#1869 Wishing Well

#1869 

Wishing Well

"My Wish" Rascal Flatts

     My wish for you
     Is that this life becomes all that you want it to
     Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small
     You never need to carry more than you can hold
     And while you’re out there gettin’ where you’re gettin’ to
     I hope you know somebody loves you
     And wants the same things too
     Yeah, this is my wish

It's not age that weakens the man, it is comfort.  All court trials are hindsight, most non-fiction books.  I can tell you as an eye doctor that backward vision, looking out the rearview mirror is always 20/20.  With age, the lines between right and wrong get blurry at times, and lies, about the good ol' days, have a way of festering.  Purveyors of stain and stench are nothing new...some of the first art known to man, even in caves, was pornographic.

What was life like before this recent bottomless ocean of technology...the talking box (television), the computer, the smart phone?  I saw it all happen in my lifetime.

In the South of my childhood, in my family, the foundations on which we built our lives, the church house and the schoolhouse.  We didn't have the distractions of social media, "keeping up with the Joneses", political correctness.  Human-beings, at that time, knowing they were created in the image of God, looked out for one another.

Most of today's young people have never seen a well, cannot believe that my grandmothers used a bucket to draw water out of a well for washing clothes-dishes-bodies.  You drew water out of a well to water livestock...animals get thirsty too.  Those who think the Bible is myth, a joke, should know that scripture and Christianity is fact not feeling.  It is a fact that Abraham, the first Jew, sent his trusted servant Eliezer to find a wife for his promised son Isaac.  Rebecca drew water from a well with a bucket to water the camels of that servant's camel train.  Can you even imagine how much water a camel can drink?  So, we know that Isaac's bride Rebecca had wonderful musculature.

In that South, at every country church house, there was a well in the front yard...travelers would stop at a country church to get water.  There was even a trough from which their horse could drink.  I did it many times, traveling, using a hand pump.  Once at our family church in the country, someone at the church said, "The water does not taste right."  Aunt Sarah, longest liver in the family, old at that time, tasted the water and said, "There are frogs in the well." 

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."  At the sunset of my life, I often think of what I could have done differently...changes I could have made...LOOKING INTO THE WISHING WELL OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Should I have lived most of my life alone?  Personally, I found women, especially the ones I married, the most selfish people I have ever encountered.  That instinct is there, selfishness-preservation; think about it, in a bad traffic situation, how many women have ever helped you in traffic?  Like a mother hen, a mother sow (in Africa, a mother lion always gets between her cubs and any other living being) the mother has the instinct-selfishness to defend herself and her young.

When I was a student, grad school, Memphis TN, member of the great Bellevue Baptist there was one girl to whom I was greatly attracted, but she felt she was too good for me, then one Sunday night, one of the worst snow storms in the history of the city, when everyone was advised to stay home, she called me and asked me if I would pick her up to go to church.  She knew I had a new car, which I had sweated, lived frugally all summer to buy, selling books door to door.  I was not about to take my new car out on those streets.  The great preacher, Dr. RG Lee, would not see me ushering on the lower floor that night and that girl was not that attractive.

Anne, co-owner of a woman's dress shop near my office, she was a spectacular woman, and I truly believe women came to me for talking as well as treatment.  I was too young but I knew she prostituted herself to older men.  She would watch the newspaper, would go to a funeral of a deceased matron just so she could observe the widower and his children...how attractive he was-how expensive the casket, how he buried his wife-how he treated his children.  She would tell him that his wife was her customer, attempting to get him interested in her.  She could never have too many wealthy men lovers.

Would I have been better off if I had played around, high school-college?  Would I have been better off it not so serious in studying, saving my money, living frugally, investing wisely?  Looking back, would I have been better not to have divorced a woman interested only in herself, uninterested in building an estate-world travel-philanthropy?  How many women philanthropists do you know? 

Life is what you make of it, and it goes too fast.  Through prayer and commitment you determine what you do at the crossroads of your circumstance.  The Christian does not allow his circumstances to determine his faith.  Would I have been better off if not so strict in always presenting the best version of myself: my dress, my language, my studies, my presentation?  Would I have been better off if not concerned about my health, taking supplements, careful about what I eat and drink?  Would I have been better off if not a concerned, committed, convinced Christian?  Too many Christians just want the "fire insurance" of thinking they will not go to Hell, by pretending at the church, and around town, but, they never know real redemption, what it means to be a new creation, born again, "they want their cake and eat it too"... holding onto God while continuing to live like those who want nothing to do with God.  Water from God's well, you never thirst again.  Water from God's well, you wash fellow saints feet.  Water from God's well, you clean the inside as well as the outside of the vessel-temple.  "Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  (Corinthians 3:16)