One Man Plus God

 (Toy that Dr. Morris brought back from Greece, sold today.)

One Man Plus God

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village,

The child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in still another village,

Where he worked in a carpenter shop

Until he was thirty.

Then for three years

He was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book.

He never held an office.

He never had a family or owned a house.

He didn't go to college.

He never visited a big city.

He never traveled two hundred miles

From the place where he was born.

He did none of the things

One usually associates with greatness.

He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three

When the tide of public opinion turned against him.

His friends ran away.

He was turned over to his enemies.

And went through the mockery of a trial.

He was nailed to a cross

Between two thieves.

While he was dying,

His executioners gambled for his clothing,

The only property he had on Earth.

When he was dead,

He was laid in a borrowed grave

Through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone,

And today he is the central figure

Of the human race,

And the leader of mankind's progress.

All the armies that ever marched,

All the navies that ever sailed,

All the parliament that ever sat,

All the kings that ever reigned,

Put together have not affected

The life of man on Earth

As much as that.

-James Allen Francis, 1926

            A rubber band will only stretch so far. Each person's day has only 1,140 minutes. More people die from under work than over work, laziness than activity. Even so, every minute in one's life is important, never to be regained. When you get my age you realize how fast they go by, how much there is to learn, accomplish.

            Show me a person's habits and I will tell you much about that person. Sure, there should be some time for leisure but life consists, most accomplishments through routine. Routine works for me, how could a blind person survive without order-routine in life? I must know where things are, everything a place and everything in that place. If moved, lost to me forever.

            You start out with one premise, Jesus Christ is the only hope of the world. You can prophesize your day. He promised us everything we need, one day at a time. "And as thy days, [so shall] thy strength [be]" (Deuteronomy 33:25). No person afflicted with the neurosis-nervous breakdown about yesterday's problems or today's problems...always tomorrow's problems.

            Go in the closet, spend one hour in God's presence about any problem involving large amounts of money, great life changes (sickness, divorce, child rearing), and God will give you the answer you need.

            I have heard preachers say, "Don't bother God with small things, learn to handle them yourself." The poet Tennyson said, "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." God knows the problems this old blind man encounters with small things such as repairs in rental properties. In my daily routine prayer life, bringing to God's attention all the things with which I need help, I ask his help with air conditioners, appliances, water pipes, etc. He knows I need His help. It takes some a long time to learn to turn much of life's worries over to Him.  One man plus God and anything is possible.

            Everyday, a time of communion with God, small piece of bread thanking God for healing, sip of wine thanking God for remission of sin. In my time of prayer, the burdens on my heart for the world such as the plight of the Christian people in North Korea.

            I don't mind revealing that I ask God for help with the blog I write every day....sales in my business. I ask God to help me with my rental properties, my large investment stock portfolio. I ask a particular blessing on the managers of my investments and everyone else who helps me and is kind to me...from my secretary to the waitresses in restaurants. I remember so well, many years ago when sighted-driving, asking God to bless people standing at street corners. I would give him the name of the intersection. I believe God wants specifics, "The small toe on my right foot."

            Each day I pray for churches, a children's home where I have deep interest, a Christian college to which I have a philanthropic interest and, as I have told my grandson's over and over, "If they fail it is not because God and I have not done our part" because I ask God everyday to bless their lives in his service. Christians cheat themselves by not having enough faith to trust the creator of the universe who has said, "....Yet ye have not, because ye ask not" (James 4:2).  We certainly learn to depend on his will AND, if he does not answer all my prayers I will still get more than I deserve, will go to Heaven proclaiming, "He paid it all." The greatest insurance-assurance word the Christian can know, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).