Ever Feel Forsaken?

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" (Jesus, from the cross.)

     This is my first blog of 2015.  After the hustle and bustel of the holidays I went through a couple weeks of frequent naps.  I didn't want to leave my home.  The weather was bad and going out was an effort.  I had to make myself undecorate the house and put my pictures back on the hutch where the manger scene had been displayed.  Added to that there were the irritations of winter that comes every year. (This is when I most understand and envy the "snowbirds" in Florida and Texas.) These irritations made we whiny and out of sorts. (Going a couple weeks with frozen pipes and no running water will do it to the best of us.) All of this made me want to become a hermit!  My blog was the last thing I wanted to do.  (You can't reach outside yourself when you're being self-centered!)  but I gradually became so miserable that I couldn't stand myself, I started thinking of what I wanted my first blog of 2015 to be.  Below is what I came up with.  I hope it helps you.  It helped me to write it. :)

      Have you ever felt "forsaken" by God?  You pray but heaven seems like brass,... impenetrable.  You sing the praise and worship songs with a yawn.  You read your Bible and fight sleep,... and sometimes these periods last, what seems like, forever.  One saint referred to this as "the dark night of the soul".  Have you  been there?  I have to admit that I have and it has left me confused and empty.  It has caused me to question my faith and God's faithfulness.  But in the almost fifty years I have been a Christian, I have come to see that I'm not alone in this and there are answers for me.  Added to that, God has always been faithful in ministering to me after a period of drought.  I often think of Elijah who after being obedient to God, was forced to flee for his life into the wilderness.  There he endured physical suffering and despair until God finally broke through his little world and once again showed him his love and care and that He was still with him to defend him and take care of his needs.

     As I studied the subject further, I discovered David, "the man after God's heart", also had his spiritual desert experiences. In Psalm 10:1 he said, "Why do You stand afar off, O Lord?  Why do You hide in times of trouble?" Then again in Psalm 22: 1,2 "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent." Then in Psalm 44:23, "Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord? Arise! do not cast us off forever."
     What's up with this? you may ask.  When I first became a Christian and surrendered my life, my joys and sorrows, my everything to Christ, I experienced a bliss something akin to a "mad crush".  I slept "somewhere between the sheets and the mattress" (to quote my husband, Ted), for weeks. When I prayed the tears flowed uncontrollably from my eyes because of the closeness I felt to God.  Christian fellowship with other believers was so sweet that I dreaded the days in-between Sundays and last but not least, Bible study and good preaching was like a thirsty, dehydrated person trying to get great gulps from a fire hydrant.  So when I entered my first "desert" experience, I asked the Lord, "What happened?"
     I guess it's akin to that moment when a new bride says to her groom, who wants to go fishing with his buddies and leave her home, "Well, I guess the honeymoon is over!"  And if anyone ever tries to tell you that their honeymoon was never over, don't believe them. They are either kidding themselves or trying to kid you!
     As a northern flower gardener I have come to see the wisdom in Christ's admonition to us to "Consider the lilies..." and I applied this to my changing emotions.  In the summer, the lilies are glorious.  They wave in the breezes and catch the eye of any passer-by with their brilliant colors, and the noses of even the blind with their sweet scents.  However in the fall their blossoms having already dropped, their leaves begin to brown and droop and finally lay on the ground awaiting a blanket of dried leaves to cover them and shield them from the coming snow.  Then in the spring, when the snow is gone and the sun is out once again to warm up the earth, a tiny green leaf pokes through the soggy old leaf blanket and waves at me as if to say, "Yoohoo,...hello, it's me! I'm not dead! I was just sleeping."
     So the Lord spoke to me through the lily and through the disappointed bride.  He taught me that the human heart is like the cycles He sets into nature.  Emotions wax and wane but His faithfulness is consistently there.  And when we fall in love with Him we hang on with the same commitment we promise at the alter or in the garden.
     My wise mother used to say to me, when she saw me struggling with a fussy child,  "Put that baby to bed!  He's tired, and when he's resting, he's growing!"  Now I don't know how she knew that, but since then it's been scientifically proven.  So is that same scientific fact true for us spiritually?  In the dry times are we "growing"?  When the lily is "resting" under that blanket of leaves and snow, is it gaining strength so it will be more brilliant and more fragrant next summer?   I'm not a botanist or a biologist so I can't give you a definitive answer to that question but it wouldn't surprise me if that is true.
     So lets look at some conclusions.  #1. Desert experiences in the Christian life are normal and to be expected.  #2. During these times we "hang on" by staying committed to Him through faithful worship, prayer and Bible study. #3. We wait on the Lord. In Isaiah 8:17 the bible says, "And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him." then again in Isaiah 30:18 "....blessed are all that wait for Him."  and finally the promise that we are really waiting for in Isaiah 40:31 "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint!"
     Every emotion we experience as humans is temporary, sorrow, disappointment, grief, hopelessness, joy, laughter and elation, they will all change as we travel through this life (unless we stubbornly park on one of them, and even then that parking space is unsustainable).  Like ships on the sea, one minute we're "tossed in a storm", another we're "dead in the water" and still another we have "smooth sailing" and are making good time.  Knowing this and resting in the fact that "we have an anchor that keeps our soul, steadfast and sure as the billows roll" as the old hymn tells us, should make us content and unafraid as we face our "dark night of the soul".

The Old Family Bible

Just one of my treasures in an old earthen vessel...   

     When I wrote about my Grandma's quilt in July, I promised another blog about the other treasure I was given by my aunt.  If you haven't read that blog you may want to go back and read it just for continuity.  The title of it is "The Ways of God and the Real War On Women".

The old worn cover...

     So making good on my promise, here is the story of the old family Bible. When my aunt took me into her storage room to choose a "treasure" from my grandparents worldly goods, I saw the old bible and was immediately drawn to it.  I really didn't know about the spiritual heritage of the Stanley family and I thought the bible might hold some clues to it.  It did, and my aunt filled in some gaps for me.  
     Besides the beauty of the thing, and it is beautiful, in spite of the crispy, crumbly pages, it contains family history.  My grandparent's marriage is recorded there... July 15, 1918.  That was probably the only record of their marriage that ever existed and being recorded in the family bible made it a legal document.  So we know that the book is at least 96 years old.  Also recorded there are the births of their children, their marriages and their deaths.  Someone faithfully kept the record up to date.
    As I carefully turned the old pages, my mind filled with questions, Did they read the bible?, Who are these people that I never heard of?  What did this book mean to them?  Why has no one else in the family valued this treasure?  How can I make my children understand the value of it?  Well my aunt must have read my mind because she started talking about it.

 The first page

     "It was the most important thing in our house.  Mama said, "If we ever have a fire, grab the bible first."  "All of us kids were forbidden to touch it but Mama would show us the pictures and tell us the stories.  We were in awe of it.  Sometimes I thought I saw a glow coming from it's pages."  (Then she laughed at herself.)  "Years later when I became a Christian, one of my first thoughts was to go back and read that book for myself.  You know, Daddy was an unbeliever for most of his life, until Bobbie died.  Then I think he just couldn't bear the thought that he'd never see her again, so he had to take care of that... never saw such a radical change in a person, as when my daddy got saved.  He went from a cursing, angry man to a quiet believer.  He never missed church after that.  He stopped cursing immediately, even though I'd never heard him complete a sentence without a curse word before that.  He never took a drink of liquor again.  He treated Mama better and talked to us kids like we were real people!"  She stopped and shook her hear in disbelief.
     "Did he read this bible?" I asked.

My grandparent's marriage license

     "No, Daddy couldn't read but Mama probably read it to him.  Their marriage license and all of us kids are in here."

Marriages and births...

     She spoke of it as if they had their own "chapter and verse".  I smiled and continued to turn the pages.  Later I reflected on how the times have changed.  We have probably ten different translations of the bible in our house.  We listen to it on our computers, our "notebooks" and our cell phones.  We hear it read form our pulpits on Sunday mornings, but most of the time we ignore it.  Have we become like a river that has widened so much and become so shallow that we no longer hold the "life" that's in it?  That bible to my grandparents and their family was valuable and deep.  It contained not only the life of their family, but the "words of life" and they were aware of it.

Deaths of loved ones

     I brought it home in my suitcase along with my grandmother's quilt.  This morning I took it out of it's plastic storage, so I could take pictures of it for my blog.  Now I've promised myself to find a place to store it so it will be protected and I can display it prominently in my house, like my grandmother did.  And I will instruct my children, "If we ever have a fire, grab the Bible first!"

"To Be Or Not to Be...That Is The Question"... Hamlet, Scene 1

     Indeed, that is  the question!  Because the subject of Assisted Suicide has once again reared it's ugly head in our society, I decided to put in my two cents worth. In order to do this I had to do some digging and to this I have to say, "Thank God for the Internet!"
     In my "digging" I have come across some wonderful things. One of these things that I've learned is that the Christian Church from Saint Augustine to Focus on the Family, has consistently been in agreement on the subject.  These church leaders have laid out a principle on the matter, that they gleaned from the scripture, so I don't have to wonder what the Bible teaches.     
     Now it's true, there are some denominations that have departed from this Biblical teaching. This is not new.  As a matter of fact, it began with the Apostle Peter. They base their opinion on the feeling that we must be "compassionate" to the suffering.  Then they proceed to define compassion as the prevention of suffering and pain.  This  definition of compassion, Jesus rebuked in Matthew 16:22, 23  Peter's statement there, "Be it (suffering) far from Thee, Lord."  Jesus replied to him by saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"   He wasn't calling Peter "Satan", but was addressing the "spirit" within Peter that would utter this Satanic temptation.  Jesus knew His purpose in coming into this world and He was saying, "Stop tempting me, Satan, with Peter's notion of compassion, for this suffering and death is the very reason for My incarnation!"  This is a larger subject than I want to address here, but suffice it to say, the Christian Church, down through the ages, warns us to avoid the stumbling block of this squishy compassion and instead chose to believe that suffering is very often God's chosen way.
     The principles which the church leaders came up with are as follows:
             1.Suicide is against nature.
             2.Suicide is destructive to community.
             3.Suicide is a sin against God.
     So with these points in mind, let's look at them one at a time.  1. Suicide is against nature... It is natural to love your own body.  Jesus said it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." in Matt. 19:19, and 22:39, Mark 12: 31, 33, and Luke 10:27 He included this phrase in His presentation of the Greatest Commandment. Then Paul said it in Eph. 5:28, 29.  He even went farther and said, " No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church."  So it is natural to love your own body and that makes suicide "unnatural". (By love, I mean care for your body.)
     The second point on which the principle is based is...2. Suicide is destructive to community. Have you ever noticed how suicide, "runs in families"?  Indeed, in the Jewish community, a good father would never give his permission for a young man to take his daughter in marriage, if there was a history of suicide in the young man's family. (Check out the movie, Yentle.)  The reason for this, I believe, is that when a person commits suicide they are conveying a message to their children, of faithlessness. They are saying, "When life gets too hard the thing to do is "punch out".  That leaves no room for God's intervention or for you to glorify Him through your death.  
     The third point of the principle is...3. Suicide is a sin against God.  Augustine based his position against suicide on Deut. 32:39 which says, "Look now; I myself am He!  There is no other god but me!  I am the One who kills and gives life; I am the One who wounds and heals; no one can be rescued from my powerful hand!"  Augustine went on to say, "Life is God's gift to man.  It belongs to God alone to pronounce life and death."
     But having said that, God gives us a choice. He says in Deut. 30:19 "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live..." God's wish for us is that we live! 
     So, I concluded, it was pretty plain from the scripture that suicide is not the "way of escape" from suffering or anything else.  Then I asked myself the second question. " Well then, how about when I get to that point where I think life is not worth living, it's painful and just too hard,  I'll just ask someone else to do it for me...a Doctor for example."
   But, the scripture also says that I have no right to ask another person to sin, or entice them to sin.  In fact I would be inviting them to murder me and that is a violation of the seventh commandment in Ex. 20: 13... "Thou shalt not kill. ( The Hebrew word for kill here is ratsach or murder.)  So if I ask someone to assist me to commit suicide, I'm asking him/her to "murder" me.  Not only is that against God's law but it is against a Doctor's oath.
    So the answer to Hamlet's question is..."To be"!  If you are a Christian and devoted to God and His word, you will reject the false idea of compassion, just as Peter had to reject it as coming from Satan, and stand against suicide in any form.

"...and so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.  Let them be a living and holy sacrifice___the kind He will find acceptable.  This is truly the way to worship Him!" Romans 12:1
    

"Duck Dynasty in a Miley Cyrus World!"

     This will be a short blog. It has one message, sent on the wings of a prayer.  The message is... tomorrow is election day, Christians, go out and vote! I don't mean that you should hold your nose and close your eyes and flip the lever and think to yourself, "It really doesn't matter. They're all alike. They're all crooks! etc. etc..." You know the statements. You've heard them repeated over and over.  You may have even said them yourself.
     No, what I'm suggesting is, look at the person running for Senate. Are they pro life? Are they for gay marriage? Ask yourself these questions and others that reflect your values and pick the candidate that more closely agrees with these values. They probably won't be perfect, no one is. But you can vote for the person who most agrees with you, then hold their feet to the fire.  Call or write and remind them of their promises.  Then look at the Judges and do the same thing, and then the State offices that are running.  If you don't have a "voters guide" from Michigan Family Forum or Right to Life then go on line and check them out.  The online address for Michigan Family Forum is michiganfamily.org and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find Right to Life or Baptist for Life or Lutheran's for Life.  Just google them. (Just got a new web site for you to see a voter guide. It is http://frc.org/voterguide.#ValuesVoter)
     Now a word about the title of this blog, Duck Dynasty in a Miley Cyrus World, I put it in quotations because I "lifted" it from Todd Starnes latest book, God Less America. It so apply describes where we are as a nation.  We are the Robertson family in Duck Dynasty with their values, and we are living in a "Miley Cyrus world".  We, the church, are called to be "salt and light" in this world. That means that we should be holding back the corruption that is so prevalent in our society.  One way we can do this is by voting. It seems like such a small, insignificant thing and we are tempted to think, How can my puny little vote count for anything?  But did you know that if all the Christians in this country would vote we could totally change the direction of it?  Not only that but your act of being a good citizen can and probably will influence others to do the same.  God has given us this duty, this power, this privilege and we dare not spurn it.  Because of the great lack of interest or irresponsibility or maybe just plain ignorance, we have very nearly lost our freedoms and the American church is on the brink of persecution. 

This is the price that was paid  so you can vote!

     I have been so burdened about what is happening to our country and this is my appeal to all of you who read my blogs. As I read my Bible I have come to see that there are two ways God has spread the gospel, one is by giving His people the freedom to preach and teach it and the other is through persecution.  With this in mind go vote!

The Land of Enchantment

     Today's bolg is a walk down memory lane.  My motivation for writing it is two-fold.  First they are my memories and I love them and second, they are a slice of American history that will give you a rare glimpse into a time and place that helped make up the American experience.  Probably, not all of you will appreciate it, but some will and that's all I can expect.  If even one of my readers like it, I'll consider it a success.
     I grew up in southeastern New Mexico, mostly in oil camps.  Now an oil camp is an outdated thing so it warrants some explanation.  My dad worked for Gulf Oil Corporation and at that time they provided housing for their employees in the field.  There were no big corporate offices there where men and women with brief cases filed in every day.  This is where men worked on the wells.  They maintained them, guarded them and serviced the industry that provided oil from the fields to the refineries.  My dad was a "switcher".   I'm not sure of the particulars of his job but I do remember that he traveled across the dessert in a jeep or a pickup and did something  to the many wells that dotted the New Mexico landscape.
     The "camp" where we lived consisted of a row of six modest homes, which housed the families of the employees.  Most of my childhood memories centered around the camps and the people who lived there.  We lived in two different camps while I was growing up.  One was south of Eunice, New Mexico and the other was north of the town.  When I reached high school age Gulf Oil got out of the employee housing business, we all bought the homes we lived in and had them moved to a lot in Eunice. Ours still stands on the same lot today.
     In 1944 we moved to our first camp south of Eunice.  I was six years old and just beginning elementary school.  To put the time in perspective, we lived there at the end of World War II and during the time when Roosevelt died.  My mom and dad were Democrats when Democrats were still conservative, so they mourned the President's death like he was a member of their family.  One of Daddy's friends who worked in the oil fields with him was a German man whose mother was in a concentration camp in Germany during the war years.  I don't know why she was there.  Perhaps they were Jewish.  I just remember the man crying as he talked about her.  It left a strong impression on my six year old heart to see a grown man cry about his mom and I would go to bed at night and pray for them and cry when I did.  I've never forgotten his face although I can no longer remember his name.  I don't know what finely happened to his mom.
     We had a barn that Daddy built a distance away from the camp.  Daddy was always a farmer at heart so he kept a pig, some chickens, and a cow at the barn.  I raised rabbits and pigeons to sell.  People in New Mexico ate them and sales were always good.  I sold them for a dollar a piece and I remember one month I deposited sixty dollars into my account.  At that time that was a lot of money for a eight year old kid.
     The families in the camp were our friends and neighbors.  I'll not name them all because I'm sure I'd miss someone, but as a child some of them made distinct impressions on me because they had kids who were my friends.  We visited back and forth between our homes.  We played together, rode our bikes out across the prairies, and played croquet at the camp croquet court till our moms called us in for supper.       
     In the summer when the weather was too hot for us to play outside, Mrs. Sanders would occasionally call us all to her house where there was a big air conditioner in the living room.  There she would read us the children's classics.  We'd spend many hot hours of the afternoons listening to Bambi, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Heidi, The Bobsy Twins, The Secret Garden, just to name a few.
     There was an old sway backed mare who lived at a nearby ranch.  Occasionally she would come up to the fence around the camp to graze.  When she did one of the kids would yell, "Black Beauty is here!"  We'd all run to the fence to pet her and feed her apples or carrots and climb up onto the fence then onto her back, where we'd take turns riding her while she grazed.  On the back of that trusty steed, our imaginations carried us away.  We would look out across the prairie landscape and see tumbling tumble weeds, cactus and mesquite bushes and imagine being chased by a band of wild Indians or a posse.  To us she was Trigger, Champion and Black Beauty all rolled into one beautiful, majestic, animal.
     One morning one of the Sanders boys, while gathering radishes from his mother's garden, felt a sting on his bare foot.  His toes were protruding just under the plants.  He jerked  back
and when he did there was a rattle snake connected to his foot.  He jumped and shook it off.  The snake slithered away and the boy ran screaming into the house.  Someone administered first aid then took him into town to the E.R.  From that day on, we were not allowed to leave the house without a "snake bite kit" which consisted of a belt, to use as a tourniquet, a small pen knife, for cutting an X over the bite and a small bottle of alcohol to sterilize it with.  We were given careful instructions about how it use it and it became part of our lives.  Thankfully I never had to use it, but I was prepared.
     Later that year another of the Sanders boys found a 22 bullet and decided to stick it into his dad's ciggarette lighter in his pickup. then look at it to see what would happen.  Well it shot him but fortunately just grazed the side of his head.  My dad said it probably wouldn't have penetrated his skull anyway.  I guess the Sanders boys were a constant source of excitement for us all.
      One of my favorite memories of the camp was when one of the neighbors would decide to make homemade ice cream and send the word out through the neighborhood and invite us to bring our bowls and spoons and "come on over".  We all took turns doing this on those hot summer evenings and it was a wonderful time.
      At some point during these years, my mother went to work in the school lunch room.  She then became the alternate "bus driver" for all the kids in camp who missed the bus.  I think some of them did it on purpose because they hated the bus ride.  On those mornings someone would inevitably read us a story while we traveled the 20 miles to school.  Usually it was a fairy tale which was short and interesting.  If there was no fairy tale reader then Mother would turn on the radio and we'd listen to "Don McNiel and the Breakfast Club".  I don't know which I liked more.  They were both fun and made going to school something we looked forward to every morning.
     I was a pre-teen when we moved to the second camp, north of Eunice.  I hated leaving my friends in the first camp but quickly made new ones there.  That's where I met the Kemps, the Tates, the Browns and the Hunters.  All of these families had multiple children.  There we ran and played hide and seek and tag on the lawns between our homes till 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. when we all had to go in.  We rode our bikes, explored the prairie, wrote plays and performed them in some one's garage or home.  I was the story teller of the group and sometimes we'd just sit in a circle on the lawn while I spun a tale.  Or we'd challenge each other to "make up a poem" about something or other. 
     Christmas time was always an adventure.  We'd open our gifts at our homes in the morning, then roam the camp, going from house to house to see what our friends got for Christmas.  We'd play the games, try on their new clothes or ride their new bikes.  It was a shared holiday on so many levels.  I was never hungry for Christmas dinner because by the time I got home I was filled to the gills with the neighbor's Christmas goodies.
     We didn't have Televisions in our homes, so in the winter time we listened to the radio.   We had tele without the vision.  The visions took place in our heads as we laid on the floor or a couch or sat cross legged in front of a big mahogany radio and listened to Fibber Maggee and Molly, George and Gracie Allen, Digger O'dell, The Friendly Undertaker, The Jack Benny Show,  The Bob Hope Show, The Green Hornet, The Squeaky Door, Our Miss Brooks,  I'm sure there were a hundred of them of which these are only a few.  They provided hours of entertainment on the cold winter evenings and I looked forward to them and hated missing even one.  We listened until we had to go to bed and sometimes I went to sleep still listening to the music coming from that radio.
     About age sixteen or seventeen, I was allowed to date twice a week on Friday and Saturday nights.  I had to be in the house by eleven and my Mother was very cleaver about it.  As soon as my boyfriend would pull up into the yard at 10:30 and turn his car lights off, our porch light would go on.  Soon Mother would poke her head out the front door and call out to us, "I just made a big banana pudding.  If you kids would like some just come on in and help yourselves." or, "I have a fresh freezer of homemade ice cream in the sink, if you'd like some, come on in."  She always enticed us inside with something because she wisely knew that teenage boys were as driven by their stomachs as any other part of their anatomy.  I probably owed my purity when I married, more to my mother's banana puddings, homemade ice cream, apple pies and prune nut cakes than anything else. 
     One of my favorite memories of my childhood was going hunting with my dad.  As I said before, his job took him out across the New Mexico prairies in a jeep or a pickup.  As he drove along on or off a dirt road, he took his twenty-two rifle and sometimes a shotgun.  He was always coming upon jack rabbits, doves, quail or some other edible critter and they often were our supper for the night.  So at age 12 he taught me to shoot a gun.  I got quite good at hitting something with the rifle.  I could hit a jack rabbit on the run from a moving truck.  But I hated the shotgun.  It kicked me and bruised my shoulder and besides I hated shooting doves and quail because they were such beautiful, gentle creatures.  He had trained our cocker spaniel, Charlie, to retrieve the birds and taught me to shoot them in flight, but dove hunting was not my favorite.  This led to his teaching me to drive the pickup so he could hunt.  So by age twelve I could shoot and drive. I remember begging him every year to take me deer hunting with him in northern New Mexico but he wouldn't take me.  He always went with a group of men so it was a man's trip.  I doubt that I could have shot a deer anyway, after being brain washed by Mrs. Sander's stories of Bambi and  The Yearling. Hunting was a wonderful bonding experience with my dad.  Mother said one time that Daddy was very dissapointed when I reached age 14 or 15 and he found out I was a girl!  As a young wife stationed with my Airman husband in Constantina, Spain, I entered a shooting contest on base during the Feria celebration.  In the contest there were G.I's, Spanish guards, me and our commander's wife.  She and I were both from New Mexico.  She came in first and I came in second in the contest.  Our husbands never lived it down.
     Now perhaps this hasn't been one of your favorite blogs, but I felt it was important for people to know how it was being a kid growing up in the West in the '40's and '50's.  When I look back on it I realize how blessed we were to have grown up in The Land of Enchantment!

     

The Diagnosis

"We are in this struggle together.  You have seen  my struggle in the past, and you know that I am still in the midst of it."  Philippians 1:30 

     As I contemplated 9-11 this morning and the war we find ourselves in, I'm almost overwhelmed with the perplexities of it.  It's a very complicated conflict!  This war is not against another nation, although there are nations involved, it's not for the acquisition of land or wealth, although land and wealth are involved and it's not even against an evil empire.  It is simply a war over philosophy, or religion.  It's as if we were all of a sudden fighting the Buddhist, or the Hindus, or the Ku Klux Klan!  It's crazy!
     Now I have to offer a disclaimer right away, so I don't offend anyone.  I know there are Muslims who are not terrorists, who are not out to kill us.  I listen to them on T.V. and have come to admire many of them.  Dr. Jasser is one of the most reasonable, patriots we have in this country today.   It would be like someone looking at the Christian world and equating it all with the KKK, just because they claim Christianity.  For this reason I sympathize with people like Dr. Jasser.  He doesn't want to be identified with the terrorists any more than I want to be lumped in with the KKK  I understand that.  But having offered my disclaimer, I must continue to oppose the thinking of people like the terrorists we are fighting, no matter with whom they align themselves.
     One of the great distractions of this war is that we are now fighting with each other over the semantics of what to call the enemy.  Even the President felt it necessary to offer his disclaimer in his speech last night when he said, "Let's be clear about one thing.  This is not Islam!"  Okay, we get it.  We all know that people can take a body of writing, no matter how "holy" it's believed to be and twist it or select parts of it, to fit their evil desires.  And there are those among us who simply hate Islam.  They, or someone they love, have been offended or hurt by it.  But to be honest there are those among us who hate Christianity for the same reasons.  Evil in the heart of mankind finds a way to hurt and kill no matter what that man calls himself.  But the war we are in is serious.  It is serious because in this case the evil has found a way to concentrate or pool in cells all over the world and it is seeking the destruction of everyone and everything that is not like it.  The word and concept of cancer is a very apt illustration of it.
     So how do we fight cancer in the body?  There are many ways, all which have been effective in different ways and in different bodies.  Some fight it with radiation.  Radiation targets the spot and seeks to kill it at the source.  Some fight it with drug therapy.  Drugs are effective when it has spread to different parts of the body because the drug that seeks to kill it, goes throughout the system.  Some fight it through diet and exercise or a change in their environment that may be causing the cancer.  Some fight it with prayer or the seeking of Divine intervention that will change the source of the evil and defeat it at the heart.  Like I said before, all of these methods have at different times and in different lives been effective.  I'm sure that everyone reading this can point to one of these methods and offer a testimony of how they worked on someone they know.  So knowing this, I don't discount any of them.
     Now, equating this with Islamic Terrorism, shouldn't we be employing the whole package in our fight against it?  I say, send in the Military, (Radiation and Chemotherapy), send in aide workers to parts of the world where the evil is growing, both in or out of our country, (diet and exercise) and send in the missionaries, (prayer and spiritual instruction).
     Because, God has given us the perfect example, cancer and the fight against it, we need to learn from that example, stop fighting with each other over the methods and get on with the war!
This is my, 2 cents!

     Oh and let us not forget the souls who have given their all for the fight.  Today we remember and honor those heroes who have sacrificed to bring this evil to an end.  And in honoring them and watching the ceremonies commemorating 9/11/2002, let's remember that this was the day we received the diagnoses... "You have cancer! You need to take up arms and fight or you're going to die!"   Find your place in the battle and don't walk away from it.

"...for you are fighting the Lord's battles!"  1Samuel 28b

OUR CALL

  "They... of Whom This World Was Not Worthy!" Hebrews 11:38a

"Also, I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man will also confess before the angels of God." Luke 12:8a

     As I sat in the pew of my church Sunday morning, worshiping and adoring the Lord Jesus in song, then listening to my very capable, interesting, entertaining Pastor, preach an instructive, faith edifying sermon, surrounded by warm, welcoming, brothers and sisters in Christ, I was happy and comfortable and I left with the glow of a new bride.  Now I know that this introduction is a run on sentence, for all you "grammar Nazi's" out there, but I had to write it like that because it perfectly expressed where I was at that precise moment. And that's important to the story.  Stick with me, you'll understand later.

     I came home, ate lunch and settled down in my recliner for a Sunday afternoon nap.  Then I decided to check in on Facebook before I went to sleep.  There I came across this article:

NEWS: Iraqi Christian Village: From Sanctuary To Ghost Town in 2 Months!

     I looked at their faces and my heart was touched, so I whispered a prayer for them, reposted the article and went to sleep.

     Then I went back to church last night for a night of singing and fellowship, communion and an ice cream social.  During communion, as I bowed my head and meditated on what the Lord has done for me, these faces edged their way into my mind.  I remembered that father's face, etched deeply with anger and frustration, and that mother's face showing the profound sadness engulfing them.  Then I remembered the kids,... innocent, questioning, insecure.  My heart became extremely heavy and I thought of two scriptures, which I wrote at the beginning of this blog: "Also, I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him The Son of Man, will confess before the angels of God." Luke 12:8  Now in my bible that verse is in Red.  That means the words were spoken by Jesus. It suddenly occurred to me that Jesus knows the name of that family and He's shouting it to the "angels of God"!  He's saying something like this, "These are MY people! Look at them, angels!  They could have stayed in their village and converted to Islam, and lived a few more years on the earth.  Instead they are "...wondering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground." (Hebrews 11:38b) ...for My Name!"  They are "...too good for this world!" (Hebrews 11:38a)

     I prayed for them again.  This time a sincere, heart felt plea for their safety, their rescue and that their faith would not fail.  Then I realized that this is my "call".  As I sit safely, happily in my pew, fellowshipping with my brothers and sister in the faith, I'm here, not just to absorb it all and leave feeling warm and fuzzy.  But I'm here, in this situation, to be a prayer warrior for these Hebrews 11 Christians.  It doesn't matter what their nationality or even their church affiliation might be.  They ARE my brothers and sisters.  Luke 12:8 is their birth certificate and proof of cutizenship in heaven.  My next prayer was for me and my American brothers and sisters.  It was...

     I might add, help us to receive with understanding, "our call"!