“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’ ​The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. ​And you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead; and you shall be cast out into Harmon,” declares the LORD, Amos 4:1-3.

            “Cows of Bashan”—that has to be one of my favorite lines in the Bible.  I can just see the faces of these haughty women when that rough old country boy Amos spun that one out.  There they lay on their silk cushions commanding even their own husbands to wait on them.  These spoiled women have many sisters in spirit today.  Just check out these other passages in Amos:

Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals— Amos 2:6.  Translation:  I will punish you for not looking after those in need just so you could buy yet another pair of new shoes.
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            I will strike the winter house along with the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end,” declares the LORD, Amos 3:15.  Translation:  I will destroy not just your upscale houses but also the cabin in the mountains, the condo on the beach, and the time share you visit every summer.

“Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, ​who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, ​who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! ​Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.” Amos 6:4-7.  Translation:  Disaster will come on those with the best and most expensively decorated homes, who eat lamb and veal—the most expensive meats in the market—who like to be entertained lavishly, who use the most expensive perfumes and makeups and judge their haircuts by who paid the most, yet are not concerned one iota over the spiritual state of this nation.

            If you cannot see our culture in these verses, it may just be that you are one of these people, more concerned about what you can have here and now, about your status among the rest of the snobs, about your comfort and convenience than about your relationship with God.  Those people broke their covenant with God, thinking that sacrifices and tithes (4:4) could make up for trampling on the needy in order to make even more money (5:11), or just ignoring them and blaming them for their own problems as we tend to do. 

            And they judged greatest among them those who spent the most on clothing and jewelry and perfume and homes and probably even manicures, while God’s Word shows us that great women are known for purity, for love, for strength of character, for teaching, for serving the poor, the ill, the weak, or even those who don’t deserve it at all.

            We have now seen all four of the oracles God sent specifically to women—the manipulators, the high maintenance, the weak who cannot face facts, and the snobs who judge by society’s standards instead of God’s.  I have known all four of them.  The goal for me--and you--is to make sure we are never counted among them.
 
She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens… She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong… She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy… ​Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness… “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”  Prov 31:15,17,20,25-27,29.
 
Dene Ward

And a certain man of the sons of the prophets said unto his neighbor in the word of the LORD, Smite me, I pray you. And the man refused to smite him. Then said he unto him, Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, behold, as soon as you have departed from me, a lion shall slay you. And as soon as he had departed from him, a lion found him, and slew him,   1Kgs 20:35-36.
 
           If you know your Bible, you know that is only the beginning of the story, but it was certainly the end of it for that second young prophet.  Here is the hard lesson we all must learn:  serving God is NOT for wimps.  Sometimes God asks for difficult things.  Sometimes they seem impossible.  But God expects the impossible from us—the things you cannot do alone, He will help you with.

            First century Christians understood this.  Many of them converted knowing they might be thrown into prison or even the arena within a week.  And us?  We want promises of health and wealth.  We demand a life where no one contracts a serious illness, where our homes never blow away in hurricanes or tornadoes, where jobs are never lost, accidents never happen, and babies never die.  We want the reward now—the perfect life in the perfect place.  Then we will consider serving God.

            It doesn’t work that way and it never has.  This prophet could not believe that God would ask him to strike his fellow prophet.  “Why God would never…” you can hear him thinking just as so many say today.  He found out there was something a whole lot worse when he didn’t have the gumption to do as he was told. 

            I have a feeling that a whole lot of people are going to meet the same lion he did.
 
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:57-62.
 
Dene Ward

 
And He said to them, let us go elsewhere into the next towns, that I may preach there also, for to this end came I forth, Mark 1:38.
           
            Jesus was a worker.  He got up early (Mark 1:35), and sometimes even missed a meal because He was so busy working, (John 4:31-34.)  He was always ready to move on to the next place, the next group of people.  His philosophy seemed to be, “There’s not much time so let’s keep working.”  Why?  Because He understood His mission:  this is why I came.
 
           That is not today’s philosophy.  Instead I hear, “There’s plenty of time to work, so let’s go play,” or “Life is short, so have fun.”  Maybe we don’t work like we ought to because we don’t know our mission like He did. 

            In our culture everything is about me--whether I am happy, whether I get to do the things I want to do, whether I feel fulfilled--and the things that we find fulfilling are usually money, fame, and pleasure. 

            We are simply too rich.  Ask a Christian in a third world country what his mission in life is and you are far more likely to get the right answer.  He scarcely has a roof over his head, much less one over a couple of thousand square feet of luxury home, and his leaks!  His existence is day to day, hand to mouth, and he works longer hours for a miniscule fraction of your pay—if indeed he has a job—than you think is humane.  Yet all his spare time is used studying his Bible, attending Bible classes, and speaking to his neighbors.  We can hardly find the time to simply sit in the pews, even though we probably work more than a dozen hours less a week than that man.

            We seem to be teaching our children the same mindless egocentrism.  They “deserve” to have fun.  They are so busy with earthly pursuits every minute of the day that they don’t even spend thirty minutes a week filling out a Bible lesson—and their parents are too busy to check to see if they did, or sigh with regret and say, “But they needed a little down time.”  Can’t their down time involve something spiritual?  Can’t we teach them how satisfying it is to take meals to the poor, to visit the elderly and the sick, to do their yard work and run errands for them?  If they are not learning it now, when will they?  If they are not learning it from you, then who will teach them?

            Four times the Hebrew writer says Jesus “sat down,” 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2.  Jesus did not sit down because He was tired and needed to rest, or because he needed some time to Himself.  He sat down because He had accomplished His task.  He told His disciples, We must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day; the night comes when no man can work, John 9:4.

            My mission is not about me.  My mission is about Jesus and His family—serving Him by serving them; serving Him by serving my friends and neighbors.  When you know what your mission is, you are more likely to keep working at it, and less likely to worry about whether you are having enough fun.  Those things become your “fun;” they become your fulfilling moments; they become your treasure stored in Heaven.          

            Accomplishing those things will finally give you the opportunity to sit down and rest.
 
He who overcomes, I will give to Him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father in His throne, Rev 3:21.
 
Dene Ward

In Thomas Wolfe's novel You Can't Go Home Again, George Webber concludes, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time…"
 
           Whenever Keith talks about Arkansas, he says, “Back home.”  It used to bother me a little.  Home should be where I am, shouldn’t it?  Then I realized that I could never have the feelings of a place that he did.  I never lived in just one place as a child, and the place I lived longest is not the place I go to when I visit my parents.  They left that place a year after I married and have lived in nearly half a dozen places since. 

            It is ironic that one of my sons lives there now, the place I would have called home, but when I go visit him, it has been so long since it was home, and it has changed so much, that I never even think of it that way any more.  The longest I have ever lived in any one place is the place I live now, and as Keith and I head into our senior years, I can foresee a time, though I hope not too soon, when we will have to leave it.  Even as small a plot as five acres takes a lot of labor, and it is a long way from the folks we count on to care for us when we become too old and disabled to take care of it and ourselves.

            Christians should be careful about those feelings of “home.”  Home should never be about a place, but about people, and about Truth.  I have seen churches divide over doctrines, divisions that were necessary.  Yet people who should have known better stayed—they were converted to a place, a building, not to the Lord.

            And Christians in our society have another problem—one that the poverty stricken brethren in places like Nicaragua and Zimbabwe never have to deal with—we have become entirely too comfortable.  We are so “at home” in our rich lives that we don’t want to give them up.  Persecution, even simply the ridicule and criticism of others, is too much to bear.  There is always a good reason not to speak up when sin becomes accepted, and not to behave differently.   Even if there is no persecution, we have a problem singing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.”  This is home and we want to stay as long as possible.

            We must make ourselves see beyond the here and now.  We must force ourselves to realize that where and how we are living today is not our goal.  Eternity is difficult enough to comprehend without focusing on what is right in front of us as if it were the only thing that counted.  Here is the truth of the matter:  compared to Eternity our lives are not even a drop of water in the entire ocean. 

            Christians have the promise that one day we will never again be homesick.  Heaven is the home we have all been looking for, the place we will live forever.  We will never have to leave.  We will never sit pining and wishing for the good old days.  The “dreams of glory” Thomas Wolfe spoke of will be there and then.  But perhaps in Eternity “then” will no longer have a meaning.  It will be Now—a capital letter Now that never ends.
 
Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord, 2 Cor 5:6,8.
 
Dene Ward
 

We are so far out in the country that we only receive two TV channels, and those are snowy on good days.  Many years ago we all agreed that we would give up other gifts to have a 75 foot TV antenna with a booster erected outside the house as our family Christmas gift.  The Gators were playing so in order to have it working as soon as it was up Keith did not wait to drill a hole through the floor and run the wire up that way.  He simply pulled out a corner of the window screen closest to the television, and opened the window a crack.  He would get to it later.  As is the case with most of us, “later” was put off longer and longer.

            Then one morning the inevitable happened.  I looked over and thought, “That wire certainly looks thicker than usual.”  When I got closer I discovered the reason—a black racer had wound itself around it, and was already halfway through the window. 

            I grabbed a broom and smacked at the window, hoping that would scare the snake back outside.  It worked the opposite way.  The snake’s slow slither through the opening turned into a swift swish all the way inside, dropping with a thud on the floor.  Yikes!  Now I had a snake in my house.  I was not going to leave it.  If I lost track of it, I knew I would never sleep again with a snake somewhere inside, especially one that had shown a proclivity for climbing.  I could just imagine it wound around the posts at the head of my iron bed while I slept.

            Luckily the boys were home that day. They ran to get the things I called for while I kept an eye on the unwelcome visitor. Together we did our best to scare that snake out the door with brooms and mops and anything else we could find.  It kept curling into a ball or hiding under a chair.  At one point, the thought crossed my mind to try sucking it up in the vacuum—at least the hose would be a perfect fit! 

            I came to my senses before that thought became a spoken idea, and told them to bring a box.  Lucas found one and put the box on the floor, open side toward the snake, while I swept it with the broom.  Every time it neared the box, it flattened itself and slid underneath it instead of going inside.  We tried several times, but finally my nerves were shot. I was through trying to be nice to this one of God’s creatures. 

            Once more I sent the boys on an errand.  When they returned, I stood on a chair, loaded the proffered .22 pistol with rat shot so I wouldn’t blow a hole in either the floor or the wall (normally I use a shotgun with a much heavier load) and shot that snake where he lay.  I gave him his chance and he blew it.  He was not going to use my house as his own private playground.

            All that for a literal snake, while we had voluntarily let loose an electronic snake in our home.  When we chose to go to the expense of installing that other kind of snake, it was with a purpose—we were seldom able to watch our teams play; this was the only way and the cheapest in the long run.  But our boys knew that it was not there for indiscriminate watching.  More than once we uttered that mean word, “No.”  More than once we turned it off and said, “Never again,” for a particular show.  We even limited their hours of “good” show time.  We did not want to be responsible for creating illiterate, overweight, glassy-eyed couch potatoes.

            The first professional television drama began on September 11, 1928, “The Queen’s Messenger,” and broadcast television has come a long way from those innocent days.  Calling it a snake is an apt metaphor, especially when you remember the first appearance of a snake in the Bible. 

            Not everyone is careful with that snake in their homes.  Not only do they let it sit in the corner unmonitored, but many even let it baby-sit their children.  It feeds their minds and their hearts for hours every day.  It teaches them that sin is acceptable, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is either hateful or crazy.  It inures them to foul language and crude comments.  It teaches children—and adults--to take pleasure watching the sins of others, to admire those sinners and want to emulate them, right down to the clothes they wear.  It tells them that nothing is sacred, except the right to do anything they please without censure.

            Some people do keep snakes as pets, but they learn how to handle them, and know better than to let them loose unattended.  If you are going to keep an electronic snake in your home, remember to keep a close eye on it, and never let it teach your children.  Abdicating your responsibility as parents is aiding and abetting the enemy.

For I have told [Eli] that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons did bring a curse upon themselves, and he restrained them not, 1 Sam 3:13.

Dene Ward

We just finished helping my mother move up here near us, probably the last move she will ever make.  She has accumulated a lot in 87 years.  Even though she gave away at least half of her kitchen equipment and several pieces of furniture, as the movers traipsed in and out and the little house begin to fill, we no longer said, “In the living room,” or “In the back bedroom.”  By the end we were telling them, “Just find an empty corner and put it there.”  True, the house is 100 square feet less than the one she left, but that’s only a 10 x 10 room, perhaps one very small bedroom, and there seems to be many more times that much furniture we have yet to find a place for.  It appears that she will need to give away even more.

    I found myself thinking what I might give up when we need to leave this place we have lived for 33 years now.  Relatively small as family homes go, just 1350 square feet, we still managed to raise two boys to manhood and have accumulated far more than will fit in a house the size of my mother’s new one.  So what can I do without?

    The answer is really simple.  You can do without practically every possession you have.  Just look at what we take camping.  It’s a lot to take for a vacation, but for living, it’s practically nothing and we manage just fine for well over a week.  

    But maybe the answer is even easier than that.  What will you take in the moving van when you die?  Absolutely nothing.  It will be empty from front to rear, top to bottom.  Absolute essentials for this physical life may be the smallest and plainest amounts of food, clothing, and shelter, but for your spiritual life, all those things that you spend so much time picking out, caring for, and working to pay for are completely nonessential  

    So why do we spend so much time and energy on them?  Why do we care so much where we live and how it is decorated, what we wear and who designed it, what we eat and how good it tastes?  Could it be because we have forgotten this fundamental truth:  things of this life—possessions, status, wealth, connections—none of it matters to the wise child of God.  

Do they matter to you?  If you could not give them up, they matter more than you probably want to admit.  And if losing them would turn you into an emotional wreck, your priorities need a serious overhaul.

Today, think about that moving van on the day of your death.  It doesn’t really matter what you might like to put in it.  Your soul is going somewhere, but it won’t move an inch.

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him, Ps 49:16-17.

Dene Ward