Drop the Rock

"Drop the Rock"

Matthew 5:44 - But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

            During my long years of training and education in Memphis, Tennessee, some of my work was at the veteran's hospital at Millington.  In one room was four WWII veterans without arms or legs... just human beings with trunks and heads.  Of course, they were on special beds with specially trained nurses caring for them.  Men in this condition do not live long. 

            Veterans who are amputees, cripple, deaf, blind, know what they have given to their country.  I get so sick when I hear the pabulum about care for veterans.  Most veterans know they receive very little care.  Patriotism, like Christianity, is mostly talk.  This old blind veteran never even received a white cane from the Veteran Administration. 

            One preacher, seminary professor, said he had his students go to the cemetery and preach to the tombstones.  By doing this they knew what it was all about.  Some of the most impoverished people I have ever known, in my world travels, were missionaries on the foreign fields.  Of course with electronics all over the world, missionary zeal is different from hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it takes real courage to give your life for the cause of Christ among people who hate you, who do not in any way understand you.  Only those who have endured criticism in a home church or home community, could ever endure what might happen on the mission field. 

            Perhaps my favorite Psalm is Psalm 84, when David speaks of mountains and valleys.  I have written at length about one verse in the Psalm which changed my life.  Psalm 84:5 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee."  The race is mine, but in no way could I have engaged in the trials of life without realizing my strength comes from God.

            In my car, often at traffic lights, a car will come near me with the radio blasting or someone will walk down the sidewalk with a boom box blaring.  We can understand people who have this much ferocious noise around them have no tranquility of spirit.  In my years of selling bibles, door-to-door, in the summer, windows open, babies and old people unable to escape the noise inside the building.  There was no mystery to me about the depletion of all joys in the lives of some.  How could they have joy, solitude in living amid the clang, clatter, awful words in music which was always too loud for man or beast?  Just imagine a young, newborn baby, growing up amid such violent noise.  We should be surprised that many young people from many of these ghetto homes turn out as well as they do.  Yet, I have heard adults say they forgive their parents and siblings for the turmoil of their surroundings. 

            The most ecstatically happy person in the room when a child is born is the mother of the newborn baby.  She knows the pain of childbirth.  It took me a long time to discover why so many evangelists became preachers.  They had experienced the pain which sin brings and want to celebrate their deliverance. 

            The only time we find Jesus writing anything, he was in the outer court of the temple.  Some male religionists brought a woman to him caught in the very act of adultery.  (John 8: 3-11)  Of course, mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death.  There were so many stones-rocks in the holy land.  On three of the times I was there, in Capernaum, still mostly rocks, I thought that surely Jesus must of sat on some of these rocks.  I remember rock piles near the Muslim homes.  They still throw rocks at the Jews and Christians.  In a day of cell phones, newsprint and news broadcasts, there is not much need for the throwing of rocks.  It is also strange the man caught with the woman in the adultery was never mentioned.  Jesus said to these religious people, just as he would say to many of us who have been judgmental and hypocritical in our evaluation of others, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

            The greatest deliverance in Christianity, forgiveness.  We must forgive because our fellow human beings are made in the image of God.  We must forgive because our we do not realize the baggage that some fellow human beings carry around.  We must forgive because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.  In the disciples' prayer, where Jesus taught us to pray, he said, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. "  (Matthew 6:12)  How can we expect forgiveness if we can't forgive?  I truly believe Jesus should have added to this prayer, "we should not put trespasses or temptations into the paths of others."  It is so necessary to start out each day asking God to keep Satan and his temptations away from us.

            I still remember the day our school principal held up a white piece of paper with one small black dot on the paper.  He said, "What do you see?"  Everyone said, "A dot on a piece of paper."  He was trying to squelch a rumor going around the school about a certain student.  The popular student had a perfect record in every area of life.  Someone was attempting to make one dot soil that record.

            In a day where the best seller is the worst smeller, when it is politically correct to excuse all bad behavior, it is so necessary to applaud-rejoice in good behavior, especially forgiveness of sins.  (Philippians 3:20).  When we realize the truth of sins ruin and Christ's redemption we know the full joy of forgiveness, both the joy of our forgiving and the joy of others forgiveness.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day

Psalm 27:  1-2

            At my father's funeral, many years ago, one of the preachers said, "When he had his stroke, he was picking peaches from trees he had planted.  I well remember those peach tree plantings...  just stalks."  You would have thought they were old sticks of wood to be thrown away but, these stalks in soil, water and sunlight grew into large peach trees.

            I well remember the day I went to Sears to buy shrubbery plantings for a rental house.  A horticulturalist who was there buying shrubbery for his own house said to me, "Tom, don't forget to prune the shrubbery each year."  I would not have believed by  looking at the straggly-stalks they would ever need pruning but, soil-water-sunlight and they became large shrubs.

            We have just had Groundhog Day, people wanting a rodent to tell us about the future.  Man has always wanted future predictions whether from a palm reader with a tent by the roadside, scriptures from the pulpit, or in this day of technology, models conjured from mathematical progressions.  Standing in the reviewing stand of a long parade, we know what has already gone ahead and what we see in front, but have no idea of what is to come in the parade.  Only God knows the beginning and the ending... our lives, this nation, world history.  The purity of Christianity is the trust that Jesus will always be at the crossroads before we get there.

            The one thing I learned in a long life of clinical care and military service is dead men all look the same.  You can not tell the wealthy, educated, successful from others.  Blind men, like those who cannot read or write, must remember things.  The mystery to this writer in dealing with men, some never think deeply or speak seriously... theirs is a casual lifestyle.  I have known men totally lacking in a museum or art gallery.  In Madrid's Prado or the Louvre of Paris, paint strokes of the masters would not be appreciated (canvases that would sell for millions of dollars).  The only strokes that would impress some men would be those on the golf course.  They clap and yell as millionaire ball players run down a ball field.  YET, in a church house or cathedral, a matter of eternal life-a matter of an abundant life, so quiet and dormant.  In a alcoholic bar setting many men sing with gusto, but in God's house, (AND, they all think they are heaven bound) you barely hear a sound when they sing "My Jesus, I love Thee I know Thou art mine."

            There are pulpiteers (preachers) whose spiritual thoughts go no further than their vestments, politicians responsible for crop controls who do not know a weed from a productive plant, Catholic priests who cannot marry who write books on family life and child care, print and electronic journalists (talking heads) who write and talk about countries they have never seen.  We hear almost daily about Obama appointing ambassadors to nations they have never visited.  (Most ambassadors buy their "ambassadorship" by raising tremendous political funds  i.e. Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to England, and Caroline Kennedy, ambassador to Japan.)

            On one of this writer's around the world trips, a trip of flying from one island to another, while on the Marshall Islands, I met two Americans who were living on a boat.  Both had been high-volume, wealthy financiers in Seattle, Washington.  One of them said to me "We got tired of the rat race, the hypocrisy.  Here, on these beautiful South Pacific islands, we live on a boat, eat fresh food, drink fresh water and enjoy fresh air.  You only go around once.  Why kill yourself in the mad, manmade gauntlet of deceit and persecution brought on by your fellow man?   God has given us life and our health has returned since we have learned to live life."

            I noticed, when visiting with them, they had many friends among the natives.  Each day was like a holiday, plentiful food, basking in healthy sunlight, rest and leisure living.  One said, "We are getting ready for heaven."  Man has the mistaken idea that God needs him.  For God to be God, he does not need anything.  Man needs God.  Living for God, living the Christian life is not complicated, just tough.  The nature of man is wanting to control.  God is able, leave the consequences to him.  "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."  Romans 14:8

            If a deaf person has never heard music, then music does not exist.  If a blind person has never seen the color red, then red does not exist.  Those who have never known the sweat of farm work think farming is exciting.  Those who have never known the horrors of warfare, think war is romantic.  The grunts on the front lines know the horror of war.  In Afghanistan, this year, hundreds of women and children have been killed just going through the daily activity of life.  Field grade officers, lieutenant colonels to generals, gain promotions during warfare.  The only truly great Americans are those who are the casualties through death or disability during war.  These are those who are forever young.  Their families and friends will never know them as older people.  A one day widow can not be comforted by other widows.  The things that get you through warfare are the same things that get you through other struggles of life.  You become a friend to pain and you trust in the belief that this, too, will pass away.  The soldier does not look too far ahead, just to a good meal and a warm bath.  Now is all you have.

            On the farm, early in the morning, before daybreak, the sound of rain... You knew the activities of the farm did not cease because of rain water.  You walked in the rain to milk the cows and to feed the livestock.  You were their god.  They depended on you.  If these animals had this reality of this perception, then why not God's chief creation?  God does not needs us, but we need him.  And, He has told us over and over, in His book, His instruction manual, "I will never leave thee or forsake thee."   Hebrews 13:5

Incident; Accidents

Incident; Accidents

“This is the most transparent administration in history,” Obama, February 14, 2013.

      Dying is only bad when it takes a long time.  Dying, like living, is something you do very much alone, despite what others may think.  No matter what they say, it is a world of meism...  Others don't really care.  Your family and friends may walk by and stare at you while you are laying in a box, but they all just want you to be over, especially if money is involved.

     There is no loneliness like the loneliness of the whistle blower, one who exposes corruption.  Others may go through the courses of political science actually have some knowledge of spiritual absolutes (right and wrong), but when the rubber meets the road they will chose political correctness... They do not want to get involved.  One man revealed a two billion dollar corruption within the giant Japanese Olympus corporation.  His life was threatened and he was run out of the country.  Whether the school house, courthouse, statehouse, or White house, the sunlight of transparency is not very popular.  The president wants popularity above everything else as do the leaders in education, religion and judiciary. 

     This writer from an impoverished life, a concerned, committed Christian and patriot believes in integrity and honesty above everything.  While on the staff of an army hospital to discover that America had not only brought back space scientist from Nazi Germany (Red Stone Arsenal), but the entire staff of an army hospital where they could care for these space scientist.   Later in another military situation where I was attached to a national guard unit, I learned of one officer loading army trucks from a commissary with commodities to sell at his personal store.  I was selected by the governor to represent the national guard at their national convention (San Antonio, Texas).  I had met the adjutant general of the national guard, a former ambassador to Nicaragua, and felt I could, in confidence, report this situation to him.  He said, "oh, this is just small potatoes." 

     Recently, another example of unconcern (National Self Immolation 1603), my experience with Medicaid fraud taking place in a building I own (millions of tax payer dollars involved), my sending a complete summation and photographs to agencies and news organizations which should be concerned with no one responding.  Even your lawyer, in a situation like this, will estrange himself from you.  We learned that family, friends, and associates do not want to involve themselves with people of courage...  People with courage enough to stand up for what is right.  It is easier to live under tyranny than to fight.  All of the silly preaching by pastors and politicians concerning integrity has about the same intimidation in their lives as the force of a black cat... Talk is cheap.  Only in Jesus Christ is our humanity transformed.

1 Peter 4:12-16

12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: 13 But rejoice , inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy . 14 If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of , but on your part he is glorified . 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. 16Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed ; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

     As the ancient story, a great Trojan horse has penetrated/infiltrated our democratic republic.  The age of casual Christianity and casual patriotism is over.  90% of Christian faith is just raw courage.  It takes courage to stand up against greed, bribery and treason. 

     In North Africa from a very high distance, I saw young men jump with a bungee cord.  They were very much alone.  In Mexico I saw young men jump into the whirling Pacific from very high cliff.  They were very much alone.  There is no loneliness like the loneliness of disability (cripple, deafness, blindness).  In my many contacts with other blind people, I have attempted to describe color because I have not always been blind.  There are more disabled people than African Americans (black 13%, disabled 32%) in America yet, notice how many disabled people are in your churches-restaurants-concerts.  Like the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand, we want to believe that everything is going to work out and that we will never be disabled or enslaved.  We know that 30% of the stints involved in the human heart fail.  We know that statin drugs, Lipitor, etc. (big farmers' largest money makers), are toxic to the human body.  Our minds are an entanglement of confusion.  We just want our life to be a matter of going through the motions, staying on schedule, eating-drinking-sex, not much different than the lower animals.  The crowning glory of man is his nervous system, a mind that can make decisions, not only for his own welfare, but that of his family, neighbors and country.  We have been provided with the whole armor of God.  Ephesians 6: 10-11.  With satanic forces as with the incidents and accidents of daily life, we must, with the whole armor of God, stand against evil and not back up one inch.

 

SURRENDER

Keep On Keepin' On

If the day looks kinder gloomy

And your chances kinder slim,

If the situation's puzzlin'

And the prospect's awful grim,

If perplexities keep pressin'

Till hope is nearly gone,

Just bristle up and grit your teeth

And keep on keepin' on.

-- Anonymous

 
   On the staff of one Army Hospital, I assisted the psychiatrist in counseling some of his less afflicted patients.  One woman told me, "I've got scars from dealing with my scars."  A mystery of life and living which I have had great trouble in understanding, the survival-non-surrender of the human spirit, how it is that people just "keep on keepin' on".

   Perhaps I first became aware of this as a very young child.  Dessie, my father's oldest sister, had lost her new house to fire.  She and her husband had just built the house by frugal living and hard work.  She had labored landscaping the yard, sewing curtains, "painting and fixing", and it all went up in smoke.  She had lost in death her first child, a daughter, Martha.  I remember as yesterday, she said to my father, I have not been so hurt since Martha's death.  But, they rebuilt their house, more furniture, curtains, clothing.  Things can be replaced, but not a life. 

   I remember, the same time, Dessie's husband, my uncle, saying to my father, "Why do people who work hard and live right, suffer?"  He said, "My daddy was killed in WWI, leaving my mother with five children.  He was buried in Europe, but, the people and the church here held a large memorial service.  My mother, having led five small children into the church house, came home, took the Bible laying close to the front door, and threw it across the room, saying, "That's that."  She did not go back into the church for a very long time, until she learned that her bitterness toward God was not the answer.

   In a world where we have become slaves of the micro-chip, where fear kills faster than any cancer, it is time for us to face the reality of just what has happened to our world.  It is amazing, even surprising, that so few recognize what is going on.  You will not hear it from the state-controlled, secular media, because they are part of the problem.  Is it not perfectly obvious to anyone of my lifespan, that the destruction of the human spirit has been a calculated agenda of Satan?  Firstly, we have seen the destruction of our education system.  A system now of indoctrination and entertainment.  We have seen the destruction of our judicial system.  Justice based on money and politics.  We have seen the destruction of not only the schoolhouse, the courthouse, but the church house.  Most pastors/preachers are much more intent on entertaining the goats than feeding the sheep.  Worship has become an outer-court fellowship of people... this laughing-clapping-shaking hands with everyone in a worship service. (I listen on Sunday to a local Baptist Church.  In the interval between the station and the Church the sound inside the Church building is more like that of an athletic arena than the sanctity of a worship service.  Then, to add insult to injury, right away the preacher asks everyone to walk around and greet one another, something that the "oldtime" churchgoers did on the church grounds.)

  Can we not understand that the secular news media, secular universities, secular entertainment models, have overturned every absolute of right and wrong, jumped completely into the gay agenda, of same-sex marriage, polluting the front lines of the battlefield with gays mixed in with real men.  It is no wonder that America has not been able to win a war since WWII.  Military discipline, esprit de corps, has become a victim of political correctness.  We have become a nation of spiritual ineptness, 57 million of our most innocent citizens killed in the abortion holocaust while we set up hospitals to save turtles and other wildlife.

   More important than what has happened at the school house, the courthouse, the white house, the church house... is your house.  The sewer of pornography, the decadence of high-living now, is in your living room via the computer.  Just a few strokes and your children's eyes see everything that Satanic forces wish them to see.  Family life has become a problem not a priority.

   When Jesus walked around the shores of the Sea of Galilee one of his concerns was the blind, deaf, cripple.  In the American experience, next to the horrors of slavery, the greatest shame of this nation is its treatment of the disabled veteran and the handicapped citizen.  This totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran, has yet to encounter one fellow veteran who has been treated well by his nation.  Following the example of other communist nations (U.S.S.R., China, Cuba, etc.) money and policies have been directed to those who have contributed little or nothing, and, buying the votes of the welfare class, politicians and policies, "the end justifies the means" have been established.  We are ripe for every contrivance of the terrorists.  More concern with security than for freedom.  The time is approaching that those who once fought for freedom will bow the knee and beg the terrorists to take over.  This is what happens when the human spirit of men has overtaken the Holy Spirit of creator God. 

Bullet Proof

Bullet Proof

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee

-- John Donne

            God wanted this writer, though early in life disabled by blindness, to travel and sense His world.  So, eight round the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries, using my remaining senses to study the world...the impoverished, the decadent, the prosperous.

            Man is the only animal who knows he is going to die, man is the only animal who can blush. So many men spend their lives thinking of dying.  Not as much now as in the past, because men have learned to preserve health through technologies which have led to longer life spans, but no real change in human nature.  It breaks my heart that people so blessed with long lives think they are bullet-proof... that nothing is going to affect them.  

             

            Many live thinking they will live forever, the perils of life (disease-accidents) are no respecters of persons. There was a time when life was very simple, just food, shelter, and exercise.  With prosperity the three big ones, heart attack-cancer-stroke, are taking their toll.  Few human beings escape cancer, it is just a matter of how long your immune system can prevent its diagnosis. Like the fear of dying, the fear of disease cannot control our living, yet we should never forget that death is just one breath away.   

            Almost daily I hear a last name, a city, which brings back the memory of someone I have known, like wonderful memories of wonderful people.   I have learned to understand unbelieving real men who have gone through the trials and trauma of raising families, building businesses, cultivating farms, defending a nation, who do not want to hear preachers or politicians who have never done anything.  It is like listening to a catholic priest tell you how to raise your children.  Some of the best men I have ever known did not possess ancestral genes, had never gained anything from family wealth and position.  Like all of us, the race was theirs, and they had done the best they could with it.  I remember two great generals who could not read nor write (Nathan Bedford Forrest of the American Civil War and Pablo of the Spanish Revolution) they did their best with what they had.   How many of us have done as much?  

            We get so tired of hypocrisy, a word not allowed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Friedrich Neitzsche (of 'God is dead' fame) said, "You do not challenge Christianity for its truthness, just Christians for their unhappiness".  If Christians really believed what they profess to believe, they would have a perpetual smile on their faces, they would be the happiest people in the world.  Christians are the only people on earth who are truly bullet-proof. 

            We hear much about accomplishment and heroes.  In my book, the real heroes, people of accomplishment, those who have run the race of life with integrity, gone through the trials of raising-protecting families, able to recover after financial and other setbacks and still have a sense of humor, to be able to laugh.  It breaks my heart that gifted men, so accomplished in every way never know the transforming-redeeming power of the Holy Spirit of God, after such a productive life here on earth, stumbling at the Cross of Christ, will die and spend eternity in hell... men blessed with so much, the gravitas of survival skills here on earth, will simply throw it all away, never knowing or believing, that their most important decision in life is making sure the welfare of their eternal soul.

            It has been this writer's unforgettable, marvelous experience to view from the outside many of the world's great cathedrals and churches.  The church exterior does not escape the smut and smog of a great city, the walls look dreary, but, going inside the church or cathedral, sun invading the great stained glass windows, the building has an entirely different appearance.  Our bodies are the temple of God, they get very smeared with smut and the debris of living on the outside, but it is the inside that makes the difference.  It is so important to treat your body like a temple, not a dumpster.  20% of the world's population have never known good potable drinking water.  It is what we eat and drink that determines our health.  Like good food, good mental processes determine our mental health.  It is from the interior of a man that defilement takes place. (Mark 7:15 "there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man".)  The mortality rate is still 100%, all of us will experience clinical death.  But, for the Christian, we do not experience spiritual death, bullet proof, living forever.

"For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."

- Romans 14:8, King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition