Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

Psalm 27:  1-2

            At my father's funeral, many years ago, one of the preachers said, "When he had his stroke, he was picking peaches from trees he had planted.  I well remember those peach tree plantings...  just stalks."  You would have thought they were old sticks of wood to be thrown away but, these stalks in soil, water and sunlight grew into large peach trees.

            I well remember the day I went to Sears to buy shrubbery plantings for a rental house.  A horticulturalist who was there buying shrubbery for his own house said to me, "Tom, don't forget to prune the shrubbery each year."  I would not have believed by  looking at the straggly-stalks they would ever need pruning but, soil-water-sunlight and they became large shrubs.

            We have just had Groundhog Day, people wanting a rodent to tell us about the future.  Man has always wanted future predictions whether from a palm reader with a tent by the roadside, scriptures from the pulpit, or in this day of technology, models conjured from mathematical progressions.  Standing in the reviewing stand of a long parade, we know what has already gone ahead and what we see in front, but have no idea of what is to come in the parade.  Only God knows the beginning and the ending... our lives, this nation, world history.  The purity of Christianity is the trust that Jesus will always be at the crossroads before we get there.

            The one thing I learned in a long life of clinical care and military service is dead men all look the same.  You can not tell the wealthy, educated, successful from others.  Blind men, like those who cannot read or write, must remember things.  The mystery to this writer in dealing with men, some never think deeply or speak seriously... theirs is a casual lifestyle.  I have known men totally lacking in a museum or art gallery.  In Madrid's Prado or the Louvre of Paris, paint strokes of the masters would not be appreciated (canvases that would sell for millions of dollars).  The only strokes that would impress some men would be those on the golf course.  They clap and yell as millionaire ball players run down a ball field.  YET, in a church house or cathedral, a matter of eternal life-a matter of an abundant life, so quiet and dormant.  In a alcoholic bar setting many men sing with gusto, but in God's house, (AND, they all think they are heaven bound) you barely hear a sound when they sing "My Jesus, I love Thee I know Thou art mine."

            There are pulpiteers (preachers) whose spiritual thoughts go no further than their vestments, politicians responsible for crop controls who do not know a weed from a productive plant, Catholic priests who cannot marry who write books on family life and child care, print and electronic journalists (talking heads) who write and talk about countries they have never seen.  We hear almost daily about Obama appointing ambassadors to nations they have never visited.  (Most ambassadors buy their "ambassadorship" by raising tremendous political funds  i.e. Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to England, and Caroline Kennedy, ambassador to Japan.)

            On one of this writer's around the world trips, a trip of flying from one island to another, while on the Marshall Islands, I met two Americans who were living on a boat.  Both had been high-volume, wealthy financiers in Seattle, Washington.  One of them said to me "We got tired of the rat race, the hypocrisy.  Here, on these beautiful South Pacific islands, we live on a boat, eat fresh food, drink fresh water and enjoy fresh air.  You only go around once.  Why kill yourself in the mad, manmade gauntlet of deceit and persecution brought on by your fellow man?   God has given us life and our health has returned since we have learned to live life."

            I noticed, when visiting with them, they had many friends among the natives.  Each day was like a holiday, plentiful food, basking in healthy sunlight, rest and leisure living.  One said, "We are getting ready for heaven."  Man has the mistaken idea that God needs him.  For God to be God, he does not need anything.  Man needs God.  Living for God, living the Christian life is not complicated, just tough.  The nature of man is wanting to control.  God is able, leave the consequences to him.  "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."  Romans 14:8

            If a deaf person has never heard music, then music does not exist.  If a blind person has never seen the color red, then red does not exist.  Those who have never known the sweat of farm work think farming is exciting.  Those who have never known the horrors of warfare, think war is romantic.  The grunts on the front lines know the horror of war.  In Afghanistan, this year, hundreds of women and children have been killed just going through the daily activity of life.  Field grade officers, lieutenant colonels to generals, gain promotions during warfare.  The only truly great Americans are those who are the casualties through death or disability during war.  These are those who are forever young.  Their families and friends will never know them as older people.  A one day widow can not be comforted by other widows.  The things that get you through warfare are the same things that get you through other struggles of life.  You become a friend to pain and you trust in the belief that this, too, will pass away.  The soldier does not look too far ahead, just to a good meal and a warm bath.  Now is all you have.

            On the farm, early in the morning, before daybreak, the sound of rain... You knew the activities of the farm did not cease because of rain water.  You walked in the rain to milk the cows and to feed the livestock.  You were their god.  They depended on you.  If these animals had this reality of this perception, then why not God's chief creation?  God does not needs us, but we need him.  And, He has told us over and over, in His book, His instruction manual, "I will never leave thee or forsake thee."   Hebrews 13:5