the wife of my youth is 60

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. (Proverbs 5:18)

The wife of my youth is 60 and is slowing down. I remember when she was young and it seemed like it would always be that way.

We always figured that I would be the one who would probably become crippled and she would have to take care of me. My feet have always been bad and we just figured they would wear out soon.

As it turns out, my feet are fine and she is wearing out. And the bad thing, there is nothing we can do about it.

As her MS progresses, it gets harder and harder for her to stand and walk, so the job of taking care of her comes to me. And I do not regret it. Except for the fact that I see her deteriorate, I do not mind at all taking care of her.

She has taken care of me all my life. She has followed me around from place to place and made a home for me and our family wherever I was. Now that the children are gone, she makes a home for me.

And even though she has difficulty doing things, at the same time, wherever she is becomes home. Even now, as we are staying in a bedroom in my daughter’s house, when I come in the bedroom and she is there, it is home.

I rejoice in her. I love her and cannot imagine loving anyone else. If I could I would take the illness from her and have it myself. Of course, I cannot, and it becomes a purely academic thing. There is no way I can do it, so it is easy to say I would.

But I like to think so.

It is amazing how our love has grown. We accept each other. We live with each other’s faults (although hers are few) and, for the most part, are past all of the squabbling and power struggles that are so much a part of a new relationship.

It is easy now to sit together, read together, go for drives together. we spend a lot of time together and like it. I talk and she listens, we discuss, things for the most part are smooth.

That is not to say there are not small flare ups. There are. We are human. But they also go away easily.

She is and has always been a blessing to me. and I love her.

daily java

Daily Java:

Tell them all this, but do not expect them to listen. Shout out your warnings, but do not expect them to respond. Say to them, ‘This is the nation whose people will not obey the Lord their God and who refuse to be taught. Truth has vanished from among them; it is no longer heard on their lips. Shave your head in mourning, and weep alone on the mountains. For the Lord has rejected and forsaken this generation that has provoked his fury.’ (Jeremiah 7:27-29)

It is a bitter lesson for a young preacher to learn. No matter how hard you try, no matter who well you preach, no matter who good the sermon is, no matter how sincere you are – people are not going to listen to you.

They will pretend to do so, they want to think that they do, all that. But they will not listen to you.

And it is not because they are stupid or mean or ugly. It is that they are human. And humans do not want to hear things that go against what they want to do.

After all, why are we in this fix in the first place? God made a perfect garden for people to live in, and made perfect people to live there. He gave them one rule: don’t eat the fruit off that tree, the one in the middle of the garden.

The next thing you know, he comes to the garden and they are hiding because they realized they were naked. He asked who told them they were naked. But he knew. They had all the freedom in the world and chose the one thing, the only thing wrong. They ate the fruit on that tree and the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Why did God put it there? He knew they would do that. He knew they would not listen to him. Yet he did it anyway. And they continued to not listen to him until now.

We have that as a characteristic, part of our natures. Tell your kids something and chances are, they will not listen. “Didn’t you hear what I said? you holler. On one level, yes. Sound vibrations went out from your mouth, their ears received the vibrations. But on another level, the vibrations were forgotten the moment they were heard.

God tells us stuff and the vibrations are forgotten the moment they are heard. It is our nature and we fight it all our lives.

But there are those who do not fight it, who just refuse to listen. I want to do my own thing, they will say. I want to do what seems right to me.

A whole nation begins to do that and soon they are known for it. And to be known as a nation whose people will not fear the Lord would be a terrible way to live. It is like children who are known for not obeying their parents. There are always kids like that in any group, kids that everyone knows will not listen to their parents and are always in trouble.

The nation of Israel, the favored people of God, the nation God showered his love on, was destroyed because of this. They just refused to listen. And God told Jeremiah that his job was to tell them but to know from the beginning that they would not listen

What a tragic end to a great nation and a people God had loved.

daily java

Daily Java:

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. (Colossians 1:21-22)

The story of Little Orphan Annie used to be one that people really liked. Annie was a little girl in an orphanage who was adopted by a rich man. Because of this, she got to go on adventures and had a great life. She went from being a poor orphan abused in an orphanage to being the child of a rich man.

The story struck such a chord. It is the dream of all children who do not have a home, finding someone who will love them and take them home with them.

Everybody, no matter who they are, want to belong to a family. We all have that need.

God looked at us. We were without a home, without a family, lost and adrift in the world. And the funny thing is, every person goes through that. Every person finds him- or herself coming to a place where they realize that they are alone.

When God made humanity, he made us to be with him, to walk with him, to talk with him. He never intended that we be alone in the first place. He meant for us to have a face to face relationship with him.

But humanity sinned and continues to do so. Since we sin we cannot be with God. He is holy and we are not. Our systems are diametrically opposed. Yet we want to. It is our makeup to be with him.

So what to do? How do you solve this dilemma? We want to be with God, God wants us to be with him, but it is impossible. We are sinful and he has no sin.

What was done was that Jesus came. He was God yet human. He was human, yet sinless. And he could touch God and us at the same time. In doing this, he brings us to God and makes us part of his family, the family of God.

We were sinful. Now in him we are sinless because God looks at us through Jesus. We were once far away, now we boldly approach the throne of grace where we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most (Hebrews 4:16). Where once we stood outside, now we are in his presence and stand before him.

He loves us. He has always loved us. But our human condition is such that we can choose. And when people choose, they almost always choose the wrong thing. When that happens, we find ourselves outside of God where neither we not he wants us to be.

But we do not have to stay there. We can choose otherwise. And we can choose to be his children, part of his family, basking in his love, immersed in his grace.

But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)

how I could have done better

God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. (Hebrews 4:1)

It is always at this time of day, late at night, that I start thinking about how I could have done better. It makes for a miserable night sometimes thinking about it.

But there is no way to undo what has been done. And there is no way to undo the overwhelming sense of failure that comes over you.

How could you have changed things? How could you make them better now?

I come to a job market that is unfriendly at best to men my age, and I come needing a job. I come needing a place to live. I come needing validity to my ministry and to my very soul.

And I have none of these.

I have rarely ever in my life been afraid. But I find myself that way now. I find myself afraid of letting my wife down, letting my children down, letting my Lord down. And I do not know what to do.

Pathetic to be at this stage in your life. You should be ready to retire and do the things you have always wanted to do. But I am stopped in my life.

And I am afraid that I have let down my Lord somehow. I do not know what to do or where to go. My wife and I are alone and would probably be homeless if not for the generosity of my daughter and her husband.

Of course, one reason we cannot get an apartment right now is because we gave them all our money to pay a very high electric bill. But in that instance, they needed it so what do you do? You help your children.

Unfortunately it puts  you in a bad place.

I sure am tired.

And my wife is getting tired too.

a love/hate relationship with my hair

And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:30)

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my hair.

That sounds silly, but it has never done what I wanted it to do.

When I was younger, I wanted it to go like what I perceived as the beach boy look. That was where the hair kind of went over straight over your forehead. I did everything I could do to get it to do that. The closest I got was at camp when I was twelve or so and hadn’t washed my hair for a whole week. It was so stiff, it pretty much did what I told it. Of course, it was grotesque, but still. What price glory.

When I got into high school, it developed a little wave on the front. It would come over straight and then dip down. I worked trying to get rid of that. One day, someone asked me how long it took to get that curl and it made me angry. They didn’t know how I tried to get rid of it.

After a bit, I realized that the waviness of my hair could look good. I found out that Michael Nesmith and I had very similar hair and he didn’t seem to mind. Of course, what I wanted then was straight hair, as hippie hair was more straight.

I found out about that time that my hair would go into an Afro if I didn’t comb it after washing it. I liked that. But I still fought it.

So I went and got it straightened about 1972 or so. It fell great onto my forehead until about a day later when the front abruptly bent at an odd angle. So I cut it as bangs (popular at the time among some of the rock singers), but it was not the look I wanted.

I went off and on for several years until finally I decided that it was going to do what it was going to do whatever I wanted. I grew it long and I cut it short.

Finally about 1980, I decided to get it straightened again. I made the mistake of going to a beauty college to have it done. When the girl got through, it was a mass of small curls. That was a popular look at the time – the end of the processed disco era – but it was not what I had gone in for. In fact, the girl who did it started crying when it was revealed that it had done the absolute opposite of what I had gone in for.

I kept it for a week, then had it straightened again. It was awful.

About that time, hair started getting shorter again. I finally came to grips with it.

I have worn it cut off in a burr for the past few years with occasional forays with longer. But mostly a pretty close burr. As I lost my hair, I did what most guys did, I accented my beard.

I had always had a beard from the time I got out of the army, but now I got the new look, what someone called the new toupee: super short hair with a goatee. Guys did that so that people would not think they were balding.

I decided the other day to grow it out again. Now the back sticks up from lying on it at night. I do not know why it does right now, but it does. So I am back to fighting it, trying to get it to lie down again.

I suppose I could shave it again, but that would be admitting failure. I want it to be longer and I want it to lie down. I do not want a cowlick.

One interesting thing though. Not long ago, I was combing my hair (it was quite short) and over the balding area at the front was my little front curl. Small, yes, almost vestigial as it is a couple of inches higher than last time I saw it, but there nonetheless.

I kept it that day and showed it to Ella.

daily java

Daily Java:

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
 Though he was God,
      he did not think of equality with God
      as something to cling to.
 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
      he took the humble position of a slave
      and was born as a human being.
   When he appeared in human form,
    he humbled himself in obedience to God
      and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
      and gave him the name above all other names,
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
      in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
      to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:3-11)

I suppose that there is nothing worse in this world than a church whose members are all trying to be in charge.

In almost every church, there are those who want to be in control and they will bend heaven and earth to get their way. They will even go so far as to tear the church up to be the boss.

Contrast that with the attitude of Jesus.

John 13. The apostles were sitting around with Jesus after dinner. A couple of them began to argue over who was the leader of the group.

Jesus got up, took off his coat, put a towel around his waist and began to wash their feet. It startled them, as this is the job of a servant. Washing feet was common since most people wore sandals and it was a dusty climate. But the washing was a job of a servant. Jesus was the master.

They sat very still as he washed their feet, afraid and not knowing what to do. It was embarrassing to them. This was out of the ordinary.

Peter decided that he would have Jesus wash all of him and he would have something to brag about to the rest, since they didn’t think of it. Jesus tells him to hush and just let him do his job.

Afterwards he tells them,

Do you understand what I was doing? 13 You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. 14 And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. 15 I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. 16 I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. (John 13:12-16)

Jesus says, if I am in charge and I can do this humble thing, you as my followers do not have anything to brag about.

Jesus had the attitude of humility that the rest were lacking. It was not that they were stupid or bad or necessarily egocentric, it was that they were human and didn’t understand.

Jesus gave up all he had, all of the Godness he had since eternity, and became human in order to reach us and bring us back to God. He was humble enough to give up being God to reach us.

Most of us need an attitude check. We need to remember that we are not in charge, God is. And he sent Jesus to show us the way.

And Jesus is Lord. He is our Savior and our Master, but he came as a servant. We are servants of a servant. Kind of puts things into perspective.

daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall;
      don’t be happy when they stumble.
For the Lord will be displeased with you
      and will turn his anger away from them. (Proverbs 24:17-20)

Schadenfreude is a term which means a pleasure over the misfortunes of others. It is like seeing a man who drives a Lotus sports car and gloats over it with a flat by the side of the road. While we may have it on occasion, it is not good.

There was a man who worked with my father back when I was a child. He bought a brand new Oldsmobile and bragged on it incessantly. Both he and his family and my dad and our family were going on a trip to the same basic place.

The man told my father how easy it was going to be to drive his new Oldsmobile, it would be so comfortable and how much better it would be than my father’s old DeSoto. This was back in the mid 50’s.

As we drove to wherever it was we were going, we came across him on the side of the road broken down. My father stopped and helped him fix whatever was wrong and they went on their way. My father had mercy, not schadenfreude.

There is an attitude that should be in the heart of the Christ-follower. That attitude is mercy.

It is also one of the things we lack in today’s world. Politics, business, everything is infected with a go for the jugular kind of action. As long as it doesn’t hurt me, it is alright.

The problem is that it does hurt you when you act in an unmerciful way.

Gloating never becomes a person, no matter how well-deserved it may be. Being happy when bad things happen is never good, even when they happen to bad people.

For one thing, it lessens you. It diminishes you in both your own eyes and in the eyes of God. It will not please him for you to be that way.

I don’t believe the passage is literal in God turning from what he is doing and whacking you around. Yet, it will make you less that what you should be.

It is hard to imagine Jesus doing this, being happy when a Pharisee tripped on his robe, or someone who was hurting him got hurt himself.

That is hard to imagine because it was not in Jesus’ character to be that way. He was kind. Even when he was angry. Which he was on various occasions, he still did not slander or wish evil on people.

He did warn of the judgment of God, he did tell those to whom he was speaking that God was not pleased with them and would destroy him. But he did it in a way that told them he would rather it be some other way.

His grace accepts anyone, he accepts anyone. Therefore, we accept anyone. And we do not gloat over the misfortune of others, no matter how bad they may be.

That is because that, even though erring, they are children of God, too. God loves them as much as he does you.

daily java

Daily Java:

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

(Philippians 3:12-14)The greatest saint that ever lived and the greatest sinner that ever plagued this earth have one thing in common. All of the things they have done, good or bad, are in the past.

The apostle Paul knew this. In this passage, in the section right before it, he wrote about all his accomplishments in his former life before Jesus. Then he says: I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done (3:7).

They were all past, gone, of no use now in determining anything. They were in the past.

No matter how good you were, nor how bad you were, it is all in the past.

It is easy to get caught up in fearing that you have done too much for God to ever love you. It is also easy to get caught up in all the things you have done and how nothing you are doing now seems of any use to God.

Both are traps that God has not set. He says in 2 Corinthians 6:2: For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation. Right now is the time that matters.

You have to put aside all the things, good or bad, that you have done. You have to realize that no matter what great things you have done or what bad things you have done, God looks at you today, right now.

Past failure and past success can rob you of a present life. And dwelling in the past can take away your future. You get to thinking about how good it was in the past or how much better things were. Paul says to put it all aside. Right now, in God’s sight, is what matters.

That isn’t to say God does not look at your good deeds and the pattern of good things you have done (2 Timothy 1:13). He does. But just that pattern will not bring you to his presence.

To do good things and then do nothing thinking that you have it all under control is as worthless as having done bad things and thinking your life is ruined to God. Both are in the past.

And you have to put the past aside. You have to forget the past and look forward to what lies ahead.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). But we serve him today, not yesterday. And we will serve him tomorrow, no matter what we have done yesterday.

i will read almost anything, no matter what it may be

But, my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out. (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

I am a reader. I have read all my life. And I will read almost anything, no matter what it may be.

When I was in school science-fiction was my love, but I also read about everything the elementary school library I went to had. I was and still am, one of those people who would rather read than almost anything else.

It is odd, though, that I would not read my assigned stuff in school. I suppose that was rebellion of sorts – I was told I had to do it so I didn’t.

But it gave me a very well-rounded body of knowledge.

For instance, OA Fleming Elementary School in Freeport, TX, had a large one room library  like many elementary schools did a the time. And there was one section on mythology. It was mostly Graeco-Roman, but it also had a few books on Norse mythology and one on Eastern mythology.

I read them all. I knew not only about the Greek and Roman gods, I also knew all about the Norse gods. I was a little scholar on esoteric stuff, stuff that did me no good and benefited me not at all.

But I loved to read. And I could immerse myself in a book and sit for hours reading it.

In high school, we were assigned Babbit, by Sinclair Lewis, and it caught me. I began reading and had trouble putting it down. Lewis was a good writer.

In fact, I got so immersed in it that I began to read it under the desk while we were doing something else in English. My teacher, whose name I do not remember, but who had really long arms (it was rumored that she had been a pro wrestler) came over and grabbed it up. She was triumphant that she had caught me with contraband – a Playboy maybe or  some kind of pulp fiction.

It was Babbit, the book she had assigned. She looked at it for a moment and then at me in a bit of bafflement. I was doing what she wanted, reading the classics, but at the wrong time. She gave it back to me and said, well, read it later.

I cannot imagine a world without books, or a world with limited reading material. Even though right now, I am reading mostly westerns, at the same time, I have learned so much through books.

All of the Louis L’Amour characters read and learn through their books. They also drink a lot of coffee and eat a lot of bacon. That is good.

But you learn so much through reading. My son doesn’t read anything, my daughter reads only fluffy stuff. And it isn’t like I sit around reading Plato or other Great Books of the Western World (although we had a set for a while and I read an awful lot of them). But I just love to read and I guess I always will.

daily java

Daily Java:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
      for the Lord has anointed me
      to bring good news to the poor.
   He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
      and to proclaim that captives will be released
      and prisoners will be freed.
 He has sent me to tell those who mourn
      that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,
      and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.
 To all who mourn in Israel,
      he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
   a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
      festive praise instead of despair. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

I was raised in a strict denomination. We had more rules than freedoms. Yet we talked about how we were free in Jesus.

On the one hand, we allowed ourselves to be bound hand and foot theologically, yet claimed we were free.

It was an anomaly, a contradiction, just in general a strange thing. It was like prisoners claiming to be free, people tied up claiming to be able to do what they wanted.

The problem was, Jesus did not come to give us rules. He came to give us freedom. and the freedom he came to give us is not just the freedom of the mind (as some who try to enslave the body say) but real freedom. He came to set us free.

And he cannot set us free by imposing more rules on us. You can call it freedom and sing about it all day long, but if you have a bunch of rules and regulations that tie you in knots, and all in Jesus’ name, you are not free. You have just exchanged bondages.

Jesus came to set us free, to bring good news to the poor, to give us comfort and release. He came to dry our tears and give us joy.

The tears we shed were the tears of frustration of not being able to do what we needed, the tears of failure in having wasted our lives, the tears of knowing that we could not do what we needed to do to be right.

He came to give us adequacy, the ability to stand before God anyway. We could not and now we can. We are blessed instead of mourning, we praise instead of despair.

And this is all because we are in Jesus and in his grace.

He came to set us free. Praise his name.