Imagine my surprise when I found out that ancient Roman women wore bikinis!  We have paintings and sculptures of the fact, dating back to 5600 BC.  Originally they seem to have been "worn" by certain Roman goddesses like Venus and her counterpart the Greek Aphrodite, goddesses of fertility, passion, beauty, and all associated things.  However, we have also found actual thongs worn by Roman female athletes.  So French designer Louis Reard, who wanted to make a splash, was not really breaking any new ground when he had his first bikini modeled at the Piscine Molitor, a popular pool in Paris.  The swimsuit was considered scandalous, which would have suited him fine.  In an allusion to the headlines he knew he would make on the fashion scene, he had newspaper type printed on the suit itself.  It was a hit, the History Channel tells us, "especially among men."  Well, duh. 

 Now of course, bikinis are mainstream, except, I hope, among Christian women.  But my hopes were dashed when one of my sons heard a young woman from church say of men, "If they can't handle it, that's their problem.  I will wear my bikini if I want to."  And so you will find various articles about modesty that divide themselves into two distinct camps.  One addresses the women only, asking them if they believe immodest clothing like bikinis and short shorts and miniskirts really befit a godly woman with a pure heart, and others that spend their time telling women they have an obligation to their brothers in Christ not to cause lust in their hearts.  Both sides tend to look with scorn on the other.  Yet both sides overlook the fact that modesty in the Bible is always concerned with overdressing, not underdressing.  It's about calling undue attention to yourselves with fine clothing, expensive jewelry, and elaborate hairstyles.  If we look at the history of the modern bikini, I believe we can see how all of these things apply.

 First, revisit the paragraphs above about the motive of the bikini's designer—to cause a splash, to make news.  The man actually received 50,000 fan letters.  As the years progressed, "bold young women" were the ones who wore them, especially in the conservative decade of the 50s.  Does any of that remind you of dressing to be noticed, the true meaning of immodesty?  Of course it does.  But one should not ignore the heart in this conversation either.  Would you answer the door in your underwear?  Of course, not, because you know that would be inappropriate, just as you would never undress in front of an open window.  Does your bikini cover more or less of you than your underwear?

 Second, those 50,000 fan letters?  Most were from men!  And anyone who scoffs at causing a brother to stumble certainly hasn't read much of the New Testament.  Jesus himself says,It is inevitable that temptations to sin will come, but how terrible it will be for the person through whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea...Luke17:1,2.

   Yes, there are men who can lust simply because of a pretty face even when the body is covered from neck to toenail, but let's not get ridiculous.  Fashion designers know exactly what they are doing when they create their clothes.  It's the women who don't seem to get it, and who go right along, allowing those people to move them like a puppeteer.  And the only thing that matters to them is what they want and how they feel and how much attention they get.  Please tell me that is the character of a disciple of Christ—the Suffering Servant who gave up all for others.

 And third, as to the godliness aspect, did you know that Reard had a hard time finding a model who would wear his tiny little bikini?  He had to resort to an exotic dancer who didn't mind walking around in public nearly nude—that's what she did every night.  He couldn't get a regular model to wear it.

 Sometimes we are so busy trying to get our women to dress appropriately that we misuse Scripture.  I have seen some interpret passages with all the exegetical acumen of a 2 year old.  Words, especially words in an ancient language, are often not exactly what we would think when we see the English translation.  "Thigh" for example can be a euphemism for a man's genitals.  "Nakedness" can refer to the sexual act itself.  Be careful when you try to draw explicit lines for clothing when the clothing mentioned is 1) underwear,  2) for men, not women 3) in particular circumstances and places, and 4) carrying a metaphorical meaning. 

 What happened in 1946 was not the end of the matter.  Reard created a swimsuit with 30 inches of cloth.  He said you should be able to pull the two parts through a wedding ring!  (Funny how he chose that piece of jewelry.)  Nowadays, bikinis have gone much farther and gotten much smaller.  Yes, we need to train our young women to be godly and pure.  They need to have a healthy respect for their own bodies and not degrade themselves just to get attention.  Yes, young men need to understand that God gave them a neck so they could turn their heads—the other way—as they fight off temptation.  And let's please use Bible words the way the Bible uses them.  If you want a word for wearing something like a bikini, let's call it lasciviousness or lewdness, because that is not only what it is, but what it causes as well.

 Remember, 1946 may have been a milestone in fashion, but it was nothing new.  In fact, it was over 7000 years late.  What this date might truly be is a millstone—something that has caused many to fall into sin, others to be tempted, and yet others to cause division among the Lord's people by setting hard and fast rules that the Bible does not.  It is, as it always has been, a matter of the heart first—both godliness and love for your brethren.  Then the correct actions should follow.

Women, for their part, should display their beauty by dressing modestly and decently in appropriate clothes, not with elaborate hairstyles or by wearing gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but through good actions. This is proper for women who claim to revere God1Tim2:9,10

Dene Ward

 On June 22, 1953, a newsboy in Brooklyn named Jimmy Bozart, dropped a nickel from the money he had made selling newspapers.  It broke in two which exposed the fact that the nickel was hollow.  Inside sat a tiny piece of microfilm.  I am assuming he contacted an authority of some sort because it eventually wound up in the hands of the FBI.  On the microfilm they found a coded numeric message containing 207 sets of five digit numbers. ”Mental Floss” tells me the case foundered after that.  Evidently there was no way to know who had paid for his paper with the hollow nickel, though everyone assumed it was a mistake. 

 Finally in May 1957, a Soviet KGB agent named Reino Hayhanen defected and provided the cipher key.  He also identified his “handler” (case manager/recruiter), Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, known by the alias “Mark”. He was arrested on June 21, 1957, and served four years of a 45 year sentence before being traded back to the Soviets in exchange for Francis Gary Powers, an American U2 pilot in1962.

 There was a time when spies were all the rage.  John LeCarre made a mint writing books about espionage.  Sean Connery and his subsequent brethren made the English spy James Bond come to life in film.  Even television went the route of shows about spies.  In the sixties and seventies we had Mission: Impossible, The Avengers, I Spy, The Man from UNCLE, and Secret Agent, the latter introduced with a song by the same name sung by Johnny Rivers.  We even had a comedic spoof of the genre in Get Smart and a Western version in the Wild, Wild West.

 Even the Bible has a few spies in it, though they had a decidedly different mission.  God’s spies were all about going to look and find out.  In Numbers 13 Moses sent 12 spies, one from each tribe, “to spy out the land.”  For forty days they traveled up and down the Promised Land and brought back the report of a beautiful and fruitful land.  But, they also brought back the report of a people who were large and strong and cities well fortified, and they lacked the faith to encourage the people to take it.

 Then, forty years later, we have the two spies who went into the city of Jericho.  Joshua charged them to “go view the land, especially Jericho” (Josh 2:1).  In both of these cases, God wanted the people to see the wealth and beauty of the land He had promised them, to become excited about taking that land and living there.  That was the result in only the second case.

 We have a Promised Land” in our future too, a city “whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10).  God won’t be sending us there to “spy out the land” but He has certainly given us glimpses of that place in a life full of blessings sent because of His grace and mercy.

 We experience a little piece of Heaven when our marriages match His plan—when the two halves of His image become one.

 We see a piece of Heaven in a family that lives according to His plan, a home full of laughter and love.

  We have a view of Heaven in a garden that occasionally produces far more than the hundredfold one might expect, and feeds us with healthy and nourishing food.  We see it in a riot of color as the flowers bloom so much that they bend and nearly break the boughs they cover.  In those things we see the Garden we left and the one to which we hope to return.

  We get a little peek into Heaven in a church full of brothers and sisters who get along with one another, “each counting the other as better than himself.” 

 We hear a bit of Heaven when our brothers and sisters sing praises to God, not with a man-made instrument, but with the one God made, the one He most wants to hear, our voices blending in a harmony that matches the sincerity of our hearts and the harmony of our thoughts and goals.

 All these things and more give us just a small taste of what Heaven will be like, but only if they match God’s perfect design for them all.  Keep your eyes open to “spy out the land” God has in store for us, and encourage yourself to get there, not by your own might, but with the help and grace of the God who keeps it in store for us.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever Psalm 23:6

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

 I remember when it happened.  He was probably the most famous and commercially successful magician at the time.  David Copperfield, born David Kotkin, believed in big illusions.  He made a Learjet disappear, walked through the Great Wall of China, and levitated over the Grand Canyon.  At least it looked like he did all those things.

 On April 8, 1983, he made the Statue of Liberty disappear before a live audience.  Oh so many years later, I found an article that told how he did it.  David Copperfield was a storyteller.  He never just did a trick.  He talked his way through it and had you focused on him and completely involved in his words.  Unbeknownst to his audience, they were sitting on a platform that revolved at an imperceptible speed.  By the time David finished his story and lowered the screen he had raised over their view of the statue, they were facing a completely different direction where no statue existed!  Reddit has someone who was there telling about a helicopter he also used to focus a bright beam of light on the statue, which also moved in a way no one could perceive so it's relative position to the audience never changed, and the bright light kept the changing skyline in the background invisible to the audience as well.  All the audience saw was black space where before Lady Liberty had stood.

 Simple right?  So why didn't the audience notice?  The same reason we do not notice when other people try to trick us, or when Satan tries to trick us.  Sometimes we are so naïve that things slip right past us.  Sometimes we want to believe in people so much that we blind ourselves to things that should be obvious.

 Jesus was not too sympathetic with that.  Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pitMatt15:14.  He expects us to beware, to be careful who we listen to, to examine everything we hear and not be deceived.  In fact, he expects us to love the truth so much that we cannot be misled. 

 The New Testament is full of warnings, full of ways to know whether or not we are hearing the truth. 

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world1John4:1. 

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them. Do [men] gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you shall know them  Matt7: 15-20.

 Those magicians out there will get you to focus on a different standard than the one God gives us.  Gradually we move from the place we should be, drifting so slowly and imperceptibly that before we know it, we are so far off that we can no longer even tell the difference.  Paul talks about people who "compare themselves with themselves" instead of with the One who should be our Model.  Anyone can look right by doing that.

 It is our responsibility to protect ourselves from the illusionists out there—the ones who try to rob us of salvation with smooth talk and false teaching.  God also expects us to train ourselves in the ways Satan tries to trick us.  That takes time--time to learn His Word and learn Him.  But if it saves your soul, it is time well spent.

I have done this so that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his schemes  2Cor2:11.

Dene Ward

We all know about Paul Revere.  But have you ever heard of Sybil Ludington?  She was born on April 5, 1761, and on the same night as Paul Revere, April 26, 1777, sixteen year old Sybil rode 40 miles—over half again the length of his ride—to rouse her father's militia unit to delay the British army in its march toward Danbury, Connecticut.  In driving rain and darkness, over unfamiliar terrain, she sounded the alarm with the same results as that more famous gentleman.  She did the same job and received no recognition for it until early in the twentieth century.

 That is what I like about Sybil.  She did not need to go out and march on a courthouse or a congress hall or anywhere else in order to do her job.  She just did what needed to be done.  If I remember correctly, she wasn't even asked to do it—she volunteered.  Then, after the Revolution, she lived a perfectly ordinary life, marrying and raising a son.  She died at the age of 77 in Unadilla, New York.

 Many people try to paint the Bible—and God--as misogynistic.  They are showing their ignorance of what they revile when they do so.  The laws that to an uninformed person who is virtually ignorant of ancient cultures seem "anti-woman" were actually placed there to protect women from any man who would misuse his place in the hierarchy God set about in Eden.  As Jesus eventually said about divorce under the Old Covenant, there will always be hard-hearted men and God did His best to protect His women from such.  The other things women fuss about are simple common sense.  We have adages that state the same thing, some made up by those same hard-hearted and biased men:  "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians," for example.  Someone has to be in charge if you want to get anything done.  But God's women all over the Bible, under both covenants, have not let those hard-hearted men who abuse God's system keep them from doing what needs doing when it needs doing.  You will find the toughest women you can imagine in the pages of the scriptures, all of them honored by God when He memorialized their deeds in His Word.

 Jael, left alone to face an enemy army general, fought him the only way an unarmed woman could have.  Inspired Deborah said of her, Blessed among women shall Jael be Jud 5:24.

 Abigail, who heard the foolishness of her wicked husband, immediately set about trying to undo the harm, carrying gifts through the hills and throwing herself on the mercy of a warrior who had sworn to kill them all.  Not in subjection you say?  She did [her husband] good and not evil all the days of his life (Pro 31:12), which included saving his.

 Rizpah, in her torment and grief for her dead and hanging son, sat in the open for as long as 6 months, warding off scavenging birds and beasts until David finally noticed and buried his and the others' bones.

 I could go on.  None of these women were prima donnas, divas, or hot house flowers.  They were women who understood that when something needs doing, you do it; no matter how difficult or uncomfortable or disgusting it is, no matter how tired you are, no matter your grief or hurt; you just get up and do it.  And none of them looked for praise or recognition.  As true servants of God they simply did the work set before them and served others.  And as true servants of the Suffering Servant who gave His all, let us do the same.

 In fact, all of us should be this way, not just women.  But if we will lead the way in anything, ladies, let's show the men how this is done.

A worthy (also translated strong, valiant, able, powerful, mighty) woman, who can find?  Her price is far above rubies Prov 31:10.

Dene Ward

Medicine has come a long way since ancient times and it hasn’t stopped progressing.  As a patient who has a rare disease, I have had my share of experimental surgeries and procedures, and endured experimental medicines and equipment.  Sometimes it’s just plain scary, but when it works, it’s amazing.  I can still see, several years after I was expected to lose my vision.  It may not be great vision, and the after effects of all these procedures and medications may not be pleasant, but let me tell you, any vision is better than no vision, and you will put up with a lot to have it.

 Blood is one area where knowledge is still blossoming.  But just think of this.  Transfusions were not common until the turn of the twentieth century, and even then it had to be a live donor for an immediate transfusion.  It went on that way for nearly four decades.  Finally, Dr Bernard Fantus at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago performed several experiments and determined that human blood, under refrigeration, could last up to ten days.  Still not long, but enough for him to start the first blood bank on March 15, 1937.  Imagine the lives that were suddenly saved.  It must have seemed like a miracle.

 Medicine has progressed even further.  My little bit of research tells me that at 1-6 degrees Centigrade, blood can now be kept up to 42 days, and that some of it can be frozen for up to ten years.  I wonder if Dr Fantus had any idea what he had put into motion.

 But sooner or later that blood does become stale.  It is no longer usable to save lives.  And if there is a sudden loss of power that cannot be maintained with a generator or other power source, all of it will spoil almost immediately. 

 Imagine a blood that never loses its potency, that never becomes stale, that will always save. 

 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, Heb 9:24-26.

 Jesus does not have to offer himself “repeatedly.”  He does not have to keep a fresh supply of blood handy.  The saving power of his blood lasts forever.  And what exactly does it do?

 It makes propitiation, Rom 3:23.

 It justifies, Rom 5:9.

 It brings us “near,” Eph 2:13.

 It purifies our consciences and makes us able to serve God, Heb 9:14. 

 It forgives, Heb 9:23.

 It cleanses us from sin, 1 John 1:7.

 Now understand this—it isn’t the fact that Jesus cut his finger one day and bled a little.  Blood in the Bible has always represented a death.  The blood that saves us is the death he willingly died on our behalf, because only a sacrificial death can atone for sin (Lev 17:11).  And we don’t have to worry about “types” and “factors.”  His blood will cleanse us from “all sin,” 1 John 1:7.

 Nowadays people want nothing to do with another person’s blood.  Everyone wears gloves.  But to gain the benefits of Christ’s blood you have to “touch” it.  How do you contact that blood?  You simply “die” with Christ.  Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life, Rom 6:3,4. 

 And that blood bank still works for us.  It keeps right on forgiving as needed, as we repent and continue to walk in him for the rest of our lives.   

 Only once--that’s all he had to suffer.  Our trips to the blood bank will likely be more than once, but may they become less and less often as we grow in grace and faith and love.  It will be there when we need it, but let’s not squander a precious gift, nor take it for granted. 

And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him, Heb 9:27,28.

Dene Ward 

 On March 1, 1692, ignorance and superstition came to the forefront as the Salem Witch Trials began.  The legal papers make a horrifying read—innocent until proven guilty was not the code back then, but the opposite:  if you came to trial you were assumed guilty.  Evidence from children as young as 9 was accepted.  Given the mass hysteria, it was probably impossible to find a child who was not willing to make accusations just to get the attention.  As far as evidence—when visions that no one else can see are counted as good evidence, there is no end to the mischief that can arise.  Unfortunately, 19 people died because of things like this.  Everyone listened to obviously made up stories with no concrete evidence because it was exciting, and in some cases, making the accusations was all that kept one from being accused herself.  Remember what caused this all—ignorance and hysteria, the exact opposite of clear and logical thinking.

 Don't think this kind of thing hasn't invaded the church today.  I have heard more than one preacher or teacher accused of teaching false doctrine when that was not the case at all.  Someone took something out of context or someone else jumped to an unnecessary conclusion and that was all it took to ruin a reputation.  When we pass these things along we are no less guilty.  The rule should always be, go to the person involved and check it out yourself.  I will always be grateful to a brother who did that for us.  He had heard something completely false 150 miles away from us, a rumor that could have ruined my husband.  As it turns out, someone had said something happened which most certainly did not happen, and then the next person decided to do a little embroidery that made the original accusation even worse.  Not only was it untrue, but we had witnesses.

 Sometimes an outright lie is involved.  When a man is accused of teaching something he flatly denies, has never taught in all his years, and the people who regularly listen to him will vouch for him, that ought to take care of it.  Instead, we hear of elders in one church telling another church they should withdraw from the "false teacher" or he will withdraw from them.  Talk about ignorance.  No elder in one church has any right to tell another church what they should do (1 Pet 5:2), and no one in the New Testament ever withdrew from a church—you simply cannot find it. 

 Often the problem is that one does not interpret a certain scripture exactly as the other, even though he agrees with the fundamental point, and always has.  A good friend and I interpreted a certain passage completely differently from each other, but we both agreed with the point each was making.  We just disagreed about which passages proved it.  So?  I never called him a false teacher and he never called me one.  Someone has forgotten just exactly how important unity among His people is to God and the Lord Jesus, and how angry they must surely be when we misuse Scripture to cause dissension.

 The Salem Witch Hunt was polar opposite of the way God intended for His people to handle questions we might have about teaching in the church.  Those people even used Scripture to accomplish what turned out to be murder (Ex 22:18; Lev 20:27; Deut 18:10,11).  They used God's Holy Word for evil.  Let's make sure we don't do the same.

Give diligence to present yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth. But shun profane babblings: for they will proceed further in ungodliness, and their word will eat as a gangrene: of whom is Hymenæus and Philetus 2Tim2:15-17.

Dene Ward

You’d think they would learn.  You’d think they would figure this out, especially people who are so smart, with so many letters after their names they could start a new language.  Yet for a long time the existence of the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham and Sarah’s hometown, was denied.  Several excavations were begun in the early twentieth century, but Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, a British archaeologist, finally put the question to rest.  From The Bible As History by Werner Keller: “Under the red slopes of Tell al Muqayyar lay a whole city…awakened from its long sleep after many thousand years…Woolley and his companions were beside themselves with joy…for before them lay the Ur of the Chaldees to which the Bible refers.”

 Where today sits a railway station 120 miles north of Basra, Woolley found many closely situated private homes along with their broken pots, cuneiform texts, and even some gold jewelry.  He found silver lyres and other musical instruments and even a royal game board, complete with “men” to travel the wooden board. 

 What he discovered, in essence, was the ancient Sumerian civilization, He also discovered royal tombs dating from 2700 BC.  It became apparent to these scientists than these tombs also contained the king’s personal retinue, people buried alive in a form of large scale human sacrifice.  Is there any wonder God would have called his righteous servant away from that society?  And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many, Josh 24:2,3.  And so the Bible once again is proven not only accurate, but logical.

 Woolley’s faith may not have been as fundamental as we would like--he discovered evidence of a great flood in the area but you and I would not have agreed with all of his conclusions in that regard.  However, he seemed to work like this:  the Bible says it existed so he went looking for it.  How many others deny the witness of the Scriptures until their noses are rubbed in it?

 Charles Woolley died on this day in 1960.  Perhaps we can use this as a reminder.  More and more the world considers the Bible as anything but the Word of God.  Instead, they say, it is a book of myths and interesting stories.  Jesus was not the Son of God either; he was just a good rabbi.  Maybe it is time we spoke out more.  Are we embarrassed to be seen as ignorant yokels because we believe the scriptures to be the authentic and infallible Word of an Almighty Creator?  Do we water down the truths revealed in it because they are no longer politically correct? 

 It was easy to believe when most of our neighbors did.  It was easy to say, “The Bible says…” when we knew that statement would carry some weight.  Despite the fact that over and over discoveries are made to prove the factual content of the Bible, people still find reason not to accept it.  They always will.  Just read the first few chapters of Exodus.  Just read the gospels.  When people do not want to accept the accountability demanded of us by the Bible, they will reject it.  They will find every excuse in the world to say, “That’s different,” when the only difference is it refers directly to their lifestyles and habits. 

 Say thank you today to Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, but only if you will use his discovery to cement your faith and allow it to change your will.

But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD.’ He who will hear, let him hear; and he who will refuse to hear, let him refuse, for they are a rebellious house, Ezek 3:27.

Dene Ward

After seeing a performance of Verdi's Aida, 17 year old Giacomo Puccini decided to give his life to writing operas.  Now we know him as the composer of some of the most beloved operas—La Boheme, Tosca, Turandot, and Madame Butterfly.  But none of those were well-received in the beginning.

 Madame Butterfly premiered on February 17, 1904, at La Scala in Milan.  The audience hissed, booed, and even yelled.  Many walked out.  It was back to the drawing board for Puccini, who went to work on a revision.

 Several things had to be fixed.  The staging was abysmal.  He seemed to have fallen into a rut and this opera was too much like all the others.  The second act was ninety minutes long.  So first, he divided that act in half.  Then he added a different sort of musical piece called "The Humming Chorus" which became very popular.  Of course, the staging was fixed pronto, or should I say, "Presto!?"  Along with a few other minor changes, the second performance on May 24 was a grand success with extended applause, repeated encores, and ten curtain calls for Puccini himself. 

Suiting the audience is as it should be for operas, but can you imagine a church service that did the same?  Encores by the song leader, curtain calls by the preacher, and a long standing ovation before the final amen.  Of course not!  Pleasing the audience is not what a church service is about.  Or is it?

The problem is we mistake the performers for the audience.  You and I are not the audience.  God is.  We are the performers and it's our job to do whatever we can to please Him.  Puccini obviously liked his second act and all the staging, but his audience thought otherwise.  He fell all over himself trying to change things to please them.  When I pick a church because I enjoy (feel entertained by) the service, then I have missed the whole point.  I need to be choosing a church that acts as the New Testament has shown me is pleasing to God—whether I personally like what they do or not.  Which church is it that follows the guidelines set for pleasing Him? 

The question is not, and never should be, did the preacher/songleader/Bible class teacher perform well enough to please me ("What did I get out of it")?  The question is, and always should be, did I perform well enough to please my Audience—God. 

But the hour will come, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers.  God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth John4:24.

Dene Ward

 On January 23. 1874, Prince Alfred, the son of Queen Victoria, married Marie Alexandrovna, the daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia.  The marriage is pictured as a political one, an attempt to calm relations between Great Britain and Russia after the Crimean War, even though the couple had met when she was 15 and fell in love immediately.  Unfortunately, the couple's own developing friction between themselves began to undo those initial feelings and kept much from being accomplished politically.  The continued tensions in Asia and other realms, didn't help much either.  If ever there was an example it's this—what began as a passionate love affair ended with a philandering, and possibly polygamous, husband, and a princess-wife who was a spoiled Daddy's girl" who had absolutely no one in her new family or country who liked her  They stopped trying to please each other and spent their time pleasing themselves.  Even ropes of precious jewels, royal title after royal title, and crowns in her carefully done hair did not give this lonely woman a happy life.  Her oldest son eventually committed suicide and her unfaithful husband died one month after a diagnosis of throat cancer.

 But the rest of the world got something pretty nice from this affair.  For the wedding, two bakers, James Peek and George Hender Frean created the Marie biscuit in her honor.  "Biscuit" in England is what we Americans call a cookie.  (Our "biscuit" is what they call a "scone," simplistically speaking.)  This particular "biscuit" is lightly sweetened and crisp and became an instant hit.  They are still eaten today, even in other countries than England.  Spain has its own special version called Maria cookies.  We have friends from Zimbabwe who have them at tea most afternoons.  If you care to look, you will find recipes all over the internet. So this couple did not leave much of a dent in history, but their cookie did.  It might be a small legacy, but it is keeping their names alive, especially hers.

 What kind of a legacy are you leaving?  Will people still talk about you after you are gone?  I am old enough to have lost quite a few friends to death.  They certainly live on in my memory, but they also live on in the memory of others.  In our women's class we still talk about a widow who spent her last years putting things in order in the meetinghouse every Monday and Thursday.  Lesson plans and bulletin boards were carefully filed, and new letters for those same boards cut out when old ones had finally become too soft and raggedy to use again.  Even a couple of years after her death, we were finding notes she had left on walls and in the storage room about where to put what and how to use those letters without sticking holes in them with tacks!  Another good sister's name always came up when we were coordinating meal lists for the sick and bereaved.  We missed the dishes she always brought, and that made us stand and talk about our favorites of hers for a few more minutes.

 After both of my parents died, people came up to me again and again as we traveled, or sent me notes or emails when they heard the news, telling me about the wonderful things they had done.  I had grown up watching them serve, of course, but I never heard about the things they did in later years after the money crunch eased up some.  They bought pews and hymnals for small churches.  They would walk up to a preacher who had minimal support that he could lose with hardly any notice, and hand him a check "for something special."  They were the first to donate when a need arose.  And when my Daddy was dying, a hospice worker came to check on him one day, commenting on the big shop fan he had in his garage.  "Wish I had one of those," she said.  "Our air conditioner is out."  When she left that day, he insisted she take the fan.

 My mother passed 8 years after he did.  When I was writing her obituary, it suddenly dawned on me that every one of her children, grandchildren, and their spouses were all faithful Christians.  If ever there was a legacy that speaks on for years afterward, it's that one.

 So what are you leaving behind you?  It doesn't matter that you are still young.  When do you think my parents started working on their legacy?  It certainly wasn't a last minute chore.  Those legacies took years to create, and those years pass far more quickly than you will ever believe—until it happens to you.

 If my children and grandchildren remember my cookies, that's fine but I hope they remember the love that baked them.  And I certainly hope you and I both have a far better legacy to leave the world than a tea biscuit.

“Only be on your guard and diligently watch yourselves, so that you don’t forget the things your eyes have seen and so that they don’t slip from your mind as long as you live. Teach them to your children and your grandchildren.Deut4:9

Dene Ward