her post at our feet, or even under our chairs—the better to garner a belly rub.

            He always throws the treats in the same direction, slightly south of east, and makes the same whistle like a missile falling to the earth, and she has become habituated to the whole routine.  We did not realize how much until one morning he threw it north of east instead of south.  Even though she watched him do it, she still ran southeast and sniffed the ground in ever widening circles, becoming more and more frustrated when she could not find the treat.  Finally he had to get up and walk in the direction he threw it and call her over.  Eventually her nose found it, but you would have thought we had punished her as she dragged herself back without her customary cheerfulness, her tail sagging almost between her legs.  She was not happy again until he had thrown the next treat in the right direction—translation:  the one she expected.
            Have you ever shown a friend a scripture that teaches something obvious, only to have him say, “I can’t see that?”  Have you ever had her read something out loud only to answer your unspoken comment with, “But I don’t believe it that way?”  Almost unbelievable, isn’t it?  Don’t think for a minute that you are immune to the same failing.  What you can see, what you do believe, depends a whole lot on what you are looking for. 

The worst thing you can do in your Bible study is go searching for something to back up what you already think.  In fact, I often tell brand new classes, “The biggest hindrance to learning is what you think you already know.”  I have had students who were intelligent and sincere look at something everyone else could see but not see it, and nearly every time it is because of some preconceived notion they grew up with or heard somewhere a long time ago and have not been able to let go.  Even something as plain as the nose on their faces.

What you already know will also raise a stop sign in your learning path.  As soon as you find what you thought was there, you will stop looking, when just a little more study and uninhibited consideration would have shown you something brand new.  The same thing happens when you rely on old notes.  You will never see anything new until you rid yourself of old ideas.  You will never find a deeper understanding if you think you have already dredged as far as you can go.

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind,” John 9:39.  He was not talking to unbelievers.  He was not talking to pagans.  He was talking to people who thought they knew God’s word inside out, who could quote whole books, who kept the law in the minutest detail, proud of how exact they were—even beyond exact—and the fact that they were children of Abraham.  Guess who that translates to today? 

When was the last time you learned anything new?  Thought any new thoughts?  Discovered any new connections in the scriptures?  When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  Can you see it if it’s thrown in a direction you never thought of before, or are you as blind as those people who were sure they knew what their Messiah would look like and how he would act?  When he came out of left field, they were lost.  How about you?
 
…and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself…? Rom 2:19-21.
 
Dene Ward
 

This morning I sat outside by the remains of last night’s fire, drinking my last cup of coffee and petting the dogs.  Suddenly I heard the hawk in a tree just across the drive.  This was the closest he had come in awhile.  I do not know if it was the first hawk that grew up on our property, or his son or grandson, but it was one of those I had talked to as he sat in his nest as a baby.  He would never have gotten that close to me otherwise.

            No other bird would have talked to me that way either.  He didn’t call out with the loud, echoing cry of a mature hawk, but with the baby sounds he used to make way up in his nest as I talked to him, the same sounds he always greeted his parents with when they brought him food during the day.  This was intimate hawk talk, not formal hawk talk.  He still recognized me from his baby days, and knew I was a friend.  He knew he could let down his guard and be that little baby hawk one more time.

            Sometimes I get tired of being grown up.  I get tired of being the mature one who is always supposed to know what to say and how to say it.  Sometimes I want to be the little kid who can run to a great big grown-up, spill my heart, and have him tell me everything is going to be all right.

            That is exactly what we can do with God.  Job said, My soul is weary of my life; I will give free course to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul, 10:1.  Job said he could tell God everything, no holding back—“free course.”  David said, I pour out my complaint before Him, I show Him my trouble, Psa 142:2.  Both of these strong men of God had moments when they let it all out, just like little children who are afraid and don’t understand.  Why do I think I need to be any better than they?

            My children used to come to me with their troubles, usually small, inconsequential things.  But to them, those things were HUGE.  I never acted like they were silly to worry over them, but did my best to comfort them, and even fix the things I could fix for them.  Most of the things we find ourselves going to God with are inconsequential in His grand scheme of things, but He still treats them as important because they are important to His children.  He will listen to even the smallest concern, the pettiest, even the selfish ones, as so many turn out to be. 

            We never need to hold back with God, especially now, because we have a Mediator who understands how those small things can seem so large. We can run to God any time we need to, and talk as a child to a Father who listens and who cares.  It’s okay to have a little baby talk with God.

For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one who has been in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need, Heb 4:15,16.

Dene Ward

Due to the huge number of college football games seen in my home, that commercial in which cows turn on lights, parachute onto a football field, and stand on top of a car pestering the little boy in the back seat has evidently made an impression on me.  A survey company called the other day. A long time ago I made a few dollars doing phone surveys and appreciated anyone who did not slam the phone down, so I answered their questions. “Which fast food chain comes to mind first?”  I answered immediately, not with any of the hamburger, pizza, sandwich, or taco joints; but the chicken place with the name I never knew how to pronounce until I was grown.

            Those commercials stand out to me for a reason—those are dairy cows!  They don’t need to worry about becoming someone’s hamburger. 

            Does it make a difference?  Only to purists, I suppose.  The commercials certainly do what they are designed to do as evidenced by my quick answer to the survey question.

            But for some things it does make a difference.  Jesus warned that blind leaders will cause others to fall into the ditch too; God wasn’t going to save them because someone led them the wrong way.  John tells us in the fourth chapter of his first epistle that God expects us to “prove the spirits” because many false ones have gone out into the world.  Paul marveled in chapter one that the Galatians had been fooled so soon after their conversion.  None of them told us not to worry, that God would save us if we were tricked into believing something that wasn’t so.

            A long time ago, a prophet was sent to warn King Jeroboam about his sinful ways.  God told that prophet not to stop anywhere on his way home.  An older prophet sent word for him to come by for dinner.  When the younger prophet told him he could not, the older prophet lied, saying, “God said it was all right for you to eat with me.”  Instead of checking with God first, the younger prophet stopped by the older prophet’s home.  Before they had finished their meal God came to him and told him he would be punished for his disobedience, and, sure enough, on the way home he was killed by a lion (1 Kings 13).

            Not knowing the difference between what God said and what this man had said, even a prophet of God, cut his life short.  God expected that young man to check with Him when he heard a command other than the original.  God expects the same of you and me.  And even though this young prophet probably thought he could rely on one of his own, one older and supposedly wiser as well, that didn’t mean the message was correct. 

            One cow is not the same as the other, no matter what it looks like, or what we think about it.  Believe me, you could tell the difference between steaks cut from dairy cattle and those cut from beef cattle.  And the first time you tried to milk a steer would definitely be the last.  Believing a false message, no matter who tells you and no matter what you want to believe, will not make that message true, and the results will be much more serious than a tough steak or even a kick in the head. .

But evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But you abide in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing of whom you have learned them, 2 Tim 3:13,14.

Dene Ward

This is an old one, but the lesson is always current--for someone out there.

            Magdi is now eleven years old.  She was the first dog we ever had that would not only chase a ball and bring it back, but catch it in the air like a fly ball, or chase a ball on the bounce, leaping four feet into the air to catch it.  If you said, “Bring me a ball,” she ran to the nearest one, picked it up, and brought it to you.  If you said, “Give it to me,” she would drop it on the ground next to your feet or place it in your hands if you bent over.  It was almost as if she really understood English.

            She also loved to play “soccer,” chasing a soccer ball around the field, then guarding it when one of us ran up as if to take it away, and take off again after she caught her breath, even balancing it on her shoulders or head or nose as she ran.  She had a large exercise ball, nearly a foot higher than her shoulders, that she would treat the same way.  Once in awhile, it rolled so fast that as she tried to jump up to grab it, it threw her over the top.  She would simply get up and go again.

             Her bones and joints have steadily betrayed her this last year.  She drags one hind foot occasionally because it hurts too much to pick it up.  Her knees are swollen and stiff and some days she doesn’t even try to get up when we go outside; she simply looks up and gives one floppy tail wag—thump, glad to see you, boss.  She has stopped racing to the gate to greet us when we come home, but if we have been away awhile, she will slowly walk until she gets there.  I always feel so bad when we get the gate closed and start down the drive before she makes it.  She has to turn and retrace those several hundred steps, but if we stand and wait at the door, she will eventually make it for a pat on the head and the words she wants most to hear, “Good dog.”

            Pick up a ball, though, and her ears stand up even if she does not.  If you bounce it, she will rise to her feet, though a bit unsteadily, and stand poised ready to run.  We have learned to merely toss it now, rather than throwing it as hard and far as we can, and she hobbles after it, all thought of pain and age and weariness abandoned. 

            The other day Keith blew off the roof, leaving piles of leaves around the house, and wads of moss clinging in the topmost branches of the azaleas.  I spent the next morning trying to “rake” it down to the ground.  Magdi thought I had something--something that might be interesting, like a snake or a lizard--and she was up instantly, running from bush to bush, even standing precariously on her aching hind legs, trying to help me get whatever it was I didn’t want in those bushes.  She has “taken care of” many snakes and lizards over the years, as well as moles, tortoises, armadillos, and possums.  It’s her job, and since all these surgeries started, she has taken her duty as my protector much more seriously.  Despite her creaking joints she was ready to work and if necessary, rescue me from whatever monster lurked in the azaleas.

            I have been reading through the Old Testament laws concerning the elderly lately for some classes I have been teaching.  What has become most apparent is how carefully God made arrangements for those and other equally helpless people like orphans and strangers, to be taken care of.  Did you know that the penalty for oppressing a widow or orphan was death (Ex 22:22-24)?  Did you know that sin is listed in the same category as adultery and witchcraft (Mal 3:5)?  Truly we need to take this more to heart than we usually do.

            But I also noticed God’s expectations for those same people themselves.  The older men and women are to train the younger (Titus 2).  In times of struggle they should be fonts of wisdom, not buckets of bitter resentments and regrets.  In the midst of fiery disputes they should be sources of temperance and cooling thoughts not fanners of the flame.

            As to the widows indeed, widows with no family who had met certain qualifications and were still able-bodied, they were to pledge themselves to work for the church in return for monetary support.  All those women were over sixty mind you, yet God said if they could still work for Him, they should, (1 Tim 5:9-12).

            What about Anna?  She stayed at the temple, prophesying every day.  She might possibly have been one of those women who worked there (Ex 38:8), even though she was over eighty.

            Simeon, who was also elderly, was still actively searching for the Messiah when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple that first time.  The Spirit sent him that special day not only to see the answer to his many prayers, but to testify to the identity of the young babe.

            People of God work for God and serve Him as long as they possibly can.  Working for God takes one’s mind off himself, off her own problems and pains.  As long as I can, I should do what I can, perhaps adapting to new circumstances, but never sitting back and saying, “Well that’s it, I’m done.”  I have known mortally ill Christians who were still talking with people who needed help, still holding the hands of those who came to visit and cheering them up instead, while only days from death. 

            I know an old dog who still loves to play, who still wants more than anything to please her masters.  I think she will probably die with a ball in her mouth, trying to bring it back for one last throw.  I hope I never drop the ball for the Lord.

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of Jehovah; they shall flourish in the courts of our God.  They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and green to show that Jehovah is upright; He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in Him, Psalm 92:12-15.

Dene Ward

Shortly after we got Chloe as a 9 week old puppy, we had a pile of dirt delivered.  Eventually it became the base for our carport slab, but for several weeks it sat there as we dealt with one problem after the other, most notably eye surgeries.  Chloe loved that pile of dirt.  She sat on top of it every day.  I suppose because she was little, it made her feel bigger, especially with an older dog who was not too friendly at the beginning.

            But she has continued to love sitting up high.  We often catch her perched on the landscaping timbers surrounding our raised flower beds, surveying her domain.  It may only be six inches higher than the field, but that is enough for her. Chloe will always love to be on top of her world.

            But even the highest she can sit does not help her see through the woods to the next property.  All she knows of the world is our small five acres.  She cannot comprehend that other dogs live in other places far, far away.  Sometimes she hears the neighbor’s dogs barking across the fence, through the woods and over the creek, and she sits up to listen, but when they stop, she forgets they are even there.

            Chloe’s world is Chloe-centric.  Despite the fact that we have a consciousness of others, we are much the same.  What happens to us is what matters to us.  How my life goes is the important thing to me.  That can cause us big problems when things begin to go wrong, just as it did for Rebekah.

“Why am I even alive?” she asked God when she began to have trouble with her pregnancy.  For twenty years she had been barren.  It was almost cruel of God, she must have thought, to give her what she had asked for and then make it seen that he was taking it back.  But God told her that she was not losing her baby.  Far from it, she was carrying twins, and this pregnancy was more far reaching than just fulfilling her desire to have a child.  Two nations would come from her, he said, and the older would serve the younger, Gen 25:23.  Yet even with those encouraging words, Rebekah still got it wrong.  She thought the prophecy was about her children themselves, not the nations that would come from them, and in her zeal to help God make it happen, she deceived her husband when the time came to bless those sons.  She forgot something as basic as this—maybe blind Isaac could not see whom he was blessing, but God could.  He did not need her help to accomplish his purpose, and his purpose is what mattered.

            We cannot see over the fence to know God’s purposes.  What happens to me, no matter how large it is to me, may be completely insignificant in the plan of God.  That does not mean He does not care about me.  It does not mean He is not listening to me and answering my prayers.  But it may very well mean that I will not understand the answer I get, or even like it much.  Sitting on top of my little dirt pile will not give me God’s perspective.  I simply trust, believe, and obey.  God knows what is best.  He really does sit on high.  He really does see it all.  That should be all that matters.

Who is like unto Jehovah our God, who has set his seat on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth? Psa 113:5.

Dene Ward

            It came up in conversation the other day when we were discussing the catbird at my feeder.  Where did the expression, “sitting in the catbird seat,” come from?  So I looked it up.

            It is a distinctly American expression, probably because the gray catbird is a North American bird.  Catbirds like to sit in the highest branches of the trees to sing and display.  The expression has come to mean being in a superior or advantageous position.  One of the first uses found is in a story by James Thurber in which he talks about a batter in a baseball game being “in the catbird seat” with three balls and no strikes. 

            You know the problem with being “in the catbird seat?”  You can get a little too sure of yourself.  Obadiah prophesied against the nation of Edom, a country full of mountains, whose inhabitants lived high above any who would try to attack their nearly impregnable rocky dwellings.  The pride of your heart has deceived you, O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; who says in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?  Though you mount on high as the eagle, and though your nest be set among the stars, I will bring you down from there, says Jehovah, Oba 1:3,4.

            The Edomites, though they were brothers of the Israelites through their father Esau, had forgotten that Jehovah made those very mountains they counted on.  That meant that He could destroy them with a word if He were of a mind to, and He was.  The Edomites were subject to Israel off and on throughout history, and were finally run out of their land completely by the Nabataeans. 

            It is easy for us to perch ourselves high above others and “display.”  Like the Jews in John 8, we want to boast of our spiritual heritage and our quest to follow the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  We are Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to any man: how do you say, You shall be made free? John 8:33.

            They bring it up again in verse 39 and Jesus answers, If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham.    Abraham would have denounced them all.  What would he say to us, who are supposed to be “Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise?” Gal 3:29, when pride causes us to place ourselves above the rest of the religious world as if we were more deserving of salvation.  Jesus warns, For everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted, Luke 14:11.  Just like those Edomites of old, God can bring us down off that catbird seat.

            He can do that because that is where He dwells.  Jehovah is exalted; for he dwells on high: he has filled Zion with justice and righteousness, Isa 33:5.  We count on Him, not on ourselves.  Jehovah also will be a high tower for the oppressed, A high tower in times of trouble, Psalm 9:9.  Just as the imagery in Obadiah, He is a high steep place where we are removed from danger. 

            And in a Messianic passage he tells us that He will take us to new heights. And Jehovah their God will save them in that day as the flock of his people; for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted on high over his land, Zech 9:16.  As children of the Most High God we have an exalted position nothing on this earth can possibly match.

            Sitting in the catbird seat is a good thing.  Just remember who put you there.

Yea, they shall sing of the ways of Jehovah; For great is the glory of Jehovah. For though Jehovah is high, yet he has respect unto the lowly; But the haughty he knows from afar, Psalm 138:5,6

Dene Ward