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            I was watching a ball game a few weeks ago when the school promos aired.  Evidently one of them now has the slogan “I can only count on what I earn.”  I must have heard it ten times in that thirty second spot.

            Every Christian ought to jump back in horror when they hear such a thing.  What I earn?  My life is a hopeless downhill plunge to destruction if I am counting on what I earn.  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Rom 3:23.

            Okay, you say, but they are talking about getting along in life, not the afterlife.  Really?  I can count on my money, my career, my social status?  All these things can be taken away in a flash by an illness, an accident, a bad investment, a downturn in the economy, even someone else’s crime.  How can I count on those for anything?  You see, that is the problem when you don’t believe in God, as a good many professors no longer do.  What a miserable life to live. 

            What’s that?  You are not miserable because you can do what you want to do instead of answering to a higher power?  I suppose, but then you live a life without hope, without purpose.  One of these days that will hit you right between the eyes and you will be miserable.  All the intellectualism in the world has yet to find a cure for that. 

            I can only count on God, on His help, on His promises, on His love and grace and mercy.  A God by the way, who changes not, who has proven Himself to His people for thousands of years.  A God who is always there regardless of the balance in my bank account, the progress of my career, or my status in society. 

            What are you depending on today, a life of uncertainty, or a God who inhabits eternity and controls it all?

But now being made free from sin and become servants to God you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord, Rom 6:22,23.

Dene Ward

         It was just a cold.  The first day I lost my voice and sneezed a lot.  The second day I started coughing, a deep cough that felt like it scraped the bottom of my lungs.  The third day I started wheezing and my temperature rose over 100.  The fourth day the headache started.  The fifth day my shoulders, neck, and back began aching and I could not get comfortable no matter how or where I lay or sat.  The sixth day it climbed into my head.  I could no longer breathe, smell, or taste.  The seventh day I lost my hearing and my ears began to ache.  Meanwhile, all the other symptoms continued.  The eighth day my temperature fell a degree below normal, but I felt a little better—very little.  Eventually it did go away, but the cough lingered for weeks.  Why in the world do we always say, “It was just a cold?”

            Maybe it’s habit. 
            “I was just ten minutes late.”
            “I was just ten miles over the speed limit.”
            “It was just a song service.”
            “It was just a little fib.”
            “I was just so tired and frustrated.”
            “It was just this once.”

            Always excusing ourselves with that little word, making every bad judgment call or “little” sin unimportant—where does it stop?  How big do they have to be before we stop using that word?

            What could God have said about us?  David knew full well when he said in the 8th Psalm, What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?  Indeed, God could have said, “They’re just people.  Why bother?” and we would have had no answer for that, especially the way we so often use that word to rationalize less than stellar behavior.

            Yet Jehovah, the Word, and the Spirit got together before they made anything else, and came up with a plan so that they could keep fellowship with men, no matter how sinful they had become.  That plan involved sacrifice on their parts, but it made men once again presentable to them.  For some reason, they thought we were worth it.
            Think about that the next time you try to excuse yourself with that word “just.” 

I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise.  I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased. All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks,  O LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth, and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD. For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.  Psa 138.

Dene Ward

You know that strange commercial where the woman’s guests keep disappearing, and we discover they have all fallen into the crack of her sofa and are living down there?  Keith put his hands down the crack of the narrowest upholstered chair in the house and, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat or endless scarves out of his sleeves, he kept coming up with the oddest things—a Ghiradelli dark chocolate square wrapper, 2 unpopped popcorn kernels, 3 red hots, 2 broken rubber bands, 4 shelled but shriveled peas, a nail file, a ballpoint pen, 3 quarters, 3 dimes, 3 nickels and 5 pennies, a fifteen inch square red bandanna, a twelve by five decorator pillow, and a co-ax cable connector.  I am afraid to try the much broader backed sofa—there really might be people living down there.

I know we have all experienced that feeling of being “lost in the cracks.” We have all had applications, letters, requests, complaints, and worst of all, payments, lost in the paper shuffle of doctor’s offices, large corporations, and government agencies.  Depending upon the issue, it could cause anything from the minor annoyance of a simple delay to the more serious problems of cut-off utilities or destroyed credit ratings.  It’s a helpless feeling, and a lonely one, to know you have done everything right and still this has happened—and no one seems to care.

Now just imagine your reaction if you had not done everything right.  You filled out the wrong form with the wrong information, sent it to the wrong address with the wrong amount of money, and you did it all two years late.  Not only that, but everything you did wrong you did that way on purpose.  Yet a week later you receive everything you had asked for anyway with promises of more whenever you needed it.

You would shake your head and say, “This can’t be possible,” and you would be right.

But isn’t that exactly what we receive with God?  In spite of our best efforts to wreck our lives, to sink into the depths of sin and be lost among the myriads who are content to live there, his searching hand will find us if we just reach out and take it.  We will never be lost in the cracks.

And Jehovah said, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry over all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof.  And to the others he said in my hearing, Go through the city after him and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have pity, and slay utterly…but come not near anyone upon whom is the mark.

The firm foundation of God stands having this seal, The Lord knows those who are his…Ezek 9:4-6; 2 Tim 2:19.

Dene Ward

If there is one thing the world has wrong about Jesus it’s this:  the idea that Jesus not only accepts us as sinners but allows us to keep on sinning because He is so kind and loving.  And one of their favorite examples is the adulterous woman in John 8. Nonsense!

In the first place, Jesus’ attitude toward sin is really just a side issue in this narrative.  This is about the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus yet again, and His being able to avoid the snare yet again.

They brought Him a woman who had committed adultery “caught in the very
act,” they said.  “The law of Moses says we should stone her.  What do you think?”

Jesus first did what we ought to do 90% of the time.  He kept His mouth shut. 
When your mouth is shut, you can think better.  And this was an obvious trap, if you just thought about it.  His silence also did this:  they kept pressing Him until it must surely have become obvious to many who were listening exactly what their motive was as Jesus calmly stooped and wrote in the dirt.
             
And what was so obvious about the trap?  He was approached while he was
teaching, a time when there would be many to see and hear His downfall (they
hoped), and whatever He had been teaching at the time would have been made ineffective.  He was not asked what the Law said, but what He thought. 
Asking rabbis what they thought about scriptures was not unusual, but if
anyone disagreed with Him, perhaps they would no longer listen to Him.  They said she was caught in the very act, so where was the man?  According to the Law they seemed so concerned about, Deut 22:22, both should have been brought for judgment, so it was obvious that doing right was the last thing on their minds.

This was the trap:  if He says that she deserves to die, He has pronounced the death sentence without the permission of the Roman authorities, which the Jews were not allowed to do, so He is in trouble with the powers that be. 
If He says otherwise, He is in trouble with the Jewish people who held
Him to be a prophet and a righteous man, because He has disobeyed God’s
law.
             
But with one sentence, He turns the whole thing around on them.  He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.  I find it hard to believe that these men who would soon murder Him and within a short time afterward imprison, abuse, and murder His followers were at all stung by a guilty conscience.  His few words remind them that the Law says they are to carry out the sentence because they were the witnesses, the ones who caught her “in the very act,” Deut 17:2-7.  The Law says Jesus could not lift a hand against her until they cast the first stones.  So now who is in the trap?  Are they willing to follow the Law in spite of the Roman dictum against capital punishment?
             
And so Jesus once again stooped down to scribble in the dirt, and when He
looked up, everyone was gone.  And now, He could not accuse her, not because He condoned sin but because there were no witnesses; and He could not stone her, for the same reason.  He would not have participated in a travesty of justice anyway, but now He simply could not, according to God’s Law.
             
But what does He say to her?  Go thy way and sin no more.
             
Jesus never has and never will accept sin.  He will accept sinners, but only if they change their lives and begin to live righteously.  Even then, when
they slip and fall, He expects remorse, repentance, and growth that make those sins farther and farther apart.  For each of us, when we lay our sin at His feet, the answer is the same:  Go thy way and sin no more.
             
I bet that woman of so long ago did her best not to let Him down again.  Can we do any less?
 
My little children, let no man lead you astray.  He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.  He who does sin is of the devil, for the devil sinned from the beginning.  To this end was the Son of God made manifest, that he might destroy the works of the devil, 1 John 3:7,8.

Dene Ward

I have been clipping and redeeming coupons since we got married.  I have a file box and a system.  I search ads faithfully and use them to  plan both my shopping trip and my meals.   And I don’t fall into the coupon traps—if I don’t need it or won’t use  it, or did not want to try it anyway, I don’t buy it.  We got by for 50% less than most families with teenage  boys.

 I seldom have one of those shopping trips you hear about, where the
woman buys $100 worth of groceries for $2.98, primarily because I do not buy a  lot of processed, prepared foods. I  have a garden; I bake from scratch. My grocery bill rarely includes anything but staples, meat, paper goods,  and the few produce items we do not grow, like onions, potatoes, and   garlic.  You don’t find many coupons for those things, but occasionally I make a “coupon coup.”  There was the jar of mustard, regularly $1.29, on sale for 99 cents.  A 50 cent coupon brought it down to 49 cents.  There was the week Publix
actually put their bakery’s key lime pie on sale for $4.50.  I had a $2.50 coupon PLUS they gave away a free loaf of French bread with every pie.  So for $2.00 I got a  key lime pie (regular $7.49) and a loaf of French bread (regular $1.99). I couldn’t have made a key lime pie alone for any less than $4.00, and theirs is nearly as good.

 Then I raided the drug store, the popular hang-out for those who are aging.  Keith needed glucosamine chondroitin.  $30.00 a bottle.  It was buy one get one, plus I had a $3.00 coupon.  We needed vitamins, regular $6.00 a bottle. 
They were buy one get one, plus I had a $2.00 coupon.  They also had my favorite shampoo on sale, one I hardly ever get to buy  because it is usually $4.29 a bottle.  They had it for $3.00, plus I had a coupon for $2.00 off 2, plus, for  buying two, they automatically gave me another $1.00 off anything in the store at the check-out, effectively making the price $1.50 a bottle. Finally we needed some low dose aspirins--$4.69 a bottle.  I had a $4.00 coupon, making that 69 cents.  Are you keeping track?  I bought $86.29 worth of items for $38.19.  Don’t  tell me the time I spend clipping and sorting isn’t worth it.  
  
Redeeming coupons brings to mind another sort of redemption.  I am always thrilled when I get a high  quality item for a low price. I would never pay full price for a crushed box of crackers or a dented can of tomato paste; nor would I for wilted produce—maybe half price for overripe bananas because they still have some use.  But top dollar?  Forget it.

 I am so glad God was not as stingy as I am!  He redeemed me, paying full price not for dented cans, crushed boxes, or even overripe bananas.  He got the culls, the totally useless, rotten, spoiled produce; he paid top dollar for
something no one else would have even considered buying.  
 
I think, when you have “been good” all your life, perhaps “raised in the church,” as we are prone to say, it is hard to realize our worthlessness, and really appreciate what has been done for us.  An old song goes, “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die; would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”  I noticed that in  one of the newer hymnals that last line has been changed to “such a one as I.”  Unh-unh. We need to get the “worm” back in there, because that is how low we were—totally worthless and disgusting--when Jesus redeemed us, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold…but with precious blood, as a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ, 1 Pet 1:18,19.  Truly the Lord is gracious.  In fact, we got the real bargain—precious grace for irregular, damaged merchandise!

 For while we were weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, maybe for a good an someone would dare to die.  But God commends his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Rom 5:6-8       
 
Dene Ward