Just a Bunch of Stems

4/24/2015 0 Comments

My little boys used to bring me bouquets all the time.  Sometimes it was Queen Anne’s lace.  Sometimes it was a bright blue spiderwort.  Sometimes it was a rain lily or a stem of pink clover.  Sometimes it was just a dandelion bloom.  All of these are wildflowers, what any suburban lawn grower would call “weeds.”  Yet I put them all in vases of various sizes because they were all precious to me.  My little fellows had no idea the difference between domesticated flowers and wildflowers.  All they knew was “flowers.”

  But even they would never have gathered a bunch of them, ripped off the blooms and handed me a fistful of stems.  The problem with religion today, including some of my own brothers and sisters, is they value the stems and not the flowers. 

    A few months ago someone told me how listening to a certain teacher had made his day so much better.  I anxiously awaited the lesson he had heard, but he never once said a word about the content.  All I heard was the teacher’s name, at least three times, and how that person had made his day better.  What he had done was throw away the flower and put the empty stem in a vase of water to admire.

    I understand having favorite speakers and teachers.  Nothing makes me happier than to hear someone compliment my husband and my sons.  But none of them teach for the glory.  They teach to help people. If all people remember is their names, then they haven’t been much help, have they? 

    If I can’t tell you what a person taught me, did I learn anything, or was I just entertained for a few brief moments?  One of my favorite teachers isn’t much of an entertainer, but I always go away with a new way of looking at things, even things I have been looking at for decades now.  He makes me think, and he makes me see the possibilities.  He makes me want to go look at it again myself, and I often do.  He makes me examine my life in ways I never have and want to change for the better.  Can your favorite speaker do those things, or does he just make you laugh and feel good?

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to someone for help with your Bible study.  God did ordain the role of teachers in spiritual things (Eph 4:11).  He meant for us to have brothers and sisters we could go to with questions and problems.  Paul told Timothy to pass on what he knew to “faithful men.”  He told the older to train the younger.  But God also holds us individually accountable for what we do with what we hear.  “Work out your own salvation,” Paul told the Philippians, well after Jesus had already said, “If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the ditch.”  It is up to each of us to be careful to whom we listen and to examine what they say against the Word (Acts 17:11).

    A good teacher doesn’t care if s/he receives praise or not—that is not his/her purpose.  All s/he does is hold up the Word of God and present it to you.  “What is the straw to the wheat?” God asks in Jer 23:28.  That word “straw” has several meanings according to Strong’s, and one of them is the wheat stalk, or stem.  Which is more important, God is saying, the stem or the wheat it holds up?

    I knew a man once who nearly tore a church up because he insisted on “his turn” to teach when not only was he a lousy teacher, he didn’t even know the Word of God accurately enough to teach it.  Clearly, it was all about the glory of teaching to him, and clearly he needed the admonition in Rom 12:3:  For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

    I know the temptation.  So did Paul.  I refrain from [boasting], so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited, 2 Cor 12:6,7.  It shouldn’t matter to me what people say about my speaking or writing.  What should matter is how many I reach, how many are helped and encouraged and how many souls are saved.  And that is what should matter to those who listen and read too. 

    And do you know why this is so important?  If you value the who above the what, the straw above the wheat, the stem above the flowers, someday sooner or later you will be deceived into believing a lie.  Even good teachers make mistakes, and you might be deceived by an honest error too.  That is why James tells us in 3:1 that teachers will receive the “greater condemnation.”  Teaching is a responsibility, and anyone who craves the glory is manifestly unable to handle that burden.

    Most of the preachers and teachers I know will tell you the same things I am now.  If you want to make me happy, then use what I give you, remember it and grow.  Share it with others who might need it.  Even if you forget where you got it, just pass the good news along.  That is what really matters.  Give them a bouquet of flowers, not a handful of stems.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.

Dene Ward

Making Choices

4/2/2015 3 Comments

We live in Florida.  So does Mickey Mouse.  When my boys were in school, it seemed like every other year the school decided a “field trip” to that Orlando park was in order.  (Whatever happened to “field trips” to the firehouse or the water plant or the art museum?)  You sent $40 to the school--this was 25 years ago, remember--and your children got on a bus at 6 am, which drove up to the park and unloaded about 9 am.  At 3 pm, the kids climbed back aboard and came home.  Meanwhile, you had also sent at least $15 more so they would not go hungry.
    We were on a tight budget and, as adults, we could easily see that the scant amount of time there was not worth the money.  So we spelled it out carefully and gave them the choice—no more of these so-called field trips.  Instead, if they wanted to, we would save money for a year and “do it right.”  Four nights in the Disney campground (the hotels were out of the question), complete with all the transportation around the park and free Disney movies every night at an outdoor theater with park benches to sit on.  Four 4-day park passes and supper one night in the castle, plus all the special shows they never had time to see before, like the Main Street electrical parade and the laser show at Epcot, and a souvenir of their choice at any park shop. 
    What made the choice difficult?  For the next three years, when their classmates piled into the buses, they stayed behind.  Usually I showed up at the school to take them out for “early dismissal,” but the next day they endured questioning about why they did not go to Disney with the rest of the group, and listened to the stories about all the fun they had. None of their classmates ever did understand, even when the boys told them the whole story.  Why not do both? they wanted to know.  It is always hard to tell your friends that you are not as well off as they are, especially when you are young and don’t really understand it yourself.  Yet the boys thought about it, and made the choice.  “Doing it right” was by far better, they decided. 
    So we saved for a year, all of us.  The boys picked up aluminum cans and coke bottles, and even set aside birthday money, which we had encouraged grandparents to send instead of gifts—they knew the plan.  $700 later, we had the vacation of a lifetime, and the boys felt even better because they had helped pay for it.  Don’t tell me that having Cinderella lean over you during dinner is unimportant to a twelve-year-old boy.  You have never seen such bashful blushing in your life.
    Growing up is all about learning to make choices.  If you miss that valuable lesson, you may face a life of misery that could have been avoided.  Learning to weigh options, both their pros and cons, is the key.
    Just think about sin for a moment.  Sin is pleasurable or it would not be a temptation.  But weigh the choices.
    A life of purity will give you a renewed mind, Eph 4:22-24.  A fresh, optimistic outlook on life can get you through a world of trouble. 
    The decision to remain pure will lead to better relationships with those you deal with and the self-respect that comes with self-control, 1 Thes 4:1-8. Self-control is not a prison—it is freedom from things that rule your life; it is you making the choices not your appetites.  That is empowering.
    Pure living will give you not only the hope of a life to come, but hope for the life now too, 1 Tim 4:7,8.  It promises you that God will never forsake you, Heb 13:4-6, and will cause others to glorify God, 1 Pet 2:11,12.  And talk about comforting—living a pure life leaves you unafraid to stand before God and give an account of it, 1 Pet 4:1-5.
    And the other option?  Let’s see, a life of impurity could give you STDs along with ensuing pain and infertility and possible death, cirrhosis of the liver, ulcers and other stress-induced conditions, a suspended driver’s license, a criminal record, a broken home and family who won’t talk to you any longer, fair-weather friends who leave when you need them the most, a ruined reputation, financial ruin caused by alimony and child support payments, and gambling debts you can never repay, not to mention those eternal consequences which include facing the wrath of God, Col 3:5-11, and the second death, Rev 21:8.
    Hmm.  Doesn’t really sound like such a difficult choice to me.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward, Heb 11:24-26.

Dene Ward

A Beautifully Made Bed

3/19/2015 0 Comments

I well remember my children’s first attempt at making their beds.  They were so proud of their accomplishment, one I had not even asked them to do, that they came running to get me, and took me to their room by the hand.
    There were two twin beds, indeed all made up.  The bedspreads hung lopsided, the hem at the head end barely reaching the edge of the bed and the hem at the foot end folding down over itself onto the carpet.  Under it, the sheets and blankets sat in piles and rolls, making the bedspread top look like it was laid over Lilliputian foothills. One of the spreads was particularly “off,” and I was momentarily at a loss to figure out the problem.  At the foot, the bottom sheet showed in a line one to four inches wide.  Since the top barely reached the headboard and it was not neatly tucked in under the pillows, that should not have been.  Then I realized what was wrong--the whole bedspread was on sideways.
    “Amazing!” I gushed.  “What a fine job you have done.”  For indeed they had—for a four- and six-year-old who had been given no instruction at all  
    The next few mornings I asked if they would like to learn some hints that would make bed making easier.  Easier?  Of course they would, because it had not taken long for the new to wear off this activity and for it to become simply a chore.  So they learned how to make a bed properly, and in time they did reasonably well.
    Now imagine if they had shown me that first made bed when they were 14 and 16.  Do you think I would have lavished any praise on them?  I would have expected a much better eye for detail, and much more care in technique.  That does not mean I was lying when I told them at the earlier age that they had done a fine job.  They had done a fine job for their age and experience.
    Now how about us?  How old am I as a child of God?  But—and here is the crux of the matter—how old do I act?  How much have I learned and grown, and does it show in the way I behave every day of my life?
    We needn’t expect the same praise God would give a babe in Christ if we have been Christians for 20 years.  If we have been Christians longer than that, we should have made even more progress.
    Make no mistake, God does love his children, but He has expectations as well.  I must do my best for my Father, trying harder and harder to get better and better.  If my “bed making” is still at age 4 level when I have spent 44 years as His child, He will not be pleased.  And if I love Him, working to get better is not too much to ask.

…till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, Christ; Eph 4:13-15.

Dene Ward

Nursery Tales

3/17/2015 0 Comments

I was a lucky young mother.  When my babies were small, I worshipped with church families that had no nurseries.  I did not realize at the time what a blessing it was.
    When Lucas was a baby, we met with a small congregation that rented a union hall.  The union must not have been very popular.  At the end of a narrow hall was the only room big enough for meeting together, and thirty of us filled it up.  Five of us were nursing mothers, and since that was over half the families in the congregation, the men agreed that we should be able to simply step out of the room to get ourselves situated, then come back in to sit and listen to the sermons or Bible classes while we nursed our babies.  New babies have a tendency to nurse for long periods of time.  We might have missed a full hour if these men had not been so mature-minded, and we ladies gratefully learned early how to stay modest while nursing.  I doubt anyone walking in would have even known what we were doing.
    When Nathan was a toddler we had moved to a place with an actual meetinghouse.  It was an old building way out in the country with absolutely no modern conveniences except electric lights, and certainly no nursery.  You walked in the door and there you stood in the open auditorium.  That meant when you had to deal with unruly children, you dealt with them and then came right back into the assembly.  
    So why do I think I was lucky?  Because I did not have the source of temptation that so many young mothers must deal with today.  When you have no choice, there is no temptation.  Young mothers today must be much stronger than I ever had to be.
    I gleaned advice from several older women during those years.  My mother, for instance, was happy to tell me about how she foiled my attempts to ruin her worship services.  I always acted up and she would take me to the nursery—she lived in the city.  Finally, when I was 18 months old, she realized that she had not trained me, I had trained her—all I had to do was wiggle and squeal a little and I got to go play!  The next Sunday, she took me, not to the nursery, but outside, and applied her hand to my bottom in a less than comforting way.  Then she marched me right back into the auditorium.  She said I looked at her with outrage, as if to say, “This is NOT how it works!  You broke the rules!”  But I was not a stupid child; I learned the new rule quickly:  being taken out of the assembly is not a pleasant experience.
    I went to visit her once at this same meetinghouse.  Suddenly, my baby needed a diaper change and needed it then.  To have stayed sitting there any longer would have broken the commandment to “Love thy neighbor.”
    So I got up and took my twenty-month-old to the nursery.  I was stunned when I walked in.  Several young mothers, and a few who looked like grandmothers, were sitting in there chatting away.  A playpen had been placed in the middle of the room, full of toys.  The side of the playpen was lowered and each baby was sitting around it, reaching in and playing with both the toys and each other.  Could the women see the preacher?  Yes, there was a large picture window in front of them.  Could they hear the preacher?  Well, there was a speaker on the wall, but their talking and laughing drowned it out.
    After the diaper change, I got out of there as quickly as I could.  I recognized the siren call immediately.  I had dealt with two babies at once, while their father preached.  We never lived close to family so I never had a grandparent to help out either.  It was often tiring, frustrating and embarrassing to try to train my children to behave in the assembly.  To have a place to go where I would no longer have to wrestle with them, where they could play and squeal to their heart’s content, would have been wonderful.  But it would not have taught them how important the group worship of God is, how precious the rituals we follow, how much it meant to me and therefore how much it should mean to them.
    Being a parent is not for the weak of heart, mind, or body.  You are on duty 24/7 and you must do what you must do no matter what else is going on in your life.  Children will not wait.  You cannot easily “unteach” what you later wish you had not taught.  I would give anything to undo a lot of the mistakes I made, but it just won’t happen.  In the end you hope you did more right than wrong, and that those right things were more lasting and impressive.  
    Think about what you do, when you do it, and how.  Think about what those little eyes see and those little ears hear.  Think the most about what those little minds infer from what they see and hear you doing.  Your children aren’t stupid either.  Whatever it is you do, when you do it, it stays with them the longest.

And [Hannah] said, "Oh, my lord!  As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord.  For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him.  Therefore I have given him to the Lord.   As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”  And he worshiped the Lord there, 1 Sam 1:26-28.

Dene Ward

"Oh No!"

2/23/2015 2 Comments

I have already introduced you to my grandson Judah and his literary hero, Pete the Cat.  (Click on “Children” on the right sidebar and scroll down to “Read the Buttons!” if you missed it.)  When anything bad happens to Pete he says, “Oh no!”, and now that is one of Judah’s favorite phrases, with his special little two year old inflection.  The last time we visited, we must have heard it a hundred times.
    When he found one of his toys in the wrong place, “Oh no!”  When his Mr Happy figure fell over, “Oh no!”  When he dropped his cookie, “Oh no!”  When a bean fell off his spoon, when his shoelace came untied, when his wind-up toy train stopped chugging along—all of these merited a loud and pained, “Oh no!”  Everything was a catastrophe for little Mr. Drama King.  But at least he paid attention to his world and he cared what happened in it.  Can we say the same thing about our spiritual world any more?    
    I remember when every member of the church could quote scriptures.  I remember when we all knew the basic Bible stories.  I remember when we understood that Truth was absolute and that our acceptance of and obedience to it determined our eternal destiny.  I even remember when you converted other people by showing them that their denomination’s practices and beliefs were not Biblical.  They would do their best to prove you wrong.  Now no one cares.  They don’t have a clue what they are supposed to believe, and neither do we.
    Now anyone who has questions about a statement from the pulpit, about a teaching in a Bible class, about the words of a new song is judged as having his knickers in a knot, as if it were something of no importance. His upset is inappropriate and unwelcome. He needs to “just calm down.”  He finds himself the object of scorn and ridicule, his concerns swept aside as the foolish rantings of a crochety, usually older, narrow-minded alarmist.  Never mind that this older person has seen things like this before and their inevitable results.  Never mind that he has the wisdom of perspective that the younger not only do not have but cannot have.  He—or she--is not respected, and never listened to.  His “Oh no!” has become the expected song for him to sing and so goes in one ear and out the other.
    God told the prophet Ezekiel that he was to be a watchman for his people.  He was to sound the alarm when he saw the enemy approaching.  Those people thought Ezekiel was crazy too.  After all, who else but a lunatic would lie on his side and dig in the sand, depicting the siege of Jerusalem for day after day after day?  Who else would not speak a word unless it was given him from God for week after week after week?  Who else would pull out a handful of hair, throw some of it to the wind, tie some in his robe, and then stand hacking at the rest of it with a sword?  None of that wacky behavior made what he said false.  God told him that when the people wouldn’t listen—and He knew they wouldn’t--their blood was on their own heads.  
    Maybe it’s time we listened to a few alarmists.  Maybe the alarm is legitimate.  At least they are paying attention while we often go along accepting anything anyone says (or sings) just to avoid trouble.  Maybe someone needs to holler, “Oh no!” once in awhile.  And maybe we need to care as much as they do.

As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith…For there are many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers…whose mouths must be stopped; men who overthrow whole houses, teaching things which they ought not… 1 Tim 1:3,4; Titus 1:10,11.                

Dene Ward

I Got Purple

2/13/2015 0 Comments

We did some more babysitting last month, and the first afternoon that we picked up Silas from kindergarten, he came rushing out to the car shouting, “I got purple!  I got purple!”
    In his school every child starts the day on green, and his behavior moves him either up the color chart to blue and ultimately purple, or down the chart to yellow, orange, or red.  Red means mom and dad have to come in for a serious talk.  Usually all the obedient, well-behaved students end up on blue, and everyone is perfectly satisfied with it.  But purple?  Purple takes something extra-special.  It is the height of achievement for a student.  No wonder he came out running, shouting, and grinning a smile as wide as our windshield as we watched him through it.
    Why is it that I can’t have the same glee, the same sense of accomplishment and exhilaration when I overcome a temptation or grow out of a bad attitude?  Why don’t we all come running to share the good news with one another?  I’ll tell you why—because we are a bunch of judgmental grumps that’s why.  Two things are going to happen if anyone opens his mouth about these things.
    First, someone is going to gasp and whisper to another, “You mean he has trouble with that sin?”  We can’t share our accomplishments when we are afraid people will look down on us, will lose respect for us, and will probably gossip about us at the first chance they get.  “Did you hear about so-and-so?  Did you know he has these problems?”
    Second, someone else will puff out his chest and say, “Tsk, tsk.  Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall!”  We can’t share our successes without someone thinking they have to knock us down a peg because of our “pride,” as they so hastily judge it.  
    In both of these cases, shame, shame, shame on us!  Those are unscriptural, even sinful attitudes.  Gossip, which is nothing less than slander, is included in that horrible list of sins at the end of Romans 1.  And what in the world do we think it means to “Encourage one another?”  It means when a pat on the back has been earned, give it!  Don’t hoard it with the self-righteous notion that we are doing what is best for the person’s soul—“wouldn’t want him to get the big head.”  Would you do that with your children?  Would you never praise them for their successes, but only criticize their mistakes?  
    AA doesn’t do it, and God doesn’t do that either.  And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”  Job 1:8.
    The Psalms are full of statements by people of God who know they have done right.  The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from my guilt. So the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight, Psalm 18:20-24.
    Don’t tell me it’s because the Old Testament people did not understand grace and were all about “earning” their salvation by keeping the Law.  “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart…Deut 9:4,5.  O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy, Dan 9:18.
    Those people knew they had not earned God’s love and mercy, but they also knew when they had done well in keeping His commandments.  Why do we think it’s a sin to recognize that?  The apostles didn’t.  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing, 2 Tim 4:7,8.
    When my grandson came running out that day I could easily have told the difference between arrogance and joy.  Why can’t we tell the same thing about one another?  Why can’t we share victories over Satan and expect others will be just as happy about it as we are?  God wanted us to know we were saved; he wanted us to be confident in our destiny. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13.
    I’ll tell you this, if we are going to “become as little children” and so inherit the kingdom of heaven, we had better stop acting like peevish, petty grown-ups.  With that sort of behavior we will never be able to run down the streets of Heaven shouting, “I got purple!”

Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favor my righteous cause: Yea, let them say continually, Jehovah be magnified, Who hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant, Psalm 35:27.

Dene Ward

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Playing in the Rain

1/23/2015 0 Comments

When our boys were small, on summer days when a soft, warm rain fell, they often asked if they could go outside and play in it.  I was reminded of those sweet days last spring when our grandson Silas did the same thing.  
    He put on his swimming trunks and headed outside, first just running a few steps out, then racing back in under the carport.  Gradually he ran further and further, eventually out to the old water oak stump some thirty feet from the house, stood there a minute hopping up and down, holding his arms out to present the most skin to the sky, and laughing uproariously.  
    He must have gone at it for ten minutes, running back to the carport and excitedly jabbering, “It’s wet!  It’s cold!  It’s fun!” then running back out into the rain even further, eventually to the swing hanging from the live oak limb out past the well.      
    But it was still spring and his little chin began to quiver, and all too soon we had to take him in and dry him off.
    Do you know what started all this?  Pure, unadulterated joy.  He and his little brother had been with us for five days while Mommy and Daddy were out of town, and although we had a great time, when they drove up that afternoon, it was clear who were most important in his young life.  They were back and before long they would take him in his own car seat in his own “blue car” to his own home and his own room where he could sleep in his own bed.  I know the feeling.
    But life may have made me forget that feeling of pure joy.  
    Despite the troubles of life we always have real reason for joy, and God expects us to show it.  David had that joy, and he expressed it before the people of Israel as they brought the Ark of the Covenant to his newly captured capital city. But he was married to someone who didn’t have it, and who did not understand.  She scolded him and received this reply:
    [It was] before Jehovah, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me prince over the people of Jehovah, over Israel: therefore will I play before Jehovah, 2 Sam 6:21.
    .Do you see the word “play?”  David was out there “leaping and dancing before Jehovah.”  That’s how he was playing.  That Hebrew word is found in Job 40:20, “the beasts play in the field.”  You will find it in Prov 8:30 and 31 where it is translated “rejoicing,” and in Job 5:12 where it is “laugh.”  The same attitude that had Silas laughing and playing in the rain had David playing before Jehovah--joy.      
    When was the last time you felt that way about God and your relationship with Him?  I think we are a little like Michal—too embarrassed to act like God means that much to us.  We are too conscious of ourselves and how we look, and far too worried about what other people think.
    If I am too embarrassed to show the Lord how much He means to me, I wonder, on the day He comes to pick us up and take us home, if He might be too embarrassed to act like we mean that much to Him.

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, I Pet 1:8.

Dene Ward

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Catching A Dream

1/19/2015 0 Comments

When we kept our grandsons last spring, twenty-month-old Judah usually climbed into my lap every evening as we sat at the table for a final cup of coffee.  It took me a minute the first time his little hand reached out in the air, but finally I realized he was trying to catch the steam wafting over my mug, and was completely mystified when it disappeared between his little fingers.
    A lot of people spend their lives trying to catch the steam, vapors that seem solid but disintegrate in their grasping hands.  They do it in all sorts of ways, and all of them are useless. 
    Do they really think they can stop time?  Over 11,000,000 surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures were performed in this country in 2013, and we aren’t talking medically necessary procedures.  The top five were liposuctions, breast augmentations, eyelid surgeries, tummy tucks, and nose surgeries.*
    Then there are the folks chasing wealth and security.  Didn’t the recent Great Recession, as it is now called, teach them anything?  Others are striving to make a name for themselves.  These are usually the same folks who tell Christians how pathetic we are to believe that some Higher Power would ever notice we even exist on this puny blue dot in the universe.  Yet there they all go looking for fame, fortune, notoriety, beauty, or even their version of eternal life.  All of it is nothing more than a dream.  It will disappear, if not in a natural disaster or an economic meltdown, then the day they die—and they will die no matter how hard they try not to.  They are the ones grasping at dreams which are only a vapor that disappears in a flash.
    Our dream isn’t a dream at all.  It is a hope, which in the Biblical sense means it is all but realized.  Sin and death have been conquered by a force we can only try to comprehend, by a love we can never repay, and by a will we can but do our best to imitate.  Yet there it is, not a wisp of white floating over a warm porcelain mug, but a solid foundation upon which we base our faith.  Heb 6:19 calls it “an anchor.”  Have you ever seen a real anchor?  If there is anything the opposite of a wisp of steam, that’s it—solid and strong, able to hold us steady in the worst winds of life.  Tell me how a pert nose and a full bank account can do that!
    The world thinks it knows what is real while we sit like a toddler grasping at steam.  When eternity comes, they will finally see that they are wrong.  Spiritual things are the only things that last, the only real things at all.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal, 2 Cor 4:6-8.

*Information from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery

Dene Ward

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The Sheltered Side of the House

12/3/2014 0 Comments

We live under a couple of huge live oaks, trees so big it would take half a dozen people holding hands to reach around them.  That means when I planted a flower bed on the west side of the house under one of those trees, the lee side so to speak, I had to be careful what I put there.  Anything with a “full sun” tag wouldn’t make it.  But it also means that I can grow things outside that others might need to take inside on a frosty morning.  The tree protects them with both the extra degree or two of heat it gives off and its shelter from the settling dew that crisps into frost on a winter morning.
    Isn’t that how we raise our children, on the sheltered side of life, and even on the sheltered side of the church?  That is as it should be.  Children shouldn’t need to worry about where their next meal is coming from.  They shouldn’t be concerned with the office politics their parents must put up with.  They certainly shouldn’t hear about church squabbles.  Your job as a parent is to protect them from those things.  
    But you can’t do that forever.  Sooner or later they need to learn about people, about their imperfections, maybe even the danger they pose to others.  That’s why we teach them that no one should touch them in certain places, that they should never get in the car with a stranger, or accept candy, or look for lost puppies.  It’s unfortunate, but we do it because we love our children.
    I am afraid we are not that smart about teaching our children about problems among brethren.  It isn’t just the false teaching wolves we need to teach them about, though more of that would be helpful.  We seem to have raised a generation that thinks everyone out there is harmless and means well because they speak in syrupy tones and sentimental mush-mouth.  No, the thing we must be most careful about is how they see us handling the disappointments with our brethren.  What they see us do and say can make or break their spiritual survival.
    When Keith was preaching full time, we saw people who claimed to be Christians acting in every way but that.  We saw couples at each other’s throats.  We saw family cliques.  We received physical threats.  We were tossed out on our ears more than once for his preaching the truth.  It may be that the only thing that kept us both faithful was realizing how these things might affect our children if we didn’t handle them carefully.  
    When they were old enough to understand what was happening, we never blamed the church.  We never blamed God.  We told them that sometimes people were not perfect, even good people--sometimes they just made a mistake.  I was NOT going to let what those people had done to us cost my children their souls.  They were what mattered.  
    As they grew older, we talked often about being faithful to God, not to a place or a group.  We reminded them about Judas.  What would have happened if the other apostles had let Judas’s monumental failure run them off?  What about Peter, their erstwhile leader?  If everyone had given up because of his denial there would have been nothing for him to return to upon his repentance.  The mission of the church depended upon those men staying faithful regardless.  God was counting on them.  We told them over and over, you never let what someone else does determine your faithfulness.  God expects you to do the right thing no matter what those people do.  I had to learn to control my depression and discouragement and not give my children cause to leave the Lord.  
    We planted our children on the sheltered side of the house, but then we moved them slowly one foot at a time to a place where the sun would beat down on them and the cold would leave frost on their leaves.  Finally they were as inured as possible from the effects of other people’s failures, including our own.  If they ever fall away, they know better than to blame someone else.
    Be careful what your children hear you say about your brethren.  Be careful what they see in your actions and attitudes.  Sooner or later they will need to stand the heat of the noonday sun and the bitter cold of a spiritual winter.  Don’t give them an easy excuse not to.

For there must be also factions among you, that they that are approved may be made manifest among you. 1 Corinthians 11:19

Dene Ward

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Read the Buttons!

11/21/2014 0 Comments

“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

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