Canning tomatoes is one of the more difficult garden season chores.  You wash each and every tomato.  You scald each and every tomato.  You pound ice blocks till your arms ache in order to shock and cool each and every scalded tomato.  You peel each and every tomato and finally you cut up each and every tomato.  How many?  In the old days about 5 five gallon buckets full, enough to make 40+ quarts.  Then you sterilize jars, pack jars, and process jars.  Only 7 fit in the canner at a time, so you go through that at least 6 times.

            And you will have more failures to seal with canned tomatoes than any other thing you can.  As you pack them in, pushing down to make room, you must be very careful not to let the juice spill over into the threads of the jar.  And just in case you did that heinous crime, you take a damp cloth and wipe each thread of each jar.  Tomato pulp will keep a perfectly good jar, lid, and ring from sealing.

            In order to have that many tomatoes you must be willing to cut up a few that are half-rotten, disposing of the soft, pulpy, stinky parts—and boy howdy, can they stink!—in order to save sometimes just a bite or two of tomato.  Now that there are only two of us, I usually limit myself to 20 + quarts.  I still put one in every pot of spaghetti sauce, one in every pot of chili, and one in every pot of minestrone, as well as a few other recipes, it’s just that I don’t make as many of those things as I did with two boys in the house.  Now I can afford to be a little profligate.  If I pick up a tomato with a large bad spot, I am just as likely to toss the whole thing rather than try to save the bite or two that is good, especially if it is a small tomato to begin with.  Why go to all that work—washing, scalding, shocking, peeling, cutting up, packing—for a mere teaspoon of tomato?

            But isn’t that what God and Jesus did for us?  For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leads unto life, and few are they that find it. Matt 7:14.

            The Son of God, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:6-8.  And he did that for a half—no!--for a more than half rotten tomato of a world.  He did that to save a remnant, a mere teaspoon of souls who would care enough to listen and obey the call. 

           Sometimes, by the end of the day, when my arms are aching, my fingers are nicked and the cuts burning from acidic tomato juice, my back and feet are killing me from standing for hours, and I am drenched with sweat from the steamy kitchen, I am ready to toss even the mostly good tomatoes, the ones with only a tiny bad spot, because it means extra work beyond a quick slice or two.  Aren’t you glad God did not feel that way about us?  It wasn’t just a half rotten world he came to save, it was a bunch of half rotten individuals in that world, of which you and I are just a few.
 
But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Rom 11:4-5

Dene Ward

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” 2Sam 12:13.

            I imagine you recognize the above scripture.  David’s statement immediately follows Nathan’s indictment, “Thou art the man.”  But do you know what immediately follows David’s confession?

            Because God through Nathan declares that David’s punishment will be the death of his child, David immediately begins a week long vigil asking God to spare his son.  “Who knows,” he says, “whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live?”

            How many times have you found yourself sorrowing over a sin in your life, even after a heartfelt repentance, but then felt it presumptuous to even ask God for the smallest thing in your prayers that same day?  How many times have you said, “Not now.  I need to show some real fruit of repentance before I ask God for anything at all.”   How many times have you thought, “Surely He won’t listen to me yet?”  Or even worse, “How can God forgive me?”

            David knew better than that.  He not only recognized his sin and his utter unworthiness (Psalms 32 and 51), he recognized the riches of God’s grace.  We may sing about “Amazing Grace,” but David knew about it.  Maybe it takes just as much faith to believe about grace as it does to believe in God.  I know this:  if you deny that God will forgive you and answer your prayers, you may as well deny Him.
 
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:4-7
 
Dene Ward

“Do it myself!”  What parent has not heard these words from his toddler with mixed feelings?  Yes, he is learning to do things for himself, all by himself, without my help.  Good for him!  Yes, he is learning to do without me.  Some day he won’t need my help at all.  Some day he will experience his own Independence Day, and we will face it with pride in his accomplishment and tears for our own loss at the same time.

            And don’t we prize that independent feeling ourselves?  I have a good friend who is 93.  She and I have often bemoaned the fact that people no longer seem to understand the word “need.”  What they think they “need” is usually just something they “want.”  It worries us that we are becoming more and more dependent on wealth and the technology it buys.  We have said to one another, if someday there is a great catastrophe, most of the country won’t know how to survive at all.  She has a colorful way of putting it:  “They won’t even know how to go to the bathroom!”

            We have lived in the country for a long time, and I have learned a lot about doing things myself.  I don’t know when was the last time I bought a jar of jelly at the store.  Or pickles.  Or canned tomatoes.  Or salsa.  Or any sort of frozen vegetable at all.  I do it myself.

            For awhile we had chickens.  Until we finally figured out that we were barely breaking even between the cost of feed and the “free” eggs, we gathered jumbos every day, half a dozen or more.  Keith milked a cow, and I often had a sour cream pound cake sitting on the countertop, made with our eggs, our homemade butter, and our homemade sour cream.  I mashed potatoes we grew with our fresh cream and homemade butter.  The ice cream we churned was so rich we often saw flecks of butter in it.   I think maybe we gave up the cow the day we actually started feeling our arteries clog as we looked across the table at one another.

            A lot of people can and freeze vegetables, jams, and pickles, but it always gave me a little extra pride when I made things that most people never even thought about making, like ketchup from the tag ends of the tomato crop, and chili powder from the cayenne peppers I grew and dried.  Lots of folks make applesauce, but not many can their own apple pie filling to use later in the year.  Another friend I have makes her own laundry starch.  If anything dire does happen in the next few years, my two special friends and I promise to share.  I am sure the 93 year old will be happy to tell you how to dig an outhouse.

            But that sort of pride and independence can get in the way of our salvation, can’t it?  There really is nothing we can do to save ourselves.  And we must learn to depend upon God—he demands it.  He is to be the one we trust, the one we rely on, the one we go to for every need we have, even if our definition of need is really “want.” 

            As long as I think I can manufacture my own salvation and experience a spiritual Independence Day, I will never find myself in God’s good graces, or in His grace.  This is one case where self-reliance is disastrous.  This is one case where we celebrate Dependence Day instead.  Have you celebrated yours yet?
 
By grace have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, Eph 2:8

Dene Ward

Today’s post is by guest writer Keith Ward.
 
I am not noted for my patience unless you count the fact that bodies are not strewn in my wake through the day. I am no more patient with myself than with others. I have a 3 way plug on the end of the drop cord that comes to the carport from the shed. It runs the blower and, on summer mornings, the 18" fan that cools us and keeps the bugs blown away while we have our third cup of coffee. So, today, I needed it for the blower and instead of unplugging the fan, I unplugged the drop cord from the 3 way--for about the 43rd time in the last month. "YOU WOULD THINK YOU WOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW!!” I muttered....well, given my hearing and that I had ear-plugs in to preserve some of the remainder of it from the blower, who knows how loud I was. As I plugged it back in and began blowing off the screened porch and carport, I thought that perhaps, just maybe, now and then, God feels that way about me--"He ought to know better than that by now!"
 
I can quote a lot more scripture than I can live: I have known the line, “as we forgive those who trespass against us,” for about 55 years. Yet I pray forgiveness of things I knew better than to do and get impatient with people who merely do irritating things in traffic.

I pray he just plugs me back in and proceeds with whatever chore I am suitable for.

Maybe, I need to remember that with others? I suspect I would have fired a worker who made the same mistake that many times? How about the brethren?
 
Maybe I need to quit praying or get real about being patient?
 
 
​For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ​but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt 6:14-15
 
 
Keith Ward

Sometimes the people who become involved in prison ministries are too idealistic.  They wind up being taken advantage of by the very people they are trying to save, usually because those people see that idealism and know exactly how to exploit it.  Either those idealists become disenchanted and leave the field entirely, or they learn a little pragmatism—they become adept at recognizing the signs and usually avoid being manipulated.  Keith has been working with convicted felons for a long time, so he knows exactly how to deal with them.  First as a probation officer, then a classifications officer, and now as a volunteer Bible class teacher, he has learned to read his audience fairly well.

            “But has all this work ever resulted in anything good?” someone asked once.

            Well, besides the lives that he has influenced for the better, the young men who have learned a little self-discipline and gotten good jobs and become good citizens—and there were a few—besides that, we are worshipping with one of them right now.  You should see the surprised looks when I mention that.

            And here is the thing that might surprise you more.  The larger problem when this happens is wondering how the brethren will receive such a one.  In one place we lived, the church found out we might possibly have a newly released, and newly baptized, ex-convict among us and they were not happy at all.  We heard comments ranging from, “I won’t ever allow myself to be alone with him,” to, “I don’t want him around my children.”

            Reminds me a little of Acts 9:26:  And when he was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.  Yes, a murderer had come into their midst and they didn’t want to have anything to do with him.  In fact, this man had seen to the deaths of their very own friends and relatives.  Their fear and loathing sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

            But not to Barnabas.  He took that man around and assured everyone that he had changed.  Did he know him better than they?  Not that I can tell from any reading I’ve ever found.  He did not know Saul of Tarsus from Levi of Persepolis.  What he did know was his Savior and the power of his gospel.  For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes… Rom 1:16.

            And the more our culture becomes like the culture of that time, the more likely that we will not be dealing with upstanding middle class nuclear families when we evangelize, but with people who come to us with immoral backgrounds, with addictions, and with criminal records.  Or know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you… 1Cor 6:9-11.

            And it will be up to us to show them that we truly believe the rest of that citation:  but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. 

            We talk a good fight when we talk about “God saving me, the sinner,” and how we don’t deserve our salvation and need the grace of God, “just like everyone else.”  But too often there is an exception clause in our thinking.  The Lord has made it perfectly clear through his brother James, murder equals adultery equals prejudice (James 2:8-11).  The same law says they are all sin.  None of us will be a step ahead of our brothers with convictions on their records when we stand before God.  We have all been washed, sanctified and justified, and we will all be judged “as we judge others.”
 
For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Jas 2:13
 
Dene Ward

I sat by the window today and marveled at the birds that had come to my feeder—the usual cardinals, titmice and chickadees, plus two kinds of doves, a wren, four catbirds, dozens of sparrows, a small flock of brown-headed cowbirds, a painted bunting, two goldfinch couples, a few pine warblers, a yellow-rumped warbler, new to the group this year, and a hummingbird buzzing above them all at his own special watering hole.  All these on the same day and that’s not all just in the past week.  We even had a ring-nosed gull drop by yesterday.

            What may be the most satisfying is seeing those we can recognize from times past.    Remember the cardinal with the broken wing?  (Check the July 2014 archives.)  He kept coming back for well over a year.  It has only been the past month or so that we haven’t seen him and it may well be he has lived out his lifespan, but he lived it far longer and better for coming here to fill his plate, heal, and grow strong again.  His wing was never quite straight after his mishap, but it grew plenty strong enough to fly him where he needed to go. He wasn’t the first sad and sick bird we have had.  If you have been with me awhile, you may remember the one-legged sparrow, and the brewer’s blackbird that was left behind when her flock flew northwest again—she was too sick to join them.

            I wonder what God sees when He looks out on His “feeder.”  We forget, I’m afraid, what our lives were like when we decided to take Him up on His offer.  It is too easy, when life has taken a good turn and we are so much healthier in spirit, to think it might possibly have been our own doing.  He is the one who comforted our mourning, who gave us a “garland” to replace our “ashes,” who took away our “spirits of heaviness” and gave us the “oil of joy” and a “garment of praise” (Isa 61:2,3) to replace the sackcloth life had thrown on us.

            The Lord came looking for us at the worst time of our lives, and because of that we now live in the best times, no matter what our physical circumstances may be.  We were all bruised reeds, but with tenderness and care He granted us the greatest of gifts, a spiritual healing that is eternal.  It is right to praise Him, to stand in awe, and to marvel.  But once in a while it wouldn’t hurt to remember the broken wings, the near fatal spiritual illnesses, the missing pieces of our hearts that He restored and what it cost.  Maybe our healed wings stay a little bent just to remind us where we were and what might have been without His amazing love.

            And always, we need to look for the others who need Him too.  There is room on the feeder for as many weak, sick, and dying birds as we can bring with us.  And then He can look with satisfaction one day on those who laid their burdens on Him, who allowed Him to care for them, who accepted His offer of love and grace.  And together we can marvel for Eternity.
 
Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth. Isa 42:1-3
 
Dene Ward

Was there ever a church with as many problems as Corinth?  We can easily make excuses for them.  Corinth was one of the most sinful cities in the world at the time.  In fact, “Corinthian” was an adjective describing a licentious lifestyle.  Certainly it was difficult to be a Christian in such an environment.  I have said before that if a person could remain pure in that city at that time, anyone can live a pure life today.
            Yet the apostle Paul obviously expected more out of them, and he told them their faults plainly. 
            They were factious (1:10-14); they were carnal and immature (3:1-3); they were arrogant (3:18,19; 8:10); they were selfish (6:7; 14:26-33).  They had little regard for one another and put their own interests ahead of the mission God gave them as His people (6:5-8; 8:9-13).  They glorified sin in their presence instead of removing its leavening influence so their worship could be pure before God (chapter 5).  They even corrupted the memorial meal that should have unified them, reminding them that they all came from the same humbling circumstance of sin, dependent solely on the grace of God for their salvation, (11:17-34).
            Yet despite all this, how does Paul end that first letter of rebuke?  With hope.  Yes, they had been “fornicators…idolaters…adulterers…effeminate…abusers of themselves with men…thieves…covetous…drunkards…revilers…extortioners,” but they had also been “washed…sanctified…justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (6:9-11).  Paul scolds them over and over, but he ends with the hope that they could change their lives, overcome their problems, and be “raised incorruptible” on that final day (15:52).
            Paul told even these bad boys and girls of the New Testament that they could live righteously and inherit eternal life.  Doesn’t it make you stop and think a minute before you consign someone to Hell by refusing them the opportunity to even hear the gospel because of their sinful, problem-filled lives?  Doesn’t it make you cringe a little at how carelessly we label congregations of God’s people “sound” and “unsound?”  And most important of all, doesn’t it give you hope when you fall yet again and have to pick yourself up and repent?
            Most of us would have simply bypassed Corinth if we had been making Paul’s itinerary for him.  To paraphrase Nathanael, “Can any good thing come out of Corinth?”  Yet Paul knew that where there is the greatest need, there will be the greatest response.  It may be tough going.  It may be that these folks will be “high maintenance Christians,” people who need a little more help, a little more support, and a whole lot more of our time, but who is to say that one soul is worth more than another?  We all stand before God as helpless sinners.
            And God holds out for us the same hope he gave those early Christians who had to fight their upbringing in a libertine culture even worse than ours. 
            O death where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Wherefore my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not vain in the Lord, 1 Cor 15:55-58.
 
Dene Ward

The “Health and Wealth Gospel” has been going on far longer than we think.  Paul talks about people who “suppose that godliness is a way of gain,” in 1 Timothy 6:5.  Others in Philippians 1 seemed to be preaching to cause Paul trouble and make a name for themselves at the same time. There is indeed nothing new under the sun.

            A few years back a certain televangelist promised that if you gave to his little club, your life would suddenly become wonderful.  The more you gave, the better it would get.  About the same time I remember something going around the brotherhood about financial problems being a sign that we were in sin, so don’t think it cannot touch us as well.  In fact, I have heard more than one Christian ask why he deserved such ill treatment from God when he had been so faithful and given up so much.  How is that any different?

            Sometimes unscriptural doctrines affect us far more than we want to believe.  While it is true that God will send judgment on sinners, it is also true that our lives can be effected by the sins of others, and that sometimes things happen just because they happen and for no other reason.  God brings not only rain on the just and the unjust, but hail too.  He never promised a security blanket that would protect us from everything bad.  Suffering and death happen because Adam opened the floodgates of sin, and if for no other reason, that is why we all suffer, including innocent children.  At least in our case as adults, we have participated in that sin sometime in our lives, whether we want to admit it or not.

            Nowadays admitting the awfulness of sin, even “small” ones, is not fashionable.  It’s narrow-minded, bigoted, primitive, ignorant, just plain nuts—take your pick of popular descriptions.  Perhaps that is why we do not comprehend what the Jews returning from Babylon understood.  Most of them were not the idolaters who had been sent away, but their children and grandchildren who had learned the lesson of faithfulness to God.  Yet they said, “After all we’ve done, God has punished us less than our sins deserved,” (Ezra 9:13).  That should be in the mind of every Christian every day of his life.

            So today has not been a particularly good one?  Just think—if God had been just, it would have been even worse.  Micah said, “I will bear the indignation of Jehovah because I have sinned,” 7:7.  He understood that we should be standing in shame with our heads bowed, rather than railing at God for his “unfairness.”  Be happy that God is “unfair.”  None of us would want what we truly deserve.

            Even more wonderful than that is the fact that we have good in our lives at all.  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the suffering, that we forget the blessings.  “Count your many blessings” is not only a good song, but a good idea as well.  And we have all those blessings because God loves us, and He loves us in spite of the sin in our lives, not because of the good we do.  We get that all turned around, and that is the reason we can even think thoughts that begin, “And after all I’ve done for you…”  Just exactly what is it that we can do for God?  How can we help Him?  How can we do anything for the most powerful Being, the One who created us? 

            Exactly.  So let’s be thankful, especially this week, for what we get that we don’t deserve—every good and perfect gift comes from God. 
 
Sing praise unto Jehovah, oh ye saints of his, and give thanks to his holy memorial name.  For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime; weeping may tarry for a night, but joy comes in the morning, Psa 30:4,5
 
Dene Ward

My father was a young boy in the Depression and grew up on a small farm where they made use of everything.  He cannot stand to see something going to waste, even if he can’t at that moment find a use for it.  Before his retirement he often pulled stacks of paper out of the company trash bins, that old, wide, green and white striped computer paper with the holes in the sides.  He pulled out card stock that had been run through a printer of some sort leaving thin black lines on one side only.  Then he brought them all to me. 
 
           We were usually with a small church all those years ago, with a limited budget, and our own was even more limited.  What did I do with all that paper and cardstock?  The computer paper graced the walls of many a Bible class.  You want to know how tall Goliath was?  Unroll a ten foot long length of it, tear it off along the perforations and then measure out Goliath’s six cubits and a span on it and tack it to the wall.  In a high ceiling-ed room it was easy, but in others Goliath had to bend over, with the paper running up the wall then along the ceiling.  Suddenly you really understood what a “giant” was.  It wasn’t just the height.  It was how massive his body must have been to support that height.

            You want to know how tall Saul was?  The scriptures say he was “from his shoulders upward” taller than any of the men of Israel.  So we asked tallest man in the church to come in and stand by our computer paper.  We marked his height, then went up as much more as his head and shoulders.  Saul was no Lilliputian himself.  Those lengths of paper also made great time lines.  Other times they were “missionary journeys,” an attendance chart for each student, each one measured out according to scale and then “journeyed” with a felt pen to the next stop each time a student came to class.  If he didn’t make it back to Antioch or Jerusalem by the time we finished the lesson book it was a sure sign he had missed too many classes!

            And the card stock?  I must have cut out thousands of flash cards for memory verses, apostles, judges, and prophets, anything that could be represented with a line drawing and a stick man, as well as the question cards for board games I made and Bible Jeopardy boards I constructed.  The trash that no one else wanted found a spiritual use that helped hundreds of children learn about God and His word.

            God has a habit of taking things that no one else wants and making use of them too.  For behold your calling brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called…1 Cor 1:26.  Jesus did not go to the “in crowd;” he did not go to the rich and powerful.  In fact, most of the time those people became his followers it was because they came seeking Him, not the other way around.  No, Jesus went to the poor, the disenfranchised, and those whose lives were filled with problems that filled others with disgust.  Fishermen may not have been the dregs of society, but they were the working class poor.  Matthew the publican was despised.  Simon the Zealot was a fanatic from whom others might have shied away.  Zacchaeus, though wealthy, was another despised tax collector.  Mary Magdalene had had seven demons.  He healed ten lepers and the only one of that shunned group that even came back to thank him was a Samaritan, the lowest of the low.

            Why did these people flock to Him so?  Because He gave them hope.  He gave them purpose.  He made something of them when everyone else had given up on them.  And He will do the same for you and for me.  It matters not how far you have fallen, nor how little anyone else values you.  God valued you enough to give His son for you.  He can pull you out of the world’s trash can and make you a vessel of honor, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use, 2 Tim 2:21.  If you think otherwise then you don’t really believe in the Almighty God.
 
Thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth.  For in these things I delight, declares the Lord, Jer 9:23,24.
 
Dene Ward

Hurricane season is now at its peak.  As a child I remember one hurricane—Donna, who arrived on Sept 10, 1960.  She struck south Florida as a category 4 storm, turned and came back east across the middle of the state, then veered north, becoming the only hurricane of record to produce hurricane force winds in every state on the US Atlantic coast from Florida to New England.

            She blew through Orlando on a Saturday night.  Our parents woke my sister and me and moved us to the center of the house because the wind was blowing rain up under the eaves and it was running down through the walls and seeping in at the baseboards next to our beds.  While they packed towels around those baseboards, I slept through what were probably the scariest moments of my childhood—I was 6 at the time.  The next morning church services were cancelled, a first in my life, and I was a little afraid we would all wind up in Hell, especially when the sun began to shine mid-morning. 

            After that it seemed that we always managed to live in the right place.  For forty-four years the storms always went another way.  Then 2004 happened.  Charlie, Frances, Jeanne, and Ivan all hit Florida within a few weeks of each other.  Frances and Jeanne descended upon our area of North Central Florida.  Seventeen inches of rain were followed by twelve more only two weeks later.  By then, the pine trees were like spoons standing in thick soup, and many fell.  We were in constant prayer that they would not fall on us.  We went a day and a half without power or telephone, which could have been much worse.  People just a mile east of us were without power for ten days.  A neighbor loaned us his generator for a few hours, and we saved the produce and meat in the freezer.  Others had to list their losses on insurance reports.

            This time, though, was much different than my childhood experience.  As a child you really have no idea of the possibilities.  As an adult you understand that a direct hit could completely destroy everything you have, and, though we all joked about getting together to blow in the same direction at the same time, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf to push the storm the other way, there is nothing at all you can do about it.

            Far from sleeping through it, I remember lying in the dark in the wee hours of the morning, listening.  When the rain let up for awhile, I could hear a gust of wind coming from a long way off.  “It sounds like a train,” people always say about tornadoes, and the same was true of that wind.  It came closer and closer, louder and louder, finally slamming against the house, followed by complete silence, except for the sloshing of water in the water heater. 

            A minute later it started again.  And again.  And again.  I lay there for an hour listening to the gusts come over and over, praying fervently every time that I would not hear a tree cracking just before it fell on us, or the screaming of the roof as it tore off the rafters, but only the water heater sloshing its load back and forth as the house was once again nudged just a bit on its pillars.

            Helplessness can be paralyzing, but to a child of God, it should be empowering.  For He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me, 2 Cor 12:9.  When you finally realize that you are not in control, you can stop worrying about it.  What will happen, will happen.  Things may turn out all right in this life, and they may not, but whatever happens, you can deal with it.  Christ has promised that His grace is sufficient to bear any burden.

            In our society with all its various insurances, retirement accounts, and pension plans, we may never truly grasp our dependence upon God.  We may give lip service to the notion that we depend on Him for everything, but the comprehension just isn’t there, and it shows when our “things” and our “plans” are more important than our service and our trust, when the loss of those things sends us into a tailspin we cannot pull out of.  I cannot save myself; neither can you.  I do not deserve to be saved; neither do you.  If I really understand that—if you really understand that—it will make all the difference.

            So if you have ever experienced helplessness in life, a moment when you finally realize that you cannot fix things yourself, it is both a devastating and a glorious moment.  Thank God that it finally happened.  It cannot help but spill over into your spiritual awareness as well—you will finally begin to understand and appreciate grace.

I will give you thanks with my whole heart…I will worship toward your holy temple, and give thanks to your name for your lovingkindness and for your truth…In the day that I called, you answered.  You encouraged me with strength in my soul…Though I walk in the midst of trouble you will revive me...The Lord will fulfill His purpose in me. Your lovingkindness, O Jehovah, endures forever, selected from Psalm 138.

Dene Ward