I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. I got my first really nasty comment on the blog a few weeks ago.  I know, despite the obviously made up name, that this was not a Christian in any sense of the word.  A Christian would never have used the language he did.  I answered him politely via the email address I had access to, apologizing for his misunderstanding, inviting him to visit again, and have not heard word one back.

            I understand that this type of thing is called “trolling.”  Someone who has nothing better to do with his life goes combing through blogs and websites and does his best to create a controversy with a quick jab, then sits back to see “what he hath wrought.”  In this case nothing.  One reply by a reader showed his comment to be, not only vulgar, but completely ridiculous.  I did not say what he said I did, and no one else took it that way either.  And you know what?  Solomon’s proverb is shown to be true yet again, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

            The church had trollers to deal with in the first century.  Acts 13,14,15,17, and 21, Rom 16, Gal 1 and 2, several chapters in Timothy, and most of John’s epistles show their sinister attempts to cause controversy and divide the church.  They even followed Paul around from place to place, “poisoning their minds against the brothers” Acts 14:2; “subverting souls” 15:24; “agitating and stirring up” 17:13; “creating obstacles contrary to the doctrine” Rom 16:17; and “distorting the gospel” Gal 1:7.

            And we still have trollers today—people who go from house to house spreading dissatisfaction, who stand in the parking lots campaigning against the leadership of the church, who even have websites devoted to dispensing discontent with spurious arguments and unsubstantiated accusations, usually about their own pet concerns.  And who are the victims?  “The naïve,” Romans 16 tells us, usually those who are young and easily swayed by a handsome fellow who seems far more “with it” than the stodgy old fogies, who are usually viewed that way because they believe in stodgy old things like Biblical authority.

            And how does that passage describe these trollers?  They are “puffed up with conceit,” gathering to themselves a rah-rah club to satisfy their egos.  They “understand nothing” while at the same time claiming to be more enlightened than anyone else.  They have an “unhealthy craving for controversy,” unhealthy for those whose hearts are deceived, unhealthy for the body of Christ, and certainly unhealthy for their own souls.  If someone tries to get you involved, walk away.

           Trolling—no, it’s not new, and neither is this:  God hates it every bit as much now as He did two thousand years ago.

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. Titus 3:9-11.

Dene Ward

Now that we have a carport for the first time in 27 years, I find myself wondering if all we did was get something else to keep clean.  I know I sweep it every morning I am home and the weather is cooperative.  If I miss a day, it’s really a mess.  A little while ago, after a couple of rainy days, I had an especially large job ahead of me.  In places on the edges the dust was caked an inch thick.

            I thought I would never finish.  I swept several times in each patch and still the dust flew.  Finally I looked at Chloe and muttered, “There is enough dust here for God to make a whole person.”  As my mind is apt to wander into strange places, it was only a second or two before I wondered if I was sweeping some Native American from four or five hundred years ago, or perhaps some Spanish conquistador who never made it home.

            Now that’s a humbling thought, isn’t it?  Some day several hundred years from now, someone may be sweeping me off their carport, or whatever they have by then.

            When it comes right down to it that is all these bodies are.  As God told Adam, For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return, Gen 3:19.  Too many times we think we are more than that.  But answer this:  how many billions (or trillions?) have ever lived in all of time, and how many of those do you find in your child’s history book?  I imagine the percentage would be point zero, zero, zero, zero something, or even less.  How can I ever think that I am so important to the world that I would wind up in that tiny group?  I will be surprised if anyone remembers me even twenty years after I am gone, much less several hundred.

            Thinking too well of myself will do nothing but cause serious trouble.  How many relationships are ruined by self-centeredness?  How many tyrants came out of an ego that could not be satisfied?  How often has the Lord’s body suffered schisms because someone thought he was more important than any of his brethren?

            If you think about it, it is ironic that the only person who was ever as humble as he should have been is the one who changed history forever.  While we claim to follow Him, we evidently don’t believe His way is the best.  Humility seems to be the most difficult thing we have to learn, and the place we most often fail.

            So go sweep your carport today.  It might be that you will gain a little perspective.

For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.  

The dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God who gave it, Eccl 12:7

Dene Ward

 

I sat with my hands in my lap, listening to the announcements.  When it came time for prayer, instantly two hands reached for mine and held them until the amens echoed around the building.

The hand on my right was my husband’s.  After spending thirty-nine years together, it seemed only natural.  We are always touching, patting, and hugging.  To walk past one another without some sort of physical contact is unthinkable.  What has made this relationship even more remarkable though, is the spiritual sharing and touching.  When two people pray for the same things, hope for the same things, and endure the same things with the help of the same Comforter, two people who were so unalike in the beginning that several people tried to talk us out of this marriage, the closeness can only be with the help of the Divine Creator who united us in far more than holy matrimony.

The other hand came from a friend, someone I have known for several years now, who has supported me in every way imaginable, who has stood by me and has lifted my name up in prayer, who has shared her own trials with me and allowed me to help her as well, someone who lives nearly fifty miles from me, whom I would never have known except that we share the same Savior and the same hope and a place in the same spiritual family.

Some people view holding hands in prayer as nothing more than an outward show of emotionalism.  To me those hands signify the unifying power of the grace of God.  That unity began with 12 men who would never have come together in any other way, and soon spread to add one more.  Some were urbane city dwellers who looked down on lowly Galileans.  Some were working class men while another was a highly educated Pharisee.  Some had Hebrew/Aramaic names while others’ names bore the influence of Hellenism.  One was a Zealot and another his political enemy, a tax collector.  Yet the Lord brought them all together in a unity that conquered the world.

I have held black hands, brown hands and white hands.  I have held plump soft hands and rough calloused hands.  I have held the tender hands of the young and the withered hands of the old.  I have held the hands of lawyers and doctors and plumbers and farmers, teachers and nurses and secretaries and homemakers, hands that hammer nails and hands that type on computer keyboards, hands that cook and sew and even hands that carry a weapon on the job.  We all have this in common—our Lord saved us when none of us deserved it.  That is His unifying power. 

The hand of God is the one that makes all of our hands worth holding.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Romans 15:5-7

Dene Ward