Rhombus

Today, September 30th, 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of our first sighting of the “stone-age family” The Flintstones. They were introduced to the world on September 30th , 1960. Years ago, I would look at the ancient medical instruments used by pioneer doctors in the archives of the medical school at Chapel Hill. My father owned many ancient farm implements, used by pioneer farmers. I have sold my collection of early pharmaceutical mortar and pestles, used for the compounding of medical prescriptions.

Most of today's young people have never seen a milk churn, a pedal sewing machine, a hand saw, and certainly now the bathing, bowl and pitcher at one time found on the washstand of every bedroom. Most young people think that running water has always been a fact of life, there was not running water in the White House until 1900, first telephone in White House in 1877, the year of my grandfather's birth. One of my smart drivers, a university student, when I suggested to him one day that we stop somewhere for lunch, and I said, “can you imagine what it was like for our forefathers crossing the plains to prepare food?” He said, “I am sure they stopped at a McDonalds.”

What does God require of us, in today's world, when we consider Christian discipleship, I think of my great grandfather and his writing about a southern baptist meeting in Nashville, TN. He had gone there on a train, had never seen electric lights, bathrooms inside bathrooms. He wrote of the street lights, food service on the train, what we consider the simplest, were luxuries beyond imagination.

He traveled the eastern part of the state by horse and buggy, there was not a paved road, power line, telephone. He was from one of North Carolina's first colonial families, large landowner, much better off than most people, but according to today's standards, lived in servitude. Does God require more of a man riding in large air-conditioned, comfortable car on paved highways, all creature comforts, than those who rode in buggies, horseback, or even walked...as did our blessed Lord. We have record of our Lord riding on a donkey one time.

Think of the early church building, cold, drafty in the winter, hot and stuffy in the summer, outhouses, greatly blessed if owning a piano, hard, wood floors, hard benches. How well I remember my aunt, thinned with age, carrying a pillow on which to sit during church. Even the poorest country church, today, has a heated pool for baptism. Most people my age, were baptized in a pond or river. Aunt Sarah, would pin the girl's dresses between their legs because she didn't want their dresses to go up as they went into the pond. Until 1936, first on the cover of Life magazine, people had never heard of slacks, women wore dresses. When I was on the staff of an army hospital at the woman's army center (WACs), the women, on the parade field marched in dresses.

Actions, attitudes, principles, spiritual or temporal, do not change with time. Sin was sin in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, throughout history: deception, adultery, fornication, pride, laziness, gluttony, and all other sins were as great in the ancient world as they are in the modern world. It is just that in the world of political correctness, the psychology of loving everyone, about everything, we rationalize, compromise, fraternize with the world, the flesh, the devil.

In our discipleship, spiritual or temporal, there are ditches and canyons which we must cross. Eating the wrong things was not as much a problem to Judaism as dividing up the land between the twelve tribes. In the 21st century, the behavior of children is not as much a problem, as same-sex marriage, the murder of children, euthanasia of the aged, or even lesbian bishops and gay preachers in some denominations. The principles of the Commandments have not lost their power, the sacredness of the communion table has not lost its power. When the communion is served by men with rough, gnarled hands, or by today's men with moisturized hands and manicured nails. The pulpit furniture has changed, the building is now carpeted, the pews are padded, but partaking of the symbols: bread and wine, representing the atonement of our blessed lord on Calgary, are as basic and blessed now in the 21st century, as in the 3rd , 10th , or 17th century. I have a record, a church growing from my ancestral church, there were not enough deacons in the growing church for the members to observe the Lord's supper, so the founding ancestral church sent men to assist in the observance.

Christianity was real to the early church, the later church, and even some “today” churches. There have always been pretenders, Jesus had one, Judas, Paul had one, Demus, the truth is the truth whether any one believes it or not. Whether in a tent, a wood-framed building, a brick edifice, when Christ is in the heart, God controls the mind. Modern conveniences make service easier, make the message more available. But, as was found in China, with the underground churches, harshness and hard times, brings greater commitment. One woman, on one of the poverty stricken Cooke Islands showed me her small, worn Bible. She said, this is the most precious thing I own.