Thirsty No More

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

 (John, 19:28)

This writer still remembers those two great Christian actors, Roy Rogers and his wife Dale Evans singing, "Happy Trails." If there is anything that I have learned in my long life, dealing with other human beings, traveling the entire world, just how unhappy some trails can be. The test of our discipleship is our desire to quench the thirst of the thirsty. Jesus thirsted for a lost and dying world. Many of my fellow human beings have a thirsting faith to bring life forces to others. There is a famous hymn, "Others Lord yes others, let this my motto be."

It is that thirst which sent Christian missionaries around the world, taking with them in word and spirit the message of Salvation. It is that thirst which kept many of our heads in books so that on many professional levels we could make life better for our fellow man (doctors, nurses, lawyers, soldiers, explorers, etc). In a day when this blind man is told that most young people ride around in the comfort of an air conditioned vehicle with a cup of cold drink of some type in their face, we know there are those who have never known true thirst. God deliver me from people who have never felt pain, never wanted for anything, never been hungry, never been thirsty. Those of us raised in the heat and under the bright sun of farm agriculture know what it is like to sweat and thirst. In another article, I have described the greatest thirst I have ever experienced... in Egypt. One of the greatest stories ever told, our blessed Lord's encounter with a woman at a public well... the one thing they had in common, the need for cool water.

70% of the earth's surface is covered by water. Most of the pure water of the earth is found in the Great Lakes of America. One of creation's greatest miracles is God's ability to balance the equation of turning salt water of oceans into pure water, coming from the atmosphere in just the right size drops to water vegetation, fill rivers and lakes in just the right time and energy. Next to the coagulation of blood in animal life, I can think of no greater scientific miracle than the photosynthesis including water in plant life. The two things the atheists have never been able to explain, God, caretaker of the planets and his ability to deal with the individual mind in its relationship to right and wrong. The human mind thirsts for a knowledge of the absolutes of right and wrong.

How mysterious it is that Satan, often without our even realizing what is happening so confuses our concepts of right and wrong, even our thirst for knowledge. Satan's ambition is to lead as many people to Hell with him as possible. Just as he lead 30% of all the angels in glory toward damnation with him. He is the great deceiver.

Shelton was about 25, did not have a job, needed work. Back then, over 30 years ago, I would still hire someone to drive my car back to the area where my few surviving relatives still lived. I would always ride by the old school house which I attended for 12 years, the old church house which my ancestors had attended to since 1874. The home place, where my driver would describe how rapidly everything was deteriorating since none of my family lived there anymore. This time, I went by to visit two cousins, two sisters who lived in their old family home, one bed ridden-dying with cancer. Driving up, the older sister with her walker was hanging laundry on the clothesline. Here is a woman who taught school for 40 years, trustee of a college, supporter of many people in the community. Yet these two sisters had outlived all of their cousins-neighbors, had no one to help them. The young people in the community there, as now, were sitting at home drawing government checks for doing nothing. Patty, the youngest sister, soon to die, said, "Of all the people I know, I wanted to see you the most."

On the way back, Shelton confessed to me that he had left the church many years before, no longer believed. It came out that he was HIV-Positive, under treatment, soon to die. He told me how all of his friends had deserted him. He told me about two close friends who now kept the glass he used, his eating ware separated from theirs. Later, his mother, surviving in a small nearby town told me the horror story of finding a funeral home to handle his body.

Before Shelton died, he begged me to assist him with suicide. Perhaps he found someone who did help him. Anyway, his thirst for friendship, happiness, Salvation was never quenched.

Another young black man, who I hired to drive me to the VA Hospital, also HIV-Positive, told me about the screams of his wife when she learned of his disease. I have written about my own first cousin's death from Aids. He was a brilliant organist-musician in a large Manhattan church. After his death, his only sibling, his sister called me and said, only one other person, one of our cousins was at his funeral with me. Where were all the friends and acquaintances he entertained in his own beautiful home and on whom he had spent so much money, money left to him by my mother. This dead cousin was an Air Force Veteran, and received no help in his sickness.

The writer, C.S. Lewis said, "Hell is getting your way throughout all eternity." God is boss, he is in charge AND, he uses whatever he needs... warfare, disease or drought. A good friend, doctor, fought the blood disease, Hemophilia his entire life. Treatment at UNC CH Hospital, blood transfusion, infected with the AIDS virus, leading to his death. His wife was deceased. His son said to me, "I cannot find a lawyer to take the case, they all say the same thing, I cannot withstand an IRS audit and this always happens when you take on anything powerful, such as the University."

This very week, this totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, Medical Officer Veteran endured the most vicious telephone call from a VA official that one can imagine. You see, government officials, in the main never thirst. They have high paying jobs and cannot be fired. Like politicians, bureaucrats, professors, scientific foundations, they have never known life in the fight, only the benefits of living isolated from the battles of life. It is like the Catholic priest who writes books on marriage or raising children, inheritors of trust funds who have never wanted for anything. Those who neither understand sin or thirst. We are who bewitched, besieged, by the "cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts for other things entering in" (Matthew, 4:19). Know about life and the need for the everlasting arm of God. Most people I know, family-friends-associates have their hand on the doorknob-door of faith but, they never have the joy of opening the door and being engulfed by Christian grace... Thirsty No More.

Country Store

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (Santayana).

Most Americans are content with their own peace, comfort and prosperity. They are not interested in looking through the rear view mirror of how they got here. Most young people I have known, having gone through the trauma of a government school have little interest in history. They think that Americans have always lived in a land of pleasure, largess, skyscrapers. One of my drivers, a university senior, said to me, after I had spoken to him about the horrors of early settlers crossing the plains, "I think they mostly stopped at McDonalds." I then told him about one of my friends, a well known judge from Tennessee whose ancestors had crossed the plains on a covered wagon. His great grandmother, riding next to her husband at the front of the covered wagon behind a yoke of oxen, fell over dead. They had already buried one child on the trip. It was up to the father, and a surviving son, my friend's grandfather to dig a grave, to bury his great grandmother, bury her in the wilderness and then stay around for a few days to keep the Indians from digging up the body.

When this writer's ancestors landed on the shores of New Jersey in 1677 (a small ship called the Kent), they had brought just a few tools, fewer clothing than comforts, a few utensils. First, they felled some trees, built shelter. Their first actual efforts in conquering the new world, the place to which they had fled for religious freedom and opportunity was to build a chimney, a place for warmth and into which they could hang a cooking pot for the cooking of very scarce food. I still have here in my house the chimney cast iron cooking pot they had brought over from England.

Like biblical characters, you must put flesh and blood on these people. Can one even imagine the physical and psychological trauma they endured... so many died in the ocean crossing as well as after they came ashore.

First, was built their houses, using the rough hand tools they had been able to bring... narrow diameter logs which they put together as log houses. There were still log buildings (barns) on the farms where my parents and grandparents lived.

There were no work animals in the early years of North America. They eked out an existence from the soil, vegetable gardens around the stumps of trees where the soil was pliable full of humus.

Later, as more houses were built and more settlers arrived, the need arose for a store where supplies could be purchased or traded which arrived from England. In my boyhood, there were still country stores at almost every crossroads. This was the beginning of American commerce. Say what you will, investigate all you wish, this was the beginning of all the big corporations which now dominate the stock markets of the world. It is simply a matter of supplying needs for profit... raw capitalism. 90% of faith is just raw courage and, many of our ancestors had the faith-courage to begin businesses, no matter the risk, no matter how small.

I so remember those country stores of my youth. In them you could find necessities which could not be raised-produced on the farm, such as sacks of flour (cornmeal could be obtained at a local grist mill. I so remember the old grist mill near my home, farmers taking in bags of already shelled corn and the stone grinder, turned by water, grinding the corn into meal. Always, as my father was getting the meal, I was out on the bridge next to the mill where the water came through turning the wheels, watching the fish that had escaped). In the store would be a small variety of canned goods, some sewing supplies such as thread and needles, snuff-chewing tobacco, patent medicines, perhaps rolls of oil-cloth for the covering of kitchen and dining room tables. There often were bags of hog and chicken feed, certain necessities for automobiles and farm machinery.

With the coming of vehicles, it was at the country store that you purchased gasoline and oil. There would be a hand made ramp on to which you drove your vehicle for an oil change. Before power lines invaded the country side, the gas tank was pumped by hand. Phone lines came into the country side before power lines and it was at the country store that everyone made telephone calls... usually just emergencies, a place to call the doctor or the funeral home. It was at the country store that the first town councils were formed. With need-wanting to make a living, first came the blacksmith shop, then other businesses such as doctors offices. This is the history of the beginning of every town-city-metropolis. Usually, starting at a place of traffic such as a bend in a river or a railroad. With time, there was a need to transport farm commodities-animals-products of industry. With time, there was a need for school houses, church houses, even court houses. We all came from backgrounds such as this. Every politician should realize that this is the way our America grew. It started with one-story buildings, then two-story. Can you even imagine what it was like, before modern escalation to build multi-story brick edifices (hotels), office and industry buildings?

The founding members of our society-culture were those with the faith-hard work ethic. To take the risk, invest their hard earned money, not only in building commerce, but in building hospitals, libraries, colleges, and then later orphanages (where the children were called inmates), poor houses (county homes, where the unfortunates had never been able to do anything but survive, were able to live and die in some dignity), later retirement and nursing homes. By law and duress, veterans who have defended our country were cared for, but, in the American experience, next to slavery, its greatest shame, the unforgivable shame of this nation is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens.

Have we come this far, made such progress from sea to sea in buildings, transportation, industrial enterprise, education opportunities to see it all destroyed by ineptness and deceit. God most assuredly has had his hand on America. One political party wants God taken out of its constitution. Everyday, in every way, we see lying and deceit paralyzing and punctuating future American progress. Are there enough Christians left to stem the tide, to make a difference?

Odyssey of Good News

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

In my dreams, even in my nightmares, I can see, I am not blind. Once, on a ship, heading towards the North Pole, we were in a terrible storm. We hung on to ropes as we attempted to walk from place to place, could barely sleep in a bunk. The captain said to me, this ship was built for a storm such as this. Early settlers, the great plains of our nation, woodlands and weeds, inevitable prairie fires, the homeowner would always burn the vegetation around his house for at least one half of a mile so that the prairie fires would go around his home. Seeing is not believing, believing is believing. You will stay in trouble the rest of your life, in darkness-blindness if you depend on other people to give you the truth. Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not AND, the word of God is truth, all the truth we need.

The best University is the school of hard knocks. One of the most striking things about disability, any person you meet, always can tell you about someone who is in worse shape than you. Please God, just once, let some family member, friend, even stranger say to this totally blind man, who in everyway does the very best he can everyday "I am praying for you." It takes a real man to stand up for Christ. At 85, even if I were to live to be 100, my life is just a blink compared to eternity. We spend our entire lives looking at bars over windows, protecting things, that we really don't want. Shrouds have no pockets. The world's greatest insurance policy, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans, 8:38-39).

I heard one of the greatest spinal surgeons in the world say "Most back pain can be eliminated with one action, forgiveness." He said, "There may be some need for back surgery, but most back surgery is unnecessary, just learn to forgive." God has told me to QUELL my bitterness... to forgive employees who have walked out of my house-businesses carrying my things. He has told me to forgive my family, relatives, associates who have ignored me, "despitefully" used me. God has told me to forgive a government with no concern for its citizens. It is beyond my comprehension that I know people, my fellow citizens and even family members, who support and vote for the Democrat party: A party that puts such evil as Obama and his ilk in the White House, a party that promotes the killing of unborn babies. Sound is the blind person's best friend, radios, reading machines. 50 years ago the VA promised me a machine that could read books to me. I finally received this equipment one year ago (mail and the Post Office system is slow). I cannot tell anyone how much I have enjoyed listening to books. Is it not strange, that in spite of the VA's insolence-ineptness, that not one relative, church member, neighbor, employee ever attempted to help me with this pleasure? You see, most people think that nothing bad will ever happen to them... never any disability. Sighted people see things around them; the blind hear things around them, and know they are there, the blessing of raindrops on leaves, even the sidewalk. Sighted people think they hear birds singing, but the blind hear every note, their individual voices.

Stay out of the holes of life, the hole of discouragement-despondency-despair. Today is tomorrow that never came, we can do nothing about the past and very little about the future, we only have today. The good news-the Gospel, eyesight or not, we walk by faith not sight. Faith is action supported by belief, sustained by confidence, don't limit God, death is the easy way out. Christian is a census term. For those who are not Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu it is easy to declare yourself a Christian. Most people I have known who have called themselves Christians, just have their hand on the doorknob. They never really open the door of faith and enter the all-consuming room of total grace.

We are told that followers of Christ were first called Christians at Antioch. It was a demeaning term. There is bareness with many church members about being called Christian today. I hear many church members speak of God, but few talk of Jesus. The Gospel, The Good News, sins ruin and Jesus Christ redemption. The greatest thought that should come to any Christian, in death, thankfulness for salvation. I so remember when my precious mother died, her sisters were in the next room when I went in and told them it was all over. They said nothing about my mother's Christian life, their joy at her home going. They went to talking about flowers for the funeral. I am sure out in the countryside where she had lived her entire life when the news of Miss Sally's death reached the homes, most talked about frying chicken and fixing potato salad. Death has become so sanitized, just the rituals and formalities. The blind sees beneath the veneer of pretending.

 

You Can't Go Home Again

“This is man, who, if he can remember ten golden moments of joy and happiness out of all his years, ten moments unmarked by care, unseated by aches or itches, has power to lift himself with his expiring breath and say: "I have lived upon this earth and known glory!”

Thomas Wolfe

"So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then!" (Joshua, 14:11).

You must put flesh and blood onto the characters in the Bible. They are as real now as they were then. Caleb, (and his name means dog) and Joshua were two of the spies sent by Moses to investigate the "Promised Land" into which three million Jewish slaves would enter after 40 years of "humbling" in a wilderness. Only Caleb and Joshua gave a positive report on their return, about the country and the 7 cultures living there. The area Caleb surveyed is present day Hebron. These two men had witnessed their salvation in the Red Sea, years of preparation. They were the only two of their age group who were allowed by God to enter the "Promised Land." Caleb was 85 years of age, still enthused about life. This is this writer's 85th year, and some days, I find it very difficult to be enthused about my future on this earth. The North Carolina writer, Thomas Wolfe, from Asheville, in his famous book, said, "You Can't Go Home Again." But, in our memories, we can go home again. We pity the person without memories, without the experiences of life. Life has a way of toughening us. If those who attacked me 25 years ago attacked me now, they would lose their teeth. I have become toughened by the warp and woof, even the entanglements, of living by faith, not sight.

I would like to go back to the home place, walk through that big old drafty house... feel the cold-freezing linoleum under my feet, hear the cows munching grass in the large pasture across the road from the front yard. The greatest delight in this world, to have my mother come into my bedroom, as she did when I was a child, reach under the quilts to make sure that my feet were warm.

God wanted me to sense the world. I have traveled every continent, passport stamped in 157 countries. At the sunset of life, I would still like to hear the buzz, smell the spiciness of the city of Hong Kong. I would still love to hear "Call to prayer" in the great Muslim cities of the world, such as Cairo. I would still love to hear the chatter of shoppers in African markets. Even smell the black bread in the eating cars of the Tran Siberian railroad as I crossed the 13 time zones of Russia. I don't know which I would like to hear more, Big Ben in London or the chimes of the Bell Tower at Chapel Hill? I have a personal handwritten letter from a former UNC, Chapel Hill President, asking me to come up for a visit, he wanted to show me around, all the new buildings and progress.

In a bottomless ocean of technical knowledge, where there is more sickness, poverty, terrorism than ever before in history, how much progress has been made? 8 Around the world trips, sounds and smells, drums and drama, there is much of the past 85 years I would simply avoid. There were beautiful things which I want etched in my memory forever. Beautiful memories of my ancestors, the family church, the school house, BUT, I would like to forget how hard my parents worked. As I saw working peasants in fields around the world, India, China, Burma, etc., I knew that I had come from the peasant class, that my parents were peasants. In a world where Washington, DC refers to one million dollars as one dollar, where 3,000 babies are aborted everyday, where fifty percent of the population of our country will die from cancer. I realize that I have lived in the rapid decline of civilization, that to the uninitiated everything is obscure, they are clueless. In spite of everything we have been here a long time. Every time I flew into New York City, I had chills when I passed the Statue of Liberty, every time I hear the carillons play hymns on a nearby church, I have renewed chills because I realize that so few people comprehend their national and spiritual heritage.

We love our country, but so hate our government... its a hypocrisy, its deceit.

I would like to go home again and even revisit some places but, there are some things that I hope God will help me forget. Long before the present day Afghanistan war, I was at a boarder crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Refugees were lined up, their belongings hung onto their shoulders in large bags. They were in rags, their small children on the icy ground without shoes. Everyday of my life, in my time of prayer in my communion, when I have wine and a small piece of bread, remembering what my savior did for me on Calvary. I pray for refugees and hungry children all over the world. In a world of wealth, where even America is in debt $18 trillion dollars, there are wants and needs beyond comprehension. The carnal Christian cannot understand, they have never been there. Nor, do they want to believe those of us who have been there.

Old people savor everything they know because it is rapidly coming to an end. This writer was sitting on a bench outside the almost demolished Cathedrals of St. Paul and St. Peter near Leningrad, Russia. An old lady, in broken English, told me of how she prepared some rats she had caught to feed her starving children their last meal before their deaths from starvation. Most people in the western world know nothing about hunger and even strife. To date, most Americans do not know about drones dropping bombs on their own cities, they just know about their drones dropping on other peoples cities. Highly developed civilizations can die. It is hard for starved prisoners to remember anything. We can lose everything except our sole.

Free Throws

“Through it all,

through it all,

I've learned to trust in Jesus,

I've learned to trust in God.

Through it all,

through it all,

I've learned to depend upon His Word.”

Chorus of Through it All, Andre Crouch 

In this flight-fight-plight of life there is nothing more troublesome than the study of the human mind, just getting through the supernatural comprehension of what is involved in human intelligence: realizing the mercy, grace of the Creator of the universe-caretaker of its planets and God's direct relationship with the personhood of man and every human dilemma.

This writer wonders how many believers have experimented with prayer, the wondrous love of a Savior whose blood and water gushed from His heart as He died for the sin of the world... The supernatural message of the cross.

Years ago, speaking in many churches, I seldom saw a cross, even a vacant cross. I so love the Catholic crucifix. Every worship service should be engulfed by the "worth-ship" of the pain our blessed Lord freely gave. My pain, as a sightless man, is reaching out-pushing out to those who spend more time before a TV set, in a gym, or in an arena watching millionaire ballplayers run up and down a ball court than they do with God's word; the answer book for every human equation... the greatest power in all the world, the One who created you, sustained you and at last will save you.

What I want to get across here is the fact, and it is a fact, proved over and over, that we are not stuck where we start.

Your writer was born on a dirt road in poverty stricken Eastern North Carolina... no power, phone or water lines. School houses, like church houses, like most houses, were destitute. There were no inside gyms at the school, we played on God's "Good Earth". I would have been to short to play basketball anyway.

I saw my first basketball game after I arrived at UNC, Chapel Hill. There were 13 in my high school graduating class. As in everything else, I was not prepared for college.

Back then, basketball games were played in Woolen Gym where they set up bleachers for national university games. Since then, there has been Carmichael Center and now the famous Gene Smith Center. I could not understand free throws, that from the lunacy involved in playing the game in attempting to make points, some had difficulty making free throws, free points and yet, is this not the history of mankind... God giving man freedom, the gift of life, the gift of salvation?

When anyone asks this Christian what proof he has for the Bible, I state "it is just a three letter word"... "JEW". Study the history of man in the world, learn to trust the "Boss" of the universe. He gave "free throws" to the Jewish people. The death angel "Passover" just because they were Jews, three million slaves lead across a sea bed, water piled on either side just because they were Jews, "free throws". And it has never ended, "free throws", God gave his Son and his Son gave His life.

Even more so, as we maneuver amid victims, towards the goal line, think of those who were born to privilege-ancestry-money, think of those born with superior minds, think of those born with good looks, think of those with talent whether surgery or singing... "free throws".

I never considered this very much until I left the poverty of Eastern North Carolina and encountered the disparity of the world found at an education institution. As children, my father had taken us into town to see the Christmas lights-decorations at the homes of wealth. Most of these people did not even believe in the Christ of Christmas. At the state supported Colleges and University, supported by the taxes of all citizens, even those with dark skins and who were not allowed to enter the University, or put their feet on the sands of the state's white beaches. The disparity-bigotry-discrimination became stigmatized when I learned that some of my friends whose fathers were judges, legislators, big alumni givers got many "free throws" from the University. The University had officials who checked on the sons of prominence regularly to make sure they had no academic or financial problems. My friend Ned, whose father was a Legislator would buy me ice cream with his food allowance. He did not need to work to get through financially or academically. The University via politics in Raleigh, took care of him and so it was with so many others. The poor, the disenfranchised, the disabled, those with black or dark skins, those who did not graduate from military-prep-outstanding high schools did not receive any "free throws" from any place.

If there is anything I have learned in my long life, those who are the recipients of "free throws", think God should be made in their image, not them made in the image of God.

Henry David Thoreau had said "Once you have seen one train wreck, you have seen them all." God knew that sightless, I could not see all the train wrecks of the world, but he wanted me to "sense" the world. We have learned the silliness of warning people about smoking cigarettes, over eating, even the futility of wars against poverty-drugs-terrorism. Most simply do not care. In a world of meism, you sit in a chair surrounded by a circle. Your only interest, that within the circle that surrounds your chair. Within the madness of addictions, sex, greed, we have become profane-decadent creatures. Most of us have very few friends who usually are "free throws". Betrayal of country, friends, even family makes God blush. What kind of idiot had rather be on a landing craft at Normandy, knowing the certain death of bullets, would not have rather had been at home in America with his family, going to a job, enjoying his children. The more mature the saint, the tougher the test. Have you ever considered the "free throws" you enjoy because of the saints and glory who kept our faith, the thousands of veterans buried on foreign soil, who prized this Nation?

Rolling On

       
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.

Will Durant

Your writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, Medical Officer Veteran. My world revolves around the audio media. I hear overpaid announcers talk about every type of sports fields, parks, other activities paid for by my taxes. Yet, the blind-crippled-disabled, can not participate in most of these things. As one restaurateur told me, "We do not want handicap people in our business because it makes the normal people feel bad." It is very much that way at the church house, school house, court house. It takes "walking by faith" to get the disabled and disenfranchised through this "veil of tears."

I so enjoy hearing actors portray other people... walk into character. I like the Broadway stage (For many years I owned a condominium in Manhattan, to this day still have 250 playbills from Broadway plays. I heard some of the great actors, Claudette Colbert-Mickey Rooney-Lauren Bacall-etc). One of the great musicals of my lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along. My lifetime has been observing a nation of people, just rolling along toward the brink of disaster. Our nation, indeed the world, will not end with a bang or even a whimper, but from rotness within. Flying into Manhattan, the lady in the harbor always gave me a chill.

It is not politically correct to even discuss the morals and decadence of our country, we have become a profane culture. Government agencies are like card sharks, always dealing a few cards to the underlings, while they deal themselves a royal flush. I have never been able to swallow-foolishness involved in separating Americans because of skin color, because of certain club-fraternal memberships, because some ancestor was lucky enough to strike it rich... not because of ability, but just pure dumb luck. My fellow Americans, even in my lifetime have forgotten that we are all pilgrims on the same journey, it just so happens that some have better roadmaps.

For those of us who did not win life's lottery, it is so easy to become discouraged. This totally blind veteran, born in poverty, graduating from a small country school, 13 in my graduating class, working my way through 8 years of university so that I can jump through every hoop the government forced in order to professionally-militarily serve my country. Was first robbed of my dreams, then my security, and lastly, at the sunset of life, my dignity. At the time this writer went to school, there were no student loans or grants and from poverty, you worked your way through.

News people are so excited about some cartoons published in France. There has been a 1,500 year battle between the followers of Islam and the followers of Jesus. Seven hundred million Islamic women are not allowed to look into the eyes of any man. In Saudi Arabia, women not allowed to drive a car. This writer, world traveler, traveled in many of the 42 Muslim countries, it was not unusual to see chopped off hands. Yet, like the Paris magazine that published cartoons about Mohammad, no one has criticized the same magazine for publishing cartoons about Christianity, nor the enslavement of women in Islamic countries. Our American "do-gooder" women just concerned about women within the borders of North America, the few borders that are left.

When we think of the holiness of God, the discipline and character of our ancestors, we tremble in the knowledge that God is still in charge. Just this week, a national program revealed that 19% of all high school seniors have had at least four sexual experiences before graduation. We know that 52% of all black babies are aborted. A mother is the holiest thing alive.

For most of my lifetime, pretenders on stage, church house, school house and even at my house, we did not want not to be different from unbelievers. Sinners have so much fun. Madison Avenue and all advertisers want all Christians to dress, talk, act like unbelievers. Christians are so ashamed of God's word... just keep your spiritual feelings inside the church house. We don't worry about fooling God, just fool everyone else. The Caretaker of the planets of the universe is to busy counting the hairs on our head (Luk, 12:7) to notice our sins, indifference, pretending, play acting.

Here we are, at the first of another year, things are certainly no better. In the Old Testament, the beginning of the year, devotion to God meant the presentation of First Fruits. You must put flesh and blood on the people of the Bible, their faith, their character. They brought the first of their harvest, the first of their livestock, even presented their first children to God. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. If under Jewish law God required First Fruits, the tithe, certainly under grace we should give "cheerfully" First Fruits of every blessing. Whether it is a stock transaction or a real estate sale, the time is rapidly coming when the Christian Testimony, even in America will be outlawed in the public square, restricted to a house of worship. If Christ is our life, if his righteousness possesses us our profession, to that possession must be evident in our daily walk, only then can we "merrily roll along." You cannot sell-give-share anything which you do not possess.

My only child, my son is a Ph.D. Professor at a large Baptist Seminary. He goes out with Seminarians to witness to the unsaved in the community. In one park, he and a student found two fifth-grade students having sex on a park bench. How much worse can this ungodly world get? Do those in the pulpits and pews of America really care? Are we content to just "roll on"? The history of this planet involves a battle for the souls of mankind.  

Visions and Values

We all metaphorically wear masks that make us socially acceptable at the expense of our personal identities, and we "prepare" different masks for different people. This happens to be my people-meeting face.

T.S. Elliot

My town house is up on the levy, just above the mighty Cape Fear River, with its angry-swift current. Not that many miles from the ocean, to fall into this river is almost certain death because of the power of the current.

Would not anyone be foolish to jump into this river and swim against the current, when every one else who falls in the river are going with the current?

There have been many unanswered mysteries in my life, but the greatest, the one that will only be answered in heaven, why so few are willing to swim-battle against the current. Perhaps this is the reason our blessed Lord told us that very few will go through the narrow way, while so many seek the broad way. "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew, 7:13 & 14).

The Saints of old, those of today and even those of tomorrow will be forever showcased in heaven because they were willing to fight the current... unwilling to put on masks of acceptability for unbelievers. Our citizenship is heaven, we are just "strangers and pilgrims" on this earth (1 Peter, 2:11), foreigners, our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians, 3:20). This writer, world traveler, knows what it is like to be a foreigner in any country. We are easily distinguishable because we look different, act different, speak different. The Christian Church in America and elsewhere does not grow because church members do not want to be different. From the pastor to the pew warmers, it is a matter of pretending... as if God, Sovereign, Creator of the universe can be fooled.

I want to hear a honest pastor-preacher-evangelist say one time, "WHY ARE YOU HERE?" We know that the divorce rate is as great for Christians as for non-Christians, that 87% of all young people raised in the church leave the church forever after college. That most main line churches have decreased membership. The only churches maintaining their membership, Catholics and Blacks, they never had much going for them in the first place, except traditions. We know that most church memberships grow only because of card signers. There is no obedience without repentance, no discipleship without discipline. The mega-churches, have drums and drama, bells and smells, perfumed and comfortable members, in the habit of conforming for a few hours on Sunday. Transformed members (Romans, 12) show the reality of the Christ centered life everyday, actions-language-dress. Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not. The truth, and it has always been so, we do not read or live God's word because we had rather be popular with the world. There is no pleasure in swimming against the current. Dale Carnegie does not advise Christians, nor does Madison Avenue advise real Christian principles "by the how to of winning friends and influencing people." The art of compromise is essential for the politician, modern pastor, modern parent.

At one time in my life, the large den in my house, my walls were covered with masks which I had brought back from all over the world. The oldest civilization know to man, the Dogons of Mali in Africa wear masks at their festivals. I owned a Dogon mask. I possessed masks from the highlands of New Guinea and the valleys of Sri Lanka. Every culture-civilization in one way or another, paintings, piercings, tattoos, masks, always wanting to pretend to be something which they are not. It is the very foundation of the Broadway stage. Even in the 1600's Shakespeare said "the whole world is a stage." I feel sure that Judas, one of His disciples, who witnessed His miracles, was a superb actor. God perfected change with the Chameleon.

Since this Korean War era Veteran is sightless, totally blind for nearly 50 years, it has been essential to hire people to assist me. Over and over, almost without exception, applicants for employment have assured me their honesty, their desire to give good work for good pay. It does not take long for the mask to come off, their true identity to come forth.

I am recovering now from the stress of one such employee. I have been so exasperated-stress-discouraged that I can barely walk across the room. This woman who professed to be a Christian, who told me she had met the Lord on her knees, just before Christmas had put $950 on a credit card she had stolen from me. Actually transferred hundreds of dollars for my PayPal account to her private account. It would be impossible to know just how much money, things she had removed from my house, my refrigerator and closets. Of course she was arrested, but in this world of welfare protection-assistance, law enforcement is much more interested in helping her than helping me.

The fact that I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, Medical Officer Veteran who has given, and then given again for his country means nothing whatsoever to law enforcement or the companies which enable this deceit. The greatest disappointment to me is the fact without exception, everyone I have talked with about my latest robbery (and there have been many other robberies) just begin to laugh and say "they always find you." Just once, please God, let one supposed friend say to me, "I hope the thief will get what is coming to her/him, that God will send an honest, responsible person to help you."

Have we as a nation, even the Christian Church, lost all "visions and values?" For a long time, this 85 year old veteran has "walked by faith, not sight" (2 Corinthians, 5:7). For 1400 years there has been a battle between Islam and Christianity, it worsens every day. Perhaps not in my lifetime, but the time is rapidly approaching that Christian heads will be chopped off in this country. Many, who have compromised everything and become indifferent to life's basics will not care... just continue to go through the motions of living. It is essential, it is God's will that real men and woman of faith fight the sweeping current of neutrality and tolerance.