My Tuesday morning class just finished a study of Lamentations, the first study of that book I have ever done.  Which means, of course, that I learned a lot of new things, and despite this being some of the saddest material in the Bible coming as it does immediately after the fall of Jerusalem, I have fallen in love with these little gems.
            That is the first thing I learned.  Lamentations is not one book that we have divided into five chapters.  It is five separate psalms of lament.  Once we figured that out we decided to study each one separately rather than go seamlessly from one to the other and perhaps have to stop in the middle of one if class time ran out and lose the train of thought.
            Another thing we learned:  each lament is an acrostic poem.  The patterns are not always the same, but the use of the Hebrew alphabet is prominent in them all.  In numbers one and two, each stanza has three lines and the first word of each stanza begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, all 22 in order, making 22 verses in our English Bibles.  Number three is a bit more complex.  Each stanza has three lines and each line within the stanza begins with the same letter that is next in the Hebrew alphabet, making a total of 66 verses in our English Bibles.  Number four follows the pattern of numbers one and two except each stanza has only two lines instead of three.  Then you reach number five, which is not an acrostic in the strictest sense, but which still has 22 stanzas in a nod to the Hebrew alphabet.
English poets are prone to look down their noses at acrostic poems as contrived and uncreative.  They served a real purpose in their time.  Those people did not have Bibles lying on their coffee tables.  They were used to listening and memorizing.  Knowing what letter the next stanza began with was a useful tool in that memorization. 
            Acrostics also had literary symbolism.  Using every letter of the alphabet meant a full expression of the emotion under discussion, in this case, grief.  After all this expressiveness, from A to Z we might say, nothing remains to be said.  And a study of these five poems will show you that is so.
            Number one is a poem of overwhelming sadness.  After we went through the verses and the figures of speech, the repeated words and synonyms and the nuances of expression, I read the poem aloud to the class.  They began reading along with me, but one young woman suddenly sat back, closed her eyes a second, then opened them and listened even more intently.  This poem will cut you to the heart.  You will want to weep out loud with this conquered people.
            Number two will shake you to the core.  Anger, fury, indignation, and other synonyms for the wrath of God appear several times both as nouns and verbals.  Enemy, foe, swallowed up, without pity, without mercy leave no question that what has happened is the doing of an angry God.
            Number three dwells on punishment, the reason for all this devastation and ruin, but suddenly turns close to the middle to remind the people that God is faithful.  A good God still punishes sin.  He would not be good if He did not.
            Number four brings home the consequences of breaking the Covenant.  Drawing heavily from Deuteronomy 28, the writer shows them item by item that God had warned them that this would happen, that making a covenant with the Creator involves the personal and corporate responsibility that the people had sworn to so many centuries before.
            Number five rounds out the collection.  Finally a humbled people feels remorse and repents.  They beg God for restoration and renewal, and the writer leaves it with a Hebrew idiom that seems to indicate that God's response will be positive.  After so much pain and terror, there is finally real hope.
            Do you see how the writer covers all the bases with these psalms?  Not only in the acrostics within the poems, but also by changing his focus from one psalm to the other, he has shown every possible emotion the people were feeling after the Babylonians destroyed their nation. 
And that means we can use these words in our own struggles too.  We will all have trials in our lives, but most of us will never experience what these people did.  Surely if their grief can find expression and relief in these words, ours can too. 
 
All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.” “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. (Lam 1:11-12)      
 
Dene Ward

Keith called me outside one Saturday.  I was in the middle of something important and was a little irritated. It is hard enough to do things these days when I have to lean so close, squint so hard, and put up with the resulting headaches trying to see what I am doing.  Then he wants to interrupt me, and I will just have to start all over again.  But I sighed, a louder one than was called for, and dutifully went outside.
            The afternoon sun was waning, for which I was grateful.  No matter how dim the day I have to reach for sunglasses nearly all the time now.  He took me to a shaded spot on the west side of the field and pointed.  Then I saw it, or them as it turned out, probably a hundred dragonflies darting here and there all over the place. 
            He felt bad for me because I could not see them all the time.  In fact, I would not have known what they were had he not told me, but I think my vision of them was the best.  He saw them in the shade as well, when they once again became ugly black bugs, but I only saw them as they came out of the shadows, the sun striking their wings and lighting them up like tiny golden light bulbs.  Then they would disappear, but more would appear in their place, over and over, darting here and there in movements no one could possibly predict.  I think my view was much more magical than his, and therefore far more delightful.  We stood there watching them for several minutes.  I probably could have stood their longer since I had the better view, a view he would never have because he could see so well.
            No matter what we may be going through in this life, God always prepares good things for us, but we will never see them if we always stay inside ourselves, commiserating with ourselves, rewinding over and over the tape of all our troubles till we can recite them from memory to anyone who asks, and even some who don’t.  There is a silver lining somewhere if we just search, and in the searching who knows what treasures we might find? Besides, it will keep us too busy to complain so much.
            Go out there today and look for those silver linings—or the golden dragonflies, or whatever God has specially prepared to help you through this day.  You will find them, but only if you have a mind to.
 
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 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 23:5,6.
 
Dene Ward

I found a verse the other day that intrigued me--for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, Rom 14:17.  While the meaning is obvious—in the context of eating meats sacrificed to idols, Paul is telling them that being in the kingdom is a matter of the inner man not the outer man—I still wondered why those three things were chosen among the many traits describing Christians.
            Before much longer I found Romans 5:1-3.  Those three things are not three separate items, as if they can be chosen one without the other, they are a chain reaction.  I am justified (made righteous), and as a result have peace with God, and that creates joy in my life. 
            Keep reading down to verse 5 in Romans 5, then add 12:12 and 15:13 to the mix and you see that joy is inextricably bound with hope.  The Greeks did not use “hope” the way we use it, a wish for something that could go either way, but as a confident assurance or, as Keith likes to say, “a vision of a certain future.”  Along with the apostle John in 1 John 5:13, I should be able to say, “I know I am saved; I know I have been forgiven; I know I have a relationship with God; I know I am going to Heaven.”  Is there anything that should inspire any greater joy?
            Being joyful does not mean we may not face sad times; it does not mean we must not ever grieve in a trial.  What it does mean is that we will bounce back from those times because joy is the foundation for our lives.  If, instead, I come through a trial with an attitude only toward myself, what I have endured, and what I believe others should be doing for me because of it, my joy has turned into bitterness.  In fact, I have not successfully endured that trial at all. Whenever I allow something to smother my joy, in at least that much I have allowed that thing to be more important to me than my relationship with God. 
            This is easier said than done.  I used to wonder how to have this joy that everyone kept telling me I was supposed to have.  God does not leave us without direction.  Col 1:9-14 gives us several techniques for having joy.  Be filled with the knowledge of Him; walk worthily of the Lord; bear fruit in every good work; give thanks for our salvation.  Do you know what that boils down to?  Focus on the good things and stay busy serving others. 
            Joy is like a glow-in-the-dark toy.  The more I focus on what God has done for me and what he expects me to do for others, the longer I sit in the light and the stronger my glow will be.  But if I sit too long in the shadow of sadness and grief, focusing too long on myself, my joy will begin to fade until eventually it is gone altogether.    
            If you find yourself alone in the dark today, it’s time to come back into the light before your joy disappears, along with the hope that reinforces it.  This is a choice you make, one that has nothing to do with what happens today or what anyone does to you, but with the path you choose to take regardless.              
 
That the proof of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ:  whom not having seen you love; on whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory:  receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:7-9.
 
Dene Ward
 

What has happened to create this doubt [doubt from hidden conflicts] is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God’s place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. … The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem." (Guinness, "God in the Dark," 151–152) 
            "'I am the LORD your God. … You shall have no other gods to set against me' is not only a principle of correct theology but of sound psychology. Whatever assumes in our lives a practical importance that is greater than God will become god to us. And since we become what we worship, to let an unanswerable problem become god to us is the surest way to guarantee that life will be characterized at its heart by defeat." (Ibid., 152, ellipsis in original)

Os Guinness, God in the Dark

A long time ago, when Keith preached for a small country church, he and I used to do our visiting on bicycles.  With two toddlers aged 3 and 1, we each had a child seat over the back wheel of our bikes and off the four of us would go for an afternoon or early evening of making the rounds to our elderly or ill brothers and sisters, or to make new contacts in the rural community whenever someone moved in. 

We rode sometimes as far as five or six miles one way.  We learned the roads far better than we would have by car.  The traffic on the highways was scarce so we could easily avoid the potholes.  We learned to use the center of the dirt roads.  You simply couldn't plow your way through the thick white sand on the corners and edges.  We also learned why lime rock roads are often called washboards.  Talk about vibrations—our teeth were still chattering a half mile after we turned off of one.

We found another good reason to avoid the edges of the roads—snakes!  More than once one of them jerked back from the road and slithered further into the grass it had been just about to leave.  Whenever we passed a flattened rattlesnake or moccasin in the road, we gave a little cheer.

And we also learned about wind.  I was reminded of it the other day when Lucas called and told me his experience with his bike and the wind.  It goes like this.  You are having the greatest ride of your life.  You feel great.  Your legs seem to fly on the pedals.  You can up the gears with impunity and virtually zip down the road.  Then you turn around to head back home.

Suddenly you understand why the ride out was so easy.  You are headed into a wind that had formerly been at your back.  You pedal harder in lower gears.  Your calves and thighs burn.  You begin to huff and puff.  Sometimes you wonder if you are making any progress at all.  And it takes you half again longer to get back home than the ride out.

When I see someone trying to navigate the trials of life without God that's what I think of—pedaling against the wind.  I cannot imagine facing problems without God.  What's the use of it all?  You can't count on help from anyone because, like you, they are all in it for themselves.  You don't believe that anything good will come from it.  You are pedaling into a headwind so strong you will be lucky to even stay in the same place instead of being blown backwards.  Who will listen to your cries?  Who will hold you up when things get even worse?  And why did it happen to you anyway?  Nothing makes sense.  And sooner or later, even if you get through this one, another problem will rear its ugly head and there you go again.

But with God on your side things are different--the wind is at your back.  It may still be a rough ride.  Life can deal you some bad moments.  The French have a phrase:  c'est la vie.  Such is life.  You can't get through it unscathed.  But with God behind you, you know you have help.  You have someone to lean on, to talk to, and to count on.  Because you have His Word in your heart you can make better decisions.  Because you pray you can feel calmer and more content.  Knowing that He will send help through your brothers and sisters, through Providence, through his Holy Spirit, and because you believe He will answer your prayers, you can face the impossible and come through it far better than you might have otherwise.  You know there is a reason—be it learning or growing stronger or refining your soul, you know you will be better on the other side of this affliction.

Are you riding with the wind, or against it?  If you don't have that relationship with God, if you don't know Him through his revelation to us, and if you never bother to talk with him unless you want something, maybe you are headed in the wrong direction.  Just because you sit on a pew, you aren't necessarily on the right road.  It's easy to get bogged down in the sand corners.  Just because you were once baptized into the Lord's body, you aren't necessarily a part of it now.  There is a snake out there just waiting to strike at your ankles.  You need to turn that bike around.  He wants to help you, but He can't as long as you keep riding against the Wind.
 
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isa 40:28-31)
 
Dene Ward
 

On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education that “the doctrine of separate but equal has no place in public education.”  Do you know who “Brown” was?  She was Linda Brown, a black third-grader who had to walk a mile to the all-black elementary school, right through a railroad switching yard, instead of a much shorter seven blocks to an all-white school where she was not allowed.
            Although that decision was a giant step in desegregating American schools, it did not change things immediately.  It was over 11 years later when I had my first black classmate, a seventh grader named Diana White.  She was well-spoken, well-dressed, friendly, smart, and pretty, and I liked her instantly.  At that point, nothing about the Supreme Court ruling had affected me personally at all.  I still walked across the street to school every morning.
            The next year we moved from that small town where grades seven through twelve were all housed in a small school labeled “high school” to the biggest city I had ever lived in, a melting pot of cultures and beliefs that made me feel like I had moved to another country altogether.  Schoolyard fights were common and the bathrooms billowed with cigarette and marijuana smoke. 
            I hated those first two years of what they called junior high, more than twice the number of students I had been with the year before in one-third the number of grades—8th and 9th.  I had discovered that the school year consisted of 120 days and that first year I kept a small notebook in my desk in which every afternoon I marked off a day, from day one to day 120, four vertical lines and a crossbar every week.
            That was also my first experience with busing, which was how that city handled the new laws, and it was not a kind experience.  Instead of riding safely with a parent to the school near my house, I was hauled off five miles in the opposite direction. 
            Most of the upholstery on that old bus was dried out and cracked from the Florida heat, some of the foam padding spilling out, or torn out by bored students, the walls and seatbacks scratched with rusting graffiti, the floors scuffed and covered with gum wads and other sticky things I really didn’t want to contemplate.  The windows stuck either up or down, depending upon who sat there last and how strong he was.  I suppose the engine was in reasonable shape.  It certainly spewed out enough fumes, which then wafted back around the bus and in through the windows.  But that acted as a sort of buffer for the odors of adolescent sweat and far too much Brut and Tabu.
            The first morning I stepped on that bus was like something out of a nightmare.  Even though the county had tacked up a list of rules for all to see, rules that included, “No more than two people per seat,” and, “No standing on the bus,” most of the seats were crammed with three people and the unlucky few who had no friends to save them a seat, stood in the middle.  (It was deemed better to break bus safety rules than to break the federal law that required the busing in the first place.)  I was near the end of the pickup route and I knew no one else on board, so I stood.
            What a ride that was.  I always carried several thick textbooks stacked on the slanted top of a loose-leaf notebook—no backpacks back then.  It was either hold onto the books or hold myself up as we swung around corners and bounced over railroad tracks.  Somehow I managed to grab the metal back of a seat with my right hand while using my left arm to hold my notebook and books tightly up against me so they wouldn’t slide into the floor on the nearly thirty minute ride across town, made so much longer by the frequent stops for railroad crossings and the multitude of traffic lights and school zones we passed through. 
            Before a week was out, though, I had made a friend, another quiet girl as much a fish out of water as I.  She got on the bus three stops before me, when there were still seats available, and she started saving one for me.  That one little thing made the days bearable—I had a place, I belonged.  It meant so much that on the mornings she was absent and I discovered it when I climbed aboard that reeking bus, I nearly cried.
            God understands our longing for a place.  He knows we want to belong, we want to matter to someone.  Into a world where the best you could hope for from capricious, petty, spiteful pagan gods was to go unnoticed, the apostles came preaching about a God who actually cared.  Jesus came preaching about a God who knew you so intimately that he could number the hairs on your head, and who willingly provided you the necessities of life.  The disciples spread the word about a God who sacrificed himself to save, who helped bear burdens, and who offered rest and refreshing from a world sometimes too difficult to bear alone.
            God is saving you a seat on the bus.  Sometimes the bus hits a bump in the road, just as it did for Job.  Sometimes the driver takes a detour you never planned on, just as happened with Joseph.  Sometimes the route is long and the day hot and stifling as you sit among people who reek of the stench of this world, just as has happened to so many who have taken the ride before you.  But you are not alone.  The Lord got on that bus before you.  He will always be there saving you a seat, and after you count off that last day of “school,” he will give you a place where you can “belong” forever.
           
I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Acts 26:18
 
Dene Ward

In this part of Florida we have a little bit of winter.  In fact, we have several spells each year with two or three days of gray, wet, cold that seeps into your bones and makes you wonder why anyone would ever nickname this place “The Sunshine State.”
            Then a morning dawns as clear a blue as you could ever imagine and the sun comes out in a blaze you would swear was even brighter than in summer.  The dog’s fur is warm from lying out in the field instead of burrowing under the porch, and you wish you could lie out there with her.  Now you know why it’s called “The Sunshine State,” and you also know no one up north has these respites, certainly not this degree of warmth in the middle of December, January, or February.  They also don’t have bright yellow jessamine cascading from the tops of trees, and camellias treating you to a mid-winter pink blossom that can withstand even a quick morning’s frost.
            Life is like that for Christians.  God never promised a life without trials any more than He promised a year without winter.  We do our neighbors a disservice when we tell them all their problems will go away if they just hand them over to the Lord.  Casting your burdens on him doesn’t mean they won’t affect you any longer—it means you have all the help you need to handle them.  Why would the help be promised if those problems were going to disappear?
            Paul said he served “the Lord with all tears, and humility, and trials” (Acts 20:19).  James tells us to “count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds” (1:2).  Peter goes so far as to tell us it is necessary for us to be “grieved by various trials” (1 Pet 1:6) and not to think it “strange” when we are (4:12).
            But God does give us reminders of what is to come, things we might call a taste of Heaven here on earth.  He sends it in a strong, godly marriage with two people working together, laughing together, crying together, and growing together as they help each other toward that final Home.  He gives it in that first lusty cry from your child as he enters the world.  He reminds us of that first place we lost in the spring when the azaleas explode in all their color, when the dogwoods shine through the woods like a beacon, and when the birds sing in a cacophony of trills, tweets, chirps, and twitters as they fly back and forth building their nests.  He shows us what He has in store for us as we gather with our sanctified brothers and sisters and raise our hearts in song and encourage one another with love, with advice, and with edification to sustain us during those times not quite so Heavenly tasting.
            We cannot have Heaven now.  We wouldn’t want to give up this world if we did.  So we have troubles, we have tragedies, we grow old and ache and become aggravatingly forgetful and finally learn to long for our true abode instead of being satisfied with second best.  But God does remind us occasionally of how it will be, a little nudge in the right direction so we will eventually make it Home.
 
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, Col 3:1-2.
 
Dene Ward
           

I knew a woman once, a faithful Christian, who believed that crying over the death of a loved one was sinful.  She bravely, some would say, faced the loss of a child to a dread disease with a smile.  No one ever saw a tear leave her eyes.  I know a lot of people who agree with her, a lot of people who would applaud her as “strong and full of faith.”  I don’t.  In fact, that erroneous belief of hers affected both her physical and mental health for the rest of her life.  It also made her unsympathetic to others she should have been best able to comfort. 
            God created us and He made within us the impulse to cry, just as He made other appetites and needs.  He never expected us not to cry, not to mourn, and not to grieve.  Do you want some examples?  Abraham cried when Sarah died, Gen 23:2.  Jonathan and David cried when they realized they would not be together again in this lifetime, 1 Sam 20:41, and David cried again when he heard that Jonathan, and even Saul, were dead, 2 Sam 3:32.  Hezekiah “wept bitterly” when he heard that he had a terminal illness, 2 Kgs 20:3.  Paul wept real tears when he suffered for the Lord, Acts 20:19, and he wept for those who had fallen from the way, Phil 3:19.  Where do we get this notion that righteous, faithful people never cry?
            1 Thes 4:13 does not say we sorrow not over the death of loved ones.  It says we sorrow not as others do who have no hope.  “As” means in the same manner.  Yes we sorrow, but not in the same way.  We know something more awaits us.  Our sorrow is tempered with the knowledge that we will one day be together again, but that does not mean the sorrow ceases to exist—it simply changes. 
            I cried often after my Daddy died, usually when I saw something he had made for me, or given me, or repaired that I had thought was a goner.  He was handy that way, and I miss the care he showed for me in those small gestures.  Even now, writing these things makes my eyes burn and water just a bit, several years after his passing.  But I do not, and I have never, let grief consume me and keep me from my service to God and to others.  I have not let it destroy my faith—my hope—that I will see him again and be with him forever.
            Anyone who thinks that crying is faithless sits with Job’s cold, merciless friends.  Job did cry.  Job did ask God why.  Job did complain with all his might about the things he was experiencing, yet “in all this Job sinned not with his lips” Job 2:10.  What did he get from his friends?  Nothing but accusation and rebuke.  “Have pity upon me, oh you my friends,” he finally wails in 19:21.  Paul says we are to “weep with those who weep,” Rom 12:15.  If weeping were sinful, shouldn’t he have told us to, as Job’s friends did, rebuke them instead?  No, God plainly says at the end of the book that Job’s friends were the ones who were wrong.
            And, of course, Jesus cried.  I have heard Bible classes tie themselves into knots trying to make it okay for Jesus to cry at the tomb of Lazarus.  How about this?  He was sad!  To try to take that sadness away from Him strips Him of the first sacrifice He made for us when He carefully and deliberately put on humanity.  Hebrews says He was “tempted in all points like us yet without sin.”  That means He experienced sadness, and people who are sad cry.
            Do you think He can’t understand our specific problems because He never lost a child? 
            And when he drew near he saw the city and wept over it…O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you would not, Luke 19:41; Matt 23:37.  When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them... How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender, Hos 11:1-4,11.
            Anyone who cannot hear the tears in those words is probably not a parent yet.  God knows what it is like to lose a child in the worst way possible--spiritually.  Don’t tell the Lord it’s a sin to cry.
            I have seen too many people nearly ruin themselves trying to do the impossible.  I have seen others drive the sorrowful away with a cold lack of compassion.  Grieving is normal.  Grieving is even good for you, and God knows that better than anyone since He made our minds and bodies to do just that.  How much of a promise would it be to “wipe away all tears from their eyes” if He expected us to do it now?  In fact, David asks God in a poignant psalm to collect his tears in His bottle—don’t forget that I am sad, Lord.  Don’t let my tears simply fall to the ground and dry up, keep count of them—“keep them in your book” Psa 56:8.  Do you think He would have preserved that psalm for us if crying were a sin?
            If you have lost someone near and dear, if you have received a bad diagnosis, if you have been afflicted in any way, go ahead and cry.  This isn’t Heaven after all.  But don’t lose your faith.  Sorrow as one who does have hope, as the father of the faithful did, as the “man after God’s own heart did,” as one of the most righteous kings Judah ever had did, as perhaps the greatest apostle did, even as the Lord did.  Let it out so you can heal, and then go on serving your Lord.  His hand will be on you, and one day—not now, but one day--He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
 
Dene Ward

Twenty-five years ago my husband was ambushed and shot in the line of duty.  His survival brought about deep gratitude and relief in this house.  Yet there were other trials we still had to endure.  I chastised myself for complaining about them because things could have easily been so much worse.  Yes, the first week was one of abject terror because reprisals had been threatened.  I have never felt so lonely in my life as I rose to look out the windows every night when the dogs barked, especially since he was still recovering from his wounds and unable to do much.  Plus we had to deal with police investigators, attorneys, supervisors all the way up to the Secretary of the Department of Corrections (himself!), and then there was the media.  Add to all those the doctor appointments, physical therapy appointments, hearings, and the accompanying financial problems as he lay out of work for nearly a month.  But, I kept reminding myself, he's alive.
            I had come within a literal quarter inch of having no more socks to pick up, no more shirts to iron, no more toothpaste tubes squeezed in the middle, and no more cough drop wrappers lying by the (missed) trash can, and I was so glad!  If this is the worst trial we have to go through, I will never complain again, I confidently affirmed.
            One year, two months, and ten days later I got irritated over a pair of socks.  Later that same day the water heater sprang a leak.  We live in Florida out in the country, it was summer, and we own a "manufactured home," which is sales-speak for trailer.  Nothing fits right off the shelf and often must be ordered.  Repairmen will sometimes refuse to travel this far out, and when they do it costs plenty.  The only way to stop the leaking (actually pouring) water heater until it was fixed was to turn off the water to the entire house. 
               The next day the air conditioner quit.  Did I mention we live in Florida and it was summer and in a trailer you have seven foot ceilings and no attic space so it is always 10 degrees hotter inside than out—where it was 95 with matching humidity, which meant a heat index of about 110. 
            So what did I do, beginning with those socks?  Complain!  What happened to all those confident assertions? 
            I have always had great disdain for the Israelites.  How could they have possibly been unfaithful to God after all He did for them?  How could they possibly "murmur" (complain) as I Corinthians 10 accuses?  Surely they were the most ungrateful, hardheaded people who have ever lived.  And what did Paul say about them a few verses later?  Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition…(1Cor 10:11).  MY admonition?  I could never be like those people.  Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall (1Cor 10:12).
            Perhaps I have been a little too hard on those people, a little too Pharisaical.  "Thank you, Lord, that I am not like THEM."  But I am--over and over and over.  And aren't we all?
            The disciples rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for Him.  And here I can't even put up with something that has absolutely nothing to do with persecution for my faith.  He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: (Luke 16:10).  If I can't manage the small, I certainly won't manage the things of greater importance.
            It only took a year for things to be back to "normal" for me, complaining, that is.  Pay attention:  the lesson learned from one bad scare won't last if it doesn't cause a change in heart altogether, along with a daily renewing of that change.  I would certainly hate for the Lord to decide I need to go through it all again.
 
I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, because they did not pay attention to my words, declares the LORD, that I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, declares the LORD (Jer 29:18-19).
 
Dene Ward
 

We worked our boys hard when they were growing up, weeding and picking the garden in the heat of a Florida summer, standing in a hot kitchen working the assembly line of produce canning and freezing, mowing an acre’s worth of our five with a push mower—not a walk-behind, but a push mower—splitting and stacking wood for the wood stove, hauling brush, raking leaves, and dumping them for mulch.  After hours of hard labor and buckets of sweat, nothing thrilled them more on a hot summer afternoon than a refreshing dip in a nearby spring.
            Springs, even in Florida, are cold.  It is almost painful to step into one--they will literally take your breath away.  I was one who gradually eased my way in to avoid the shock, but the boys wanted to “get it over with,” and usually jumped off the pier, the floating dock, or the rope swing, whatever that particular spring had as a point of entry, and if I was standing too close I “got it over with” too. 
            One of their favorites was Ichetucknee, probably because that one took up a whole day as we rented tubes and floated down the river from the spring head, leaving the water three hours later when we reached the picnic pavilions.  Even by that point in the float, the river was still close enough to the spring that we could chill a homegrown watermelon in its cool shallows while we ate tomato sandwiches and leftover fried chicken; and we never had to worry about snakes or alligators.
            We were always the only ones around clothed from our necks to our knees so we got a lot of strange looks.  The clothes did not help a bit with the cold.  They were for modesty only.  Nothing about a freezing wet shirt sticking to your body will keep you warm, even in a patch of sunlight.  Yet when I finally got wet enough that a mere splash did not make me squeal, the water was a refreshing respite from the sauna we call summer down here. 
            Peter told the people of Jerusalem that if they repented they would receive “seasons of refreshing” in Acts 3:19.  I am told that the word actually means “breathing,” as in catching one’s breath after hard labor or exercise.  That indicates to me that God is not promising us a life of ease.  Yes, we have blessings that others do not have, and that only those who are spiritually minded can even recognize and enjoy, but we will still experience heartache, persecution, illness, and other trials of life.  We are expected to wear ourselves out with service to any in need, as long as there is life in us.  God has no truck with laziness.
            But we have this promise—as surely as ice cold spring water lapping against an overheated body can refresh and renew, we will have refreshment from above that soothes our aches and heals our hurts, that rests our souls with the peace of fellowship with God, and that bestows grace on our tortured spirits.  Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that he may send the Christ who has been appointed for you, Jesus, Acts 3:19,20.



Dene Ward