Although gunpowder was accidentally discovered by the Chinese in 850, the first recorded use of a cannon in battle was the battle of Crecy, August 26, 1346, during the Hundred Years War.  That is disputed by the Arabs who claim that the Mamluks used one against the Mongols in 1260.  Then there are the French who claim they used the first cannon in 1339.  But usually the English get the credit, Edward III to be specific, for the 1346 date.  In any case, cannons were here to stay after the 14th century.

Keith was having a religious discussion with someone once, a brother as I remember, but one he disagreed with.  I had come upon a pertinent scripture in my own study a few days earlier and gave him the passage.  “Here’s some more ammunition,” I said.

That word came naturally to me.  Keith was a certified firearms instructor for the state.  He taught probation officers and prison guards how to shoot.  As a probation officer he carried his own weapon, having to qualify every year.  He taught me how to shoot well enough to dispose of a dozen poisonous snakes over the years and he taught the boys, too.  So the word “ammunition” just came out.

However, it nagged at me enough that over the next few days I began wondering if we don’t have that mindset much too often,  Yes, we are in a battle.  Yes, the scriptures talk about our “weapons,” weapons God Himself supplied for our warfare.  And yes, our fight is not just with Satan, but with his ministers as well.  But look at this passage:

As for me, I have not hastened from being a shepherd after you; neither have I desired the woeful day; you know: that which came out of my lips was before your face, Jer 17:16

Jeremiah was NOT happy about Judah’s coming destruction—he did not “desire” the evil day.

There’s an old story about a man who was converted after thirty years of different preachers telling him he was lost.

“Why now?” someone asked him.  “Why listen to this preacher?”

“Because,” the old man said, “he really sounded like he was sad about it.”

Is that our problem?  Do we get too much pleasure out of the fight?  Are we just a bunch of gung-ho cowboys in our zeal?  Are we more interested in winning arguments than in winning souls?

God gave Jeremiah plenty of ammunition, and he used it well enough that he was thrown into prison for it.  But he never enjoyed the job.  In fact, a good many of the prophets disliked their mission.  “I went in the bitterness of soul,” Ezekiel said.  In his confrontation with the priest of Bethel, Amos as much as said, “This wasn’t my idea.” 

That’s a far different attitude than I have seen in some brethren, who delight in slinging bandoliers over their shoulders and spraying automatic fire in a drive-by.

We’re supposed to be saving souls, not murdering them with spiritual handguns and especially not with cannons.  Let’s take stock of our attitudes when we go out to battle today.

​Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the twilight mountains, and while you look for light he turns it into gloom and makes it deep darkness. But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears, because the LORD's flock has been taken captive, Jer 13:16-17.

Dene Ward

We live in a rural county.  We have no garbage pickup.  Instead we have dumpsites at several places with recycling bins and a dumpster for household garbage.  We have to haul our own trash.  Ask yourself how much trash and garbage your family generates in a day.  How many garbage cans do you have outside and how many times can you empty the trash indoors before your outside can is full?  Now, how often would you like to drive several miles to dump your trash, and how many of those big trash cans will fit in your car?  You now know one reason most of the folks out here have a pickup truck!

But this also explains the burn barrel.  We keep two receptacles in the house—one for wet garbage and one for burnable trash.  The more we can burn, the less often we have to cart garbage cans down the highway.  We put everything we possibly can in that box of trash—junk mail, out-of-date documents, bills, and receipts, cardboard boxes, empty plastic containers and lids, plastic bottles and bags, old rags, irreparable clothes—everything that will burn, or melt and then burn.  Don’t talk to me about recycling.  We recycle in several other ways, and this practice saves gas.

But let me ask you this. Would you ever put anything important in a burn barrel?  Of course not.  Do you know what God thinks of this world?  He has his own burn barrel, and this world is what He plans to throw in it.

We need to remember that.  Too often we become enamored of the very things God will ultimately destroy.  Some of our favorite things in life are sitting in God’s burn barrel.  Even when we think we have our priorities straight, we often do not.

I remember telling my little boys that one day we would take a month long camping trip out west.  We would show them all those beautiful national parks they had only heard about.  They could look across the Grand Canyon, watch Old Faithful erupt, and stand in a place where the mountains rose peak after peak after peak with no signs of modern man—no power lines, no sounds of traffic, not even a tangled skein of contrail in the perfect blue sky--a place where a thousand years before some native had stood and enjoyed the same view.  It never happened.  We never had the money or the time.  They are grown now and can understand the pressures of life, making a living, paying the bills, meeting one’s responsibilities to others, but I have always felt bad about missing that trip.  We managed one or two other things while they were still at home, but never that one.

But remember this, no matter how good a plan it was, how good the values we were trying to instill with an appreciation of God as the Creator of all that majestic beauty, God Himself doesn’t think that much of it.  It’s temporary.  He plans to destroy it all.  The things God meant for me to teach those boys were things I could teach any time, any place, no matter how much money we did or didn’t have. 

The Bible is full of people who did not have the right priorities—Esau for one, who sold a birthright for one meal.  The Hebrew writer calls him “profane” (Heb 12:16).  Paul talks about having a “mind of the spirit” rather than a “mind of the flesh” (Rom 8:4).  And why?  Because Jesus’ kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36).  It is “not meat and drink” (Rom 14:17).  So many things we allow ourselves to become upset about simply do not matter.  Traffic jams?  Noisy neighbors?  Pet peeves?  Even the trials of life—precisely because it is this life we are becoming distracted with.

For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is perdition, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Phil 3:18-20.  Yes, Paul says that when I let things of this life upset me to the point of distraction that my “god is my belly.”  I am not supposed to be minding those earthly things.

So today, think about God’s burn barrel.  He has a place for the things He plans to destroy, just like I do, one that gets too full too fast.  God’s burn barrel holds things like wealth, possessions, awards, careers, opinions, irritations, Jimmy Choo shoes, stock portfolios, time shares on the beach, cabins in the mountains, camping trips out west—even this earthly tabernacle that so many try to keep looking young.  They all go in the barrel at the end of the Day.  And God will light the fire Himself.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed…Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace, 2Pet 3:10-14.

Dene Ward

We were driving a hilly section of North Georgia on a winding backroad between small Southern towns, the kind with steepled churches, brick town halls on green grass-carpeted squares, and railroad tracks running right down the middle of Main Street between diagonal parking on either side of the road.  Away from the towns farmland tufted with white cotton bolls, metals barns housing lumberyards, and firewood stands with cords stacked for sale nestled among single wide and double wide trailers, old frame farmhouses and the occasional red brick ranch style home of the younger generation.

Then we passed a deserted house. You can always tell.  The paint is peeling, the gutters are full of leaves, and the naked windows stare out at you, no light of life within them.  A house left to itself always deteriorates far more quickly than one that is lived in.

And the yard?  Weedy, strewn with wind-blown trash, gardens filled with dried up flower heads or bolted vegetables, everything withered from lack of care.  A garden left to itself always goes to seed.

So how did some primordial soup produce even one cell of life where there was none before, and how did that cell evolve into something more and more complex, and finally become an intelligent creature conscious of its own existence and that of others outside itself, able to reason, to create, and to appreciate art of all kinds, and strategize plots of great complexity? 

Until someone can show me a vacant house that keeps itself clean and void of rot, and a garden that never needs weeding or watering, I just won’t believe it.  I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but God made me smart enough to see through that one.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, Rom 1:18-22.

Dene Ward

Every afternoon following our midday meal, we walk our property, counting new blooms on the roses, smelling the jasmine, and looking beneath those large scratchy leaves for new squash blossoms.  Usually I end up with a handful of wildflowers, blooms so tiny I cannot see them until Keith hands me one I can pull up close.

 Do you know what I see?  Blooms of all colors--red, pink, blue, white, yellow, orange, purple in all shades and combinations—and shapes—bells, tubes, bowls, cups, stars with five or six points, some flared, some rayed, some as complex as orchids.  And did you know that even the stems are different?  Some are wiry, some are leafless, some are hairy, some sprawl and others stand up straight, and some are square!  Some of these flowers are exquisite, but most of us don’t know that.  We’ve never taken the time to bend over and really look.

 A long time ago a woman who has since become a close friend, told me that looking across the pews at Keith had made her think he was stern and unapproachable, and so she had decided to make it a point to get to know him.  It wasn’t really Keith’s fault.  He has large, piercing blue eyes that look like they’re boring into you, a strong Roman nose, and a voice that, because he is profoundly deaf, is always in projection mode.  Even when he isn’t, he often sounds disapproving, and is always loud, which is often translated “angry.”  A lot of people just go with that first impression.  This woman did not, and she proclaimed that year of getting to know him “delightful.” I wonder how many others have missed out on that delight, how many have formed an opinion, and kept it despite what others might have said.

 How many do we overlook?  The elderly because we think them dull and uninteresting?  The teenagers because we’ve branded them all shallow and naïve?  The disabled because we think they have nothing to offer?  The scholarly and intellectual because we think those dry old men can’t possibly know how to have any fun?  The ones who seem so well put-together that we think they wouldn’t possibly want anything to do with “someone like me?”  None of these judgments is fair.   

Jesus told the Jews, “Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment,” John 7:24.  Maybe I should take the time (sacrifice) to bend over (be humble) and examine (make some effort) a few wildflowers out there, instead of passing over them (negligence) as if they weren’t worth my trouble (arrogance).  When I think of it that way, I finally understand why judging by appearance is NOT righteous.

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  1Sam 16:7 

Dene Ward

In February the pine and oak trees suddenly burst out in fuzzy yellow green tufts of pollen that fell like snow on the ground and the sidewalk, covering our car in a thin layer of windblown chartreuse powder and stuffing up Keith’s nose like cotton.  In March the needles and leaves finished falling and the new ones almost instantly budded out in their customary spring green color.  The pollen dried and began falling in earnest, turning the new green grass brown under its carpeting.  Every time I finished working outside, I brushed my shoulders off before heading inside.

 I thought I was in good shape, but in the middle of the night my hand ran over my pillow and I felt it—several large grains of something, and as the sleep fog lifted I realized what it was—tufts of pollen.  On my pillow?  How in the world…?  And then I knew.  It had fallen into my hair, and my hair with all its corkscrews had trapped it like a net.  The only way it was coming out was with a comb—or rubbing it on a pillow, I guess.  The next morning I cleaned out my hair, brushed off the pillow and sheet, and swept the floor.  Then I walked around the house and discovered more on the floors of every room.  So I swept them all.  But that only fixed the problem that morning.  In the afternoon, I had to check my hair all over again.

 It’s easy to think you can be in the world and not be contaminated by it.  Yet every day you bring home those same contaminants if you are not careful to remove them.  They will not easily brush off.  They will not stop falling just because it’s you they might fall on.  And if you leave them, perhaps thinking you will get them out later, or that they will fall out on their own where they won’t hurt anyone, they will affect every part of your life before you know it.  Your language changes, your dress changes, your interests change, and finally, your attitudes change, and suddenly you are not the person you thought you were.

 I have learned to brush myself off every day while the pollen is falling, to run my fingers through my hair and untangle the ones that are trapped.  I check my shoes and the creases in my jeans.  And I do it whether I have been outside all morning or just a few minutes.  Contamination can happen in a flash.

 Be sure to check yourself this evening before you hurt not just yourself, but the ones you love. 

Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.  Jas 1:27

Dene Ward