When my father was a young person, he knew a young man in the community who cared nothing about the church, or the school, or his family, or his neighbors, or anything else except himself. His selfishness got him into some real trouble and so he left the state and went down to Texas and became an oil field worker, really became a wildcatter (a person who drills oil wells in areas that are not in advance known to be oil fields), and by the time I was a child he had returned to the community for visits showing off his millionaire success riding in a large stretch limousine with a wife of questionable advantages.
I say this because one morning in the Quaker church, of all places, where as a child, I was with my parent who were visiting there, where Quaker women are conservative in every way. She evidently thought she was in a night club and pulled out her compact and lipstick and did her face while the sermon was going on. Anyway, he shared his wealth with his long estranged family by first going to the family cemetery and replacing all the tombstones with far more expensive ones, putting a nice fence around the cemetery, and building a roadway from the highway to the cemetery, buying all the land around the cemetery and much other land in the community, remodeling his relatives homes, and generally, “spreading his wealth” (a familiar term). Mr. Mitchell is long dead, but the stories of his largess to the church which he never attended in his youth, and to the relatives whom he hardly knew, persist.
Perhaps the greatest story in all of literature, is the so called “Prodigal Son.” It is a story of a young Jewish boy with a remarkable father and less remarkable older brother, who took an early inheritance and went far from home, probably Babylon-Vegas. Where he wasted his inheritance and when this Jewish boy had to resort to feeding pigs the scriptures says, “he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). How many days did his loving father stand looking in the distance thinking about his lost son. The scripture says he recognized him, probably by his walk or something and he ran to meet him. The remarkable part of this story is that the older brother resented the festivities of the homecoming. But, the remarkable father said to the resentful brother, entreated him and assured him that his remaining property was his.
I have sympathy for both the son who wanted to get away from home (because I had a real strict father) and I have sympathy for the older brother who had stayed at home, worked hard, and did not have as much empathy for his younger brother. Our Lord gives us these parables such as the man who went and hired people to work in his vineyard and paid the ones who came to work first the same as the ones who came to work last. This helps us to better understand death bed conversions or even the repentant thief on the cross.
It helps me as a blind Christian (I am a totally blind 100% disabled service connected veteran) to show some benevolence toward healthy, wealthy men in this very community who went to Canada to escape military service ,but returned to become the leading politicians and some of the wealthiest party givers and party goers at the country clubs of the community. They are the “good time, good ole boys” of the community and they and their wives look down their noses, particularly at church, at those of us who were foolish enough to live committed lives directed by the holy will of God.
We can be sure that God will discipline his own. These good ole boys already belong to Satan and they will have their enjoyment, “here and now.” “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:7)
We who live in the darkness of blindness, who have given our best to our country, have values some will never understand outside of a spiritual conversion.
Character determines destination, Our values are set by home and school. We cannot prevent birds flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from building nests in our hair. It is the anti-Christian home and the anti-Christian school system, that permits the building of the nest of socialism, admiration for political corruption, and disdain for nobility of human life that has brought down individuals and governments. Right now, the worlds largest democracy, Indonesia, a country of 5,000 islands, is making the decision of either continuing as a democracy or becoming the world's largest Muslim theocracy. We pray that the secular movement in this country that has permeated the home, government, school systems, universities, media, and even the largest corporations will not be over taken by this cancer.
The story of America, the success of America is based on free enterprise, capitalism, and constitutional rights that include everyone, even the minorities. A democratic republic established by a magnificent constitution, gives to every citizen the freedom to fail or to succeed. Bill Gates, a man of wealth and intelligence, in his rules for success in business, states in the first rule, there is no such thing as fairness. We are just given opportunity along with responsibility, whether at home, or wildcatting in a foreign place.
Abraham Lincoln, said he was not afraid of this country being conquered by another country. His fear was that it might implode from the corruption and the anti-American curse from within. 125,000 men who lie buried in foreign cemeteries attest to the fact that this country is worth defending. It is the greatest story of a successful nation in history. And the story is resplendent with men and women of faith who are responsible for the success. They had faith in the promise of America and faith in the decency of one another.
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