#1826 On the Stage of History

On The Stage Of History

            Your writer is a world traveler, (8 round the world trips, every continent, passport stamped in 157 countries, this includes both poles). Whether the Intuits of the far north, Asians or Africans, so many primitive tribes worship the sun...something large that they can see, an entity that they can fit into their world.

            In the books of Charles Dickens, he wrote of that days social problems. In Oliver Twist, we have a boy who escaped his environment. Back then, everything was good or evil, black or white. Americas today's world, everything in shades of grey. In every culture, there is a need for health and beauty... some hope in life. It is a human factor to have faithless day: days of despondency, despair, discouragement. Even Jesus was exasperated...a fig tree that did not bare fruit...buying and selling in the temple. 

            God expects only one thing of mortal man, trust. I have found that one who can not trust is not trustworthy himself. To be trustworthy, you must have the grace to trust: those who can not be trusted do not trust. Adam and Eve could not be trusted. All the beauty that one could possibly desire, all the bounty that one could possibly desire. God set just one parameter, "don't touch that tree".

            It is not the righteousness of God rather, righteousness of God...all consuming , as this writer has specified many times, you do not say, I am an American "I am American"... all consuming you, you are stating everything that America stands for. I would be the first to admit that we have many different type of Americans...greedy-envious-hypocritical. There are many who have a certain type self righteousness... pretending, performing BUT, when you have righteousness, through Gods spectacles, he sees the righteousness of Jesus in you.

            This writer, like you, had no existence before conception. Jesus had existence before he was conceived through the Holy Spirit in the body of a 13 year old virgin named Mary. In that manger, after delivery, (God had put on a tent of human flesh). The one who spoke and worlds were formed. Nothingness into somethingness. Jesus inherited it all and we, as believers on him accepting his redemption, become joint heirs with him. Jesus, with the glory of his father, before the world was formed, voluntarily yielded himself, the entire weight of the sin of the world. That is the nature of the spirits he puts in us. Oh how it depresses me that the modern church goers have so cheapened this great gift. Most do not know what it is all about. They actually think that God needs them. They actually think we are to worship "bellhop deity" just to be called on when we need him.  They want to camp out just as near Sodom as possible (even within the smoke and stench of a burning hell).

            Faith is supernatural. We must trust in the integrity of God's word. He did not say one thing accidentally. Jesus is our kinsman redeemer... willing to pay the price of our bondage- ransom. It takes the flesh and blood of a kinsman to redeem... able to pay the price, and what a price he did pay. A cross on Calvary (Hebrews 11). Now you understand why we can worship one whose Father spoke everything into existence. One man, Adam, caused us to lose our inheritance but, by grace through faith plus nothing Jesus, our kinsman redeemer- joint heir has regained our citizenship in heaven for us.

            I never understood redemption, completely, until, one day, on certain business, I was in a magistrate office, 2 parents were there to bond out their son who had been arrested for some malfeasance. He must of been a child of old age because both parents had grey hair. I could tell they had both been crying but they were there before the magistrate on business. the shirtless, shoeless young man, around 17 years of age was brought in, you could tell he was happy to see his loving parents and they had all the grace-faith-trust-love of parents in their son. They presented to the magistrate the deed to their house and its appraisal to bond- bail out their son. They had come to buy his freedom, to take him home. Is this not the history of Christianity? Our kinsman redeemer is the only hope of the world.

            The greatest fallacy, in my thinking as an American and a Christian , is that others have the same belief system- values- absolutes that you have. Others do not have the advantages of your lifestyle. I won life's lottery when I was chosen, by God, to be born: when I was blessed with my parents: when I was given my mind: when I was redeemed by God through the precious blood of his son. Surely others, not knowing the inner wirings of my mind, think I am strange. Remember, it does not matter what others think. The historical stage of the world has been occupied by those who did not choose the most trodden- beaten path. 

#1825 An Old Soldier Salute

An Old Soldier Solute

On

Veterans Day

Glorify the Lord with me;
    let us exalt his name together.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
    he delivered me from all my fears.
⁵ Those who look to him are radiant;
    their faces are never covered with shame. (Psalms 34)

            A veteran expects nothing extra. It would be wonderful and expected if the veteran could receive what his government promised him when he enters the military service. Just to serve, just to wear the uniform is a privilege.

            Yesterday, one of my friends left to fly to Normandy for the 75th anniversary. This Veteran was at Normandy for the 25th anniversary.

            In the American experience, next to slavery, the greatest shame of America is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicap citizens.

            For fifty years, this veteran has been totally blind, 100% disabled. I was a medical officer during the Korean War Era. There have been many disappointments in my life. You never recover from poverty or permanent disability, you just learn to trust in God and keep close to that clear- sharp voice "I am all you need".

            I was on the staff of Army hospitals, I saw the best and worst in military sick care  treatment. I wish I could say that I have seen improvement but, in spite of the publicity, in spite of congressional reaction, conditions have only worsened. One of my VA doctor friends, Dr. Charles B. said to me, "the employees working here just keep breathing until they can get that retirement check." When I was young, there was a few WWI Veterans alive, their all gone as well as most of the WWII Veterans.

            I had two relatives who were gassed in Europe during WW1, as far as I know, they never received any veterans benefits. Like the veterans of WWII, they were just thankful to go home and go to work, raising a family, building a community.

            My first real encounter with the horrors of warfare, while in school in Memphis, I've pulled time carry for patients at the Millington VA Hospital. In one room there was four soldiers who had lost both arms and legs; just trunks laying on special beds. A nurse took care of them completely. Of course, they did not live very long. Later, involved in the activities of a nearby city, I came upon a WWI Veteran who had lost the use of both legs, he had designed a contraption of bicycle parts, whereby he could move around town using his arms to manipulate the vehicle. He stayed on one street corner and sold candy bars and pencils. He told me that he did not receive anything from the Veterans Administration but he was thankful to be able to help himself.

            There are 166,000 of our finest buried in overseas cemeteries. This was before the time when bodies were brought home. I stood at that great cemetery at Manila, Philippines, where 18,000 are buried. Of course there are 250,000 buried at Arlington.

            When children and young people are in their most sensitive sexual years, when the politically correct adults are confused about "bathroom training"- gender identity, let us be thankful that there was a time when real men, supported by real women were willing and able to put our national honor to the test on the alter of liberty. America, bull work of freedom, knowing the challenge involved in freedom of religion- speech- defense, at the behest of political slave masters, now willing for self imprisonment. We have been conquered by the enemy of indulgent insolence, with out a shot being fired. Where are the Veterans, the pastors, the parents who profess to love this nation? 

#1824 Homecoming

Home Coming

(Abortion has many victims beyond the child who is destroyed. Were all the abortions to stop tomorrow, the Church's work of healing these other victims will have only begun)

            There is no hill for the self possessed victim to climb. God loves you as you are, wherever you are , but he refuses to leave you there. We all had a starting point, before the foundation of the world, God chose each of us for life (Psalms 139) Marvelously created, one sperm cell of a father, one of millions fertilizing the cell of our mother, producing an individual unlike any other person who has ever lived on this earth. Each of us have 64 trillion cells in the body, each cell capable of producing 100's of pages of data detailing ones ancestry. Life has no guarantees, many innocent babies actually aborted. On one of this world travelers trips to communist China, my guide told me that his sister had produced five baby girls, each of which were strangled by her husband. In that communist, godless society, one child law to a couple, the husband wanted a boy but, this old blind veteran cringes to think that America is heading in the same way as communist China...57 million babies aborted in America since the Supreme Court decision of 1973... the most innocent life, they had never done anything bad to anyone. And yet, we have the nerve to talk about terrorism in other places. Just think, and how could anyone not believe in the omnipotence of the creator of the universe when you consider that like every snowflake that has ever fallen- every grain of sand on a seashore- every person possesses a personhood, finger print, voice and even flex in the iris of the eye, different from any other person who has ever lived. We wonder why 72% of the children from church-going homes leave the church after they enter college. They have seen their parents and church members base their "supposed" faith on feeling, not fact. Christianity is not complicated, just difficult. Christianity is fact not feeling. Even at the old country church (built by my great grand parents in 1874) as a child, I saw everyone base their redemption on a bellhop type salvation, they just called on God when he was needed.

            Even the thousands of different denominations, each thinking it has the true message, believes that God needs them rather then they needing God. In my lifetime, 85 years, with the world completely changed, I have seen organized religion turn into a Madison Ave. type fantasy. Who needs the Grace of God when you have government largess, when you have welfare handouts instead of hard work, when you have politics instead of prayer?

            The one message I have had great difficulty getting across, speaking in pull pits, before groups of every type, the supernatural redemption gift of God when the old man of sin and redemption is replaced with the new creation, salvation experience of being born again by the holy spirit of God. You have within you something which only you can understand, which your family, friends, and no one else can comprehend unless they too have been filled with the holy spirit of God. When you have this new creation, Christ in you, when God looks at you he sees Jesus.

            Perhaps I can explain patriotism on very much the same level. Church members like to fight the battle against Satin from air condition fox holes, they really don't believe, they really don't believe in the mission of the church. The warrior , on the front line, having within himself the spirit of love for God, family, Country will risk his very life. Only the true warrior; true soldier knows the inner conflict of seeing his fellow soldiers dead bodies (in Korea) stacked up like cord wood. ... in the middle east, from Islamic; radical; terrorist comrades must pick up the pieces of their friends. This is what the inner neurology of mankind endures.  With much of the same emotion, the child loves his home. In this writer's prayer life every day, I pray for the refugees, migrants, hungry children all over the world, displaced by the warfare of mankind. They do not have a home. I have written about it before. What I saw on the border of Pakistan... refugees from Afghanistan carrying everything they owned in big sacks on their backs...small children, barefooted in rags, clinging to the only thing they had regarding a home, their parents.  

            The home place where I was raised, in my family for many generations, the first thing my old uncles would do when they arrived at our home, go to the old well (hand pump), a clean glass for my mother and start drinking the water. King David of the old testament wanted water from his home place in Bethlehem (2 Samuel 23:15, 23:16) even Jesus taught us about a drink of water. No water like the clean water from the country home place (the tragedy of modern city living, water poisoned by chloride and floride)...the lie of the century, drinking poisoned water top prevent tooth decay.

            Down the road, up a path from the farm where I was raised, the old Hinnant homestead, one Saturday, each summer, the large beautiful cars would pass our house headed for the long deserted house in a big grove of trees where the family would still have their homecoming. The land had stayed in the family...no one lived in the old house but a family member kept the grounds in order, the old hand pump in working condition. God helps people who have no memories; no love affair with parents, family who have gone on. They would bring their lunch, would take flowers out to the graveyard where parents; grandparents were buried and have a good time rejoicing in the memories of their childhood...their heritage. They were all people of wealth, but not to "stuck up" to remember.

            Likewise, in the woods, not far from my home, on the land of another relative, an old black church ...just crewed benches one Saturday to the year, wealthy black people from town, driving large cars would park up and down the highway, make their way with food baskets and fold up tables to sing and praise God for his blessings, then and now.

            As a child, I never could understand the homecoming at our old country church. when old people, some living far away would show up for that day. Only in recent years, as an old person myself, can I understand their tears as they would enter the church hearing the old hymns that they knew as a child. It is mans possession of a soul, that gives him these emotions, separating man from his fellow lower animals.