Lid For Every Pot

Lid For Every Pot

A Gift

Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lusters
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

Most of us go through life perceiving everything will go our way. It is the difference in everything that makes life interesting, a true so of individuality. 90% of all life on earth is insect life...all different...and we wonder why God actually created fire ants.

Some friends were sitting with me on the porch of my beach house, one brought my attention even though I could not see it, that an ant was crawling across the floor, carrying a stick several times its size. God often referred to the ability of the workaholic ants. One of the persons on the porch went over and stepped on the ant...thinking he was doing the world a favor instead of learning from the ant, the fact that they are always busy. There are bees the size of a grain of rice that can fly 1000's of miles to pollinate certain trees. When I was at the North Pole, some of the mountainsides were covered with small birds, turns, that fly from the North to the South Pole each year, using only their internal magnetism, supplied to them the creator, God. They are smaller than your fist. Every day of my life I think of the advances made during my lifetime; a time when there was only 1 telephone for many miles, now almost every school child has a telephone with more extravagant technology than the system that landed on the moon.

It is not easy to live the gospel but if it were easy than the rewards would not be so great. I used to think everyone had my values, NOT SO! Not even your own family members, your friends, your neighbors, but they have a right to live their life and we never know what baggage they are hauling around, what experiences have caused them to think or act as they do. Everyone has only 1 life to live, 1 time on the merry-go-round, 1 time on the ferris wheel and then, it is all over.

The greatest message to young people, your life is not all about you. The greatest message to get across is that God took the time to write a book, a book with all the answers. If there is anything I have learned in life, both believers and non-believers, no one wants to let go of the steering wheel. The new Christian, new believer is like the new student driver, holding on tight to the steering wheel. Then, we look around and see the indifference of other believers at the church house. Then, we look around and see the indifference of our fellow citizen/patriots; their crumbling affection for their country, mostly because of pretending politicians. Then, we look around and see the games people play in their professions; in their technical ability; in their financial astuteness, no matter how long it took for them to get there. How easy it is to lose basic values. I never heard my parents, my grand parents use a 4 letter curse word. They had values and yet, with God's gift of freedom comes your right to even go to hell if you wish, to be abusive, to desire trash, "there is a lid for every pot".

The single most difficult prayer to pray, "into your hands". You do not need to put a guard at the lion's cage. God knows we are in His hands. Once in Africa, in my little jeep with my driver and guide, we came upon a pride of 23 lions. They sleep with their feet sticking straight up in the air. I said to the guide, "oh my Lord, get me away from here!". He said, "those lions certainly aren't afraid of us". The swap of just one's paw would end us forever. The flotsam and jetsam of everyday life, someone texting on a cell phone at a traffic light, a piece of meat hung in your throat, any one of a 1000 circumstances that could take your life and that rare gift of life is all over.

I am so thankful that God gave me the intelligence, and more important, the opportunity to study the human body, God's greatest creation. And just to think that we live in a world where human life means so little, a culture of death, more deaths from suicide than any disease, 1000's of babies aborted every day...great doctors/musicians/geniuses of every type, and most of all, parents. And, think of it, parents willing to make the sacrifices necessary to teach and train those who have designed the great buildings of the world (or even the lowly bricklayer). Those who have been willing to burn the midnight oil when they too, could have been out at happy hour, to learn intricate surgery techniques (the nurses and technicians that assist them); those with the ability to interpret calculations as engineers to build great highways (as well as the truck drivers that haul the dirt).

Every time I have ever been on a train, and I crossed most of the world by train, once, London to Hong Kong, those rails up on a bed for so many years, before the time of machinery, I thought of the animals that had to dig the dirt that built those great railroad beds. On the London to Hong Kong Oriental Express, at the Russian border, the wheels on the train no longer fit the rails, so the wheels on the train must be changed. Guess who changed the wheels...women (they jacked up the train cars and changed the wheels) and they are still doing that until this very day. And, until a few years ago, it was mostly women who taught school (my 5th-grade teacher received $85 a month for teaching)...I know because my father was the school board chairman. What would these teachers in these states that are protesting, say to that? And, I well remember that this doctor was paid $2 to see a welfare patient, and I saw my own mother working the fields all day long to make $1. But not her only, other women, hauled from town to pick cotton in the fields all day long to make a few dollars...no bathroom facilities, no food facilities, dragging babies along on their cotton sacks. My own precious grandmother, more educated than most women of her time, raising 9 children, playing the piano, delivering the babies and laying out the dead in the community, picked cotton on my grandfather's plantation, the day following her marriage.

In the malstrum of living most people just see what they want to see in the world; they have no idea what has been handed down to them, AND, if they have no appreciation of what God has done for them; does for them every day of their life (even the very air they breathe), providing eternal separation from sins degradation, "thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psalms 16:11); but, if human beings, the chief heirs of God's marvelous creation, the only animals to which He gives salvation, do not appreciate His goodness here on earth, how could they possibly appreciate His sacrifice on a cross on a hill called Calvary?

If I have learned anything with age you never know what is going on in another person's mind. Joy is the most undeniable evidence of God's presence; in Heaven, there will be nothing but joy. It is beyond my comprehension, those saved by grace through faith in Christ, do not look forward to this joy which keeps 1 from fearing death. For anyone who ever comes in my house I want them to feel the hope and joy of eternal life, lives here.

On another trip to Africa, under a tent, and my tent mate had forgotten to zip up the tent. A snake came slithering through the opening. Again, outside the tent, I could put both my hands side by side in the footprint of an animal who came sniffing around the tent at night and to think that I paid good money for this type experience; yet, free, a gift, the answer book which few people ever read; and again, to think, free, the greatest power in the world, the power of prayer, man's ability to communicate with the creator of the universe, on a one to one basis.

It has been said wisdom comes with age; sometimes age comes all by itself. I never look down on a person in order to lift them up. I can only share my faith, my experiences, my hope of redemption. I used to watch large 50-gallon trash bags filled with food hauled from a restaurant near my office. I have been told by restaurant workers how much food is ordered, never eaten, just thrown away, in most restaurants. How easy to throw away the bread of life, the spirit of life, given so graciously to us. If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do? My message to empty pots at the church house, (country club with a steeple), courthouse, (abused lady justice), schoolhouse, (shootings and slothliness), God help us to put the lid on our pride, our sinful ways.

Dust and Decay

Dust and Decay

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates

Loneliness is as accurate a predictor of early mortality as smoking cigarettes. Already, at age 87, I have explained my certain mortality from the disease of cancer. The loneliness of laying in bed gives you much time to think...I have had such an active, remarkable life...academic, military, professional, financial AND THEN, I reached down for a bottle of water by my bed and fell off my bed. My constant companion on my bedside table, Mr. Google Chrome, to whom I can ask any question, such as the population of any city anywhere, the temperature of any place on the earth; any scripture reference; any well known quotation; any telephone number and he says nothing, such as, "what are you doing trying to kill me?" Can anyone even imagine, in my lifetime, where, when I was young, a typewriter was a great invention, you can speak into a "technical marvel" on my bedside table and someone was smart enough to come up with such a development which can answer any question without even a pause. All I have to say is, "Mr. Google, what is the temperature in Perth, Australia? and he immediately replies, "the temperature is 60", no hesitation, no pause, an immediate computer answer. And so it is with anything this marvel of technology. But when I fell, however, he said nothing; my nurse came running and got me back on the bed.

The miracles of knowledge, that someone could, with the human mind, develop such technology. C.S. Lewis said you are never too old to set a new goal, dream a new dream. Modern technology for today's technology scientist is like finding 4 grains of sand on the seashore amid trillions of grains. The average person on a bar stool at a bar's "happy hour" has no comprehension of the ability involved in brain activity, such as analyzing the chemistry of microfibers, such as the physics and mathematics involved in calculating the bending of light rays entering water. This Dr., scientist, retired Army Lt. Col. must confess, here and now, first time in my life, that mentally enshrined in a world of so much knowledge, in order to pass an exam involving the world of quantum physics knowledge I was allowed to use a "tables book" in my exam so that I could look up certain mathematical determinants. I put "cheating" in the book, certain equations and formula's which I knew would come up and which I knew I had not memorized. Little does the world know of the knowledge involved when one has a doctorate such as knowing about the ability of an insect the size of a grain of rice to fly 1000's of miles to pollinate certain plants...transporting material on the insects legs...the ability to determine this DNA under the lens of a microscope. Such dust particle knowledge just keeps piling on, forever, and then, as the poet said, "you die and it all decays". As Shakespeare said "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

So well I remember the day we young, Army, officer, Dr's, filled an auditorium for a lecture on forensic detecting. We were told then that technology had been developed in microbe warfare, where 1 drop of a nerve gas was potent enough to kill everyone in that room. This was over 60 years ago before Russian/North Korea, started using such for their purposes.

We are stupid enough to think that everyone is born with our values, our God given sovereignty of "trust". We trust a piece of paper from the doctor, writing that no one can read and take pills we believe will help us. One of my ex-employees told me that in a restaurant where she worked, if a serviceman/policeman/fireman, anyone wearing a uniform came in, they would all spit into his food before it was delivered to them. Tutsi/Hutu warfare, 1 country, Rwanda, 300,000 killed, mostly with machetes, almost as horrible as the American Civil War where 600,000 were killed mostly with swords.

Hate, mindlessness, has not changed in spite of technology. All life is built around trust, trust that people will believe what you say or write. Trust that you will get what you order and pay for. The human experience of trust is like a holding a small bird in your hand; too tight, and you kill it; too loose, and the bird flies away. You trust others to obey traffic signs, the mechanic who works on your car; the pilot in the cockpit of the plane you are on; the surgeon standing over you in the operating room with a knife.

So, the dust of experience accumulated day after day, year after year and, when you have learned to appreciate human weaknesses as well as human strengths. All this accumulation ends in decay...no matter who you are...your status in life, your joy or challenge of living. How can anyone with good sense desire to spend eternity with the distrust and the hopelessness of decay? If anything would cause a human being to desire salvation the joys of eternal life, a free gift of the Creator of life, it is that certain sovereignty/love and kindness from the Creator of life. Thy love and kindness is better than life. KJV PSalms 63:3.

John Piper:

But as for me, I would seek God, And I would place my cause before God; Who does great and unsearchable things, Wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth, And sends water on the fields. Job 5:8-10

If you said to someone: "My God does great and unsearchable things; He does wonders without number," and they responded, "Really? Like what?" would you say, "Rain"?

When I read these verses recently I felt like I did when I heard the lyrics to a Sonny and Cher song in 1969: "I'd live for you. I'd die for you. I'd even climb the mountain high for you." Even? I would die for you. I would even climb a high mountain for you? The song was good for a joke. Or a good illustration of bad poetry. Not much else. But Job is not joking. "God does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number." He gives rain on the earth.".  (https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-great-work-of-god-rain).

Most of us choke on the fumes of judgment; we so like to judge one another. Three and a half trillion dollars spent each year in America on health care, which amounts to about $10,000 per person. I don't know how long we can keep this up but we should be glad that we live in a country where its citizens have health care available and we should not easily judge those who spend our tax dollars on frivolous psychological "troubles" or run to the emergency room for just anything that comes up. It is so easy to prevent, so easy to be careful about eating/sleeping/working. I am a great believer in supplements such as vitamins, they're cheap and really do work. Of course, Western medicine, our Western medical schools teach young, health care professionals, "that as long as you eat a good diet, you do not need supplements". Who eats a good diet anymore? All the good minerals have been extracted/leeched from the soil. Surely you can look at the groceries, the counter with vegetables and see that most of them were just hanging on, "mostly alive when harvested".

My main "gripe" with harvested vegetables, the poisons that were sprayed on them in an attempt to control parasites. Needless to say, some young people do not have the intelligence to wash well, their lettuce/cucumbers/peppers/beans, etc., before using them. Not only should they be washed well but soaked in a solution of water and vinegar. I cannot imagine anyone eating a salad that has not been thoroughly washed or anything else that hasn't been thoroughly cooked. Heat still destroys most bacteria/parasites. If you want to know how clean the food that you put into your "temple"; examine it with a magnifying glass.

I must depend on someone else to prepare my food, buy it at the store, etc.; I like vegetables with boiled eggs. One of my assistants brought in a bag of salad mix. I said, "make sure you wash it well". She said, "I think it is already clean, right out of the bag. I see them put it out at buffets, right out of a bag". I said, "get a magnifier and look at all that trash and all of those bugs in that salad mix plus chemical residue". I thought she was going to "throw up" on my food. Since I graduated from the university, almost 70 years ago, 88 new chemicals and chemical compounds have been produced to put on food crops. And we wonder why people get sick...it is not just a small amount but a cumulative effect that does damage to the body.

Rat poison is mostly harmless cornmeal, it is that small amount of arsenic that kills the rat and the genome of the rat is just 5 degrees from that of the human species. Your writer was raised on a farm. My daddy used to say that something was trying to eat everything he planted from the time he put the seed in the ground until the very last. What did our ancestors do before all of these chemicals? They let the birds, chickens, etc., take care of the problem. One of my great aunts had her flock of turkeys trained to walk down the rows of any garden or crop field and rid the plants of insects. She did not spend her time watching soap operas on television, dreaming of having a relationship with one of those "he-she's" that were so good looking, so cute. Like most of the world, television actors pretending to be someone they are not; the doctors on television could not put on a band-aid. I doubt if Martha Stewart has ever seen a butter churn.

We are all living on the corner of function and dysfunction, having lost the ability to think with common sense...now too lazy to even look at a wristwatch, rather we ask Google what time it is; too lazy to even write a complimentary note to anyone about anything. It is so easy to use a cell phone. What are we doing with all of this time we are saving? Do you see anyone, anywhere, involved in God's mission, his work, his ministry? How well I remember the saints at our country church, cleaning their own church, cleaning their own churchyard...and then going to the graveyard and cleaning it. Most of today's young people have not set one foot in their ancestral graveyard, have no idea about the lives, the DNA, that they have inherited.

The greatest forfeiture of the people I know, millennials, baby boomers, even the elderly; a lack of humility. We think we are so smart, take so much pride in having all these blessings of healthcare, technical advances, just dumped in our lap. Pride is the beginning of every sin and we are so proud of what we have accomplished. I never knew my maternal grandmother to get into a car without talking about how "good it rode". You see, she had known bumps in the road, weather beating in the buggy. Even when I was young there were so few paved roads in Eastern North Carolina (highways 17 and 301 going north and south, highway 70 going east and west). Intimacy with God brings humbleness. You function better when you realize that all the power, grace, mercy, of the creator of the universe, available just as much to you as to anyone... this gets you through the difficulties of life and living.

When you consider your hardships, think of our blessed Lord's mother, nine months pregnant, riding on a donkey. Most church people today have the "Pilot's" syndrome, we know what is right but we just want to wash our hands of the entire matter.

Half Baked

"The redeemed before the throne--look how they shine! Hark how they sing! They were not always as they are now. They were once like us--sorrowing, suffering, sinning! But He has washed them from their sins in His own blood--and wiped away their tears with His own nail-pierced hands!" -John Newton

"All glory to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding His blood for us! All glory and power to Him forever and ever! Amen." Revelation 1:5-6 
  

            If you don't get in the water, you will never learn to swim; no matter how many books you read about swimming. Satan has been very effective in setting up his "firewall" of demarcation/boundary lines, in the secular world. When I graduated from the University 65 years ago this month, we were presented a bible (this from the nation's first and oldest state-supported University, UNC Chapel Hill). Now, from everything I hear, even on "so-called" Christian College campuses, Christianity is demoted to a superstition; and we now have cities beautified, with church steeples empty. My seminary professor's son was recently asked to travel to a church and attempt to resuscitate. He said, "Beautiful building, beautiful city." A building which seated 900 people, had exactly 20 persons there on Sunday morning. He had just returned from a mission trip to Japan, taking with him 14 seminarians. In Japan, the once all-consuming Shinto religion, with its shrines, now just considered a part of Japan's history...superstition.

            This writer, world traveler (Dr. Morris has made eight around the world trips, every Continent, passport stamped in 157 Countries), in Burma, more Stupa's (religious shrines) than people. In Greece, the ancient city of Delphi; above one temple in Gold letters, these words, "know thyself." In Paris, France, one of the great tourist attractions: Napoleons Tomb. The story is that, after one of his bloodiest battles, he presented a medal to each surviving soldier...which had on it, only the words, "The Battle, I was there." We Americans were here during the most critical part of our history, a time of healthcare scams, attempts to "unisex" everything from the school house to the military's front lines. We have seen the churches emptied out, but sports arena's filled in. Every Christian should remember one thing: today I am one day closer to heaven or hell.

            In China, I was at a group of caves, known for their ancient religious attraction. Three older Chinese men called me over to them, they said to me in broken English, "We believe you are a Christian." I said, "Yes, how did you know?" The reply of one, "You can always tell, a Christian has joy, and that is what attracted us to Christianity." IF there were joy in the many churches which you find on almost every corner of every American City, the unsaved would be trying to get in, and members would have the pews filled; instead of what is happening now.

            This has been the mystery of my life, a human being, chosen by God to live on this rare and beautiful planet. IF we are believers, we should be concerned about those around us, certainly members of our own family...they are going to die; "The mortality rate is still 100%," and will end up in one of two places, nothing in between. When I was a boy, I still remember one old man in our community, a dirt tenant farmer named Romey; who would go to my cousin's country store with his bible, and invite the men he knew to sit and talk with him about God's word. Brother Romey would never go on a mission trip, would never preach in a pulpit, but he was concerned about the men who farmed around him...the men he knew. I know very few pairs who are even concerned about their own children...if one would die suddenly by choking on something, or by car crash.

            Those of us raised poor, never get over the food we ate...we still sometimes prefer it to the finest foods in the finest restaurants. My mother and grandmothers have been dead a long time. But, I can still see them cooking cornbread, perhaps the cheapest food known to man (just a matter of cornmeal; ground-up corn, with water, made into cakes). I can still see my mother frying these cornbread "cakes" in a (cast) iron frying pan. She always cooked them well on both sides...they were not good half baked. I can think of nothing I'd rather have to eat, right now, than a cake of her cornbread. If only we could see our future, know that we are already living eternally...just "half-baked." Most of us do not really believe, sincerely or completely, in anything. Otherwise, we would not see the blight on the family...the curse brought on children (abortion, child trafficking and sex slavery chains). Unbelievers, even our own children, must SEE Christianity in us before they HEAR anything about Christianity from us.

Stupa (Religious Shrine)

Joseph Thomas and Sally Pittman Morris at their only daughters wedding 1970

                                                       Count Your Blessings 2019

                                                                  IF
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don't deal in lies or being hated don't give way to hating. And don't look to good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream and not make dreams your master; if you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. If you bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose and start again at your beginning and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone. And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them "Hold On"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you If all men count with you but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distant run, Your's is the Earth and everything that's in it And which is more-you'll be a Man my Son

                                              (written by Rudyard Kipling 1895)

        One cannot honor a Earthly Father without having a special relationship with his Heavenly Father.
        In the last days of my life, 89, now dying with prostate cancer, So many has said to me "what attribute your success the answer is so easy The Salvation provided me by God and the genes provided by my earthly parents.
      My mother and father enjoyed singing they didn't go to the church house to mumble but to let everyone knew what they where singing and around the farm, you could always hear singing perhaps my father's favorite "Count your Blessings" and another hymn which he loved, "Nothing Between".
When he was not doing his chores we could hear him singing and have not forgotten his testimony.
     One must have memories, So many not ever a memory of a father. Have you ever consider what it was like for young people 100 years ago to get to know one another so that the marvelous blessing of family life can take place. I can remember when it was only one telephone in the community; few cars. A boy would be attractive to a girl he saw at the church house or school house. He would go to the home and asked her father for her hand in marriage. Good family names, integrity, blood lines, have always been important one cannot read the Bible without establishing this fact.
My parents, from two North Carolina first families were raised within two miles of one another. So anyone asked me of my success it can easily be retrace. I know about my great grand parents, grand parents and parents; family honor country. We can easily look at our own children, grandchildren and see our ancestors personalities and value systems.
      On Father's Day it's a good time to relearn where you got your valves, your treatment of others, your work ethics. The greatest joy one can know on this earth is the joy of knowing that you have not disappointed them.

   

Today I wonder the same, what about you? June 11 2019

If I Had My Life To Live Over Again

When asked “How would you have lived your life differently if you had a chance?” Nadine Stair, an 85-year-old woman, from Louisville, Kentucky, provided these poetic words as her response…

If I had my life to live over again,
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax.
I’d limber up.
I’d be sillier than I’ve been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances,
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would, perhaps, have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones.
you see, I’m one of those people who was sensible and sane,
hour after hour,
day after day.

Oh, I’ve had my moments.
If I had to do it over again,
I’d have more of them.
In fact, I’d try to have nothing else- just moments,
one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute.
If I could do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had to live my life over,
I would start barefoot earlier in the spring
and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances,
I would ride more merry-go-rounds,
I would pick more daisies.

– Nadine Stair

What beautiful words to ponder. What a sweet and sobering poem. It perfectly reflects the message passed down to me from from my elders when I worked in nursing homes in my early 20’s.

Those wonderful people, who were getting close to the end of their days, taught me so much about what really mattered in life. Their wisdom set me on the path to conscious living and for that I will be forever grateful to each one of them.

In today’s world, the emphasis is on getting stuff done rather than enjoying the unfolding dance of life.

It’s not often we allow ourselves the luxury of being fully present for our precious moments. When we live like this – always trying to get somewhere instead of being here – we are short changing our lives. 

So, ponder this poem deeply my dear friends. Let it seep into every cell and molecule of your being. Let it open you up and break through the belief that the next moment will finally make you happy.

This is it.

This moment.

This is your one wild and precious life, here and now.

-Love Melli

#1948 Featherbed Warrior

#1948 Featherbed Warrior

#1948

Featherbed Warriors

Don't you wish you had purchased Microsoft stock when it came out 30 years ago, Microsoft stock has gone up 89,000%: $1000 invested then would be $1million now.

There are one billion people of the seven billion people on the face of the Earth now on Facebook.  Why are these social media sites so valuable?  This writer remembers the time when you could send a message on a one cent postcard...that was all we had; I was raised in impoverished Eastern North Carolina on a dirt road without power-phone-waterlines.  AND, we doctors wonder why aged people of that time in history possessed such clogged up insides: filled with toxicity.  Whatever the weather they had to go outside to an outhouse for elimination and they suffered with the toxicity of lack of elimination which poisoned their bodies...led to their deaths. 

I am saying all this because there is a difference in people.  Bill Gates, world's richest man, founded of Microsoft-operating out of a car garage.  Would present himself to anyone as just an ordinary man, but in his 10 Rules for Success, his first rule is that there is no such thing as fairness. 

Most of those on Facebook are just ordinary people but you never know when one is going to stand out.  Our Puritan forefathers ALL used outhouses; such was the case at the White House until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.  Today, all over the world in a bottomless ocean of technology ordinary people use a handheld phone which contains more technology than the module which landed on the Moon.  Were these ordinary men?  Was John Glenn an ordinary man?  Men, who were willing to be blasted off the face of the Earth with power equivalent to an atomic bomb...perhaps to never return.

The first telephone was placed in the White House by President Hayes in 1877.  Its number was number one.  Hayes did not think it was very useful.  This writer was raised in a community where there was only one telephone for many miles: at my cousin's country store.  But, very ordinary people live life, did the best they knew without inside plumbing, telephones, or computers.  All this has happened in my lifetime, can we even imagine what the future holds...everything invented-produced-used by ordinary people? 

I so remember, as a small child, helping my grandmother "make-up" the feather beds in our house, there were no sophisticated mattresses with programming for softness and hardness.  Much birdlife had given their feathers, one of the most intricate of God's creations in order that one could sleep in comfort on a very soft bed.  The bed, filled with feathers was fluffed and smoothed to give the tired worker some measure of sleep.  Today's spoiled young people cannot imagine the hard ground on which soldiers slept while fighting for the facilities-pleasures which they enjoy in this country. 

I am a rare book collector, own a collection of thousands of antiquarian books, there are books about everything.  I once had two young college intellectuals-millennials who were shown the pictures of a farm outhouse, they had never seen such.  They had no idea what a slit trench or other facilities soldiers had to use could not even be imagined.  They looked at a book showing the butchery of animals, hogs and cows, which they enjoy eating but the pictures of the butchery process mad them ill.  Most children have no idea about the origination of the eggs which they find on their plates...that the shells of eggs are the most intricate processes of God's creation.  Yet, ordinary people, all over the world, know about the fowl-gallus species-bird with their intricate feathers, egg shells-a marvel of physics, hollow bones which make them lighter in flight.  This writer, at the North Pole, saw the hills blackened with birds called terns, with all our knowledge of physics-geography-physiology we still cannot understand how this bird life can fly continuously from the North Pole to the South Pole in a resolution of tracking (those at the front moving back, everyone taking their turn at the front in order.)  The most sophisticated zoologist attempts to explain how the baby chick knows when to peck himself out of the eggshell, knows immediately how to hold his head in order to get water down this throat, and knows his own mother's clucking pattern from any other hen.

Many years ago, I heard Dr. Margaret Swanton, professor in the UNC-CH medical school make the statement that I have never forgotten, I don't think she realized at the time what she had said, she said, "The human body does not function the way it is written in books, every doctor worth the piece of paper he holds knows the truth of this statement."  If all science were so simple, so many things, such marvels of God's creation, so easily understood...everything fitting into a design of scientific reasoning or certainly some laws of nature.  It takes ordinary people to realize that man does not have the answer for very many things...what makes some of us so different, many so indifferent, MOST SO ORDINARY.  Letters behind your name mean very little just as rank on your shoulder means little on the battlefield.  Most war heroes were very ordinary men, most people who have the mental wiring to make great discoveries have no special metabolic structure, only blessed with an innate desire to pursue and accomplish.  Young people could still be fluffing a feather bed, which would still feel so good to a tired body but there was someone who had the ability to seek-study-select a better source of sleep-rest-comfort.  Thank goodness there was someone who pursued the idea of pushing water through pipes, using the physics of airways for sound travel, the magnanimity of electronics to bring electronic messaging into a home via a talking box: the ever present television set, the completely dependent computer (every person-business-warrior now completely dependent on the computer...a system which even a small child can operate: a child which has never seen a chick escape from an egg, an outhouse, a dial telephone).  Those of you with degrees-military rank-much wealth-good looks-gravitas of every type GOOD NEWS, remember, God loves the ordinary as well as the extraordinary, the color-scent-texture of a rose as well as the plainness but essential quality of grass. 

Father's Day 2019

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

-Pope John XXIII

            We have known for some time that most vehicle crashes on the highway are caused by (drivers on) prescription drugs or alcohol. You should remember this each time you're speeding down a busy highway, approaching a fast car driven from the opposite direction...you are just a few feet from death, because anything could happen; failure of a vehicle, or even a doped up driver.

            Michelangelo spent forty years of his life on his back, painting that marvelous ceiling of the Sistine chapel, Vatican, Rome. When looking at that ceiling, as I did many times, one cannot imagine the talent/time involved (in its creation). In the early years before electric power, for 400 years, it could only be viewed by officials taking candles and torches into the Edifice. So, you can imagine how blackened, over the period of 400 years, it became. In more recent years, it has been cleaned. When you look at the other sculptures of Michelangelo, such as his sculpture of Moses, it is hard to imagine all that talent in the brain of just one man. It has been said that after the completion of Moses, featured at the . The statue, so real that even the artist himself hit it with a hammer and said "speak to me."

            With all the greatest of some men, we think of great world leaders, who were fathers of children; none take a back seat to the average hard working, God-fearing, tax paying father who, not only gave us life through his affections and mixture of DNA with his wife, than are own father. To raise a child, with the temptations, risks, expenses involved in today's world; that 40 years can be well inequity, on a balancing scale, with that of Michelangelo.

            At the beginning of WWII, draft boards were set up in each county to pick from the male youth of that county, those who would be selected for military service. My own grandfather sat on this draft board. In our community was a wonderful family by the name of "Acock." My grandfather told how the father/head of that family came before the board and begged that his only son, draft age, would be spared from selection of military service. He said, "I was in WWI, I know about war, please let me go in place of my son; if anything were to happen to our only son, it would kill both me and his mother."

            From the beginning of time, certainly discovering the history of the Old Testament, we now know the importance of a father in a family. Certainly, women had their place in the history of the world. But, as we so plainly see in the certain history involving men of the Old Testament....maleness, ancestry.

            Woman began to take their place in our Western culture around WWII. Perhaps it started with a cover on LIFE magazine, featuring women wearing slacks. Women started working in factories, as was the case with my mother and grandmothers. My father and my grandmother's other sons had gone to war. Women drove tractors, and even mules on the farm. They kept things going until their husbands and sons returned. Then came television and the fact that most television writers and producers were gay. You can slice it down to the beginning of time when men started designing women's clothing, starting working with women's hair...started degrading real men in theater and movie productions. The attempt has been made to make buffoons of fathers.

            This writer has been blind for over 50 years. I understand that some men now wear earrings, that seeing a man walking down the street dressed like a woman is not a rare sight. We all have been exposed to the recent epidemic of gentless marriage, unisex showers and bathrooms. You will not find this type of abomination is Muslim countries. Even Liberal, Western civilization nations, realize that a woman's place is anywhere that a woman can serve. The nurses on the battlefield work for military hospitals; more female doctors and lawyers now than male. 65% of all college students are now female, when I was in college there were very few female students, only one in my graduating class. At the funeral of a great pastor, one of the speakers referred to what I had said about the one being eulogized. I had said, "I have seen his Christianity in my home."

             I am what I am today, because of MY father, the hardest working man I have ever known. I never knew him to go hunting or fishing, any type of entertaining because there was always work to do. After working late, he, and he alone, would always milk the cows. On Saturday's, when most men were watching ball games, he would stay on his feet all weekend long and cut hair. But, my father knew the joy of all his children graduating from college, knew the feeling of having one of the nicest homes in the community, of seeing my mother well dressed. It was he who went to the church early on Sunday mornings and built fires in all of the wood stoves. In Summer, he'd go out early and open all the windows. It was he, more so than the pastor or any other member, who made sure the church was closed up after service. It was he, who with his great voice, that lead the singing, taught a class, or even preach if necessary. Talk is cheap, but it is the walk of the father that we celebrate on fathers' day. I was never that type father. My son and grandsons well know that I stand strictly on the shoulders of my ancestors...nothing I have done compares to what they did/accomplished.

As another Father's Day approaches let us never forget our Father's

Remembering Our Father's on Father's Day 2019

There is nothing as conceivable in the mind of man than the grandeur of the grace of God. Every study, secular or temporal, tells us that good relationships keep us happier and healthier, especially relationships with our own family, and especially relationships with our own parents. That great commandment, given by God to Moses with promise, tells us to honor our parents.

I have been amazed, in a long life, how many young men had no relationship with their own father. Oh! The words they would use about their father, even though they were the carrier of their father's DNA. I never knew a gay male to refer to his father, he always talked about his mother.

Mark Twain said life is not long enough to have hardness, we need softness--certainly softness in the appreciation of parents, no matter how "adrift" the biological father, who planted the seed for your life. There is no way we can know the reason for things working out as they do with couples, divorce, etc. But, God has his reason for bringing people together, for giving certain very definite DNA characteristics to someone like you, characteristics which can never be duplicated. If there had not been illicit sex between David and Bathsheba there would never have been a Solomon, known for the three W's: Wisdom, Wealth, Wives. More importantly, he is known for his great contribution to God's Holy Word.

Every day, we marvel at the courage of so-called "average" people. Every day, we grieve for people who squander their lives... So many suicides among young people.

We all must come to the realization that we cannot jump further than we have jumped already. We are not stuck where we start. That great preacher, Jonathan Edwards--pastor, missionary to Indian tribes--gave us the best definition for free will: God giving man the freedom of choice, the right to choose. Man without God in the mind is just a sophisticated chimpanzee.

Alice, in Alice in Wonderland, came to a fork in the road. A Cheshire cat was in a tree nearby. She asked the cat which direction she should take. The cat said, "where are you going?" and Alice replied, "I don't know." The cat replied, "Then it doesn't matter which direction you take."

The vast population of the world has always been made up of people with simple, genuine opinions. The greatest sound on this earth was the cry of a baby in Bethlehem... perhaps the greatest example of Fatherhood. God worked it all out in the council chambers of eternity. He chose to give us life and then chose to put on a tent of human flesh and live a perfect life among us...willing to die on a cruel tree to show us the very essence of giving. The father gave his son, the son gave his life.

I was amazed at how smart my own father was when I went to college. It did not take me long to have a new appreciation for him, the workingest man I have ever known, and probably the smartest. He did the best he could with what he had...intelligence, work ethic, frugal living, faith in a sovereign God. On the day of his funeral, just before the service started, a large funeral wreath was brought in to join all of those already there. The funeral director came over and handed the card to me and I put it in my pocket. Later, I had someone read the card to me. It was from the local General Assembly State Legislative Senator. "In memory of the only man who ever asked me about the welfare of my soul."

At the university, I was so impressed by men with PhD and MD degrees. They could not begin to measure up to my father, who could understand and cultivate anything. Like his ancestors before him, he prized freedom and knew the meaning of the words "Christian" and "American"...no pretending. From the "Good Earth" they had learned to live from the soil, knew how to raise livestock for survival (hogs and cows, which could be slaughtered for meat, even how to use wild animals from the forest), how to budget time, live frugally, and return to God a large part of income after paying honest debts (debts for fertilizer, seed, building supplies). He knew how to care for his farm animals and would not allow anyone to milk our beautiful cows except him.

We would have been considered peasants in Eastern North Carolina, growing "cash" crops, such as tobacco, cotton, corn, soybeans, to take to the auction market... carefully preparing everything. He and my mother were the stalwarts of our church (built in 1874 by both my mother and fathers' great-grandparents). We had the nicest church in the community, just as we had the nicest home in the community, and just as we had the nicest car/clothing/furniture. You could hear their voices at the church singing. I can still hear him singing as he was around the farm, early in the morning, feeding livestock, "nothing between my soul and the Savior," and many other hymns.

He was not ashamed of his faith. He would work on his tractor until 10 o'clock on Friday night and then stand on his feet all day on Saturday, cutting hair in town to help out the barbershop there and make extra money for us. Then he was up early on Sunday morning, heading for the church to build fires in the wintertime/open windows in the summertime. He was chairman of the school board, and the principal only had to come to him for problems, whether the problem be with a door or a student at the schoolhouse.

My father's four children all graduated from college. After I had returned from the military and had lost my eyesight, and because of the values he had taught me, I would have my driver take me up for a visit. My mother had died much too young. My driver would say, "he will be sitting on the front porch watching for you."

At the front of most churches, you will find the table from which the large supper is served. On most are these words, "In memory of me." Jesus did not tell us to remember him at Christmas, Easter, or any other time...the only time was at the Lord's table, partaking of the bread and wine. His broken body...broken for our healing, his shed blood... every drop for our redemption. Fatherhood has been a failure if you raise children who go to hell, who go to prison.