Father Time Takes His Toll!

                           
Jay Leno sends a humorous reminder that time is taking its toll. He said, "With high definition TV, everything looks bigger and wider. Kind of like going to your 25^th high school reunion" (RD, 9/04, p 70). Time changes us. As someone said, "What Mother Nature giveth, Father Time taketh away." The wit of Will Rogers lives on in countless quotes. He once observed, "Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know ‘why’ I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved." Many people assiduously seek to lessen the toll the passing of time takes on the body. But no matter how young or old you are, the Bible says "our outward man is perishing" (2 Corinthians 4:16a). Whether you are a toddler, a teen, a thirty-something, or three times thirty, one thing stands true – "All flesh is as grass, and the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever" (1 Peter 1:24-25). Country singer Clint Black cobbled together beautiful but haunting and sobering words about the temporary nature of our journey through life in his 1993 song "No Time To Kill" – "There’s no time to kill between the cradle and the grave. Father Time still take a toll on every minute that you save . . ." Save all the time you can. Get the highest speed computer and internet and wifi service currently available. Buy only microwaveable meals, or pick up your food in the drive through lane at the fast-food restaurant. Do your banking online and shop at amazon.com. Drive in the fast lane on the way to work, or leave early and avoid the traffic. Eat well and take all your vitamins. Brush your teeth after every meal, floss daily, and see your dental hygienist biannually. Watch the cholesterol, don’t smoke, filter your water or drink only Dasani or Fuji Artesian or Perrier. Control your blood pressure and get regular exams. Get a Peloton Indoor Stationery Bike or go to the gym five days a week. Jog, hike, bike, swim, count calories, don’t eat much ice cream, get eight hours of sleep every night. And while you’re at it, rub on all the lotions, potions, cremes, and oils you can. Get your skin treated. Color your hair and augment whatever body parts you think are sagging or dragging or making you look older. Believe me now, I’m not making fun of these things (at least not all of them). I use a lotion or two myself. But do all that – and still Father Time eventually takes his toll.

And yet there is hope. Let us re-visit the passage quoted above from 2 Corinthians 4:16, quoting the entire verse: ^"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." Father Time takes a toll on our bodies, but he can’t harm our souls if we live by faith and do God’s will! There is a place "where the soul never dies," a place where, if we have been faithful and true, God will "make all things new" (Revelation 21:5). In 2018 time will continue to take its toll – so make it your goal to do God’s will and renew your soul! Think about it!

  By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

The Kind of Love the World Needs More Of!

      Few people have not been exposed to the words of Jesus found in John 3:16 – ^"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." The manger where Christ was born and cross here He died both stand as tangible proof God loves us. Scripture, human experience, and social science research all testify to an innate human need to be loved. In 1965 Jackie DeShannon sang, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of . . . not just for some but for everyone." It’s a beautiful song, and nobody paying attention to the things going on in our homes and schools and communities can deny the world needs more love. But we must be careful how we define the love the world needs more of. For the raw, naked, unvarnished truth is millions of people mistake lust for love, and it is beyond that debate a lot of lust is loose in the world. 

Trace Adkins told how many people feel and act about love back in 1997 when he said in a country song with catchy-lines, "This ain’t no thinkin’ thing, right brain, left brain, It goes a little deeper than that. It’s a chemical, physical, emotional devotion, passion that we can’t hold back . . . Gray matter don’t much matter, darlin’, when it’s getting down to you and me." It’s pretty clear a lot of people are being guided by something besides their brains when it comes to love. As someone said, "Brains are what a man looks for in a wife after not using any in selecting one" (or vice-versa, of course). The recent flood of sexual harassment allegations against some very powerful and prominent people in our culture reveal what happens when people practice lust, not love. Meanwhile the Bible goes on telling us we should "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). And, "love does no harm to a neighbor" (Romans 13:10). These words come on the heels of quotations from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 that the commands to not commit adultery, not murder, not steal, not bear false witness, and not covet are all "summed up in this saying, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ " (quoting Leviticus 19:18). So it is – the world needed more love long before DeShannon sang about it in 1965!

The world indeed needs more love. Real love. Love that includes affection and deep feeling – but is not limited to mere feelings and emotions. Love that is defined by what it wants to give, not driven by what it can get. Love that feels, but is then acted out – not selfishly, but selflessly. Love that stays for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth. Love that acts in behalf of the one/ones loved. Love that is willing, if need be, to "suffer long" (1 Corinthians 13:4a). Love like the kind we read about in Romans 8:32 – "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Eight year-old Rebecca teaches us about love. When asked to define love, she replied, "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That’s love." Yes, Rebecca, it is. That’s the kind of love the world needs more of. Think about it. 

        By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

Our One Fixed Hope!

            I can’t forget words I heard the late black evangelist G. P. Holt declare in a sermon nearly 40 years ago as he preached about the gap between human understanding and God’s ability. He said, "I don’t see how a black cow eats green grass and gives white milk that makes yellow butter. But she does it, and I like it." Amen to all that, Brother Holt! How ridiculous is the notion that a finite human brain should be able to "see how" and fully understand all the ways and doings of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God. Centuries before Christ, a psalm attributed to David declared, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me" (Psalm 131:1). Why should we be surprised some of God’s ways are beyond complete human understanding? After all, the average adult human brain weighs in at about three pounds. Meanwhile, God is declared to be "mighty in power; His understanding is infinite" (Psalm 147:5b). The prophet Jeremiah told God in a prayer in Jeremiah 32:17, ". . . .There is nothing too difficult for You." and when the angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary she would be pregnant with Jesus, she said, "How can this be, since I do not know a man" (that is, "since I am a virgin?") – and Gabriel answered, "With God nothing will be impossible" (Luke 1:34-37).

Think about another thing we struggle mightily to understand – "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). That verse comes in the middle of teaching about "suffering, groaning, pain, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword" (Romans 8:17-36) – some of which the apostle Paul makes clear we all encounter in life. Question is, where is God when we undergo any of that? Where is the good when we suffer? Our human predicament can be likened to a very nearsighted person inching along a complex mural painted on a long wall. We see enough to know it is a great work of art, but we cannot clearly see the entire thing. We see some of this and some of that, but cannot see how it all fits together. We do not, as it is said, "see the whole picture." But God does! Our challenge is to trust not only that God is good – but that He is good . . . all the time – even when life is not so good. John Greenleaf Whittier said in his poem, "The Eternal Goodness" – "Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storms and floods, To one fixed hope my spirit clings; I know that God is good." Are you suffering? Christ did, too. But His cross and empty tomb declare this powerful message: God is good, and all will work out for our good if we keep faith with Him. Cling to that one fixed hope. 

  By: Dan Gulley, Smithville

Doom and Gloom, or Hope Beyond the Tomb!

Seinfeld was an American sitcom on NBC that ran for nine seasons from 1989 to 1998. The show has often been described as "a show about nothing," and if you watched it very many times you know that is indeed an accurate description! One episode has a scene where George Costanza (played by actor Jason Alexander) discusses the subject of hope with Jerry Seinfeld. George says: "I don’t want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you’re hopeless you don’t care. And when you don’t care, the indifference makes you attractive." Jerry replies, "So, hopelessness is the key?" And George replies, "It’s my only hope." 

Humor aside, hopelessness is not only not our only hope, hopelessness is (not to be overly simplistic) simply hopeless. To illustrate, consider this statement (from the brilliant but faithless British philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell, who wrote in Why I Am Not a Christian) about how science presented us with a world that was "purposeless" and "void of meaning." He said, "That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the chance outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built" (quoted by Lee Strobel in The Case For a Creator, p 25).

Russell was a brilliant man, but what his high-minded philosophy really boils down to is nothing more than a hopeless end. Compare that hopeless gloom and doom and "scaffold of unyielding despair" with these God- breathed words of faith and assurance from the pen of the apostle Paul in Romans 8:22-28 as he talks about the hope Christians have, even as they sometimes groan from the hurt and pain life brings to bear – "For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. . . . And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."

I can’t speak for you, but the "scaffold" of doubt and hopelessness and the "foundation of unyielding despair" are far too flimsy and frail to risk and rest my soul on. The hope Jesus Christ gives to defeat sin and the grave is the reason I am a Christian! Think about it.

By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

Deu 25:1 If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

What is just judgement? It is one which acquits the innocent and punishes the guilty. Solomon warns about unjust judgement: “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15).

Yet, it is not always the case in this world. Sometimes we see that the wicked men are excused and exonerated, and even protected while the just men are criticized and condemned, and even punished. For example, in 2013, a court ordered an Oregon bakery to pay a lesbian couple $135,000 for refusing to make a wedding cake for them. In 2015, a florist who declined to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding because of her Christian belief was fined $1,001 by a Washington court and will be held liable to pay the legal fees incurred by the gay couple, which could "devastate" her financially. Those are just two of the many cases in which the righteous were condemned while the wicked were justified. Well, God hates those who justify the wicked while condemning the just.

 

At the trial of Jesus, we see the righteous Son of God was condemned to be crucified while a murderer was released (Luke 23:18-21). Again, a case of justifying the wicked while condemning the righteous.

Paul wrote concerning love: “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13”6). Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. It takes no delight in sin. It does not condone sin, will not be a partner to anyone who does it, and will not commit it himself. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful” (Psalm 1:1).

Have you been guilty of justifying the wicked and condemning the righteous? Of course, you will say you have always been just. But, have you been guilty of taking side between two squabbling persons? Like siding with your friends or children even when they were wrong? We read of parents challenging a school principal because his son was punished in school. Does he think a school will punish a well-behaved kid? Have you been guilty of “siding” your child?

What if your friend was issued a parking ticket? Did you tell him that he should be honest and that he was wrong not to display a parking coupon? Or you joined him in ranting at the parking warden and commenting how nasty persons parking wardens are? If you did, you were justifying the wicked and condemning the righteous.

In the news yesterday was a man who went to his nine years old daughter’s school, interrupted the class while a teacher was teaching, pulled out a boy and slapped him on the face. The reason: his daughter had complained about this boy bullying her. Not only did the man continue to haul accusations at the victim but also proceeded to lecture the class on how it was wrong to bully others or behave like gangsters. Unbelievable! The big bully and gangster telling some young boys and girls not to bully other or behave like gangsters. Somebody please give him a mirror.

A mirror is what we all need. We know the doctrines but fail to practise them. We know we must be just and impartial. But we are not always just and impartial; we are respecters of persons. We take side when our friends have a quarrel with some others.

Our Lord says: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). Let us be righteous when we judge.

Jimmy Lau

Psa 119:97  Oh how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day.