Lid For Every Pot

A Gift

Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lusters
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

Most of us go through life perceiving everything will go our way. It is the difference in everything that makes life interesting, a true so of individuality. 90% of all life on earth is insect life...all different...and we wonder why God actually created fire ants.

Some friends were sitting with me on the porch of my beach house, one brought my attention even though I could not see it, that an ant was crawling across the floor, carrying a stick several times its size. God often referred to the ability of the workaholic ants. One of the persons on the porch went over and stepped on the ant...thinking he was doing the world a favor instead of learning from the ant, the fact that they are always busy. There are bees the size of a grain of rice that can fly 1000's of miles to pollinate certain trees. When I was at the North Pole, some of the mountainsides were covered with small birds, turns, that fly from the North to the South Pole each year, using only their internal magnetism, supplied to them the creator, God. They are smaller than your fist. Every day of my life I think of the advances made during my lifetime; a time when there was only 1 telephone for many miles, now almost every school child has a telephone with more extravagant technology than the system that landed on the moon.

It is not easy to live the gospel but if it were easy than the rewards would not be so great. I used to think everyone had my values, NOT SO! Not even your own family members, your friends, your neighbors, but they have a right to live their life and we never know what baggage they are hauling around, what experiences have caused them to think or act as they do. Everyone has only 1 life to live, 1 time on the merry-go-round, 1 time on the ferris wheel and then, it is all over.

The greatest message to young people, your life is not all about you. The greatest message to get across is that God took the time to write a book, a book with all the answers. If there is anything I have learned in life, both believers and non-believers, no one wants to let go of the steering wheel. The new Christian, new believer is like the new student driver, holding on tight to the steering wheel. Then, we look around and see the indifference of other believers at the church house. Then, we look around and see the indifference of our fellow citizen/patriots; their crumbling affection for their country, mostly because of pretending politicians. Then, we look around and see the games people play in their professions; in their technical ability; in their financial astuteness, no matter how long it took for them to get there. How easy it is to lose basic values. I never heard my parents, my grand parents use a 4 letter curse word. They had values and yet, with God's gift of freedom comes your right to even go to hell if you wish, to be abusive, to desire trash, "there is a lid for every pot".

The single most difficult prayer to pray, "into your hands". You do not need to put a guard at the lion's cage. God knows we are in His hands. Once in Africa, in my little jeep with my driver and guide, we came upon a pride of 23 lions. They sleep with their feet sticking straight up in the air. I said to the guide, "oh my Lord, get me away from here!". He said, "those lions certainly aren't afraid of us". The swap of just one's paw would end us forever. The flotsam and jetsam of everyday life, someone texting on a cell phone at a traffic light, a piece of meat hung in your throat, any one of a 1000 circumstances that could take your life and that rare gift of life is all over.

I am so thankful that God gave me the intelligence, and more important, the opportunity to study the human body, God's greatest creation. And just to think that we live in a world where human life means so little, a culture of death, more deaths from suicide than any disease, 1000's of babies aborted every day...great doctors/musicians/geniuses of every type, and most of all, parents. And, think of it, parents willing to make the sacrifices necessary to teach and train those who have designed the great buildings of the world (or even the lowly bricklayer). Those who have been willing to burn the midnight oil when they too, could have been out at happy hour, to learn intricate surgery techniques (the nurses and technicians that assist them); those with the ability to interpret calculations as engineers to build great highways (as well as the truck drivers that haul the dirt).

Every time I have ever been on a train, and I crossed most of the world by train, once, London to Hong Kong, those rails up on a bed for so many years, before the time of machinery, I thought of the animals that had to dig the dirt that built those great railroad beds. On the London to Hong Kong Oriental Express, at the Russian border, the wheels on the train no longer fit the rails, so the wheels on the train must be changed. Guess who changed the wheels...women (they jacked up the train cars and changed the wheels) and they are still doing that until this very day. And, until a few years ago, it was mostly women who taught school (my 5th-grade teacher received $85 a month for teaching)...I know because my father was the school board chairman. What would these teachers in these states that are protesting, say to that? And, I well remember that this doctor was paid $2 to see a welfare patient, and I saw my own mother working the fields all day long to make $1. But not her only, other women, hauled from town to pick cotton in the fields all day long to make a few dollars...no bathroom facilities, no food facilities, dragging babies along on their cotton sacks. My own precious grandmother, more educated than most women of her time, raising 9 children, playing the piano, delivering the babies and laying out the dead in the community, picked cotton on my grandfather's plantation, the day following her marriage.

In the malstrum of living most people just see what they want to see in the world; they have no idea what has been handed down to them, AND, if they have no appreciation of what God has done for them; does for them every day of their life (even the very air they breathe), providing eternal separation from sins degradation, "thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psalms 16:11); but, if human beings, the chief heirs of God's marvelous creation, the only animals to which He gives salvation, do not appreciate His goodness here on earth, how could they possibly appreciate His sacrifice on a cross on a hill called Calvary?

If I have learned anything with age you never know what is going on in another person's mind. Joy is the most undeniable evidence of God's presence; in Heaven, there will be nothing but joy. It is beyond my comprehension, those saved by grace through faith in Christ, do not look forward to this joy which keeps 1 from fearing death. For anyone who ever comes in my house I want them to feel the hope and joy of eternal life, lives here.

On another trip to Africa, under a tent, and my tent mate had forgotten to zip up the tent. A snake came slithering through the opening. Again, outside the tent, I could put both my hands side by side in the footprint of an animal who came sniffing around the tent at night and to think that I paid good money for this type experience; yet, free, a gift, the answer book which few people ever read; and again, to think, free, the greatest power in the world, the power of prayer, man's ability to communicate with the creator of the universe, on a one to one basis.

It has been said wisdom comes with age; sometimes age comes all by itself. I never look down on a person in order to lift them up. I can only share my faith, my experiences, my hope of redemption. I used to watch large 50-gallon trash bags filled with food hauled from a restaurant near my office. I have been told by restaurant workers how much food is ordered, never eaten, just thrown away, in most restaurants. How easy to throw away the bread of life, the spirit of life, given so graciously to us. If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do? My message to empty pots at the church house, (country club with a steeple), courthouse, (abused lady justice), schoolhouse, (shootings and slothliness), God help us to put the lid on our pride, our sinful ways.

Dust and Decay

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates

Loneliness is as accurate a predictor of early mortality as smoking cigarettes. Already, at age 87, I have explained my certain mortality from the disease of cancer. The loneliness of laying in bed gives you much time to think...I have had such an active, remarkable life...academic, military, professional, financial AND THEN, I reached down for a bottle of water by my bed and fell off my bed. My constant companion on my bedside table, Mr. Google Chrome, to whom I can ask any question, such as the population of any city anywhere, the temperature of any place on the earth; any scripture reference; any well known quotation; any telephone number and he says nothing, such as, "what are you doing trying to kill me?" Can anyone even imagine, in my lifetime, where, when I was young, a typewriter was a great invention, you can speak into a "technical marvel" on my bedside table and someone was smart enough to come up with such a development which can answer any question without even a pause. All I have to say is, "Mr. Google, what is the temperature in Perth, Australia? and he immediately replies, "the temperature is 60", no hesitation, no pause, an immediate computer answer. And so it is with anything this marvel of technology. But when I fell, however, he said nothing; my nurse came running and got me back on the bed.

The miracles of knowledge, that someone could, with the human mind, develop such technology. C.S. Lewis said you are never too old to set a new goal, dream a new dream. Modern technology for today's technology scientist is like finding 4 grains of sand on the seashore amid trillions of grains. The average person on a bar stool at a bar's "happy hour" has no comprehension of the ability involved in brain activity, such as analyzing the chemistry of microfibers, such as the physics and mathematics involved in calculating the bending of light rays entering water. This Dr., scientist, retired Army Lt. Col. must confess, here and now, first time in my life, that mentally enshrined in a world of so much knowledge, in order to pass an exam involving the world of quantum physics knowledge I was allowed to use a "tables book" in my exam so that I could look up certain mathematical determinants. I put "cheating" in the book, certain equations and formula's which I knew would come up and which I knew I had not memorized. Little does the world know of the knowledge involved when one has a doctorate such as knowing about the ability of an insect the size of a grain of rice to fly 1000's of miles to pollinate certain plants...transporting material on the insects legs...the ability to determine this DNA under the lens of a microscope. Such dust particle knowledge just keeps piling on, forever, and then, as the poet said, "you die and it all decays". As Shakespeare said "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

So well I remember the day we young, Army, officer, Dr's, filled an auditorium for a lecture on forensic detecting. We were told then that technology had been developed in microbe warfare, where 1 drop of a nerve gas was potent enough to kill everyone in that room. This was over 60 years ago before Russian/North Korea, started using such for their purposes.

We are stupid enough to think that everyone is born with our values, our God given sovereignty of "trust". We trust a piece of paper from the doctor, writing that no one can read and take pills we believe will help us. One of my ex-employees told me that in a restaurant where she worked, if a serviceman/policeman/fireman, anyone wearing a uniform came in, they would all spit into his food before it was delivered to them. Tutsi/Hutu warfare, 1 country, Rwanda, 300,000 killed, mostly with machetes, almost as horrible as the American Civil War where 600,000 were killed mostly with swords.

Hate, mindlessness, has not changed in spite of technology. All life is built around trust, trust that people will believe what you say or write. Trust that you will get what you order and pay for. The human experience of trust is like a holding a small bird in your hand; too tight, and you kill it; too loose, and the bird flies away. You trust others to obey traffic signs, the mechanic who works on your car; the pilot in the cockpit of the plane you are on; the surgeon standing over you in the operating room with a knife.

So, the dust of experience accumulated day after day, year after year and, when you have learned to appreciate human weaknesses as well as human strengths. All this accumulation ends in decay...no matter who you are...your status in life, your joy or challenge of living. How can anyone with good sense desire to spend eternity with the distrust and the hopelessness of decay? If anything would cause a human being to desire salvation the joys of eternal life, a free gift of the Creator of life, it is that certain sovereignty/love and kindness from the Creator of life. Thy love and kindness is better than life. KJV PSalms 63:3.