#1928 Fishing Without a Net

March 4, 2020

#1928 Fishing Without a Net

#1928

Fishing Without a Net

"If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a well song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."  -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (at the request of his widow, these recorded words of Dr. King's last sermon were played at his funeral)

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"Go Tell the Spartans" - Simonides of Ceos

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Prayer is spiritual cement.  When you have government, you have what governments can do.  When you have money, you have what money can do.  When you have politicians, you have what politicians can do.  When you have the cement of prayer holding the values of your life together, you have what God can do. 

The final battle of this world is the total destruction of the home.  Only a fool, totally brainless, cannot see what is happening everyday...the destruction of the home, the family, and the insanity of same sex marriage.  Satan fears marriage and family.  Just a few years ago, we could not imagine same sex marriage. 

Most pleasurable things in life are not memorable; we seem to always remember the "hurts" of life because we learn from them.  We chase someone else's ideas of living...the movie screen-soap operas.  All animals are true to their nature except man, the only animal that can blush, laugh, and cry.  Only man has the ability to speak, the ability to deceive and tell a lie.  Scripture tells us that there is a time to keep silent (Ecclesiastes 3:7).  One of my doctor friends told me that one of his patients told him that people were saying bad things about him all over the world.  He said, "Isn't it better for someone to be saying bad things about me all over the world, than for people all over the world to be saying bad things about me to someone?" 

In today's storm within this nation, when we have more fear of a disaster from within than from without, sports has become the national tranquilizer.  Not that there is anything wrong with sports.  Just down the road from where this writer was raised, a young man was reared and became a national sports figure-his fingers blessed by God to handle any ball.  He constructed his first baseball glove from the Naugahyde cover from an old sofa.  Russia's Lennon said the opiate of the people was religion.  Religion has become just a separate compartment in most believers' lives: totally indifferent to the unbeliever...fishing without a net, most church people could care less. 

The one thing from which a child never recovers, poverty, this writer now lives in comfort, letters after his name, never concerned about money, BUT, this writer has never recovered from poverty.  Those raised in poverty know that they must give more than those who won life's lottery, that they must have the charisma to "charm" others, they must excel when others don't care, must learn to hide behind a veneer of charm so that others can never detect what they are actually thinking.  The greatest disguise, ever perfected, keeping hid what you are really thinking.  This writer so despised those flashy fraternity boys at the university-the country club set, where he was never accepted, when they tried to impress him with their ancestry and money but he had the good sense to never let them know what he was thinking.  After all, I claim the name of Christ; I am supposed to be different.  Our Blessed Lord said, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34).  This will help calm the storm within, as you fish without a net, especially when you don't have much "bait".  You just put on that smile but never look them in the eye, your feelings about others will betray you if you look at them directly in the eye...the window of the soul.  Beware when any sales person talks to you about anything, if they will not look you in the eye.  How well I remember the owner of one department store trying to sell a hardworking farmer a new dress suit.  He would take the trousers and twist them saying, "This suit will never wrinkle."  Of course it is very difficult to wrinkle new material.  You can know that they are fishing without necessary equipment...even a net.  Life is hard, the game is rigged. 

Every experience of your life makes sense, WHEN YOU KNOW THAT GOD HAS A REASON FOR YOUR LIFE.  Do you think God had a reason for making me a blind man?  Do you think that God will not hold the world in the grasp of his wrath when we consider the one hundred fifteen thousand babies killed everyday in the world...in the holocaust of abortion?  Think of those killed who would probably have been the great musicians, parents, scientists, leaders of the world.  For those of us chosen for life, our devotion to our Creator is more than just hope when we think there are no other options.  For, we will never know God's strength until we have experienced weakness, God's riches until we have experienced real need.  This writer was needier during the long years of professional education, than ever in the poverty of our farm.  How can I forget the ten cent aisle, where I bought my groceries, every can ten cent because it was dented.  God helped this old, blind, veteran to forgive those who spend hundreds of dollars for a meal. 

God helped me to forgive the drug addicts-those who have never learned to protect health.  It is so much easier to stay well than to get well.  It is so much easier to never start drugs (and alcohol is a drug) than to go through the rehabilitation of getting over sin...something which many times takes years. 

When will our country's leaders learn that it is easier to keep a nation safe from within than to fight enemies from without?  In this time of political uncertainty, pretending religion, Lord help some of us to know that when you fast and pray Satan will flee.