#1867 Road Paved with Cotton Balls (Labor Day)

#1867

Road Paved With Cotton Balls

(Labor Day)

"We’ll Work till Jesus Comes" Elizabeth K. Mills

     We’ll work till Jesus comes,
     We’ll work till Jesus comes,
     We’ll work till Jesus comes,
     And we’ll be gathered home.

The sword does not question what it cuts.  In liberal America, where everything is politically correct, you are careful about everything you say because you just assume that everyone is the enemy.  When I was in high school, college, professional school, and the professor asked a question, you were expected to give some type of answer.  Now, you just say "pass" AND, so it is with life and livelihood there is someone to take up the slack.  Those who do not work, steal, you steal from someone who pays the taxes that enables you not to work...you just tell your costumed government overseer, I pass.  Our nation was built by men and women, now fertilizing the ground, whose mantra was work-worth-worship. 

Complexity for its own sake is not a virtue.  Young people have learned to hide behind the complexity of the technology age...talking box, computers, smart phones.  Just as prescription drugs are leading to our slow suicide without our realizing it; so robots and artificial intelligence are taking over the productive job market.  I truly believe that every human-being is born with a conscience, is born with the competitive spirit of being productive.  There was certainly a reason that God placed most human-beings on the land, to work the land, it all started in a garden.  Life comes from dirt, we must have the elements in our body for nutrition that comes from the earth, either from plant life, taking in these elements which we eat, or the animal life we eat that was nurtured from the plants that got their elements from the earth.  Those who worked in the soil sweating in the hot sunlight, depleting the body from nutrition and toxicity knew the joy of crawling to bed totally exhausted-tired. 

Prado in Madrid, Louvre in Paris, National in Washington, DC we have seen what an artist can do on canvas...capturing the magnificence of beauty but, not oil on canvas-not with any photographers lens can you capture the true beauty of a butterfly's wing, the color and texture of a flower such as a rose or even a petunia, or the sound of song birds in trees.  Those with the senses of sight-smell-touch have certainly seen and realized God's work AND, after he worked, saw it was good, he rested.  There is a real tragedy in the modern day world, that so many do not know the joy of rest from work. It does not have to be the work of blast furnace in a steel mill, tilling the soil or harvesting on the farm, moving the machinery in a textile or plastics factory, there is no work like the energy expended in childcare-elderly care-sick care, there is no relationship between the type work and type pay.

This writer was raised on a tobacco farm in poverty ridden eastern North Carolina, my parents-ancestors, were landowners but they were little more than peasants.  They knew the honor of hard-backbreaking-sweating work.  I get so tired of hearing people who have never done a day's work, talk about migrants doing work that Americans will not do, they have not come up yet with a work that I have not done, and my parents before me did not do.  We worked because we had no choice it was survival, it was a matter of putting food on the table.  I lived at a time when a father went to work, leaving mother at home to raise the children, keep the house.  Now it takes both parents, sometimes working multiple jobs, to make basic provisions for the home.  Two can live as cheaply as one, if one does not eat.  We live in a profit driven-ridden world.  A good example, when patents for prescription drugs expire, how is it that magically these same drugs appear for sale over the counter? 

In life's studies-life's disciplines there are no questions, only answers we have not found. I am convinced there is no work like the gleaning of knowledge from the printed page.  Once, a CIA agent was visiting me, he had heard me on the radio, wanted to meet me, he said, "I cannot believe a blind man has so many shelves filled with so many books."  I said then, as I say now, "I just want books around me; I want to feel of them, I want to know that there is so much knowledge in the world."

My entire life, I have watched people window shopping for something they cannot afford.  If you have a rudimentary knowledge, enough education to read, there is no limit to your education.  Like your reputation, your greatest asset is your work involved in learning.  This you can afford.  There was a time when those with very little knowledge, about the human body, attempted to restore life after death.  They would even strap a deceased person on a galloping horse, thinking that the jarring motion would restore life.  Piercing the veil of ignorance, working from books as well as a laboratory, we now know that children can give CPR...chest compressions.  If shoe salesmen were not as well prepared and had as little integrity as many professionals, especially politicians, who draw big salaries for their work, the world would be walking around on very sore feet. 

Satan can go as far as God will let him go, his biggest trap is indifference, perhaps more toxic than laziness.  Most of us just want the easy way out, to gain as much as possible for the least amount of work...shortcuts, "the end justifies the means".  We are a nation of laziness and indifference.  This superpower presses forth military officers and warriors trained and ready to fight for our nation's security, we have thousands of prisons with their guards, and we have thousands of cities with law enforcement...CIA-FBI.  YET, we have a woman running for president of the United States who knew nothing of national security, classified information.  Just common sense would have dictated the necessity for secrecy in the highest government agencies.  Every military officer knows that he is not supposed to put his hands in his pockets around any high-ranking elected, government official.  All jobs from the highest in the land to the lowest in the land require work of some type...mental or physical.  Why have diplomatic entrances at airports if you do not know anything about security-secrecy?  Think of the time and treasure spent by legislatures, even Congress, passing laws if the highest officer in government does not know what you are talking about...not willing to expend the work to find out.

Once, I attended a large conference in Atlanta, Georgia one of the speakers was the president of a large manufacturing company.  He said, "I sent my expensive watch back to the factory and had the words 'The Night Cometh' (John 9:4) put on the face."  He further said, "I realize how rapidly my country is going over the brink that night is descending on us.  I want to realize this every time I look at my watch."