daily java

Daily Java:

Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. (Deuteronomy 8:2-4)

I am very rarely ever sick. I will get down and sometimes I will have allergy problems in which I cough and stuff. But as far as getting sick, I rarely am.

But the past few days have been the exception. My temperature ran almost 101, I have been shaking from being cold, I have slept a lot and I have had a really bad cough along with a horrible rasping in my lungs.

But I am through now, it seems. Yesterday my fever broke and today I feel much better.

My friend Jim wrote on my Facebook page, “You’re getting lots better – you now realize God isn't finished with you yet.”

I am not sure that is the exact point of my recovery. Even stupid people get well eventually. But still.

It is humbling to be sick and dependent on someone else. Personally, I hate it. I do not like to be virtually helpless.

Of course, that is the point of marriage: that we help each other through hard times. “For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death you do part.”

Ella and I have always taken that seriously. There have been times when she was incapacitated that I helped her. And vice-versa (whatever that means).

When I was young, early 20’s, we had not been married long, I was promoted in the telephone company to lineman. Since this is the most important basic component of the phone company (dealing as it does with the infrastructure and equipment), it made a good bit more money than taking money out of pay phones.

But first, we had to go through an instruction class on how to climb poles. The pole-climbing school was short, but pretty necessary. The guy who was the main teacher was a kind of cool guy, one that impressed a lot of the guys, including me. Until, that is, he started talking about marriage.

This was, of course, the early 70’s when a lot of thought about marriage was changing among the stupid people. Which included him. He was talking one day about how hard it was to be married and how unglamorous it was. Sooner or later you found yourself having to help your wife up off the toilet because she was pregnant or something. He went on.

I was finished with him. Even at that young an age, I recognized that he was a fool. I had come from a committed relationship as modeled by my parents as had Ella. We had the perfect examples of people depending on each other.

That was what God wanted from the Israelites. What they wanted, though, was for him to feed them and clothe them and otherwise leave him alone, thank you. He wanted to love them, which they wanted also, and for them to love him back, about which they were dubious.

Even though he took care of them for so many years, they still refused to love him back.

I have thought about that guy in the telephone company for the past almost 40 years. He is probably on his fourth wife, and is never able to find anyone that will age according to his standards. He is probably miserable over it, while keeping up the appearance of a bon vivant. Just in general a pathetic guy.

I have known a lot of them over my life, sadly enough. And so often, they end up like Israel, broken down and defeated and bitter.

Not me. I love my Lord and I love my wife and cannot imagine a life without either of them.