Faith - Dene's Blog

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

6/17/2015 1 Comments

Sometime back a young lady came up to a friend of mine and said, “I want to be a sweet little old lady when I get older. How do I do that?”

   I can imagine myself asking the same question when I was young. I guess I thought there was a magic age, a time when suddenly I would understand everything and feel wise. It hasn’t happened yet, and youth left me a long time ago.

   My wise friend looked at this young woman and said, “The way to become a sweet little old lady is to be a sweet young lady.”

   She is so right. I can guarantee you that every grumpy old man you know was once a grumpy young one, and every bitter old lady you know was a bitter young one. You will not suddenly become wise just because you have aged, and you will not suddenly become good-natured either. It reminds me of something I heard on an audio book recently: there are no happy endings, only happy people.

   And isn’t that what we Christians are supposed to be, happy? Yet it seems I meet more and more unhappy Christians. Maybe we do not dwell enough on the hope we have—or maybe we simply don’t believe it. If I do believe in that hope, it will show in the things that do and do not upset me, in the things that do and do not discourage me. It will show in how I treat people, even those who are not kind or who actively mistreat me. It will show in the way I put others ahead of myself and my own desires, serving as well as I can in whatever situation I am in. Isn’t that what a sweet little old lady does, or a kind and pleasant old man? I have known many in my lifetime. Christians should always become sweet little old ladies and kind and pleasant old men because they believe that here and now is not the end of the matter. They understand that very soon they will see a happy beginning that never ends--and they believe it.

   If you want to be a sweet little old lady when you grow up, start working on it today, whatever your age, or you will never make it in time.

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed, Prov 3:13-18.

Dene Ward

Pot-bound

5/28/2015 1 Comments

In our quest to diligently teach our children, I think we often overlook something. We care for our children, nurturing both body and soul. Our task, though, is to work our way out of the job. If my thirty year old child still cannot dress himself, or needs to be reminded to brush his teeth, I have failed miserably. In the same way, our children cannot make it to Heaven on our spiritual coattails.

            It is often difficult for a parent to realize that his child’s faith should be his own, not an exact replica of his. A child who does nothing but ape his father’s opinions has, like the Jews of Isaiah’s day, a faith which is a commandment of men learned by rote, Isa 29:13, rather than learned by personal study, meditation, and conviction.

            Both of my sons have slightly differing views from mine about some passages of scripture. I’m glad. It means they have taken root on their own and, though there is never any guarantee, I feel much more optimistic about their remaining faithful when I am gone. If you remember the story of the orange tree my mother-in-law gave us, which rooted itself while we were trying to find a place to put it, here is yet another application: children need to have a little freedom in their quest for spirituality, freedom to spread their own roots. Parents who demand exact conformity, treating any difference as a sign of disrespect, are spoon-feeding their children’s spirituality while at the same time stunting their growth. They might as well be carrying them off the ground in a black plastic nursery pot so their roots won’t branch out. Sooner or later they will become pot-bound and die.

            While you expect to shape their values and instill basic concepts of spirituality and faith, God expected that they would ask, “Why?” and that you would give them real and sensible answers. “Because I said so,” does have an appropriate time and place in teaching them authority, but not in teaching the word of God. If you cannot tell them why, then when you are gone why should they continue?

            Encourage them to study and develop on their own. Treat their discoveries as equally interesting as yours. You may think Paul wrote Hebrews and they may not. You may believe the three-person interpretation of the Song of Solomon and they may prefer the two-person. You may look at Romans 7 as any man without Christ, while they believe Paul is talking about himself before his conversion. Isn’t it great? You will most likely have an eternity to discuss these things together and with the authors themselves, while the parents who demanded absolute conformity and automaton feedback, may find themselves looking around, wondering where their children are.



And the people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, did Joshua set up in Gilgal. And he spoke unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then you shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For Jehovah your God dried up the waters of the Jordan from before you, until you were passed over, as Jehovah your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were passed over; that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of Jehovah, that it is mighty; that you may fear Jehovah your God for ever. Josh 4:19-24.

Dene Ward

Turkey Necks

4/8/2015 0 Comments

We have two wild turkeys coming to the feeder these days, a brand new development. We knew they were out there in the woods—you can here the toms gobbling and the hens clucking early in the morning and in the hours of dusk. Then last fall we saw four traipsing across our garden in the middle of the day. A young visitor that day heard Keith and her father talking about “turkey season,” and I heard her whispering, “Run turkeys! Run!” And they did.
   Then in the middle of winter one morning I looked out and there stood a turkey hen under the south feeder pecking at the fallen birdseed. She visited every day for awhile and eventually found her way around the house to the other two feeders. Gradually she became used to us, and now we can go out on one side of the house without her leaving the opposite side at a “turkey trot.” She will even let us move by the window inside, where she can see us clearly, without running away.
   Then one afternoon there she was again, only she looked a little different, didn’t she? Maybe her neck was thicker we said, and then one of us moved in our chairs and she ran down the trellis bed and actually flew over the fence. Turkeys do not like to fly, so she must have been terrified. That’s when we put two and two together and realized we now had two turkeys, one with a thinner neck who has learned that we won’t bother her, and one with a thicker neck who still thinks we are some sort of predator out to get her. Isn’t it odd that it’s the skinnier turkey that is the least frightened?
   That is an apt metaphor for the people of Israel. They were the country with the skinniest neck, yet throughout their history they routed huge armies or saw them turned back by “circumstances.” They watched God’s power work when no other country their size, nor even some larger, could withstand the enemy. But despite that ongoing evidence, only a few learned to depend upon God, only a few saw the chariots of the Lord on the hilltops around them (2 Kings 6:12-18). Only a few of them had faith and courage like this:
   And Asa cried to the LORD his God, “O LORD, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on you, 2 Chron 14:11.
   Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright, Psa 20:7,8.
   Eventually there weren’t enough faithful to save them from destruction. Eventually God had to remove the ones He thought had some potential and send the prophets to ready them for a return, but even then only a small remnant came back. Many of them were still frightened turkeys, and they were well aware of how skinny their necks were.
   Learn the lesson those people didn’t. God has given you evidence every day of your life that He is with you. If you think otherwise, you just haven’t noticed. Trials in your life are not an indication that He is not with you. Paul told the Romans that “tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword,” none of those could separate us from the love of Christ—not that they would never happen!
   Be ready to stand against whatever army Satan throws at you, knowing that the chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; [and] the Lord is among them, Psa 68:17.

Dene Ward

Understanding God?

4/7/2015 0 Comments

I heard something the other day that made me stop and think. Some fellow of some offbeat religion had decided that Jesus was going to come on some given date. One of my brethren immediately said, “Well, I guess we know one day Jesus won’t come.”

Now wait just a minute. I understand that concept comes from the passage that says no one knows the day of the Lord’s return except God, but God can choose any day he wants to choose, even one I choose, if I were of a mind to. Before long, someone is going to come up with the ridiculous notion that if everyone takes turns choosing a day, then we can keep the world from ever ending. No wonder the world makes fun of us when our thinking is as shallow as that.

Sometimes in an effort to explain the unexplainable we overstate our case. We talk about what God would and wouldn’t do, how He would and wouldn’t feel, what He just could not do if He were really a loving God, and I want to cringe just waiting for the lightning to strike. Behold God is great and we know him not, Job 36:26. God is so far beyond our comprehension we truly cannot understand Him. We need to be careful not to be so presumptuous as to declare what He will and will not do, how He does and does not feel. Yes, I can gauge His reactions to my life based upon how He reacted to others, but making unqualified statements about God’s will is pretty arrogant for the created to say about the Creator.

Sometimes we say things like, “I know we’ll understand some day.” Frankly, I don’t know any such thing. God never promised that I will understand everything, or even that I would be able to. Have you not known, have you not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary; there is no searching [no measure] of his understanding, Isa 40:28. It may be that once I live on a plain of spiritual existence, inhabiting eternity along with Him, that many things will become clear on their own, but God does not owe me an explanation for anything. We seem to have forgotten who holds the IOU.

This is what I know. God loves me. He sent his Son to save me. He has given me every spiritual blessing. I can talk to Him any time I choose, not just when I need help. But when I do need help, He will be there. Those things alone should amaze me and give me plenty of motivation to be faithful to Him.
He is the all-powerful Creator. He owes me nothing; I owe Him everything, including my obedience and loyalty in a life that is sometimes sad, sometimes grueling, sometimes problematic—and He is not required to explain why I must put up with those things—but a life that is also joyous because of the peace I have now and the promises He has given me for the future, even though I don’t deserve them. That is all I need to know.

For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite, Isa 57:15.

Dene Ward

Let's Pretend

3/5/2015 0 Comments

Let’s play a game. Consider the elders in your church--if you have none, then the men who do the majority of the work. Pretend the government has carted them off to prison, and just this morning you find out one has been executed. Not only is the populace not upset about it, they are clamoring for the execution of the other man too. It quickly becomes clear that none of you is safe. You keep your doors locked and the curtains drawn. Even a knock causes your stomach to lurch and your heart to pound as you carefully peek through the drawn blinds.
   Your home is large, in the middle of town, just a short walk from the jail. It is not exactly difficult to find. Would you allow the brethren to meet there to pray? Would you have the courage to draw attention to yourself with the long line of cars parked on the street, and the constant coming and going during a time when finding an excuse to arrest and murder people of your persuasion is the latest fad?
   Or how about this scenario--you are an outsider where you live, an out-of-towner who owns her own business and depends upon the good will of the citizens there to keep you afloat financially. Since it is a small, family-run business it would not take much to ruin you. Yet you have come across a faith that makes wonderful sense and you believe it whole-heartedly. Still, the men who have taught you, a couple of well-known preachers of this belief, have been arrested. The whole city thinks of them as troublemakers. Only yours and one other family has actually “signed on.”
   Are you willing to take them into your home? To insist that they take advantage of your hospitality, and even make a place for them when they escape from prison? What about your family if you are thrown into prison for “aiding and abetting?” What about your business when people find out you are backing these scalawags?
   Mary of Jerusalem, the mother of John Mark (Acts 12), and Lydia, a native of Thyatira living in Philippi (Acts 16), did these things—women, mind you, who were not afraid to act and support regardless of what it might have cost them. They did not sit back waiting for men to do the scary stuff—they put their necks on the line, along with the necks of their families, and the good of their livelihoods and homes. They could have lost everything. Yet this is all reported so matter-of-factly that you wonder if they took more than a second to make the decisions they did.
   What about us? The time may come when who we are and who we associate with could cost us reputations, jobs, homes, even our lives. Take a minute to “pretend” with real people’s names, with real thought about what it might cost. Could we do as well as they did? Will we do as well as they did?
   I worry that too many of us find excuses that have to do with “propriety.” “How will we ever reach anyone if people think we approve of actions like that?” we rationalize. At what point will it ever look appropriate to support someone the world labels a troublemaker simply because he teaches the truth?
   We use the word “stewardship” as our alibi. “Why, if we go out of business, we will have less contact with the community and be unable to influence them,” we say to justify ourselves. .At what point will it ever be good stewardship of our wealth to put our financial future on the line in support of the truth and those who preach it?
   So take a moment today and play the game, “Let’s pretend…” Remember the example these faithful women have set, and others like them through the centuries. Make sure that when the time comes, we don’t look for excuses. Instead, we make our pretensions real, regardless the cost.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God, Phil 1:27,28.

Dene Ward

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Shall We?

1/29/2015 0 Comments

The difference between the words “shall” and “will” is primarily a legal distinction in America today. We seldom use “shall” in our everyday speech. However, I have heard that in Middle English it was used to distinguish between intent and promise. If one simply said, “I will” do something, it only meant he intended to do so and would do his best. If he said, “I shall,” it meant that he would do it one way or the other. “Shall” meant, “I definitely will,” “I certainly will,” “I most assuredly will,” with the “will” underlined, all caps, and bolded. Think about that as you read the following passages from the King James Version, that Middle English so many decry, and think what that means about these things.

    I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved from my enemies, Psalm 18:3
    Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart all ye that hope in the Lord, Psalm 31:24.
    But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, he shall receive me, Psalm 49:15.
    For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace, Rom 6:14.
    Above all taking up the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, Eph 6:16.
    But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus, Phil 4:19.
    For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, 1 Thes 4:16.
    And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away, Rev 21:4.
    And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle neither light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever; and he said unto me, these sayings are faithful and true…Rev 22:5,6.

    So the question again is, “Shall we?”
    Yes, we most definitely, certainly, assuredly shall!

Dene Ward

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Stuck in a Rut

12/11/2014 0 Comments

I hear an awful lot these days about people being “stuck in a rut,” especially when it comes to their religious practices. For some reason that is supposed to excuse every departure from the scriptures. Some groups, for instance, have decided that the first century practice of taking the Lord’s Supper every Sunday must be changed to monthly, quarterly, or only on certain holidays. When one does it too often, they say, it becomes merely habit and loses its meaning.
    Others, who claim to understand the importance of following the pattern God set for group worship, still want to change things around on a regular schedule, the incidental things that scripture does not regulate. That’s fine. I am the last person to bind where God has not bound, but consider a few things with me.
    The way we are doing things now in my church family, while still scriptural, is not the way we did them when I was a child. It is not the way my grandparents did them. It is not even the way we did them fifteen years ago. Society and culture have changed and so have the various expedients we use to fulfill God’s requirements. So what is this about ruts?
    When Jesus appeared on the scene in the first century, the Jews had been practicing the same law, including a Sabbath every Saturday, for 1500 years by a much more exacting standard than we have under the new covenant. “Aha!” some will say, “and look what happened. Along came the Pharisees to whom the Law was nothing but a set of rules to keep. It had totally lost its meaning to them as a religion of the heart.”
    Had it? What about Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea? What about Saul of Tarsus who “lived before God in all good conscience,” Acts 23:1? Surely they were not the only Pharisees to whom the Law still meant something. And what about the rest of the people? Did Anna, Simeon, Zacharias and Elisabeth, Mary and Joseph, Salome and Zebedee, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus practice a religion out of habit that had totally lost meaning to them because they had been stuck in a rut for a millennium and a half? How in the world did Jesus manage to find 12 apostles if everyone practicing Judaism was “stuck in a rut?”
    It seems to me that when someone complains that his religion no longer has meaning for him because he is “stuck in a rut,” it says more about him than it does about the religion he practices—or doesn’t practice. While babes in Christ may need special care, mature Christians should be past the need for coddling. It is my responsibility to keep my heart and my attitude right in my service to God and to keep myself out of the rut of rote ritual, even if God tells me to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way for ten thousand years. Exactly who is it that is being worshipped anyway? It certainly isn’t me and my likes and dislikes—at least it shouldn’t be.
    If we need to change the things we can change, by all means, let’s change them. But when the reason becomes “how I feel” instead of what is best for the body of Christ and the mission God gave us and always--always—according to God’s Word, we need to stop and take a better look at ourselves.
    Today I will strive to put my heart into my service to others and to God, even if that service is the same as yesterday’s, or last week’s, or last year’s. That is, and will always be, my responsibility and no one else’s.

And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you this day for your good, Deut 10:12,13.

Dene Ward

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Riding on the Spare

12/9/2014 0 Comments

As I was “walking” on my elliptical machine this morning, I suddenly heard several metallic pings on the floor. I got down on my knees and finally found a nut, bolt, and washer. Looking for their proper place on the black machine was hopeless. I knew these eyes would never find it, so my dogs got a surprise. I walked with them for the first time in months. Not for long, though, because I tripped three times in five minutes, once over a root and twice over vines. After that I gave up—this was too dangerous.
    So all my careful plans had come to nothing. We bought this machine because I could not walk outside safely any longer and expected that to take care of everything from now on. I can even “walk” on it when I am totally blind, right? The problem is I was counting on something manmade, and sure enough, it let me down. Yes, Keith can put it back together, but how long till this happens again? And how long till it breaks completely? I simply cannot rely on it to work right forever.
    Yet we do this all the time with things far more important than taking a walk. We make solid investments, have good life insurance policies, and work for companies with good pension plans. What happens when the economy goes south, when prices double in a few days’ time and suddenly that monthly income we had worked so hard to have coming in after retirement will barely cover two weeks?
    We take good care of ourselves, having annual check-ups, eating right, taking our vitamins, and exercising regularly. What happens when the tests come back positive?
    We can depend upon ourselves for absolutely nothing in this life, but we don’t seem to get that. We treat God like the spare tires in our trunks, dinky little donuts we only use when necessary, and only until we can get our own tires fixed up and rolling again. What we fail to realize is when we rely on ourselves we are traveling everywhere on four dinky donuts that could go flat any time, while God has some big steel-belted radials handy if we would only stop and put them on!
    God is the only thing you can count on. There is nothing wrong with being good stewards of the blessings God has given us, but there is everything wrong with trusting our own stewardship instead of the Giver of those blessings Himself.

My soul, wait in silence for God only; For my expectation is from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation: He is my high tower; I shall not be moved. With God is my salvation and my glory: The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times, you people; Pour out your hearts before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah. Psalm 62:5-8

Dene Ward

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The Hitchhiker

11/7/2014 0 Comments

We live thirty miles from the meetinghouse, about forty minutes with good traffic flow and no construction. Otherwise it can be up to an hour.

    To make the before-services meeting of the men who will be serving that day, we usually leave our house about 7:45 every Sunday morning. One Sunday we passed a hitchhiker at the four-way stop a couple of miles from the house. He was an older gentleman, decently dressed, holding a sign that said “Gainesville.” So we stopped and picked him up. We understood that he was taking a risk too, so as he settled into the backseat we mentioned that we were on the way to church and pointed out our stack of Bibles next to him. This instantly set him more at ease, and he talked with us some.

    He was on his way to work at Sears, a good thirty miles from the corner where we had picked him up, and several miles opposite where we were headed. He didn’t have to be there till noon, but since he did not know how long it would take to get a ride, he had left his house on foot at seven-fifteen and made it to the corner where we found him. His car had broken down and he was only able to buy a part a week as his paycheck came in, so until he fixed it, he was hitching rides.

    “But just take me as far as you can and I’ll thumb another ride and another until I get to the bus stop in front of Wal-Mart. If I make it there by eleven I can get the bus I need in time.” We took him all the way to Wal-Mart.

    Now just imagine this: you find out your car doesn’t run on Saturday. You live way out of town where no one else does. How early would you be willing to get up to hitch a ride to a nine o’clock service? That isn’t the half of it, people. What others things do we miss doing for the Lord because we aren’t willing to make a sacrifice like that, because it’s so easy to say, “I can’t?” This man was nearly 70 years old, yet he spent nearly five hours every morning getting to work, working a whole shift, and then more hours getting home after work—in the dark. Have you ever gone to that much trouble for the Lord?

    The next Sunday the man was once again at the four-way stop. We picked him up and dropped him off at Wal-Mart once again, after inviting him to sit with us at church till eleven, with an offer to take him straight to Sears afterwards. He politely declined, and also declined to tell us exactly where he lived when we offered to pick him up and take him to work every day. But he did tell us that his wife had died several years before and he had lost all his savings paying for her medical care. “I have to have this job,” he said. “I am only six payments from paying off my mortgage, but without a paycheck I will lose my home.”

    Ah! There was the real motivation. He didn’t want to lose his home, an old double wide on a rural lot. He got up at 6:30 every day for a job that didn’t start till noon, so he could be sure of getting there. And he did it so he wouldn’t lose a humble, barely comfortable home.

    We have a home waiting for us too, far better than that man had, a home that is eternal, “that fades not away.” He didn’t want to lose his home. Don’t we care whether we lose ours?

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God, Heb 11:8-10.

Dene Ward

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September 28, 1940--Going Home

9/26/2014 2 Comments

The first time he said it I was confused. The second time I was a little miffed.

            “We’re going home,” Keith told someone of our upcoming visit to his parents’ house in Arkansas.

            Home? Home was where I was, where we lived together, not someplace 1100 miles away.

            I suppose I didn’t understand because I didn’t have that sense of home. We moved a few times when I was a child, and then my parents moved more after I married. I never use that phrase “back home” of any place but where I live at the moment. But a lot of people do. I hear them talk about it often, going “back home” to reunions and homecomings, visiting the places they grew up and knew from before they could remember.

            But what was it the American author Thomas Wolfe said? “You can’t go home again.” Wolfe died on September 15, 1938. His book of that title was published posthumously on September 28, 1940, and those words have come to mean that you cannot relive childhood memories. Things are constantly changing and you will always be disappointed.

            Abraham and Sarah and the other early patriarchs did not believe that.

            These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. Hebrews 11:13-14.

            That phrase “country of their own” is the Greek word for “Fatherland” or “homeland” or “native country.” Those people believed they were headed home in the same sense that Keith talked about going back to the Ozarks. Some question whether the people of the Old Testament believed in life after death. They not only believed they were going to live in that promised country after death, they believed they had come from there—that it was where they belonged.

            That may be our biggest problem. We do not understand that we belong in Heaven, that God sent us from there and wants us back, that it is the Home we are longing for, the only place that will satisfy us. We are too happy here, too prosperous in this life, too secure on this earth.

            Try asking someone if they want to go to Heaven. “Of course,” they will say. Then ask if they would like to go now and see the difference in their response. It is good that we have attachments here, and a sense of duty to those people. It is not good when we see those attachments as far better than returning to our homeland and our Father and Brother. Paul said, For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, - if this shall bring fruit from my work, then what I shall choose I know not. But I am in a strait between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better: yet to abide in the flesh is more needful for your sake. Philippians 1:21-24.   Paul knew the better choice. Staying here for the Philippians’ sake was a sacrifice to him, a necessary evil.

            Heaven isn’t supposed to be like an all-expenses-paid vacation away from home—it’s supposed to be Home—the only Home that matters.

            How do you view Heaven? The way you see it may just make the difference in how easy or difficult it is for you to get there.

Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight); we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8.

Dene Ward

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