We raised pigs when the boys were growing up.  A pig a year in the freezer went a long way toward making our grocery bill manageable, everything from bacon and sausage in the morning to chops and steaks on the supper table, ribs on the grill, and roasts and hams on our holiday table.  The first time the butcher sent the head home in a clear plastic bag and I opened the freezer to find it staring at me nearly undid me though.  After that Keith made sure to tell them to “keep the head.”

We bought our pigs from a farmer when they were no more than 30 pounds.  That created a problem that usually the boys and I were the only ones home to deal with.  Once the pigs were over 100 pounds they could no longer root their way under the pen, but those young ones did it with regularity, especially the first week or so when they had not yet learned this was their new home and they could count on being fed.  More than one morning I went out to feed them and found the pen empty, spending the remainder of my morning looking for the pig out in the woods.

One Wednesday evening when Keith had to work, the boys and I stepped outside to load us and our books into the car for the thirty mile trip to Bible study, only to see the young pig, probably 40 pounds by that time, rooting in the flower beds.  We spent the next forty-five minutes chasing it.  You would think three smart people, two of them young and agile and me not exactly decrepit in those earlier days, could corner a pig and herd him back to the pen.  No, that pig gave chase any time any one of us got within twenty feet of him, and they are much faster than they look.

You see things in cartoons and laugh at the pratfalls exactly as the cartoonist wanted you to, knowing in your mind that such things never could happen.  When you chase a pig you find out otherwise. 

Once we did manage to corner the thing between a fencepost and a ditch and Lucas, who was about 12, leapt for him with his arms outstretched.  Somehow that pig managed to move and Lucas landed flat on the ground on his stomach while the pig ended up trotting past all of us on his merry way, wagging his head in what looked like amusement.

Another time Lucas actually got his arms around the pig’s stomach, but even an un-greased pig is a slippery creature.  Nathan and I never had a chance to grab on ourselves before it was loose again and off we all ran around the property for the umpteenth time, dressed for Bible study by the way, which made the sight much more ridiculous, especially my billowing skirt.

We never did catch that pig.  He simply got tired and decided to go back into the pen.  I had opened the gate and as he trotted toward it, we all gratefully jogged behind him, winded and filthy and caring not a hoot that it was his idea instead of ours.  Still, he had to have the last word.  Instead of going through the open gate, at the last minute he ran back to where he had gotten out in the first place and slunk under the rooted out segment of the pen.  Then he turned around and looked at us.  “Heh, heh,” I could almost hear with the look he gave us.  We shut the gate, filled in the hole, loaded up the feed trough, and went inside to clean up, arriving at Bible study thirty minutes late and too exhausted and traumatized to learn much that night.

God is a promise maker.  He has given us so many promises I could never list them all here.  We have a habit of treating those promises like a pig on the loose, like something we can’t really get a good hold of, certainly not a secure one. 

I grew up in a time when it was considered wrong to say, “I know I am going to Heaven.”  Regardless the fact that John plainly said in his first epistle, “These things I have written that you may know you have eternal life,” (5:13), actually saying such a thing would get you a scolding about pride, and a remonstrance like, “Let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall!”  We were too busy fighting false doctrine to lay hold of a hope described as “sure” in Heb 6:19.  

That word is the same one used in Matt 27:64-66.  The priests and Pharisees implored Pilate to make Jesus’ tomb “sure” so his disciples could not steal the body and claim a resurrection.  He told the guards, “Make it as sure as you can.”  Do you think they would have been careless about it?  Do you think there was anything at all uncertain about the seal on that tomb?  Not if you understand the disciplinary habits of the Roman army.  It is not quite as obvious because of the different translation choice, but the Philippian jailor was given the same order, using the same word, when Paul and Silas were put in prison:  “Charging the jailor to keep them safely [sure],” and he was ready to kill himself when he thought they had escaped.

That is how sure our hope is—“an anchor…steadfast and sure.”  It isn’t like a pig we have to chase down.  It isn’t going to slip through our fingers if we don’t want it to.  Paul told the Thessalonians that “sure” hope would comfort them, 2 Thes 2:16.  How comforting is it to be fretting all the time about whether or not you’re going to Heaven?  How reassuring is it to picture God as someone who sits up there waiting for you to slip so He can say, “Gotcha!”  That is how we treat Him when we talk about our hope as anything less than certain.

I never knew what to expect when I stepped out of my door the first few weeks with every new piglet.  If we hadn’t needed it, I would not have put myself through the anxiety and the ordeal.  Why in the world would anyone think that God wants us to feel that way about our salvation?

…in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal, Titus 1:2.

Dene Ward           

I wonder if it means as much to us.  I wonder if it would have even gotten our attention.  We take so much for granted, so many things people have not always had access to, things they would marvel at were they alive today. 

Noon on a hot, dusty day saw a thirsty man sitting by a well after a long walk.  A woman trudged up, not during the normal hours of drawing water; a woman, we would later discover, who was on the fringes of her society, a society that was on the fringes itself, especially to people like this man, who sat where she had hoped to find no one.      To her utter amazement, he asked her for a drink.  It was not just that she was from a hated caste, but she was a woman, and men seldom talked to women in public, especially not one with her background.  And not only that, but he offered her something wonderful--she would never have to come draw water from this well again.  She was so excited she ran to tell the others in the town, even the ones who before would not speak to her because of her questionable morals. 

He stayed for two days, teaching about this miraculous water, water they eventually realized was not wet or even real, as the world counts reality, but far more real in the dawning light of a spiritual kingdom that would accept them all, not just those other people who hated them.  Soon, everyone would have this living water available, and no one in that kingdom would be considered “second class.”

I wonder if Jesus would have gotten my attention with this talk?  I don’t have to draw water from a well in the heat of the day—enough water to clean, bathe, cook, and stay alive.  But one day, 30 years ago, that little story meant a whole lot more to me than it ever had before.

We came home from a trip to discover that our well had collapsed.  We did not have the several hundred dollars it would have cost at the time to fix it.  Keith had to dig a new well himself.  For a month, every night after he finished the studying and home classes he conducted as a preacher, he worked on that well, even in the cold January rain, even running a fever. 

A farmer neighbor filled and carted a five hundred gallon tank outside our door.  That tank had held things not good for human consumption, so we used that water to carry in five gallon buckets for flushes, and pressure canners full for bathing.  Every morning I went to another neighbor’s house to fill up gallon jugs for the water we used to brush teeth, make tea and coffee, and wash dishes.  The boys were 5 and 3, way too little to help cart water.  I learned the value of carrying a bucket in each hand—balance was everything if you wanted to slosh as little as possible all over your carpets.

We learned to conserve water without even thinking about it—no more water running in the lavatory while brushing teeth, shaving, or putting in contact lenses!  Suddenly, carrying water was a time-consuming, back-breaking job. Modern homes are simply not geared to anything but running water.  It would have been much simpler to have had an outhouse in the backyard, and a pump handle in the kitchen.  The amount of water that needed hauling would have been cut in half.

And after a month of that, I understood what this woman must have thought, what a luxury the concept must have seemed to her hot, weary body.  Do we feel that way about “living water?”  Is salvation such a luxury that we marvel at it and run to tell others?  Or do we take it for granted like running water in our kitchens and bathrooms?  I would not wish the month we endured on anyone else, but you know what?  I think it was good for all of us.

Therefore with joy shall we draw water out of the wells of salvation.  And in that day shall you say, Give thanks unto Jehovah, call upon his name, declare his doings among the peoples, make mention that his name is exalted, Isaiah 12:3,4      

Dene Ward

While I was teaching music I was a member of several professional organizations.  My favorite was the local group which met seven times a year in members’ homes for business, some high-spirited performances, and a potluck lunch.  Once we met in a house just off the highway, down a lime rock road.  In the middle of the meeting, a rain came up—not just any rain, but one we around here call a “toad strangler,” several inches in less than an hour—they happen all the time in Florida. 

The rain had stopped when it was time to leave and we took off down the dirt road shortcut in a caravan of cars headed to our various studios to meet the students for the day.  Suddenly, the cars ahead of me came to a halt, and ladies started climbing out, gathering together and peering up ahead.  I turned off the engine and joined the milling crowd at the head of the line. 

Water had run across the road.  It had not cut a deep rut, and in fact, was a nice shallow-looking, easily fordable stream, but we had all lived in the country long enough to know you don’t just drive through water running across an unpaved road.  “Someone needs to walk out there and check the road,” was the consensus. 

Have I mentioned that at 35 I was the youngest in the group by about thirty years?  Instantly, all heads turned toward me.  Having been silently elected, I slipped off my shoes and started across the newly created waterway.  I took five firm steps only to have to grab my skirt and hike it up over my knees as I sank exactly that deep on the sixth.  Instantly I had visions of those jungle movies I used to watch on Saturday afternoons as a kid, where the first one in the safari line sinks in the quicksand because, in spite of everyone telling him to be still, he wiggles and squirms and sinks before anyone can even think to cut a vine and use it to pull him out—or if some bright fellow does think of it, twenty people on the other end cannot out-pull the suction of a big mud puddle.. 

A good minute later it dawned on me that my name was being called, and I still had not sunk any farther.  My feet had found a solid layer of hardpan about two feet below the surface so Tarzan swinging to the rescue was totally unnecessary.  I made my way back to the group with the most unladylike thwock, thwock, thwock noises as the suction released with each step.  We all carefully backed our cars down the one lane road, turned around in the driveway from where we had started and went the long way home, down the paved state highway.

Hopelessness in the scriptures is often pictured as “sinking.”  Jeremiah prophesies that Babylon will sink and shall not rise again because of the evil I will bring upon her, 51:64.  Amos warns Israel that they are in for the same punishment: they shall sink again like the River of Egypt, 8:8; 9:5.  And all because of sin.  Even Peter, when he tried to walk on water, began to sink because of little faith and doubt, Matt 14:31.  And truly, just like sinking in the quicksand (at least in the old grade B movies), there is nothing we can do but hope a savior happens along.  Praise God, he has!

The Psalmist pleads in 22:8 Commit yourself to Jehovah, let him deliver you; let him rescue you, seeing he delights in you.  In spite of the fact that, like an ignorant city slicker, we walked out into that mud on purpose, in spite of the fact that we ignored warning after warning, and kept right on wiggling and squirming, and even when we have been pulled out before, but keep stepping right back into the same pool of quicksand, Jesus is ready to hold out a hand and save us. 

Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink… Let not the waterflood overwhelm me and swallow me up…Answer me, oh Jehovah, for your lovingkindness is good.  According to the multitude of your tender mercies, turn to me; and hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress; answer me quickly. Psa 69:14-17

Dene Ward

Living in the country has meant adapting.  In many ways it has been good for me.  The city girl found out she could learn and change, even though change is a thing I have never liked.  I love routine.  Now, after 32 years, it isn’t change, it’s just a new routine, and that helps when I have had many more changes in the past few years, and see more coming.

One of the things I learned quickly was to make sure I had everything I needed to get by for the week.  A sixty to eighty mile round trip, depending upon which side of town what I need is on and how many other places I have to stop as well, doesn’t happen more than once a week even if you did forget the bread or run out of milk.  You learn to do without. You don’t change your mind about the menu unless you already have on hand the things the preferred dish needs.  When an unexpected guest arrives and you want to offer a meal, you put another potato in the pot, double the biscuit recipe, and get out another package of frozen garden corn, and if you didn’t plan dessert that night, you put the home-canned jellies and jams on the table.  So far, no one has complained.

I have learned to be organized.  I do everything in one visit, and usually that coincides with a doctor appointment or a women’s Bible class.  I keep track of everything I run out of, or run low on, as the week progresses, and buy it all in the order that uses the least gas.  I keep staples well stocked.

I have also learned that I don’t have to have everything I think I do.  The only store close to us is a tire store, about three miles down the country highway.  The man has been in business for 40 years.  Our children went to school with his, and somehow he has made a good living selling tires in the smallest county in Florida just outside a village that might have a population of 100 if you count the dogs.   But as far as shopping, it doesn’t do much for me.  You can’t try tires on, they don’t do much for the home décor, and window shopping is the pits.  So I don’t “shop.”

Sometimes we become slaves to our culture.  We think we must wear certain things, go certain places and do things in a certain way because everyone else does.  We shop and buy because everyone does, not because we need it.  We go see the movies that “everyone” has seen.  We buy a cell phone because “everyone” has one nowadays—“it’s a necessity.”  We run down to the store every time we run out of something instead of carefully making a list of what we need and taking care of it in one, or at most two trips a week, wasting precious time and costing ourselves more money than we realize.  Everyone does, we say.  Maybe we should stop and think about that.

Why?  First, because it never crosses our minds to be different than everyone.  Is it sinful?  Maybe not, but then why does something have to be sinful before I am willing to look at it and decide whether it is best for me and my situation?  Why am I so afraid to be different?  A Christian should have a mindset that is always looking at things in different ways than the rest of the world.  If I decide this is the best way to live (and not sinful), then fine, but I should, at the least, think about it.  Christians who always act without thinking will eventually do something wrong some time in the future. 

Second, we are to be good stewards of everything God gives us, including time and money.  If we saved a little time, could we use it in service to God?  Could we offer help to someone in distress?  Would we have more time for visiting the sick and studying with neighbors?  If we saved those few dollars every week, could we give more to the Lord?  Could we help someone in need more often?  Could we be the ones who take a bag of groceries to a family in distress because that day we could buy for them instead of running to the store for yet something else we forgot?

But we aren’t really talking about running down to the store here.  We’re talking about attitude and priorities—about doing the best we can for our Master in more than a haphazard way.  Paul says we are to “purpose,” or plan, our giving.  I have no doubt that doing so ensures a larger donation than merely waiting till the last minute to see what’s left in the bank or the wallet.  The same thing will be true if we plan our prayer time, study time, and service time.  Instead of running out of time for any of it, we will find ourselves making a habit of the things God expects of us.

In a parable Jesus praised the steward who was “a faithful and wise manager,” who was always working, always serving, and able to get the appropriate things done at the appropriate time (Luke 12:42).  Those servants, he goes on to say, are always ready for the master’s return.  Are we ready, serving and working as many hours a day as possible as faithful stewards, or are we so disorganized that judgment day will find us at the checkout for the fifth time in a week, just to pick up a bottle of ketchup?

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies--in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1Pe 4:10-11)

Dene Ward

I live in rural north central Florida.  Snakes are a fact of life.  Poisonous snakes are a big fact of life.  You learn to take precautions, but even then, if you have not seen one in awhile, you become careless.  Last summer we were reminded of where we live.

One morning I was walking the mown path around our property, as I do every day, six laps for 3 ½ miles.  Suddenly the weeds to the left of me buzzed.  If you have ever heard a rattlesnake in person, you know it does not sound exactly like the ones on TV.  It sounds like an angry June bug, a really big, really angry June bug.  I leapt sideways about 10 feet—in fact, if sideways leaping were an Olympic event, I would have won the gold medal that day. 

We never found that one, but not ten days later, the dog alerted us to one in the yard, which Keith shot.  Four days later, she found a cottonmouth which escaped her by flattening itself enough to get under the house.  Keith had to crawl under there with a flashlight and a pistol for that one.  A week later another rattler in the yard met him as he returned from the neighbor’s.  Four days later a black racer crossed my running path about thirty feet ahead.  Two days after that a coachwhip met me at the fence behind the old pigpen when I walked.  This was beginning to get eerie.  We had never had this many snakes in this short a time, not even the first summer we set up house in this old watermelon field in the piney woods, half a mile off the highway. 

Five days later I was folding clothes in the family room and happened to look out the window right next to me.  Not five feet from my face, a racer was winding itself up around the TV tower.  No, racers are not poisonous.  Yes, it was outside and I was inside with not one, but two, glass panes between me and it.  But something about that one sent chills up my spine.  It was almost more than I could do to go outside that day at all.  Somehow I expected to see dozens of snakes slithering up the porch steps and clinging to the screen just waiting to strike when I opened the back door. 

But when it was time to walk, I took a deep breath, got the .22 rifle loaded with number 12 shot, leaned it against the tree and set off, with my trusty canine bodyguards bounding up ahead of me to sniff out the critters and, more important, scare away the snakes.  Still, I was a lot more alert than usual. 

This was a good spiritual reminder as well.  We live in a stable society.  No natives on the warpath.  No marauders on the borders.  No wars fought on our home ground.  Have we forgotten to be careful?  There is still an enemy out there who is REAL, and he will kill our souls if we are not alert.  Are we to be so afraid that we shut ourselves away from the world?  No, for how could our lights shine and our faith be told?  But being cautious never hurt anyone. 

When you go out there today, pay attention, stay safe, and when you see the lion, who at least once has masqueraded as a serpent, either shoot him down right there or run!

Be sober, be watchful, your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour; withstand him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brothers who are in the world.  And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish and strengthen you.  1 Pet 5:7-10

Dene Ward

Out here in the sticks we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of pine woods planted by the paper companies.  Do not let anyone tell you that we are depleting our forests by using so much paper.  Old growth forests are not used for paper goods; they are used for that pretty furniture you own.  The paper companies regularly plant the trees they eventually send to the mills. 

I always get a start when I pass a wooded section that has been standing for several years, and find that it has been taken down, soon to be replanted with small saplings.  And I have noticed several times that when the trees are removed, a rundown wooden shack sits in the open, formerly hidden by the rows and rows of sixty foot tall pines.  The porch sags, the roof waffles, the windows are paneless, with dangling shutters or none at all.  There are no power lines and no well tanks.  These dilapidated houses may have been empty nearly a hundred years.

I find myself wondering who lived there.  None of these places could be more than twenty by twenty, many smaller, probably with one or two rooms, three at the most.  Kitchens were often on the back porch because of the heat and humidity in this area; families bathed in wash tubs in the kitchen or on the back porch, and outhouses were the plumbing of the day.  Did a young couple raise a family there?  In those days, they often had as many as nine or ten children.  When it rained they all had to play inside! 

And when it rained the roof leaked.  When the winter wind blew, it seeped in between the board or log walls.  And no telling what might crawl in through the cracks in the floor boards—if there was even a floor.  Yet I know happy families lived there, and good citizens grew up from such poverty.  I know some of those elderly people and they talk of those days with a lot of smiles and chuckles.

Yet here I sit, complaining because sometimes on a clear, still day in the country your electricity goes out for no apparent reason, and if the wind blows at all you can count on it.  No electricity means no air conditioning and no well pump.  Whenever a new neighbor moves in between me and the highway, the phone company will inevitably cut my line when they put in the new one.  And I don’t have a thing to wear!  Well, if I lost ten pounds I might.  I wonder if those folks who lived in that shack had enough food to even worry about getting too heavy. 

These little shacks are reminders to me to be grateful for what I have, and not to covet the material blessings of another.  I can be happy anywhere.  I can raise godly children anywhere.  I can make a good marriage anywhere.  I can be a child of God no matter where I live or how.  But no mansion on earth will make me happy if that is all I care about. 

Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world for neither can we carry anything out; but having food and covering we shall with that be content. 1 Tim 6:6-8.

Dene Ward

 In the country the power can go out for no apparent reason.  You expect it in a storm.  Limbs break and fall on power lines.  Ground becomes saturated with rain and the trees uproot themselves and fall over, taking the lines underneath with them.  Lightning strikes sub-stations and transformers.  All of that is understandable.  What is not is an outage on a calm, sunny day, something that happens far more often in the country than in town.

When you are not expecting an outage, it can cause problems.  I once put a sour cream pound cake in the oven only to have the power go out twenty minutes later.  (Yes, the sun was shining brightly.)  I needed another 40-60 minutes of 325 degree heat.  I was afraid to take the cake out, but unsure how the residual heat would affect the cooking time, nor how the reheat time would affect it when the power came back on.

I decided to leave it in the oven, thinking that it was less likely to fall from that than from suddenly moving it from the oven heat to room temperature when it wasn’t even half-cooked.  Two hours later, the lights came on and the oven began reheating itself.  I compromised on the time and with the aid of a toothpick was able to find the moment when the cake was done but not over done.  It was a little more compact than usual, but it didn’t fall, and it tasted fine.

When you live in the land of unexpected outages, you really appreciate the consistency of God’s power.  Eph 1:19 tells us it is immeasurable, which means it cannot be contained and is therefore infinite.  Romans 1:20 simply mentions “the eternal power” of God.  Whenever we need it, it is there for the asking and nothing can deplete it.  Every time I hear someone say, “There are so many others with bigger problems, I hate to bother God with mine,” I wonder if they really understand the “eternal” power of God.

God’s power guards us (1 Pet 1:5); it strengthens us (Eph 6:10; Col 1:11); it preserves us (Psa 79:11); it supports us in our suffering (2 Tim 1:8); it redeems us (Neh 1:10).  Paul prayed that the Ephesian brethren would know that power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead (1:19,20) and the same power that can answer any request we might possibly think of (3:20).  And, he says, that same power works within us as well.

When the storms of life rage around you, you will not have to worry about the power going out.  In fact, that power will be stronger the more you need it.  Paradoxically, we are never stronger than when we need God the most because we are letting him take care of things.  Counting on yourself is the weakest you will ever be, and that usually happens on the sunny days, the days when life is easy.  On stormy days, the days when we finally give up and lay it all before God, the power at our disposal is awesome. 

The Light never goes out, or even dims in a brownout, when run by the power of God.

 

Ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, and whose power is in the skies. Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel--he is the one who gives power and strength to his people.  Blessed be God! Psa 68:34-35

Dene Ward