I told you yesterday that I had googled “reasons for abortion” and had found a couple of articles, but in that post I only told you about one of them.  I also found one of the most self-serving articles I have ever read with a title so long I won’t bother now to type it out, but it started, “Ten Reasons I am Pro-Abortion,” and the author is Valerie Tarico.  Let’s just go over some of her statements today.

              1.  Abortion is “fundamental to female empowerment and equality.”  What is this world all about any more except me and my rights?  We fight this in the church all the time, just as Paul fought it in the first century.  We are to be willing to “suffer wrong,” actually yielding our rights for the sake of others--I Cor 6,8, Rom 14, Phil 2—need I go on?  The whole mentality is the opposite of being Christlike.  Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me. Rom 15:1-3.  Yielding our rights and subjecting ourselves to one another, whether male or female, is what Christianity is all about.

              2.  Taking pregnancy “as it happens” instead of planning it, and by inference removing what is unplanned, “trivializes pregnancy.”  On the contrary, treating pregnancy like something listed on a schedule trivializes it.  Babies are not some kind of item we need to remember to pick up at the market before we get home, or can toss in the trash if we don’t want them.  Even when it just “happens,” the people of God have always considered …children a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Ps 127:3

              3.  “Real people” are more important than a fetus.  And there you have the perennial justification.  A fetus is not a person.  God says otherwise, period.  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you… Jer 1:5.  But our society no longer has any respect for God or his Word, and with that perspective it can justify anything.  This woman even compared an unborn child to a hamster, and the hamster came out ahead.

              4 and 5.  Abortion can “fix our mistakes” or “fix tragic accidents.”  We now live in a society that blames our mistakes on others, or that thinks we should bear no consequences from them.  Unfortunately life is not like that and trying to pretend that it ought to be is foolish.  Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. Gal 6:7.  Indeed this argument is not about fixing mistakes or accidents, but about making me unaccountable for my sin.  There we go again—sin, a horribly old-fashioned word for something that no longer exists anyway, not to a godless society.

              6.  Abortion is “good economics.”  And by that of course, we are talking about having the money to raise a child.  I am so happy for her that she is part of a family that can eventually reach a point where they can “afford” a child.  If we had waited till we could have afforded them, we would never have had children at all.  Is she saying in all her wisdom that poor people should be neutered?  My children survived on hand-me-downs and happiness.  I do not believe either one of them feels deprived.  ​“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ​Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Matt 6:25-30.

              7 and 8.  Abortion is “a way to form a family of your own choosing,” and not having access to legal abortion would be “a violation of our values.”  Let me be clear that I am not against contraceptive measures being used by a married couple.  I am not against choosing the number of children you want to have as far as you can control with those contraceptive measures.  Medical science has made that possible today without the killing of conceived infants.  However, notice the attitude in these two statements.  It’s all about me and what I think, not about the eternal principles of right and wrong.  Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Isa 5:20-21.

            9 and 10.  Abortion is for the sake of the “happiness of the unborn” and to “give them a healthier start.”  What we’re talking about here is aborting defective babies.  As someone who was born with a birth defect, let me tell you exactly how angry this one makes me.  Does this writer think I am not happy?  Does she think I was not loved and cared for like a “perfect” child?  How dare she make those judgments for me and intimate that it would have been better for me if I had not been born!  How dare she say that I was not worth the trouble and expense to my parents or society!

            But folks, we will never win this argument because as Christians we will never come at it from the perspective of selfishness, materialism, and irreverence.  And we have no hope against someone who claims that her views on abortion prove that she “believes in mercy, grace, and compassion.”  We obviously do not even speak the same language.
   
            At some point, our task becomes one of keeping ourselves from being infected by this insidious attitude.  We must avoid anything that smacks of selfishness.  We must treat all things spiritual as the priority in our lives.  We must hold God and His Word in reverence, obeying every command and living a life of holiness and righteousness.  We may never change the minds of the godless, but we can keep our own hearts pure, and our actions and attitudes mirror images of the Lord’s. 
 
 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 1Pet 2:11-12
 
Dene Ward

It was my ten year high school reunion, the only one I have ever attended.  I graduated in a class of 800 so I wasn’t exactly pining to see a lot of close, old friends.  I did manage to find four I had known fairly well, but even that turned into a bit of a fiasco.  That sweet girl, someone I thought of as like-minded in her dress, speech, and actions, whose boyfriend became a West Point cadet, both of whom were decidedly to the right in their politics, was now, ten years later, an abortion clinic nurse.  I was absolutely flabbergasted and physically ached when I heard it.

              So then my dear husband began talking about a “case” he knew of.  He told her about this very young teenager who had gotten herself pregnant, but not by her fiancé.  She was very poor, and she was from a town where the social ramifications would be devastating.  “What would be your advice?” he asked my old friend.

              “An abortion,” she immediately replied.  “Teen pregnancies are dangerous to both mother and child and how will she support it?  Assuming her boyfriend and she do eventually marry, how fair is it to expect him to raise someone else’s child?  And why put herself through the torture that we all know society wreaks with unfair judgments?  Her life will be ruined.”

              All of a sudden I knew exactly where this was going, and waited for him to deliver the punch.  “The young woman’s name was Mary and you just killed Jesus,” he said.

              Even though this was in the 80s before search engines ever existed, all you have to do is google “reasons for abortion” and you will find his points exactly.  I did.  One article listed these:  poverty, teen pregnancy, relationship issues, parental upset and fear of what others will think.  There it is in a nutshell:  Mary, who would have entered betrothal to Joseph at about 13 (the kiddushin), who was so poor she had to offer the “poor people” sacrifices at the birth of her son, who lived in a society where she would have been stoned had not the Romans forbidden it and where even her betrothed was planning to divorce her—that’s how binding a betrothal was.  And every abortion doctor in the world would have advised her to terminate that pregnancy.      

           And where would we all be because, congratulations!  You just murdered the Messiah. 

               Aren’t we glad she did not?
 
And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; and she lifted up her voice with a loud cry, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Luke 1:41-42
 
Dene Ward

Medicine is a wonderful thing, but sometimes the cure is as bad as the disease.

            I have been on several heavy-duty medications for several years now.  Normal people who have the surgeries I have had do not need the medications after the surgery.  The new lens, or the shunt, or the tube fixes the problem.  By now you know that nothing is normal with me.  For me the surgery just makes the medicine work again after it has stopped—for awhile anyway.  Not even the new devices can keep up with the problem on their own.

            Eyeballs are fragile organs.  The sclera, or skin of the eyeball, protects the inner workings, but when the sclera is compromised due to chemicals, even those especially designed for a human eyeball, things become difficult.  My sclera is drying up.  I use saline drops copiously to fight this, but it is not enough.  At night especially, when I am asleep and cannot pour in those drops on a regular schedule, the dry factor is multiplied.  Eventually the eyelid sticks to my eyeball.  

            The first time this happened and I tried to move my eye in my sleep (all that REM sleep, you know) the pain woke me.  Then I could not get my eye open.  Not realizing the problem, I just yanked it open.  If you can imagine what it would feel like to have Velcro eyelids, that’s what it was like.  It just “ripped” open.  I thought I even heard the rip, but it might have been me screaming, “Yeow!” 

          What happened?  The doctor said I ripped off the surface cells of the eyeball.  I have learned to wake up completely, put saline in the corner and turn my head so the drops seep under the eyelid and loosen it before trying to open my eyes in the middle of the night.   This happens every couple of hours.  As you can imagine, a good night’s sleep is no longer possible.

            And they say that this little method of mine is not enough.  That just the eyelid rubbing on the surface of this chemically dried out eyeball is causing ocular erosion—or erosion of the eyeball, you might say.  What to do?  Nothing.  I need the medication and I my eyeball needs its eyelid.  If either were missing, worse things would happen.

            God designed his church that way.  We are supposed to need one another.  We are supposed to have such a close relationship that if we were ripped apart the pain would be unbearable.  You know why discipline doesn’t work?  Because we wait till the sinner has moved so far from us he doesn’t even notice the separation we make, much less hurt enough to yell, “Ow!” 

            Paul told the Corinthians that the next time they were together they were supposed to withdraw from the adulterous sinner.  He didn’t say, “Wait till everyone has had a chance to go see him.”  You won’t find that command anywhere in the New Testament.  The reason we think it’s there is because we misapply that discipline.  It is supposed to be medicine for the sick.  We wait so long it becomes burial for the dead, and then of course we want everyone to go see the person—we wouldn’t want to bury him alive by mistake.  If you were sick and about to die, would you want everyone to have a chance to come see you and tell you to take the medicine before anyone actually brought it to you?! 

          Then there is the problem of “privacy.”  No one wants to be as close to his brethren as those first century Christians were because, “It’s none of your business.  It’s my life, not yours.”  We need to get over that.  If we were as close as we should be, as close as an eyelid to an eyeball, we would know when people need help before it’s too late.  We would be taking care of one another’s needs.  With extended family living arrangements a thing of the past in our mobile society, it is especially important.  More marriages would be saved if we all knew when the problems started, not when they reached the point they could no longer be hidden.  Every sin works that way.

          Even physical needs are to be met by our brethren when there is no family around to do it.  I don’t know what we would have done without our church family carting me back and forth to doctor appointments, as many as five a week, picking up medications, bringing us meals and cleaning our house after all these procedures.  Keith couldn’t take that much time off work, and we had no one else nearby.  I learned to stifle my pride and accept help, to be willing to tell people what I needed when they asked, and I learned that God’s plan works when we let it. 

          We are supposed to be close to one another.  We are supposed to help one another.  We are supposed to know each other’s needs, even those private ones we don’t want others to know about.  It is supposed to hurt when we are ripped apart, not only from God, but from each other.  That’s why we stay close, why we don’t leave, why we ask for help when we need it and take help, and advice, when it is offered.
           
          Let God’s wisdom work for you today.
 
And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers…And all that believed were together and had all things common, and they sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all, according as any man had need.  And day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart, Acts 2:42,44-46.
 
Dene Ward

I was the typical first timer, scared to death that I would not know what labor was when it actually hit me.  All I had ever seen were television and movie versions of labor where the woman grabs her rounded abdomen and gasps, so that is what I expected.  Turns out I was right to worry.

            About twelve days before my due date I suddenly began having contractions.  This was surely it, I thought.  I told Keith and we waited it out for a couple of hours as they gradually faded, never having hurt at all.  Yes, they were the old Braxton Hicks contractions, so named for the English doctor John Braxton Hicks, who finally figured them out.  Some people call them “practice labor,” but that practice did not help me a bit.

            Four nights later I sat at the table trying to finish up a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  We lived in Illinois and I had been stuck inside most of the winter because I did not have a coat that would fit around me, so I wiled away some of the long hours with puzzles. 

            I had come close to finishing that night, when about 10 pm I noticed a little twinge in my back.  Pregnant women have backaches all the time so I thought nothing of it.  But about 2:00, when I had still not been able to get to sleep, that twinge suddenly became stronger.  “But this can’t be labor,” I thought.  “It’s just a bad backache.” Then my water broke.  Good thing because that was my only clue that it was indeed labor, a labor that, counting the time from 10:00, only lasted six and a half hours, and never found its way around front.  I might not have made it to the hospital on time if I had not suddenly found myself awash with the evidence.  At 4:45, I had a posterior birth, sunny-side-up the nurses call it, a nine plus pounder, twenty two inches long who, because of my anatomy and his size, could not make the final turn.  When that happens you get “back labor,” which is why I did not recognize it. 

            Two years and one week later, a day before my due date, I was in the front yard weeding my flowers.  We were in South Carolina this time so that early in May my plants were already blooming.  Suddenly I felt a little twinge in my back.  This time, because of my previous experience, I paid attention.  A half hour later I felt another.  Five hours later another sunny-side-up nine plus pounder entered the world.  This time I was ready for it because I could now tell the difference between false labor, a pregnant backache, and back labor.

            The Hebrew writer tells us, But solid food is for fullgrown men, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil, 5:14.  That tells me that sometimes deciding what I need to do in a given situation is not always a simple matter.  Just like I had to learn from experience what was and wasn’t labor, sometimes I need to “discern” the Word to decide between good and evil, or maybe between good and better.  In fact, “discern” is translated “decide” in 1 Cor 6:5 ASV, “weigh what is said” in 1 Cor 14:29 ESV, and determining what makes things “differ” in 1 Cor 4:7 ASV.  God gives us guidelines and we must determine the best course of action, always following those guidelines. 

             The Pharisees had a difficult time with this.  They took the easy way out and simply followed a set of rules without weighing the circumstances, and where there were no rules, they made some up.  Their guideline was often their own best interests.  “Instead of taking care of your aging parents, you must give to the Temple treasury,” they preached, Mark 7:11.  In other words, God always trumps people.  And even if that money never was given, as long as it was declared “dedicated to God” (Corban) they could keep it for their own use and not be counted guilty for not honoring their parents.

            Though it was told as a story, one can easily imagine the priest and the Levite saying, “Going to the temple services is more important than stopping to help this poor man because God must always come first,” in Jesus’ narrative of the Good Samaritan.  It perfectly fit their little formula for how to determine the “right” course of action.  What they forgot was that serving his children is one way we serve God—“inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.”  They would pull their oxen out of the ditch, but castigate our Lord for healing on the Sabbath.  Their pious formula, “God trumps people” was an out that served only to make him angry, Mark 3:5.

            Jesus said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone, Matt 23:23.  They had forgotten the obligation to “discern,” to “weigh things out,” and make a decision based on years of experience with God.  And maybe that is our problem, too—we don’t have enough experience with God in his word.

            Over and over Jesus reminded those people that it was not simply a matter of a rote following of the Law. Sometimes you have to think, “What is the greater good here?”  That “good” must always be lawful, which should go without saying or it would not be “good,” but when our decisions always ignore grace and mercy, we are forgetting the very thing that caused our Savior to die for us.  How can we possibly think we will receive those things from him?
 
And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless, Matt 12:7.
 
Dene Ward

Beta blockers are wonderful things if you have high blood pressure.  They block the effects of the hormone epinephrine, which we usually call adrenaline.  In doing so they lower both your pulse and your blood pressure and open the blood vessels allowing blood to flow more easily, at least that is what the Mayo Clinic website tells me.

            I do not have high blood pressure.  I do have narrow angle glaucoma, complicated by severe nanophthalmus and a handful of other things, so I take four eye medications, several of which contain beta blockers to help lower eye pressure.  So, because my blood pressure is not high, it is now very low, as is my pulse.  High these days is 100/70 and it often runs 90/60 with an accompanying pulse no higher than 60—and that’s when I am excited.  It usually runs much lower than that.  In my recent bout with kidney stones, the alarm they hooked me up to in the ER kept going off because my pulse kept dropping to 40.  Even experienced nurses have difficulty finding my pulse and it often takes two or three tries to get any blood pressure reading.  I told Keith a few weeks ago, if I ever pass out, please make sure they call an ambulance instead of the coroner’s van.

            Needless to say, I do not have much energy these days.  I wear out quickly.  Doing anything in the evening when the usual weariness of the day compounds the problem is a major ordeal.  But do I mind?  Not on your life—I can still see well enough to function, something no one would have predicted 20 years ago.  But I do have to fight exhaustion constantly.

            Sometimes our spiritual vital signs sound an alarm to the people around us.  We may not notice, but they can see the flagging interest and sagging strength.  So I wondered what sort of spiritual beta-blockers we ought to be looking out for.

            The biggest may be distractions in our lives.  It is possible to be too busy—not with sinful things, but completely neutral things, maybe even good things.  Work, entertainment, exercise, travel, sports, the hours we spend on social media and keeping our eyes glued to a screen of some sort all rob us of time we could be spending on thoughtful meditation or  becoming more familiar with God’s word.  Shame on us, we do it to our children too, and often as yet another status symbol.  We enroll them in everything possible and rob them of their childhood by running them back and forth and driving them literally to exhaustion—not to mention the pressure on them to succeed in every single one of these activities.  Do children even know how to play anymore?  I remember having voice students nearly fall asleep standing up!

            Failure to communicate with God may be one of the biggest spiritual beta blockers.  How can we expect to know Him, to know how to please Him, to know why we should want to please Him, to know the direction He wants us to take when we ignore His Word and never speak to Him except at meals—if He’s lucky!  Of course our faith will weaken—our faith is in a Who not a what, and knowing that Who is absolutely necessary to keep from losing it.

            This one may sound a little strange, but bear with me.  Sometimes our busyness is not a busyness in worldly endeavors, it’s a busyness in good works, and even that busyness can weaken us. 

            In Twelve Extraordinary Women John MacArthur says, “It is a danger, even for people who love Christ, that we not become so concerned with doing things for Him that we begin to neglect hearing Him and remembering what He has done for us.  We must never allow our service for Christ to crowd out our worship of Him.  The moment our works become more important than our worship we have turned the true spiritual priorities on their heads…Whenever you elevate good deeds over sound doctrine and true worship, you ruin the works too.  Doing good works for the works’ sake has a tendency to exalt self and depreciate the work of Christ.  Good deeds, human charity, and acts of kindness are crucial expressions of real faith, but they must flow from a true reliance on God’s redemption and His righteousness…Observe any form of religion where good works are ranked as more important than authentic faith or sound doctrine and you’ll discover a system the denigrates Christ while unduly magnifying self.” 

            I have seen people literally work themselves to death for others, visiting, carrying food, taking the elderly to the doctor, cleaning houses and doing yard work and then when their lives take a tragic turn, fall completely apart.  In all their “doing” they had neglected to shore up their own faith with time for prayer, personal Bible study, and taking a real interest in the studies offered during the usual assembly times or extras on the side.  Their lack of theological understanding left them floundering for answers they had never taken the time to look for and learn, and then when they needed them, they had nothing lean on.

            And so in all these cases, the blood pressure plummets and the pulse fades and soon they may be gone.  I am sure you can think of other spiritual beta blockers.  Today, for your own good, look for them in your life.  How long has it been since you gave yourself a good shot of spiritual adrenaline—zeal? 
if you suffered a spiritual collapse, should we call an ambulance or a hearse?
 
…“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Eph 5:14-16
 
Dene Ward

Being in the hospital is the pits.  My past two or three experiences have confirmed that.  They nearly gave me insulin once even though I am not diabetic.  If I had not spoken up and questioned the nurse, no telling what might have happened.  As she discovered, that shot was meant for my roommate. 
And speaking of roommates, you never know how that will turn out.  The last one I had was decidedly unfriendly.  After the nurses deposited me on the bed from the ER gurney, I reached across to pull back the curtain and introduce myself.

            “Don’t you dare open that curtain!  I want it shut!” screamed my companion of the next two days.  She then talked on her cell phone half the night and rang the call button every fifteen minutes.  I never did get a wink of sleep.

            Then there was the unexpected bath I received when the nurse, instead of pushing the meal tray out of the way, tried to reach across it to scan my bracelet.  She managed to upend the pitcher of ice water all over me and my umpteen stitches.

            And finally, the food, especially after surgery—broth, coffee, juice, and jello.  Yum, yum.  Barely 18 hours after being sliced from hither to yon, my breakfast was brought in, but I was alone and could not sit myself up.  The tray was barely at eye level.  I could only see things that stood up above its lip.  I saw a dark brown mug and a white one.  I tasted each and could not tell the difference, but it only made sense that the coffee would be in the dark brown one, so I drank a little of that.  One of my grandfathers used to say about weak coffee, “You could see a minnow a mile deep in it.”  That pretty well describes how that cupful tasted.

            Keith came in mid-morning and was there to help when the lunch tray arrived, identical to the breakfast tray except for an added glass of tea.  He reached down and picked up a packet, tore it open and sprinkled it in yet another dark brown mug.  “Here’s your broth,” he said as he handed it down to my level.

            Suddenly a bell rang in the back of my mind.  “When you came in did you see one of those packets on the breakfast tray?”  Yes, it turns out he had.  What I had been drinking was the hot water meant for that packet of instant bouillon, which I had been too low to see.  No wonder the “coffee” tasted so weak.

            Sometimes we settle for hospital broth for our souls.  Modern philosophies, sectarian –isms, and various “spiritual” folderols fill our hearts and our minds with about as much nourishment as a mug of hot water.  Yet our spirits obviously hunger for that type of guidance, or why would those things appeal to so many? 

            The Word of God is there for us, meat for our souls, and sustenance for our lives.  Is it too strong to suit us?  Does it burn a little going down?  That’s what happens when you get real food instead of pap.  Sometimes you have to work a little harder at chewing, and a lot harder at digesting, but the nourishment is far greater than anything man has to offer.

            We have ample evidence that God’s word is real, that it was written not by fallible men but by writers inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the words of God.  No other book has ever passed such difficult tests of authenticity as it has. If you want to study those things, I can give you the names of books and authors that will satisfy you in that regard--if you have not already decided not to be satisfied.  For many the Bible is too ordinary, too sensible, not fanciful enough to satisfy their vision of spiritual fulfillment.

            Another reason people want to dismiss the Bible is that it calls them to accountability.  If this is the Truth, I must answer to a Creator for how I have conducted my life.  So many want a belief system that lets them be God by allowing them to decide how they should live, but even they, if they are honest with themselves, eventually see the fallacy in that.  We cannot see above the lip of the hospital tray.  We need someone whose perspective is farther reaching to tell us which road to take, someone who can see the bouillon packet and tell us about it, someone like a God who loves us and only wants what is best for us. 

            Take a good long drink from the Word of God today, and really start to live.
 
Ho, every one that thirsts, come to the waters, and he that has no money; come buy, and eat; yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies not? Listen diligently unto me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live: and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David, Isa 55:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

I went on my first diet when I was 13.  I lost 15 pounds in two months. I ate so many boiled eggs it’s a wonder I didn’t start cackling.  That was just the beginning.  I bet in my lifetime I have lost a whole person—maybe two. 
For a while I had it under control—I had begun to jog 30 miles a week, and the weight melted off—thirty pounds in 6 months and though a few pounds came back on when I started eating like a human being again and had to cut it down to 20 miles a week due to an increasing load in the studio, I settled into a comfortable weight that stayed that way until my feet gave out on me and two surgeries made jogging impossible.  When I could no longer maintain the new lifestyle, the weight came back on.

            And isn’t that the reason we lose new converts?  Instead of carefully maintaining our contact with them, teaching them, encouraging them, spending time with them one on one and in small groups as well as expecting them to attend the services, we think we’ve “got them” and do nothing.  Especially if these folks have come from a background completely alien to “church,” they will need constant help maintaining their faith.  They will need brothers and sisters to help them change their lifestyles just like I had to find the time for jogging and keep a strict diet too if I were going to maintain my weight loss.  Once I went back, even a little, to the old lifestyle, the weight came back on, and once they go back to their lifestyles, that first excitement will wane and there they go—right back down the road they walked before.  After all, they had walked it a whole lot longer than the new one.

            You know why this happens?  Because we are too busy to spend the time taking care of them.  We do not want to be bothered.  Why, we have lives too, you know.  Is that what we said when we brought a new life into this physical world?  Did we tell our newborns we didn’t have time to feed them, to change them, to get up at all hours in the night to take care of them?  If we had, we would have been no different that the ancient Romans who used to put unwanted babies out on the trash pile.  Infanticide we would call it now.

            And every time we let a new convert slip through the cracks because no one cares enough to spend the time it takes to nurture them along, we are guilty of spiritual infanticide.  Changing your lifestyle is hard.  We need to love these young souls enough to help them with the process.  Gaining back unwanted weight is not nearly so dangerous as gaining back an unholy lifestyle.
 
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” Rom 15:1-3                                                                                                                   

Dene Ward

I can’t really believe it.  I was going through all those painful physical therapy exercises you have to do to keep moving when you have injuries or surgeries, and to keep my mind off the pain and the endless repetitions, I flipped on a channel that runs only old shows, about the only kind I can stand to watch any longer.  On a defunct old program I suddenly heard something profound enough to catch my attention.  A character was complaining about his life and how bad he felt.  Another character looked at him and said, “If you want to feel better, take a pill.  If you want to BE better, face the truth about yourself.”

            I stopped mid-rep, losing count completely.  What was that I heard?  I repeated it to myself at least three times so I wouldn’t forget it—maybe—and it was weighty enough a thought that it did stay with me until I could write it down.  “This one I must use sometime,” I thought, and then suddenly realized that God has been using it for millennia, sort of.

            “Face the truth about yourself,” we say.  He says:

            Be not wise in your own eyes…Prov 3:7.

            There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death, Prov 16:25.
            Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart, Prov 21:2.
            There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth, Prov 30:12.
            He feeds on ashes, his deluded mind deceives him, he cannot rescue himself,,,Isa 44:20.
            Let no one deceive himself.  If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise, 1 Cor 3:18.
            For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself, Gal 6:3.
            If anyone thinks he is religious but does not bridle his tongue and deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless, James 1:26.

            Your head should be spinning by now.  How many times have I deceived myself into ignoring rebukes and shunning well-intentioned advice?  And then, when it all falls apart and I am left hurt and weeping, did I ever once stop and think over that advice and those rebukes again and think maybe—just maybe—I should have listened?  Maybe—just maybe—I am not as astute as I seem to think I am.  Oh, I say the right words (“I am not perfect”), but when the fruit reveals itself in my actions, everyone knows I cannot be reasoned with because “My case is different.”  So many people think themselves the exception to the rule that you wonder why God bothered to write a guidebook for us—it doesn’t apply to anyone!  Oh wait, I know why!  For ME to correct everyone else.

            A rebuke should make me stop and consider, not stomp and smolder.  Yes, that is still difficult.  I am not sure it ever becomes easy.  But those scriptures up there say that if I do not consider, the vengeance I wreak with my answering anger to the one who cared enough to try, will only destroy me.

            “If you want to feel better, take a pill.  If you want to BE better, face the truth about yourself.”
 
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. Jas 1:22-25
 
Dene Ward

I had an extra long wait at the doctor’s office recently.  The former retina doctor had found a place in a private practice in Buffalo and moved on.  The new retina doctor was trying to catch up on all the canceled appointments, plus all the emergencies.  Then there was me—my specialist wanted him up to speed on my case so when we needed him in a pinch—a huge risk for all my procedures is retina detachment--he would know what was going on.  So I had plenty of time to look around at my fellow patients.

            A small-statured elderly couple sat discussing where to go for lunch.  Since it was only 9 am I knew they were experienced at waiting in this clinic.  A young black woman in gray pants and white top, sported a huge bandage on one eye and was obviously nervous—she sat bouncing one leg almost uncontrollably.  Another man, white haired and just as obviously not worried, dozed in his blue chair.  A forty something woman, a new patient it looked like, sat hunched over, filling out one of those seemingly endless forms on a clipboard.  A middle aged man in a gray fleece jacket wore the heavy dark glasses of a cataract patient.  A stylish young Hispanic woman in a brown pantsuit and heels chattered on a cell phone.  A sixty something woman in a gray coat sat reading a book, chuckling every few minutes.  A young couple sat together, too quiet, holding a sleeping infant, and occasionally looking at one another with large frightened eyes.  Something was wrong with their precious child and they were afraid of what it might be.

            We were all there for the same reason—to see a man labeled a great physician by his own medical association.  Each one of us had our own anxieties and our ways of dealing with them.  None of us had any thought for the others at all.  I think that may be the problem with some churches.  None of the members have any idea of the problems the others are going through and they really don’t want to know either.  Is that how we think the church is supposed to work?

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith, Rom 12:10,13,15,16; Gal 6:10.

          We cannot fulfill those commandments without knowing one another.  We cannot fulfill those commandments without taking down the privacy fences and sharing our problems with one another.  We cannot fulfill those commandments without building a sense of trust in one another, a safe place where we know our problems will be held in confidence and not judged by self-righteous hypocrites.

            We are all here to see the Great Physician.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we all need him and the forgiveness and grace he offers.  But one of the rules in his waiting room is, “In as much as you have done it to the least of these my brethren you have done it also to me,” Matt 25:40.  If I want his help, I must offer it to others.  If I want his help, I must not be too proud to accept it from others.  If I want his help, I must join in with all who want his help, caring even more about them than I do myself.  We cannot sit here ignoring one another, each in his own world, and expect to have our turn in his office.  He will simply cancel the appointment.
 
And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints, 1 Thes 3:12,13.
 
Dene Ward

It started the night before, a strong pain in my lower abdomen, a little lower than an appendix might be, I thought, so I ruled that out, and slowly it began to subside and I managed a little sleep that Saturday night.  The next morning all was fine, but just as I finished dressing for morning services, it started again, even stronger this time and it gradually spread up over my right hip and around to my back.  Suddenly memories came flooding back to me.  I had two 9+ pound baby boys, one 21 inches and the other 22, and they were both posterior—“sunny side up.”  That meant all my labor was back labor, and here for the first time in over 35 years, I was having it again.
 
           “Kidney stones,” my doctor told me and sent me straight to the emergency room.  Notice that:  “emergency” room.  Doesn’t that mean everyone should be hustling around to make this pain go away?  But no, I had to answer a couple dozen questions, then list medications, then get the vitals, all while leaning over trying not to groan too loudly, before I even got my own little room in the back. 
             
            And what happened there?  More waiting while people strolled around, talking to one another about their Saturday night fun, ostensibly giving orders on my behalf but no one treating it like orders.  And while I lay curled in a fetal position in that sterile little room on that narrow gurney, surrounded by stainless steel trays on which stood clear glass jars of cotton balls and swabs, pink plastic tubs, bedpans, blue open-backed hospital gowns, and plastic squeeze bottles of clear, blue, and orange liquids, up on the wall for my amusement hung a television.  SpongeBob SquarePants cavorted soundlessly with his fellow weirdos.  Really?  SpongeBob?  This is how you treat an emergency?  I lay there strongly tempted to start my Lamaze breathing—if I could only remember how to do it.  Maybe if I actually gave birth, someone would notice.

           Of course that was not a life-threatening emergency, even if it did feel like one.  I am sure if my heart had stopped, someone would have come running.  At least I hope so.  But isn’t that exactly the way we treat soul-threatening emergencies all the time?  No big deal.  We’ve got time to talk to him.  We’ve got time to teach them the gospel.  We’ve got time to bring that lost sheep back to the fold before a wolf gets him for good.  Do we?

             I understand “speaking truth in love” and I do my best to do that all the time.  But some people define that so narrowly that sin-sick people do not get the treatment they need for their desperately—terminally—ill souls.  Our culture has raised a generation that cannot take correction of any kind unless it is so camouflaged it completely slips past them as correction.  “Woe is me.  Someone dared to tell me I was wrong about something.  Someone actually hurt my feelings by rebuking me.  Poor little me.”  And in society in general, that means the corrector is rebuked, usually unjustly, and the one in the wrong gets off scot free—in fact, he usually becomes a hero.  “Look at the poor mistreated miscreant who stands against injustice!”  And let’s riot a little if such doesn’t occur.  Don’t think for a minute it doesn’t happen in the church. 

           And so instead of treating him like someone in need of emergency care, we give him a comfortable little room with SpongeBob prancing on the TV, followed by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as I recall—I was in there for both of those two shows and the beginnings of another before my problem was even diagnosed (even though we already knew what it was) and dealt with.  Good thing it was kidney stones.  I wasn’t likely to die of that.  But there are souls out there who need a good dose of medicine to even have a chance of saving them, and we’re just patting their hands and watching TV with them while they fade off into an eternity in Hell.
 
And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Jude 1:22-23
 
Dene Ward