“Hi!  My name is Moe and I will be your server today.  What can I get you to drink?”

 We had received a gift card to an Italian restaurant we had never been to before and were using it after a doctor appointment one afternoon.  Moe was slightly shorter than average, but a dark-haired, good looking young man, probably working his way through college, it being a college town.  We enjoyed our meal and Moe served us well.  Our first course came lickety-split and when the second took a little bit longer, he stopped to tell us we were “next” and to see if we needed anything else while we waited—like another loaf of warm bread, an offer we were happy to take him up on.  All through the meal he checked on our progress, on whether we were happy or not, and whether things were prepared to our liking.

 When we had finished and were sated enough to turn down dessert, he stood another moment and said, “Is there anything else I can get you?”  Then a half second later, “I really mean that.  You are the kindest table I have waited on all day and I would do anything in the world for you.”

 I had noticed that the booth behind Keith had called him over half a dozen times, and another table had sent something back.  No one raised a voice, but evidently their words and manner showed they might as well have. 

 And us?  We didn’t really think about what we were doing or how we were acting.  We were just—us.  Maybe it’s that we learned a long time ago that people in the service industry are often mistreated and verbally abused, made to pay for someone else’s failures—in this case, maybe the chef’s—and treated just like furniture as far as any personal interaction goes.  Maybe I learned it from my daddy—he always called people he dealt with by their names, and waiters and waitresses, car salesmen and mechanics all remembered him and went out of their way for him.

 But Moe’s words of gratitude have made me actually think about what I am doing and saying, trying to be even kinder than usual, and maybe even developing a short—but sweet—relationship with those people.  Isn’t that the way Christians are supposed to treat those who serve them?

 Masters, treat your servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven…and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. Col 4:1; Eph 6:9

 Why shouldn’t those passages apply to how we treat waiters and waitresses, plumbers and mechanics, cashiers and pizza delivery guys?  These people serve us as part of their daily work, and we can make or break their reputations with their bosses and even cost them their jobs.  We can also brighten their day if we treat them as we ought to, and who knows, maybe someday we can help bring them to Christ. 

 My boys have worked in service industries over summer semesters.  Even all these years later they can tell you stories about certain customers.  Do you really think it is Christlike to be a customer remembered for his sour disposition and rude words over twenty years later?

 Did you go out to eat yesterday?  How would your server remember you?  If you walked in again today, how would he feel?  How does your cashier at the grocery store greet you?  Does she ignore you unless you go through her line, or does she smile and wave when she sees you walk through the door? 

 So thank you, Moe, for reminding me that we are supposed to be reflections of our Lord to everyone.  Thank you for reminding me that my actions and attitudes can glorify or shame Him.

You shall not rule over [your servants] ruthlessly but shall fear your God. Lev 25:43

Dene Ward

Lucas lives five minutes from the beach.  On our first visit we drove across Santa Rosa Sound and strolled the white sand beach, watching the sandpipers’ maniacal little legs dodging the last remnant of a wave as it crept across the shiny wet sand, and looked across the emerald green water for the first sign of a dolphin breaking the surface while the seagulls screamed overhead hoping for an errant crust or dropped crumb.  We plodded along, our feet sinking into the mud, leaning into westerly winds that would blow the curls right out of your hair, our words caught just as they slipped out of our mouths and blown away like dust bunnies in a fan.

We weren’t alone.  Pale-skinned tourists in floppy sunhats scoured the beach for shells.  Children played tag with the waves.  Older tweens and teens, their hands and legs breaded with sand, carried pails of mud for sandcastles and sculptures, and gathered shells and driftwood for ornamentation.  Lovers of all ages strolled hand in hand, eyes only for one another.

Condos line the beach, ten or more stories of glittering glass reflecting the sun, balconies furnished with umbrella-ed tables and cushioned chairs and potted plants of the sort than can tolerate the sun, the heat, and the salt spray that constantly drifts over the narrow spit of land between the surf and the sound.

“Wonder what one of those costs?” we often ask, telling ourselves we would never tire of the view and the calming rhythm of waves pounding the shore again and again and again.

But guess what?  Before long we’d had enough and we piled back into the car for the five minute drive back to the apartment.  The first time we visited, we walked on the beach three times in three days, but soon it was down to one almost obligatory visit, and this past visit?  We didn’t go a single time.

It’s easy to get used to things.  When we moved to Illinois for two years, I saw snow for the first time in my 21 years of life.  Guess who was out playing in it, digging tunnels through eave-high drifts, throwing snowballs with mittened hands, and building snowmen?  All of our neighbors stayed inside where it was warm, peering through their blinds at the crazy people from Florida.

A few weeks ago a YouTube video went viral.  It pictured something not often seen these days—a young man helping a poor, elderly woman check out in a grocery line one item at a time because she was not sure she had enough money, and doing it with patience, respect, and kindness.  Isn’t it sad that something like that has become so rare that, just like a landlubber at the beach or a Floridian in the snow, everyone stops in their tracks to look?

And isn’t it sad that some Christians need the example that young man set?  Giving courtesy and respect where it is deserved and even where it isn’t, yielding our rights, speaking with kindness, affording others the right to make the same mistakes we do without incurring our wrath, and realizing that not everyone operates on OUR timetables—THAT should be so common among us that no one gives it a second thought and certainly wouldn’t take a video of our actions as something rare—even behind a steering wheel.  Instead, we pat ourselves on the back for doing these things once every now and then.

We should be like the waves incessantly breaking on this world with mercy, grace, and kindness, whether the shore is rough and rocky or flat and smooth.  No one ever questions whether the next wave will come.  It rolls in again and again, over and over and over without a break in the rhythm, so regularly that no one stops to say, “Look!  Here comes another wave.”  If it didn’t come, it wouldn’t be a wave.

Are you a wave, or just an occasional splash?

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 1Pet 2:12

Dene Ward

 I remember sitting at my desk in first grade looking at my middle finger and wondering what that bump was.  I did not see well, of course, so all I could tell was that it stuck out and seemed to be hard and tough.  My mother told me when I asked, that I had developed a callus from the constant writing and coloring we did at school.  “That way your finger won’t hurt from the pencil rubbing on it over and over.”  It seemed a pretty nifty idea to me, at age 6, that God had arranged it so I could go to school and do my work without hurting myself.  Plenty of other things hurt in my world of poor vision and the resulting clumsiness and rejection from my peers, so here was one thing that did not.  Very nice!

 As I grew older I found other calluses, things I would not have noticed except for that brief conversation with my mother.  Calluses on the backs of my heels and calluses on the side of my big toe made it comfortable to wear shoes, for example.  I even remember waiting for calluses to form with a new pair of shoes that rubbed me in a new way, usually wearing a Band-Aid until that happened.  Overall, my impression was that calluses were a good thing.

 (I feel a need to clarify that I am not speaking of the adjective callous—which means someone who cares nothing for others, who is actively insensitive to their needs.)

 Now that I am old but not necessarily wise, I am more and more certain that God intends us to grow calluses on our hearts in at least one area—that is our dealings with one another.  Dealings with God are a different thing—we must maintain a soft and penitent heart constantly when we approach God, but with one another, the majority of passages tell me that a few good calluses will help us maintain the unity that God demands.  Look at these passages with me:

  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things 1Cor13:7.  If I love my brother I will assume the best about what he does or says, not jump to the worst possible conclusions. 

  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins 1Pet 4:8.  Peter cannot possibly be talking about actual sins—nowhere in the Bible is condoning sin acceptable to God.  This must be a metaphor for the way we treat those little annoyances we all have (even if we don’t want to believe it of ourselves) and must deal with in our relationships.  Overlook those things, Peter says, if you really love one another.  In other words, grow a callus there.

   Take care then HOW you hear...Luke8:18.  Some of us hear with automatic judgment already formed in our hearts.  How do I know?  Because I would not have received the same thing said by my best friend in such a negative way.  I would have automatically excused her because she has so much on her plate right now, or she must be tired, or maybe she doesn’t feel well today, or—  Jesus reminds us that it is our choice how we hear a person’s words, even one we don’t much like.  Choice, we ask?  Yes, and this passage proves it.

 We are members of the Lord’s body, the church that was planned by God before the foundation of the world, (Eph 3:10,11).  Our mission is the  only thing that really matters.  Not my feelings, not my opinions, not my preferences.  If I allow any of those things to stop that mission, or deter it in any way, I have made me, myself, and I more important than God.  Being “sensitive” is no excuse.  God expects us to grow enough calluses on our hearts so that we can withstand the friction of our closeness with one another and do HIS work.  Look at those passages again.  When I don’t do those things, I am not loving as God expects me to—as God COMMANDS me to. 

 We all know people who make a career out of getting their feelings hurt.  Just imagine where we would all be if Jesus were as hypersensitive as some of us.  Don’t let your sensitive feelings turn you out of Heaven on the last day.

 ...The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult  Prov12:16.

Dene Ward

 Many American home cooks have a copy of Fannie Farmer’s cookbook. Her publishers insisted that she pay for the first printing of 3000 copies because they were so certain they would lose money on it.  The joke was on them, however, because the cookbook is still being revised, revamped, and reprinted over a hundred years later.

 Fannie was both a student and teacher at the Boston Cooking School, but went on to found her own school on this day in 1902.  The New York Times credits her with inventing the modern recipe, and being the first cook to insist on precise measurements.  No more of this “pinch,” “heaping spoonful” or “enough salt to float an egg.”  A teaspoon was a certain size, the same size every time, and it took three of them to make a tablespoon and 16 of those tablespoons to make a cup—and so on.  What would we have done without Fannie?  I recall a cooking magazine I used to get where, on the last page in the bottom corner, was printed, “In last month’s recipe for (whatever), 2 teaspoons should have been 2 tablespoons.”  That might not sound like much to noncooks, but one is three times more than the other!  If it were salt, you had better believe it would make a difference.

 God has standards too.  What else is that list of commandments we so often have our children memorize but the standard of moral behavior God expects of His people? If there is no standard, why did God say three times in Exodus that Moses needed to follow the pattern he had been shown (Ex 25:40; 26:30; 27:8) for building the tabernacle?  And why, oh why, does Paul talk about teaching the same things in every church? 

  That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.1Cor4:17

  Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.1Cor7:17 

 God has a standard, a pattern, whether in the church or in our lives, and He expects us to live by it and teach exactly the same standard everywhere to everyone. 

 When I was a child, in times when most people cared to know what God did and did not want, a brother held a debate with a famous denominational preacher.  The brother talked about living according to the law of Christ.  The opposing preacher could hardly wait his turn and was on his feet objecting.  “We live under a system of grace. There is no such thing as the law of Christ!”  Our brother calmly turned to Gal 6:2 and read aloud, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” 

 Just as that gentleman did not want there to be any sort of work we needed to do (especially one in particular), many today do not want to face any accountability to a church and its elders, or any responsibility to their brothers and sisters.  Worse than that, they expect God to allow them to worship and serve Him the way they want to rather than the way He wants them to.  Yet, again and again, God has shown us that there is a standard; there is a law we must follow, and making changes to suit ourselves instead of Him, will ruin the results for us in a far worse way than mis-measuring the ingredients in a recipe.

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son  2John1:9

Dene Ward

I started jogging and working out when I was 29.  By the time I was 30 I jogged 30 miles a week.  Oh, to have all that energy again!  I still work out, but several surgeries, medication side effects, psoriatic arthritis, and bad vision make it impossible to do what I used to—not to mention age, which will tell on even the healthiest of us.

Some days, usually Mondays when I have had a couple days off the elliptical machine, I do well, finishing my chosen program two or three minutes ahead of schedule.  Other days I just plod on through until the programmed timer goes off and I notice that I was a quarter mile short of my programmed distance.  But I got it done.  I sweated and I panted and my muscles burned for the allotted amount of time.  Mission accomplished.  Maybe I will live an extra day because of it.

Some Sundays I have no trouble at all keeping my mind on the worship. I am full of spiritual pep and vitality.  I sing with gusto and listen attentively to the classes, prayers and sermons, even making connections I never had before, priming myself for more study when I get home.  Other Sundays it’s all I can do to just be there.  My mind is as lethargic as my body.  I hear, but I don’t really comprehend.  When I leave I wonder if it did me any good at all.  Surely God is upset with my poor showing that day.

Is He?  If the day was difficult, but I made it anyway; if it was a struggle to worship “with the spirit and the understanding;” if the “all” I had to give was very little, was my service to God a failure?  I don’t think so.  We have no trouble understanding the concept of the widow’s mite in a literal way.  She gave all she had that day, and Jesus praised her for it.  Some days the spiritual mite is smaller than others.  If I give it all, why isn’t that what God expects of me?  Won’t God be pleased that I still tried as hard as I could with far less available than usual?  If God goes by effort, I worked harder that day than on any day when it was easy, didn’t I?

And if this sort of thing worries you, if you find yourself thinking you have failed because you weren’t at your spiritual peak, then you have certainly shown the heart of flesh that God told His people He wanted from them.  You didn’t feel like it, but you still obeyed God’s instructions in your service.  And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, Ezek 11:19-2.  Obedience in spite of it all—that’s the heart of flesh.  A hard heart can shout amen and sing the rafters off the roof in the middle of blatant disobedience.  God made it clear which He prefers.

By the end of an exercise week I am really dragging.  My legs feel like lead and my lungs seem starved of oxygen.  But I still go at it and get it done.  It still does my body the good I intended.  If you are dragging at the end of some spiritual interval, a time that might have started out with all the vitality you could have wanted but gradually wore down, just keep on plugging.  The energy will return and you will be back where you want to be.  It does not mean that you are not where God wants you to be.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint, Isa 40:28-31.

Dene Ward

We are well over a thousand now—and counting.  I have been writing up these little things so long I can’t watch something happen without thinking the phrase above.  In fact, more than once Keith and I have looked at one another after some oddball event and said it in unison: “There oughtta be a devo in that.”

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard.  Consider her ways and be wise,” Solomon wrote.  “Look at the birds,” Jesus said, and, “Consider the lilies.”  Both of them taught valuable lessons from the things around them.  The parables were nothing more than every day occurrences with analogous meanings.  Parables were not uncommon in the Old Testament either, and many of the prophets taught lessons with the visual aids of their own lives or actions.  Hosea and Ezekiel come instantly to mind.

Even the writers of the New Testament used athletic contests, farming truisms, and anatomical allegories to teach us what we need to know about our relationship with God, with one another, and in our homes and communities.  Telling stories is a time-honored and perfectly scriptural way of teaching God’s word.

In fact, maybe if we started looking at the world that way, at the things that happen in our daily lives as if they had some meaning beyond the mundane, some deeper spiritual use, it might just be that our lives would change for the better.  It might be easier to see where we need to grow, maybe a place we need to make a one-eighty before we get much further down the road.  There is something about watching a dumb animal and thinking, “I didn’t even have that much sense,” that will straighten out your attitude.

If I have done nothing else for you in all these years, maybe I have accomplished this.  Maybe you have learned to look at the things around you and say, “There IS a devo in that—I need to make a change.”

But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? Job 12:7-9.

Dene Ward

But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish” Jonah 1:4-6.

From what I’ve heard all my life, you’d think that the “big fish” in Jonah is the only thing worth talking about.  Our Prophets class found far more and this is just a quick overview class, nothing as detailed as verse by verse.

The passage above may not be the first lesson we garnered from Jonah, but it is one we need more than we realize.  Here is Jonah, the only Jew, the only member of God’s covenant people, on this boat as a mighty storm threatens to engulf it and take them all to a watery grave, and he is the only one not praying.  In fact, a heathen captain has to take him to task to get him started.

Have you ever been embarrassed by the zeal of a “heathen” friend or neighbor when that zeal should have come from you first?  Have you ever fallen to pieces while one of them calmly said, “Let’s pray about this,” and did?  Have you ever related a wonderful occurrence in your life without once mentioning the goodness of God only to have someone else “give God the glory” with every other word?  Have you ever had your door knocked on by someone looking to convert a soul when you have never even invited a friend to services?  We are Jonah, folks, far too many times.

I would blame it on such a fervent desire to avoid false doctrine that we pushed the pendulum much too far.  I would do that except for this—nowadays I am not even sure we know which “false doctrine” we are trying to avoid.  It has simply become tradition.  We don’t do anything to call attention to ourselves, nor to God for that matter.  We want to be quiet and comfortable, certainly not “out there” with our religion, and so our God is not praised nor thanked nor acknowledged when He should be.  “We don’t do that,” I’ve heard it said.  And I, for one, would like to know why.

None of those things is foreign to the scriptures.  You find all of them abounding in the epistles and saturating the Psalms.  God is everywhere.  What He does is always mentioned.  He is the reason for praise, for fear, for awe, and He expects us to acknowledge it. 

Why didn’t Jonah do so?  Because he was trying to get away from God.  He was trying to avoid his mission.  He had God placed in a box in a town in a covenant land and thought if he got far enough away, God would forget about him. 

Is that why we do it?  Are we trying to avoid God everywhere except the church building?  Is it far more comfortable to hide ourselves with silence than to proclaim our faith?   

When the world can shame my faith, can I even keep calling it that?

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths, Prov 3:5-6.

Dene Ward

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire, Jude 1:5-7.

If ever we need a rerun of a lesson in this age it’s this one:  Jesus absolutely, definitely, most certainly will punish.  Too many times we who “once fully knew it” fall into the false security of the world, calling Jesus the gentle, the loving, the merciful, which is all true, but it is meant to imply that he would never punish anyone for a sin.  Maybe God would, especially that mean, angry Old Testament God, but certainly not Jesus.  The people Jude wrote to must have forgotten as well.  Jesus, the same one who saved the people out of Egypt, turned right around and destroyed a whole lot of them not long afterward. 

Then Jude gives us three things to watch out for specifically.  First, in his allusion to the Israelites, he mentions unbelief.  How could they not believe in a God who spoke to them, who caused Sinai to shake, who had previously demonstrated His power in the plagues and at the Red Sea?  The Hebrew writer tells us, And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief, Heb 3:18-19.  He equates disobedience with unbelief, and it only makes sense.  If I really believe what God says, that He will do what he says He will do if I disobey Him, then I will not disobey.  Disobedience means I think I can get away with it, so it means I do not believe God, and Jesus will punish.

Then Jude mentions the angels “who left their proper dwelling.”  This cannot be talking about being cast out of Heaven because it says “they left,” which seems voluntary.  The understanding I get from scholars is they went beyond the bounds God set for them.  If a man walks into work and begins ordering people around like he was the boss, firing, hiring, and changing orders, he has “left his proper dwelling.”  Who are you supposed to submit to in your life?  Your husband?  Your elders?  Your boss?  Your government?  How about your fellow Christians (Eph 5:21)?  Have you left your proper place in life?  Jesus will punish.

And then there is the issue of the day—sexual immorality and unnatural desire as exemplified by the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Jesus will punish.

Remember, Jude tells them.  You used to know this.  What happened?  Maybe the same thing that has happened to us—listening to the culture we live in turn Jesus into a weak, instead of meek, pushover.  You can make him angry (Mark 3:5).  He will punish.  Don’t give him a reason to.

…when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, 2Thess 1:7-8.

Dene Ward

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

 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

 The above quote, which is not by Edmund Burke by the way, is one of those that sits with you for a long time.  Something inside tells you it is Biblical even if you cannot find it in your Bible.  Finally, as I prepared for a women’s class last week, I found the concept, if not the actual quote.  It is indeed Biblical.

 They wrong the barren, childless woman, and do no good to the widow Job 24:21

And now you are shaking your head trying to figure it out, right?  Perhaps I should have told you the context, not of the verse, but of finding it.

 I have a lesson on the Widows in the Bible.  We begin with a discussion of the three different Hebrew words used in the Old Testament for widows, and all the baggage they carry that our English word for widow does not.  You and I say “widow” and all we mean is the woman whose husband has died.  The most common Hebrew word meant not just the fact that he had died, but that she was now poor and helpless.  First, there were no insurance policies, no widows’ pensions, no social security, no IRAs—nothing, and women did not hold paying jobs.  Next, all of the words used for widow come from a Hebrew root that means “mute.”  In that culture a woman alone had no one to speak for her—she had no voice.  These women were regularly taken advantage of by men who knew they were easy prey.  We spent time reading aloud verses in the Bible that show how God views those kinds of people.  We read for about 15 solid minutes, and that was less than half of the verses available.  The effect was impressive.  It also became apparent that “orphans and widows” had become a metaphor for anyone helpless and destitute.

 Now back to that verse in Job.  In chapter 24 Job is lamenting that it seems that the evil are seldom punished in this life.  In his long list of evil people—beginning in chapter 23—he finally lists those who wrong the barren women and “do no good to the widow.”  A man who does nothing to help the widow—or the poor and helpless—is just as bad as the man who abuses them.  Doing nothing wrong does not equal doing good.  Can I say that again?  Doing nothing wrong does not equal doing good.

 We were not taught that from the pulpits of my childhood.  It was all about how to worship in the building on Sunday morning and all the things we did NOT do wrong.  I thank God all the time for giving me parents who taught me that pew-sitters were not Christians.  Christians were those who served others all week long.  It is all over the pages of the New Testament but people still miss it.  If you have been, please change things now.  You do not want to be lumped in with the rest of those people Job describes in those chapters.  You would be appalled to see the company you are keeping!

The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.Titus3:8

Dene Ward