#1927 Couch Potato

#1927

Couch Potato

“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”  - Alexander Pushkin, Tales of Belkin

Only old people have the guts to challenge the young people who think they know it all.  Our first knowledge of God, HE WORKED.  This writer, still working everyday at age eighty-six, cannot even imagine a human being with his chief aim in life...retirement, not working.  You work or you steal from those who do work...entitlements from tax dollars: your presence because you have nepotism from some powerbroker: you're pagan or heathen enough to believe you are too good for work...too good to get your hands dirty. 

America, indeed the world, has just survived another holiday season...the holy day of Christmas, observed as the birthday of Christ and then a dancing twist to the beginning of a new year and New Years Day.  Most of the month of December and the beginning of January taken up by the heathen of the world as throw away days in the work experience of their lives.  WHO DO THESE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE FOOLING, TALK SHOWS WHO CLAIM TO BE PLAYING THE "BEST OF"?  They were not that good when we heard them the first time, and who wants to hear them repeated.  Even, "so-called" Christian programs, even the much loved James Dobson, telling us that he is reusing the best programs of the year, why not be honest enough to say, "I am going on vacation for several weeks." 

I believe the most nauseating-permeating experience of my Christian commitment, today's pastors (more interested in their pastoral package than the pew-warmers sitting in front of them heading for Hell, unless redeemed) cancelling church programs simply because of holidays: thinking their members are too busy with their non-religious, secular activities to participate in church activities.  For the real Christian, church activities-programs should supersede all other secular activity.  It is much like the family who had one million three hundred thousand Christmas lights all around their house and yet had never been known to give anything for God's work...did not even recognize the saving grace of Jesus.  How about the hundreds of "so-called" Christians in traffic jams out to sightsee this lighting spectacle? 

This writer was born and raised in the poverty of Eastern North Carolina: the heat and sweat of the tobacco-cotton-corn farming.  When I consider how Christians will get involved in traffic jams to see a pagan's Christmas light display, I think of my own farming father going from house to house asking fellow farmers to gather at the church house to pray for rain during a time of drought...crops drying up in the fields from lack of water...wells drying up and thirsty livestock not being able to have drinking water.  Yet, even this past year, this same farming country, now with paved roads and easy access to the church house.  There was another very dry summer with crops drying up in the fields; there was a great rainfall-drenching the thirsty crops.  (I am on the telephone line from the church, a line which contacts all the church members.  I am included on the line because I have been generous to the church).  I was so saddened, even to tears, when I got the call that prayer meeting was being cancelled at the church because of the huge rain and so many ditches and roadways being full of water.  In my ancestors' time, they would have all gotten to the church anyway possible to THANK GOD for that rain...dirt roads, no cement walks around the church building...they would have been happy to walk in mud. 

For home bound-disabled-handicapped people, the radio and television are their main source of information to the outside world.  We who are poor and disabled do not take off anywhere.  A holiday is just like any other day, survival.  YET, we find that radio personalities, TV personalities, all take off for the holidays.  Instead of programs to which our lives are linked, people who we hear day after day and feel that we know.  We are left with "canned" programming, originating from some far off place.  WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE FOOLING?  These overpaid personalities, fortunate enough to have the looks-voice-connection to have such a good job are off spending some of those "big bucks" they get for their mediocrity.  Most of them are not that good or they would be in a bigger market.  And, even those in the big markets have sold their souls to Satan....just performers-pretenders.  There is a great hymn, "Be Strong in the Lord, the Victory is Yours", if there is anything I learned in my many years of world travel, how Americans should rejoice in having good jobs: jobs that provide great housing-clothing-food-vehicles.  Most of the world's poverty is below the thirtieth parallel...South America-Africa-Asia.  Most of those folks, and I have been there up close and personal (Dr. Morris has had his passport stamped in one hundred fifty-seven countries, eight round the world trips, including both poles), would be happy to have a job and work any day, everyday. 

This old, blind, veteran, if only I had eyesight, would be so happy to work everyday, I would not need a vacation or holiday, just rejoice in being able to work.  But these heathen, who use every opportunity for not working, have no appreciation for those of us who gave it all, so they could have such an easy life.  The preacher who thinks he works so hard, by having the joy of presenting the world's greatest message for thirty minutes on a Sunday morning, that he must take off Monday and perhaps chase a small white ball around on a golf course.  One of my businessmen friends, a man who runs a large business, said he had trouble getting on the golf course because of so many preachers being there.  This writer has never been in a Starbucks, I still believe in getting change back from a cup of coffee.  I well remember a doctor friend of mine taking me out to a place where we could get five cent cups of coffee.  When bad times come, and they are going to come, no country can continue with the excesses of living that some in this country so enjoy...pain and hurt will put these "mockers" of work into focus.