Drop the Rock

"Drop the Rock"

Matthew 5:44 - But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

            During my long years of training and education in Memphis, Tennessee, some of my work was at the veteran's hospital at Millington.  In one room was four WWII veterans without arms or legs... just human beings with trunks and heads.  Of course, they were on special beds with specially trained nurses caring for them.  Men in this condition do not live long. 

            Veterans who are amputees, cripple, deaf, blind, know what they have given to their country.  I get so sick when I hear the pabulum about care for veterans.  Most veterans know they receive very little care.  Patriotism, like Christianity, is mostly talk.  This old blind veteran never even received a white cane from the Veteran Administration. 

            One preacher, seminary professor, said he had his students go to the cemetery and preach to the tombstones.  By doing this they knew what it was all about.  Some of the most impoverished people I have ever known, in my world travels, were missionaries on the foreign fields.  Of course with electronics all over the world, missionary zeal is different from hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it takes real courage to give your life for the cause of Christ among people who hate you, who do not in any way understand you.  Only those who have endured criticism in a home church or home community, could ever endure what might happen on the mission field. 

            Perhaps my favorite Psalm is Psalm 84, when David speaks of mountains and valleys.  I have written at length about one verse in the Psalm which changed my life.  Psalm 84:5 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee."  The race is mine, but in no way could I have engaged in the trials of life without realizing my strength comes from God.

            In my car, often at traffic lights, a car will come near me with the radio blasting or someone will walk down the sidewalk with a boom box blaring.  We can understand people who have this much ferocious noise around them have no tranquility of spirit.  In my years of selling bibles, door-to-door, in the summer, windows open, babies and old people unable to escape the noise inside the building.  There was no mystery to me about the depletion of all joys in the lives of some.  How could they have joy, solitude in living amid the clang, clatter, awful words in music which was always too loud for man or beast?  Just imagine a young, newborn baby, growing up amid such violent noise.  We should be surprised that many young people from many of these ghetto homes turn out as well as they do.  Yet, I have heard adults say they forgive their parents and siblings for the turmoil of their surroundings. 

            The most ecstatically happy person in the room when a child is born is the mother of the newborn baby.  She knows the pain of childbirth.  It took me a long time to discover why so many evangelists became preachers.  They had experienced the pain which sin brings and want to celebrate their deliverance. 

            The only time we find Jesus writing anything, he was in the outer court of the temple.  Some male religionists brought a woman to him caught in the very act of adultery.  (John 8: 3-11)  Of course, mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death.  There were so many stones-rocks in the holy land.  On three of the times I was there, in Capernaum, still mostly rocks, I thought that surely Jesus must of sat on some of these rocks.  I remember rock piles near the Muslim homes.  They still throw rocks at the Jews and Christians.  In a day of cell phones, newsprint and news broadcasts, there is not much need for the throwing of rocks.  It is also strange the man caught with the woman in the adultery was never mentioned.  Jesus said to these religious people, just as he would say to many of us who have been judgmental and hypocritical in our evaluation of others, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

            The greatest deliverance in Christianity, forgiveness.  We must forgive because our fellow human beings are made in the image of God.  We must forgive because our we do not realize the baggage that some fellow human beings carry around.  We must forgive because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.  In the disciples' prayer, where Jesus taught us to pray, he said, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. "  (Matthew 6:12)  How can we expect forgiveness if we can't forgive?  I truly believe Jesus should have added to this prayer, "we should not put trespasses or temptations into the paths of others."  It is so necessary to start out each day asking God to keep Satan and his temptations away from us.

            I still remember the day our school principal held up a white piece of paper with one small black dot on the paper.  He said, "What do you see?"  Everyone said, "A dot on a piece of paper."  He was trying to squelch a rumor going around the school about a certain student.  The popular student had a perfect record in every area of life.  Someone was attempting to make one dot soil that record.

            In a day where the best seller is the worst smeller, when it is politically correct to excuse all bad behavior, it is so necessary to applaud-rejoice in good behavior, especially forgiveness of sins.  (Philippians 3:20).  When we realize the truth of sins ruin and Christ's redemption we know the full joy of forgiveness, both the joy of our forgiving and the joy of others forgiveness.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.