The Cheerios Tree

If 

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Any black person, any disabled  person, any person of a minority in America will always tell you that justice in America is always hit or miss. Those who are convinced of God's grace and mercy, those who are concerned, committed to the goodness of Jesus, have trouble at the schoolhouse, courthouse, poor house and often times even at your house, have trouble controlling the fact that others are often everything I hate in a human being. You don't get certainty in this life. This is the beauty of Christianity. God keeps us from crossing over the boundary/setting up certain guidelines, because of his willingness to sacrifice his only son, Jesus. Jesus died so that we can erase hatred from our thinking, is willing to forgive and forget every transgression against others/every word or act against Him and His blessedness. We love God because in the council chambers of eternity He chose us for life and living. Even so, we must cling to the cross of Christ for forgiveness, for healing, for direction and He is more than able to give it, we can trust Jesus. Most of us have learned, that in this life of sorrows, He is the only one we can fully trust. The atheist who wants a Saviour of his own design, actually believes that his redemption is found, not on a rugged cross but in a cheerios tree. One schoolboy, when asked where his cereal came from said, "from a cheerios tree".

The First Commandment, we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind. God is jealous, will not forsake His glory to anyone. So many get confused in the first chapter of the Bible, that from nothingness came somethingness, came everything. I actually heard a Catholic priest say, "Millions of years before Adam and Eve there was the Neanderthal man." Where in the world did he get that? Simply because some archaeologist found some bones that they don't think measure up to the 7 days of creation. I saw Dr. Leakey in the Great Rift valley in Africa where the genus homosapiens got started and where I saw Dr. Leakey still looking for bones. He was attempting then to explain creation and as far as I know, he and his ancestors have never stopped...refusing to believe God's word about creation or anything else. If we cannot believe God's boundaries concerning creation and the creature as well as the Creator, we might as well be like the schoolboy and believe in the cheerios tree, or like the woman in my church who said that "David was the apostle who was killed by the giant, Goliath". I had one woman working for me, in her 60's, in church all of her life, who had never come to the realization that the Bible had an Old and New Testament. I said, "what do you study at church?" She said, "I go to church because that's where nice people go. I like to be around nice people".

The fastest growing religious group in America, "the none's". They do not want to be like God but rather God to be like them. They want a bellhop Christianity, you call upon God only when you need him. Most men or women only use the name of God or Jesus when cursing. I have yet to hear a believer or non-believer in profanity say, "Oh, Buddha", "Oh, Allah". In the Muslim religion, a mother is assured her son has a place in Heaven if she names her boy Muhammad. Have you ever considered how many Muslim boys are named Muhammad? Christianity is not complicated, just tough. It's beauty, genius, God putting on a tent, and dwelling among us. The inner satisfaction in my soul, that Jesus enjoyed people, that He enjoyed visiting with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; that He enjoyed seeing the plight of people around Him, poor people, most of the population of that time were slaves. I'm so happy that Jesus probably enjoyed laughter with His disciples/food with His friends/the bubbling personality of children. When this writer stood on the shore of The Dead Sea, looking up at Harrods palace, I thought that God could have chosen for Jesus to be born in a palace, wear fancy clothing. Those who eat from gold plates in this world, whose lives are festooned by the glamour of the rich and famous have made their choice. Why should they learn the plan of salvation twice when so many people in the world have only heard it once?

Like reading the entrails of a goat we have entire professions who think they can understand mankind by studying the psychoses of those who have chosen Satan instead of Christ. There are those who have picked Marx instead of the giant forefathers of our nation. Trust in Jesus is not an emotion it is a decision, trust in the American way of life is not an emotion but a genuine fact. The Bible and the American Constitution, side by side are wonderful bookends for living and dying. I don't know which is fading faster, Christianity in America or patriotism in America. This writer is approaching 88 years of age and it is amazing the change in the church and crucial patriotic beliefs in my lifetime. The more we humanize animals the more we dehumanize human beings. The more we humanize technology the more we dehumanize the sovereignty of God. You get the feeling the person you are talking to on your cell phone is very human...so much artificial intelligence, more dependable than human intelligence. And to think that animal parts are now being transplanted into human beings. Photosynthesis by plants, eaten by animals, having a direct bearing on the human being that eats the animal that ate the plants...a whole new science...a cheerios tree. Holiness is a gift from God, not a human creation enjoyed by robots or cellphones.

In Tammy Wynette's mansion, in Nashville, there was an $8000 crystal bowl. In the crystal bowl, she had bowls of cotton. She never wanted to forget her beginnings, picking cotton. My parents, grandparents, knew what it was to pick cotton, the heat, the briars, the hedgehogs, but, the difference, they knew the Creator, able to convert plantlife into the making of fabric. They knew the planting of corn seed, often called maize, the most generous plant on the face of the earth. The 1000's of acres of corn around the world, feeding so many people, yet, the simplest, cheapest food nourishment known to man. Would you not like to have been 1 of those to sit at the table of Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Jesus, eating the cornbread that Martha cooked? This writer would rather have his fried cornbread his mother cooked than the fanciest cake ever found in a Starbucks or any other bakery (this writer has never been in a Starbucks). The schoolboy was not far from wrong when he said his cereal was found on a cheerios tree.