daily java

Daily Java:

We have heard about proud Moab—
  about its pride and arrogance and rage.
  But all that boasting has disappeared.
The entire land of Moab weeps.
  Yes, everyone in Moab mourns
for the cakes of raisins from Kir-hareseth.
  They are all gone now.
The farms of Heshbon are abandoned;
  the vineyards at Sibmah are deserted.
The rulers of the nations have broken down Moab—
  that beautiful grapevine. (Isaiah 16:6-8)

In my daily Bible reading I am reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is delivering God’s condemnation to several countries round about Israel.

It can get rather depressing and I am always glad when I get through with this section. I don’t really care for it. For one thing, I have no emotional investment in all these countries and, quite frankly, do not care about them.

However, one thing struck me today. The passage above where the people missed their raisin cakes. What a strange thing to miss. Your whole country lies in ruins and people miss the raisin cakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how caught up in food memories we are.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of her chocolate gravy. She made chocolate gravy like I have never had before or since. It was a special Saturday morning breakfast served over biscuits and was great.

My wife said that when she thinks of me and things I make, she thinks of either steak or lasagna. With her I think of stroganoff. Our daughter will probably think of green enchiladas, what we call sour cream enchiladas. Ella’s mother, she said, was roast, rice and gravy., her favorite aunt soup, my mother roast and french fries.

We all have memory keys of things that are gone. The Moabites were of raisin cakes. In the good old days, they say around eating raisin cakes. Now that the vineyards are gone, they cannot and they miss them.

I don’t really know what a raisin cake is exactly – a bunch of raisins mashed together, or a cake made with a lot of raisins – but when they thought of home that was it. And it was gone irretrievably.

When things are gone, not only the bad, but also the good is gone. The good old days were really only a few memories you have stored up that exclude the bad memories. Life in Moab was not all sitting around snacking on raisin cakes. Every meal of my mother’s was not roast and the chocolate gravy was a sometime thing.

But it is funny that you associate those not-to-be-repeated foods with different people and places.

John Donne said, “you cannot go home.” You can’t go back and have those foods in those situations. It is impossible. But how large they loom in your mind and how much you miss the people who gave them to you.

i left the Cooper County jail for the last time today

Some sat in darkness and deepest gloom, imprisoned in iron chains of misery. (Psalm 107:10)

I left the Cooper County jail for the last time today. The misery was strong tonight. One man was worried because his trial was tomorrow and he didn’t know what would happen. Another had been put in solitary because he had complained of physical problems. His friend in another cell block missed him and was alone for the first time in several months. The men he had been friends with had been sent to prison. Another was the brother of the man in solitary and he had been told nothing about his brother and was worried.

Then I went into the guard room. They were laughing about all of the things happening to the inmates. To them it was funny and the inmates’ own faults.

Whether it was or not I do not know. What I do know was that I knew these men better than the guards did. And they were in pain. And the guards didn't care.

Now these guys may have been lying to me every one. The inmates lie as a matter of course many times and you never really know if what they are saying is true. But some of these men I have known now for nine months and have heard their problems and their hearts. They are in there for drugs, rape, assault, DUI – but on the other hand, they are people. And they are just, for the most part, charged. They are not convicted. They deserve better.

I do not think I am strong enough for jail ministry. I know why the guards make such fun. they are distancing themselves from the inmates and making them less so that they can handle what they do. But it is such a small distance from that to brutality. And I hate brutality.

I will probably not go into the jail again. It hurt them that I was leaving. I am their only real link to the outside world. I wear brightly colored clothes and smell of freedom. I talk to them and call them by name. I shake their hands and ask about where they are from. I ask about their family and I talk to them. I ask what they think and I am the only person who does so. I am the only person in years for some who has expressed any personal interest.

And now I am gone. They will probably not see me again. One more disappointment,

Tonight I am depressed. I don’t think I will go in a jail again.

letting things go

The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
To increase knowledge only increases sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

Ecclesiastes is in my daily Bible reading right now, so I am seeing several things in it that strike me. And this is one.

The more you know, the harder it is on you. I believe that to a large point, the old adage “Ignorance is bliss” is true. The less you know, the less you have to worry about. Simple people tend to be happier.

My wife and I are two examples of this. Ella is by no means unlearned, but she and I have a totally different outlook on life.

I am an accumulator of information. I find it everywhere and it sticks in my mind. What is more, for the most part, I remember a lot of it.

Ella, on the other hand, enjoys receiving new information, but will not go out of her way to get it. She enjoys it (to a point) when I bring up new things, but does not go out to seek it on her own.

It makes for a marked difference in our personalities. Quite frankly, I know too much. And the more I know, the more it weighs on me. The accumulated information does not necessarily help me. She knows what she wants to know and is happy. I have to know more and am not, as a general rule, a happy guy.

And I learn a lot of stuff I don’t need to know because that is the way I am made. Some things I learn, I do not tell her because it would make her unhappy or bothered. But it is a personality quirk of mine that I have to learn them.

Once I do, they sit in there inside the maelstrom that is many times my mind. They may come out at some odd time and people are surprised that I know whatever it is I know, but in general, most of the knowledge I accumulate is useless. It is a shame I do not go to cocktail parties, because the kind of stuff I know would be great there.

Occasionally I will ask her, maybe while we are driving around, what are you thinking about?

Her response will be something like, I was thinking about how pretty those flowers are. Or I was thinking about the song we just heard on the radio.

I am usually thinking about 17 things, all unrelated, all of them twirling around inside my brain competing for attention. And there are times when I would love just to shut them all up, to think about flowers without thinking about conversations from 30 years ago, and something I had read, and the Hebrew word for something and what might happen to the van next, and something I had read and the political situation in America right now and missing my kids and our financial situation and my knee hurting and – on.

I envy her in her ability just to let things go.

Providence of God

You know when I sit down or stand up.
    You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.
    You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
    even before I say it, Lord. (Psalm 139:2-4)

I have been going back and forth to Longton, Kansas, for the past few weeks to speak at a church. It is 300 miles almost exactly.

Wednesday I took Ella to the ladies meeting at the Purvises and thought, I’ll check my tires. When I did, I found both of the front tires were not only just about bald, there was cord showing. That meant I was riding in a death trap at 70 mph. It scared me. I was almost afraid to drive home and then to Fame Tire Co the next day.

My van takes stupid little tires. 14 inchers. Nobody uses 14 inch tires these days. The trend is to big tires. Some of the cars today almost look like one of the old Conestoga wagons with those huge wheels.

Thursday morning, I went into Fame and asked for that size in a good used tire. They didn’t have what I had on the van, but they had the next size down for a good price. I bought them, had them put on and now I am ready to go again this week to Kansas.

The point is that my tires were bad and I didn’t know it. But nothing happened. When I went to replace them, they were there for me to buy. It all worked out like I needed. In fact, the lady there (Mrs. Fame?) told me that someone had called for them yesterday but didn’t reserve them, so they were there for me to take.

I was going somewhere to do the will of the Lord and he protected me. As the Psalm above says: You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. God protected Ella and me from a wreck. He saw I needed the tires and he made them available and he made sure I had the money.

I do not believe God goes ahead of us and gives us everything we want or even necessarily need. There were too many godly people in the Bible that had severe needs that God left unaddressed. But then again, sometimes he does. In the gospel accounts, there were lots of sick people, but Jesus only healed some of them.

But the way it went Thursday. God saw that I needed those tires and that he had sent me to that church in Longton and he blessed me with both the tires and the available money to buy them.

He also protected us from a wreck. At 70 mph, if one tire had gone, the other probably would have too and I may well have flipped the van. Ella would have been hurt. So he put in me the need to check the tires and he gave me the tires and money to buy them.

That isn’t a miracle. Those are different. But it is divine intervention in my life. It was God taking care of me so that I could do what I needed to do.

And I praise him for it. Thank you, Lord.

daily java

Daily Java:

Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world. (John 11:49-52)

Sometimes stupid people say good things. Here Caiaphas said something that was true and didn’t really realize it.

Caiaphas was the high priest of the Jews during the time when Jesus was walking around preaching. He hated Jesus because he knew that if Jesus was allowed to continue to preach and teach, people would like him and accept him as Messiah, the chosen of God. And if they did, he would lose his job as leader.

He decided that Jesus had to die so that they could shut him up. The funny thing about what he said was that even though he meant to shut Jesus up, he was really speaking the truth. It was better than one man die than all of the rest of humanity.

Jesus came to die. God sent him to die. And the reason was simple. We are sinners and since we have done things that are wrong, we deserve to be punished. And the ultimate punishment for doing wrong is death. But God did not want us to die. He made us to hang around with him, to walk with him, talk with him.

But there sits the death problem. How is he going to reconcile the problem that we have done too much wrong to be good any more. Somewhere down the line, we quit being an innocent child and became a sinful adult and deserve punishment.

So Jesus came to be a stand in for us. He never did anything wrong but died anyway. And he broke the bond of death by coming back to life. What all that means is that he gave us the ability to not have to die. He died for us. He took the punishment for us.

We are sorry people, that is the truth. All of us. Everybody has sinned, even those great looking people in ties and suits and dresses at church that look down on everybody else. But Jesus took the punishment so we don’t have to. And he did it because he loves us and does not want us to suffer.

So what do we do? We accept him as our Savior and let him pay the price for us. We do not have to die, because he died.

It really is that simple. We can stand before God without anything wrong in our lives because we let him take it from us. There is no way we can be good enough, but he can make us good enough no matter how bad we have been.

No matter what your life has been like, no matter what you are in here for, he can make you free and clean.

And you too can stand before God as his child. It is that simple.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, but the people believe your lies. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: ‘You must die. Your life will end this very year because you have rebelled against the Lord.’” Two months later the prophet Hananiah died. (Jeremiah 28:15-17)

Hananiah, official court prophet to King Zedekiah, King of Judah, had a great job. He stood around all day giving pronouncements, handing out advice. He was a respected member of the king’s court. When he spoke, people listened. When he gave advice, it was generally heeded. He was important.

And the last thing he wanted was for his job to end. When Jeremiah the prophet came in telling the Israelites that they needed to give up to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and go into captivity, it was too much for him. He rebelled in the only way he knew how to do it: he counter-prophesied.

He knew he wasn’t really a prophet. He had always known this. But, on the other hand, his track record of guesses was good enough that before long, people thought he was one.

When Jeremiah came along, it made Hananiah mad. Here was a real prophet. And the main problem was that Jeremiah was a threat. Hananiah had it good, being so important, but Jeremiah could take it all away from him.

When Jeremiah gave the prophecy God gave him – Give up and let the Babylonians take you into captivity – it made him scared. If they went into captivity, he lost his job, his people lost their land, everything would be ruined.

On the other hand, if he could say otherwise, and by this time he was probably convinced he had some powers of prophecy, he could keep his job and his important place.

Jeremiah’s response: you are going to die. And he did. And the children of Israel went into captivity just like God said.

Saying things are true doesn’t make them true. Pretending nothing is wrong doesn’t make it right. Hananiah found this out but didn’t live long enough to learn from the lesson.

The Bible tells us that we are to pray for our leaders

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

The political season is going hard and heavy. Everybody has somebody they like that is running for office, and everybody has somebody they do not like. It is easy to grow offensive in our likes and dislikes.

But the Bible tells us that we are to pray for our leaders. The Bible never tells us we are to pray against them. Now you may want change or you may want things to stay the way they are. But no matter how you feel about an elected representative, as an elected representative they are your physical leaders. And you pray for them.

We live in a country that can change its leadership and its corporate vision by voting new people in and old people out. We have that power.

However we do not have the power to speak ill of our leaders. They are from God and God, through his word and the words of the apostle Paul, tells us that we are to pray for them

It is easy to say, well I like this or I do not like that. But remember, this was written in a time when one of the most ruthless emperors Rome ever had was in power. Nero was in charge and he was mean. Yet the Bible never says, pray for him to go. Instead it says Ask God to help him.

This was from an apostle who was eventually killed by a Roman emperor if church tradition is right. But he still says pray for him, intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.

That is a long ways from the vitriol and anger poured out on our president and other elected officials. Whatever you may think of them, however you may feel, whether or not you agree with them does not matter. You are to respect them. if you do not, you are sinning and disobeying God.

Romans 13:1-4 says:  

Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you. The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good.

They are from God and they are sent for your good.

You don’t like them? Vote them out. But while they are in office you respect them and pray for them. Talking ugly about them is a sin.

Hard to do, but absolute Bible truth.

We are gone to Kansas again this weekend. We will see you soon. God bless you.

daily java

Daily Java:

Your teeth are as white as sheep that are freshly washed. Your smile is flawless, each tooth matched with its twin. (Song of Solomon 6:6)

A girl smiled at me in WalMart the other day. And when she did, I was 16 again.

I am almost fifty years her senior, but her smile was so pretty and so without guile that it popped me back a long ways. I do not know who she is or was, I did not approach her, but I have thought about her for a few days now.

It is funny that a 63 year old man who is happily married can be so reduced by a young girl’s smile, but it is true. And, of course, she meant nothing by it. She was probably one of these happy girls who likes to smile at people. Here was this old guy and she smiled. She probably smiled at children, young married people, dogs and cats – she was just a happy girl.

But what amazed me was my reaction to the smile. It was so pretty and unexpected and took me so by surprise. I was not ready for it.

When I go to church, I expect people to smile at me. And I smile at them, whether young or old. It is just a part of social interaction. The same goes for the grocery store and other places. I smile and say hi a lot.

But to have a pretty girl smile at me unexpectedly was something else. And I liked it. It made me feel young and remember what it was like for a girl to smile at me just out of the blue.

Girls used to smile at me a lot. I even remember when I would catch the eye of a girl out of the blue. We would look at each other and maybe smile, but nothing would come of it. I remember one girl who was walking with her boyfriend. I caught her eye, she caught mine, we turned and looked at each other. She smiled kind of sad and turned around to live her life.

I never was a handsome guy, but I was big and strong and vital looking. I looked like a dominant guy and women noticed me. Not that they fell all over me or anything, but they did notice. And they would smile.

I liked having girls smile at me and smiling at them. I liked it even after we were married. My wife knew I was not cheating on her, so she left it alone. Smiling at a girl is an absolutely normal reaction to a man. It is the most natural thing that happens. It is also, I believe, just part of the male/female thing that goes on even after you are committed to someone. It is a realization that you are still male and can appreciate a girl in a natural way.

It is the acting on it that becomes wrong. If I chased the girl down and tried to ask her out for a date because I figured she was coming on to me, that would be stupid on my part and would hurt her. she would probably recoil in horror at this old geezer trying to flirt with her.

I realized soon in life that the smiles and flirtatious looks young girls in the youth group would give me at times were nothing more than practice for life. I was a guy, even if a little older, so they would smile at me and act coy, knowing that they were safe from my advances. Just practicing. And any man who is in any kind of leadership has to know that.

That girl was smiling at the world. she was happy and pretty and slender and probably had a Justin Bieber song (barf) in her head and was just smiling.

I loved her for it. I just hope and pray her life goes well and she finds that special person who will smile back and they will connect.

Jesus had friends like everybody else and one of them died

When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?” Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. (John 11:33-40)

Jesus had friends like everybody else. And Lazarus was probably his best friend, along with Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha. And it hurt him for his friends to be hurt just like it would anyone.

But he also had a problem. His problem was that he was not hire. People didn’t just tell him what to do, even if they were good friends. He was his own man and was doing what he felt God wanted him to do, no matter what other people may have thought.

When they came and told Jesus that Lazarus had died, Jesus was busy with something else. So he didn’t just drop everything and go. Besides, unless he flew, he couldn’t get there in time. So he went on with what he was doing, which was preaching and teaching and healing. Then he left.

But then when he got there, everybody blamed him for Lazarus’ death. If he had been here, they said. He can heal blind people and all. He could have healed Lazarus.

And he could have. But he didn’t. Instead he came to the funeral and brought Lazarus back from the dead. He used Lazarus as a teaching tool just like he used the man born blind in John 9. Everybody there saw the tremendous power of God and there were a lot of people there that day who believed in him as the Son of God, the Messiah.

I have often thought what it must have been like for Lazarus. He was dead and in heaven (if he was Jesus’ friend, he had to have been a devout person) and Jesus yanks him back to earth and inside a smelly tomb. Did the grave clothes still smell like a four day old corpse in the heat? Did the tomb still smell? Was he happy? Was he mad?

Whatever he was, he was back in the world and the center of attention. His sisters were all over him, happy to see him alive. All the crowd was looking at him. And there was his friend, Jesus. So things worked out okay.

But I do wonder how he felt.

One thing for sure, a lot of people were scared of Jesus now and they started looking for a plan to get him out of their way. He was ruining their plans.

There have always been people who feel like they know what God wants better than God does.

daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools,
    or you will become as foolish as they are.
Be sure to answer the foolish arguments of fools,
    or they will become wise in their own estimation. (Proverbs 26:4-5).

Someone once said that the Bible is full of contradictions and used this verse as one. And it is a contradiction. However, it is so because there is no real way to deal with a fool.

Whatever you say to a fool, whatever you try to counter his arguments with, he will find another place to go. His argument is liquid and one trying to argue with him cannot ever get a real hold on anything.

He will jump around to illogic, to outright falsehoods, to arguments ad hominem, to whatever he can use to argue with you. And the facts don’t really matter. All he wants to do is win.

On the other hand, you hate to leave his contradictions and his foolishness unaddressed. You want to try to answer what you hear and know to be plain lies and stupidity masqueraded as philosophy or wisdom or in some instances just plain information. You know it is not and that it is leading people astray and you want to challenge it.

But arguing with a fool is like trying to keep the ocean back with a squeegee. It just doesn’t work. The minute you get on one track, the direction changes and you end up looking foolish.

So what do you do? There really isn’t much you can do. You answer him and you look foolish because you have stooped to their level. You don’t answer him and you look like you are afraid and the misinformation remains out there for someone to believe.

It is a conundrum and there isn’t a lot you can do. You can try, but make sure you do not sink to their level.

When Jesus was faced with a fool, he said nothing. At his trial in Luke 23, we read this:

Herod was delighted at the opportunity to see Jesus, because he had heard about him and had been hoping for a long time to see him perform a miracle. He asked Jesus question after question, but Jesus refused to answer. Meanwhile, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law stood there shouting their accusations. Then Herod and his soldiers began mocking and ridiculing Jesus. Finally, they put a royal robe on him and sent him back to Pilate. (Luke 23:8-11)

Jesus knew that all Herod wanted was a show and declined to be the entertainment. He never said a word until finally it made Herod mad and he began to show his true colors. Jesus knew it would do no good to say anything.

So you address what you can when the fool speaks, but in general it is better just to shut up and let him blather. Talk to people afterwards after the fool has gone home to his hovel. Then you will have a certain measure of decorum and common sense.

It is a hard thing to know when to talk and when not to talk. The problem is that fools are often better at it than you.