Growing and Dying

The difference in a tree and a post is the fact that the tree is growing. In most cases, the post is dead and dying. In some places in Central America, where the topsoil is still full of nutrients I saw posts that had been put in the ground sprouting limbs, living again.

My Great Grandfather, for whom I was named, on his plantation, had grafted so many fruit trees which produced unusual and wonderful products. Grafting is a system whereby you fuse the plant tissues of two trees, used by horticultural to produce new lines of product. For instance, on the farm, we had a pear apple which was delicious beyond words to describe simply because this man had the intelligence and enlightenment to experiment with such plants and trees. From Romans 1 to Philemon, we find everything we need to know about living the Christian life. In Romans 11:13-26 the Apostle Paul used as an analogy how Gentiles can become one with spiritual Israel. Paul also explains why many of physical Israel cannot see, because "that blindness in part has happened to Israel." It's why many cannot understand, yet (those of Israel who could, but rejected the Truth, are another matter).

As recent as todays newspaper the difference in Zionism and Judaism, most church goers know nothing about this. There are about 60,000,000 Jews in the world. A very large number are Atheist, they do not believe in God at all. In America, many group together just as a cultural not a religious experience. In the America Judeo Christian traditions (the foundation of Christianity is Judaism) evangelicals have become the nation of Israels greatest support. From 1948 when the British and the Palestinians were driven out of the ancient Holy lands Israel and America have become united in the preservation in the nation Israel...a Zion state... to the extent that America sends 10,000,000 dollars a day to Israel...at the very time that Native Americans (Indians) suffer from lack of electricity and military veterans...many of whom are disabled...get the same disability pension as a college ROTC student grant.

The Christian church, Gentiles, know little of the growth of Christianity from Christ until the present. I often wondered, as “the world” walked by or drove by a Christian church would the unsaved think, “I wonder what goes on there”? Even today, as when I was a child, you see grown men standing outside the Christian church smoking cigarettes talking about yesterdays' ball game telling jokes about women young or old entering the edifice and I thought, what possible relationship do these 45 minute church goers have to do with the center of worship on the inside of the building? (Many so called worshipers enter the service ten minutes late and then get up and leave five minutes before the service is over. The service only lasts one hour. All church activities for the week center on this one hour and yet these playing church cannot last one hour a week) Inside the building, it was more or less a matter of routine or habit. People singing about a savior to whom they had no relationship at all...actually putting money into a collection plate for which they could care less about why the money was given or where the money is going. Just being dragged in by habit “it is the politically correct and expected thing for decent people to do on a Sunday morning” never having been touched by thoughts of sins ruin and Christs' redemption, never having experienced the death barrel and resurrection of Christ in the greatest experience of Christian faith, Baptism by immersion.

Often, this totally blind Christian laying in bed at night listening to the blessed hymns of the faith on radio and then outside on the street, hearing the rap music from an over modulated radio which would fit in better at an insane asylum, I know the difference in “growing and dying”.

In the Broadway play Noises Off, a play within a play, we learn the values of noise. Sounds should have meaning. There is nothing as beautiful as quietness. My grandmother, living five miles from the nearest town where a train went through could predict the weather very accurately from the sound of the train.

In the military, when homesick, I could relay my mind back to the country home where we slept at night with the windows open and I could hear the symphony of the frogs in the creek of the cow pasture near the house. I could even hear the cows munching on the green grass.

Once, at the Baptist Tabernacle in Atlanta, I had gone there for a worship service from a nearby military post, there was so much noise in the sanctuary that all reality of worship escaped. I later wrote the pastor and asked the question, “do the people of your church know anything at all about the sacredness of quietness in a sanctuary of worship?” I have certainly been in secular clubs much quieter. The average church congregation, the average pastor, never realizes that the average church member knows nothing at all about the history of Christianity or behavior in the church...the magnificence of worship, the growth of discipleship. I was in a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka where Buddhas' tooth is displayed, there was much noise, bands playing, a side show. With all of the problems of Catholicism, they have some things right, the attitude of worship, the crucifix which reminds us of our reason for worship, the catechism...in which Catholics learn something of their belief...and above all the sanctity of life through their anti-abortion stance. I could get excited about the new Senator from Massachusetts if he were PRO-LIFE not pro-abortion. Bad enough to have fat, ugly Teddy Kennedy as a pro-abortion Catholic for 47 years. Bad enough, to have 54% of Catholics vote for the most pro-abortion president in history. Bad enough, to have solid Democrat North Carolina support a state and national political party promoting murder. “God will not be mocked” (Galatians 6:7). I want you Democrat Baptists and Catholics to know that you are not growing but are dying because God, and God alone, still determines everything. Faith, is a two sided coin. A coin is worth nothing unless it has both sides. Faith, is action, based on belief sustained by confidence. One side of the coin is action,the other side is belief.

The most beautiful sound in the world is the sound of ocean waves. I can hear the ocean waves from my beach house, from the beginning of time, until the end of time, never growing, never dying, always the same...the sound of eternity...the sound of forever.