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

 Have you heard of the Spanish Armada?  The "Invincible" Armada it is sometimes called.  If you know much about history, you know that calling it that name doomed it to an ignominious defeat sooner or later.

 Spain and England had been allies for a good while.  It seemed a good deal for England who had no empire at the time while Spain was spread all over, including large holdings in the New World.  They were both leery of France and that's what drew them together in the first place.  They made several alliances through marriages, and then the religious problem rose up to bite them both.  Soon we see a Catholic Queen Mary and a Protestant Queen Elizabeth and that was the beginning of the end for the alliance.  King Philip of Spain put together a massive fleet of huge ships, 130 in number, manned by 30,000 sailors.  They headed for England to put things in order, that is, to reestablish Catholicism as the national religion in that country.

 The underdog surprised them in the English Channel where they docked at Calais.  It wasn't time for the battle to begin in their minds, but surprise can often be an excellent weapon.  The Spanish ships may have been large, but the English ships were more maneuverable.  They also used long range gunnery rather than close quarters fighting which kept the Spaniards off the English ships and many swimming in the sea.  English "fire ships"—old or otherwise repurposed ships that were loaded with combustibles, ignited, and set to drift into the Spanish fleet--scattered them and created confusion.  Then, as the Spanish tried to flee up and around the British Isles, storms and strong winds destroyed 24 of them.  Because of the turmoil, the Spanish soon began to run out of food, drinking water, and other supplies.  Before long, the "Invincible" Armada was defeated.

 For anyone who is familiar with their Bibles, this is not an unusual story.  We have heard it again and again as the children of Israel watched the Red Sea inundate Pharaoh and his army, in Joshua taking Jericho without a fight, in Jonathan's near single handed defeat of the Philistines, David's defeat of Goliath, and the angel of Jehovah destroying 185,000 Assyrians in one night.  We have seen God send a storm to defeat the chariots of King Jabin and send the army captain Sisera running to a woman who feared God.  We have seen Elijah praying for God to open the eyes of his servant so he could thousands and thousands of horses and fiery chariots ready to defend them against the enemy.  When God leads the army and they trust in Him, they are indeed invincible, and no one can beat them. 

 Christ has already won the battle for us.  He fought Satan by overcoming sin, by dying as a perfect sacrifice, and then by rising from the dead and ascending to his throne.  Storms may come but he will still them.  With his armor and the Word we can fight against anything Satan throws our way.  We will never run short of supplies because he gives us everything we can possibly need to win, in abundance.  And we have an innumerable army standing by to help us.  All we have to do is believe in him and his victory as we fight our way through life.  We are indeed invincible when he is on our side.

But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?  The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  1Cor15: 54-57

Dene Ward

I just made a chocolate mousse cake.  This is one of THOSE recipes—you know, one of those trendy kinds you find in upscale restaurants, the kind that come with a chocolate or raspberry swirl on the white china plate, a piped dollop of whipped cream on the side and maybe even a shard of caramel “glass” sticking up out of it.  This recipe is bound to get me oohs and aahs at the table from excited guests who suddenly think I must be a gourmet cook.  And that’s when I start feeling guilty.  Why?  Because this conglomeration of bittersweet chocolate, butter, eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla took me exactly 15 minutes to put together and throw in the oven.  The only thing hard about it is waiting 8 hours for it to chill so it won’t fall completely apart when you try to cut it.

I don’t deserve any oohs and aahs and it certainly wasn’t hard to do.  I will grant you that it tastes amazing—but look at that ingredient list above and tell me how it could not.  I have absolutely nothing to do with how it tastes unless I buy cheap ingredients—like Hershey bars and margarine.  Taking a bow for producing this cake is like claiming a cordon bleu culinary education when all you’ve had is watching your mother and grandmother and reading a few cookbooks.

Have you ever had a friend ask you how you do it?  How you go through some of the trials you have been through, yet live a happy and contented life, in fact, a life of joy and faith? What do you instantly say?  Do you claim huge inner strength and unimpeachable character?  Do you talk about your spiritual integrity?  Of course not.  You tell them that you had nothing to do with it except having the sense, or maybe the desperation, to take your Heavenly Father’s offer and let Him handle things.

And it was just that simple, wasn’t it?  No, not really.  A lot of time passed before it really “took,” before you really could face your demons with assurance instead of doubt, before you could race toward that “way of escape” instead of stumbling through it, before you could sit back and let God be in control and accept His will instead of trying to figure things out so you could understand them.  And sometimes you still don't quite manage.

It takes a long time to say those words Abraham said on that mountaintop 4000 years ago—God is able; God will provide.  But once you have reached that point, it’s just that simple.  Every time life hands you the inexplicable, you don’t try to understand, you just count on God to handle it.  How can anyone take the credit for that?

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name, 1Chr 29:12-13

Dene Ward

A couple of years ago, Keith received a veteran’s pass to a Tampa Bay Rays game in St Petersburg.  (By the way, there may be a Green Bay, but there is no such town as Tampa Bay.  Tampa Bay signifies an area on the central west coast of Florida, usually including Tampa, St Petersburg, Clearwater and their suburbs.) 

But the game was at the end of the season after the Rays’ play-off hopes were gone.  At first you would think it wouldn’t be much of a game, but you would be wrong.  Young players who had been called up from farm teams for the expanded September rosters were playing for a place on the major league team next season.  Older players were playing to show their worth, either for a contract renewal or for another team to show some interest in a trade.  Established players were playing for personal records—a better ERA, consecutive years with a certain number of home runs and RBIs.  I knew it would still be a game worth watching.  No one would be “phoning it in.”

But imagine there was nothing left to play for.  Imagine they were just playing out the season because it was a contract requirement.  How many home runs would you expect?  How many wins?  And how many fans would bother to show up at all?

Some of us play at the game of life like that.  We look at our meager accomplishments, at the few years we have left, and decide there is nothing worth living for, nothing worth working for, nothing to look forward to but day after day of waking up to uselessness until one morning you don’t wake up at all.  And as far as heaven goes?  We seem to hope we have enough warning before death to shoot off a last prayer for forgiveness because surely that’s the only “hope” we have.

Too many of us have bought into the world’s idea of hope—something insecure, uncertain, and probably not going to happen at all. Go out tomorrow and plant a seed.  Now read 1 Cor 9:10:  the plowman plows in hope.  What do you think is going to happen to that seed you planted?  You “hope” it will grow.  If a farmer hoped the way most of us hope, he would never plant in the first place.  “Hope” in the Bible means something is going to happen, and you are simply waiting for it, waiting like someone standing at an established bus stop at the established time, not someone who just guessed what route the bus takes and which corner it might stop at and when, and “hoping” you guessed correctly.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations who builder and designer is God…these all died not having received the promises but having seen and greeted them from afar, Heb 11:8,10,13.  Could wealthy Abraham have given up a comfortable home to live in tents the last half of his life, could he have stood on that mountain ready to sacrifice his son if he had just crossed his fingers and “hoped” he had a future beyond this life?  No, he had Biblical hope.  He knew he had a reward waiting.

And so do you—something even better than moving up from Double A, or even Triple A, to a permanent place on the roster of a major league team, and something a whole lot more certain—even if your batting average isn’t quite as high as the next guy’s, even if all they can count on you for is a sac-fly every so often instead of a grand slam.  You still have something to play for, a place “prepared from the foundation of the world,” one that will be there no matter who wins the pennant.

And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, Heb 6:11-12.

Dene Ward

I am different from most women, I guess.  I do not enjoy those cutesy-pie sayings that sound like they came straight out of a sugar canister.  For one thing, I think they can engender the opposite feeling they are intending to--guilt, mainly.  How many times have you heard that even if you don’t feel good, you should go to the assembly because it will make you feel better when you leave?  Yes, on occasion, it does just that, mainly because I was too busy having a pity party and the services put my mind on things besides me. 

But what about the person who is genuinely ill, or who is so old and feeble that he needs to rest after putting one sock on?  My own Daddy reached that point before he passed on.  Do I really think that going to church and spreading germs to the elderly and small children is going to make me feel better, and even if it did, wasn’t that awfully selfish of me?  Or if pushing myself too hard could cause me to collapse during the services, what great good did that accomplish for anyone else?  Yet sometimes these people do push themselves—they are in fact the ones most likely to push themselves--so they come and infect everyone else, because they have been made to feel guilty for not doing so by things I have come to call duck-billed platitudes.

I see another problem with some of these things—they smack a little of the health and wealth gospel.  “Sacrifice for the Lord isn’t sacrifice if you really love the Lord.”  Nonsense.  Try that one on a first century Christian who is about to have his throat chomped on and his belly ripped open by the lions in the Coliseum.  Sacrifice feels like sacrifice and God never promised anything else.  What He did promise was that sacrifice is worth it.  That doesn’t mean anything if you have annulled the pain of the sacrifice.

The things we need to hear are the true things.  Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution...For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps, 2Tim 3:12; 1Pet 2:20-21.  What we need is to be told how to endure what will surely come if we live like Christ did, not how to avoid it or worse yet, how to make it “fun.”

Sometimes life is just plain hard.  That was the punishment we got when we were thrown out of Eden.  Christians are not immune to that penalty, we are just forgiven for it.

Be strong, God is always telling us in His Word.  Be courageous.  It isn’t courage to turn everything into one giant tea party.  That’s denial, and I see too many Christians living in that state.  And this is what it leads to when you finally realize you cannot platitude your way out of it—“Why did this happen to me?”  This is why:  We live in an imperfect world, made that way by sin, which, no matter how much we like to believe otherwise, we have participated in.  And it won’t get any better.  Tragedies are a part of life.  BUT---

We live in hope of a better world, a better place that will be perfect and will never end.  That is what you need to remember, not a bunch of saccharine sayings on poster after poster after poster.  I have something much better, and so do you if you will take hold of it.  It does not tell us that everything will be wonderful in this life, that God will spare us from anything painful.  Instead it promises pain, but it also says this:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:35-39.

Dene Ward

Things change so rapidly these days it seems impossible to keep up.  I had carefully collected a library of classical music LPs for my students to listen to.  By the time my studio was large enough, with students advanced enough to get much use out of them, I was collecting cassettes.  Before long I had to switch to CDs.  At least I don’t have a collection of 8 tracks collecting dust as well.  Somehow I missed that phase.

The same thing is happening in the church, and I don’t mean changing doctrine to suit the situation, I mean changing the means by which we teach that unchangeable Word, and the ways we edify one another while still clinging to the constraints of obedient faith.

Gone are the charts drawn on white bed sheets and the overhead projectors flashing carefully covered up lists, revealed one line at a time when the speaker moves the sheet of paper he laid on top.  Now we use power point and remotes.  Even my three year old grandson Silas knows to pick up something rectangular and point it at his make-believe screen when he pretends to preach like Daddy.

We must beg people to use the carefully selected library of books we have in the back hall—they are happier with the internet and Bible study programs, not to mention Kindle and Nook.  Even the riffling of Bibles during the sermon has decreased—many now have all 66 books on something the size of a wallet.  You are more likely to hear beeps or mechanized “plops” than the quiet shuffling of pages.

Now the preacher doesn’t just have to raise his voice when an infant begins to cry; he has to raise it when someone forgets to turn off his cell phone.  Now the song leader must wrestle with an audience who not only wants to sing at their own pace regardless of his direction, but with the ones who cannot for the life of them understand or “feel” syncopation.  Fanny Crosby would never have set words to a syncopated tune.

But some things will always be the same.

Children whose parents tell them to “Listen!” will still come up with ways to keep their wandering minds on the sermons, counting how many times the preacher says certain words or writing down every passage he uses, and in that play will begin to memorize scriptures that stay with them for a lifetime.

Someone will still sniffle a bit during the Lord’s Supper, and someone else will momentarily hold up the collection while he tries to persuade his two year old to put the coins in the plate, and the children will learn what is done and why.

A deacon will stand in back and count while another one makes last minute notes for the closing announcements, those precious words that help us “weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice.”

Serious men, in khakis and open neck shirts instead of suits and ties, will still listen carefully to the preacher while their wives juggle their own listening with trying to decide if a requested potty trip is really necessary or just a ploy to get out of this boring seat for a few minutes.

People will still ask for prayers when life deals them a harsh blow, and brothers and sisters will gather round with hugs and tears, and offers of help.

Excited new converts will still sit closer to the front than old ones, listening with rapt attention, diligently taking notes to study at home, and thinking up questions that will keep the elders busy for weeks.

Young parents will be suddenly motivated to attend regularly for the first time in their lives by the responsibility of the small souls God has placed in their hands.

Widows will contentedly sit, patiently waiting for the time when they can meet their mates “at the gate,” as my mother asked my daddy to do just moments before his passing.

Older couples will do as I do, looking around at all the new but still seeing the old in spite of the new, comforting themselves that God’s way still works, even in this perplexing age of technology and unparalleled advancement.

As long as there are people to hear it and hearts to believe it, planting the seed will make Christians spring up out of any plot of good soil. It has worked for nearly two thousand years now and we, in spite of the wow-factor of our inventions, will never outdo the results God can get with one Book.  If you ever forget that, then look around some Sunday morning, not for the differences, but for the things that never change, and that never will as long as faith exists on the earth. 

"O my God," I say, "take me not away in the midst of my days-- you whose years endure throughout all generations!" Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you. Psalms 102:24-28

Dene Ward

On June 4, 1876, the Jarrett and Palmer Special Fast Transcontinental Train crossed the country from New York City to San Francisco in 83 hours and 39 minutes.  Actually it involved several engines and several crews, but the point was to make it as quickly as possible as publicity for a theatrical production the acting company was to perform less than a week after the previous one on the East Coast.  The play was Henry V, not as if that really matters after all these years.  The only thing that matters this far from the event is the time and the speed.  They traveled 3000 miles at an average speed of 40 miles per hour.  You and I would probably go nuts, but for those people it was almost a miracle.

 How were they used to traveling?  A wagon train usually left from Independence, Missouri, so add the time to get that far to the usual 4 to 5 ½ months it took to reach the West Coast.  By stagecoach it took four weeks to traverse the country and at a far steeper price.  By boat you had two choices.  If you stopped at the Isthmus of Panama and traveled across it by train, picking up another boat on the other side, it took 45 days to go from New York City to San Francisco—there was no Panama Canal at that time.  If you sailed on the same boat all the way around the tip of South America it took 200 days.  So you see what an important thing it was when this transcontinental train arrived so quickly.  And there, perhaps, we can see the seeds of our culture's penchant for speed, which filters all the way down to our children at vacation time—or any time they get in the car for that matter.  "Are we there yet?"

 God's people have always had the same question.  “How long?” David asks, not once, but four times in the first two verses of Psalm 13.  Habakkuk’s psalm begins, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?”Hab 1:2. The martyrs pictured around the throne of God cry out, “O Sovereign Lord...how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Rev. 6:9,10.  “How long” is indeed a common complaint in the scriptures—I found it listed 52 times!

 And the point is this, these people are undergoing not just trials, but long, drawn out trials.  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” we often say, and that means it crawls when you aren’t.

 “It is not under the sharpest, but the longest trials that we are most in danger of fainting,” Andrew Fuller says in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David.  It is so true.  Just last week I nearly lost it over something small and inconsequential. 

Being married to a deaf man can be extremely frustrating.  Three times in one hour Keith and I had a misunderstanding based totally on the fact that he could not hear what I was saying.  If he could have heard just three words, none of it would have even mattered, but because he couldn’t, it made the situation more and more complex, and more and more exasperating as it went on.  And the reason I couldn’t handle it that morning?  Not because it was three times in one hour, but because we have been dealing with it for  over fifty years now.

 But who am I to complain?  The woman in Luke 8 had her issue of blood for 12 years.  The woman who had the spirit of infirmity in Luke 13 had been suffering for 18 years.  The man who lay at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) had done so for 38 years.  The blind beggar in John 9 had been that way from birth.  Sarah had waited for a child for decades.  The people of God waited for a Messiah for thousands of years!  These people had far more reason than I to ask God, “How long?”

All of us are prone to ask, “Are we there yet?”  and sometimes the answer does not come in this lifetime.  That may be the most difficult thing to deal with.  Some are born into suffering and never get out of it.  Some, due to random accident or maybe even their own bad choices, suffer for the remaining years of their lives and never see a reason.  God has His plans and we are not always privy to them. 

 But one day we will receive the answer we want to hear: “How long? Now! We are there!”  The waiting will be over, no more suffering of any sort, even the petty little annoyances that no one else can understand, that drive you up a wall on a bad day, that fill you with guilt when your mind clears and you finally recognize just how blessed you truly are. 

 Some day we will arrive, and we won’t be going on any more long difficult journeys ever again.

It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Deuteronomy 31:8.

Dene Ward

My two grandsons love to go to the park.  They love to swing and slide.  I’m not sure they have discovered the joys of my own childhood favorite—the seesaw.  Back then I was always looking for someone else to sit on the other end, and seldom found the perfect playmate.  She was always either too heavy or too light to balance it out, and one of us always hit the ground with a bang.  As for the boys, I usually put both of them on one side while I sit on the other, carefully balancing things with my own legs so they don't bounce off the top and I don't hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
 Over the years I have come to see that God requires His own kind of balance.  Nearly every major fault of His people has come with that old pendulum swing—from one extreme to the other.  From undisciplined emotionalism to empty ritualism, from faith only to works salvation—we struggle all the time to get the balance just right.  “Obedience from the heart,” Paul calls it in Rom 6:17.  And it has been so for thousands of years.
 In our Psalms class, we came upon another passage recently that emphasized yet again the problem of balance.  Over and over and over you read things like this:
 …you have tested me and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress, 17:4
I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from God, 18:21.
 Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering, 26:1.
 It always bothered me a little when I saw passages like this, especially the ones written by David, as these three are.  Isn’t he being a little arrogant?  Especially him?
 But, as with all the Bible, you have to put things together to find the balance point.  Psalm 130, one of the Psalms of Ascents, certainly shows the opposite feeling:  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? v 3.  After that, another quickly came to mind:  Enter not for judgment with your servant; for in your sight no man living is righteous, 143:2.
 The psalmists all seemed to understand the balance.  No one deserves salvation, but yes, we can be righteous in God’s eyes when we do our best to serve Him, when obedience is offered willingly, when adoration, reverence, and gratitude are the motivations behind every thought and action, when we don’t just do some right things, we become righteous.  The author of Psalms 130 goes on to say, “But there is forgiveness with you…” and “with Jehovah there is lovingkindness and…plenteous redemption.”   
 These men saw that salvation was a matter of a relationship with God, not ritualistic obedience nor self-serving obsequiousness, both of which are more about “me” than the God I claim to worship.  They proclaimed the balance that would fall before the Lord in reverence and service and yet stand before a Father singing praise and thanksgiving. 
 And I love that they did not feel required to offer qualifications to what they said.  “I am righteous,” they said, not bothering to add, “but I know I have sinned in the past, and may sin in the future.”  They never let the false beliefs of others compel them to soften a strong statement of faith in their Lord to do what He says He will—be merciful.  Why are we always dampening the assurance of our hope by pandering to the false teaching of others?  Let’s strive for perfect balance with this long ago anonymous brother:  With Jehovah there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem us!
 
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile, Ps 32:1-2.
These things have I written…that you may know you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13
 
Dene Ward

 We seldom watch the NBA anymore.  What used to be a marvel of teamwork has become grandstanding and superstar showcases not worth my time.  When players were unselfish and all about the team, they worked like the proverbial well-oiled machine.  They always knew where every teammate was and exactly what he would do because it wasn’t about one person trying to steal the show and get more accolades than anyone else, and whining when he didn’t get the ball often enough to suit him.  It was a marvel to watch.

 So certainly I remember what happened on May 26, 1987.  Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals and the Boston Celtics found themselves one point behind and about to lose the game, allowing Detroit to take a 3-2 lead in the series.  Isiah Thomas inbounded for Detroit.  But Larry Bird—Hall of Famer, winner of three consecutive MVPs who led his team to three NBA championships—stole the pass, passed it to Dennis Johnson just as he seemingly read Bird's mind, running under the basket and making the layup with one second to go in the game.  Boston won.

 As the four of us sat there watching replay after replay of what became one of Bird's most famous plays, snagging victory out of the jaws of defeat, we all thought, "Of course he did.  He's Larry Bird after all."  He could shoot, he could rebound, he could pass/assist, he could block, he always knew where everyone was on the court, and yes, he could steal, so why was anyone worried at all?

 If we can think that way about a mere mortal, no matter how skilled he is in something as trivial as basketball, why in the world would we ever doubt God, the Creator of the universe, who holds the world in His hands, directs the courses of the stars, and controls even all the nations in the world, making it all run the way He desires?  Abraham knew exactly how to trust God.  "The boy and I will return to you," he told his servants.  "God will provide," he told Isaac.  In his mind, he had already arrived at the conclusion that God could raise his son from the dead.  Of course He could.  That is how Abraham faced the greatest test of his life.  He didn't doubt God for a moment (Gen 22:5,8; Heb 11:19).  Job, even in the midst of all his troubles, also seemed to understand the power and sovereignty of God. I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted Job 42:2.

 So where is our faith when times are hard, when life is unfair, and we have no idea why?  Like those servants of old, we should be thinking, God can do anything.  Of course He can.  It doesn't matter whether I understand what I am going through or not.  What matters is that I continue to trust Him, to believe that He knows best, and to stay faithful.  If we truly believe and trust God, it will become second nature to us.  And who knows but that somewhere someone is watching us live this way, always faithful no matter the circumstances, so that after we are gone, when someone says in wonder, "He never gave up on his Lord; he stayed true," the one who knew us will answer, "Of course he did."

Look, I am Jehovah, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me? Jer32:27

Dene Ward

Keith noticed it first, a dove that sat quiet and almost still on the ground beneath one of the hanging bird feeders.  While other doves and a bevy of cardinals hopped around him pecking at the ground, then flying up and down from the feeder, he barely moved a foot in two hours, and always one small, hesitant hop at a time.  By late evening most of the other birds were gone, finished with their free supper and off to find a good roosting place for the night, but he still sat there.

 By then I was a little worried.  I grabbed the binoculars for a closer look.  He had puffed himself up twice his size as birds will do in the winter to keep warm.  But it was still early September and the humid evening air hovered in the upper 80s.  Suddenly his head popped up, stretching out his neck just a bit, and then immediately back into the folds of feathers around his shoulders.  As I continued to watch I noticed it every five minutes or so.  It almost looked like he had hiccups, but somehow I did not think that was the problem.  Something worse was happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 If God promised to watch for every fallen bird, He will watch for me.  Even if someday I breathe my last breath in an otherwise empty room, I can know that Someone cares enough to be nearby, watching and waiting to take me home.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints, Ps 116:15.

And I will gather you to your fathers…2 Chron 34:28.

Dene Ward