Pandemics, Politics – and Unceasing Prayer!

 Trent Shelton, former NFL wide receiver turned inspirational speaker, said, "Control what you can. Pray about what you can’t." I’m not sure we ought to say that is Biblical advice, for the Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18, "Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" (English Standard Version "give thanks in all circumstances"). So, while we should always pray about what we can’t control, we should also pray and give thanks to God when we are "in control" – i.e., in every circumstance! But, then again, are we really ever in total control? The notion we are in complete control is in fact a misguided and dangerous exercise in self-delusion. God’s book urges us, "Do not boast about tomorrow, For you do not know what a day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1). Again, addressing people who were making make plans and predictions concerning where they would go, how long they would stay, what they would do, and how much profit they would make in a year, James 4:14-15 warns how little control we ultimately have – "whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." Really now, are you in control?

 Those in touch with the reality of the human situation know these Scriptures "tell it like it is." There are always forces beyond our control affecting our lives. You can plan a picnic a month ahead in the summer- time, but you can’t control whether a thunderstorm will rain on it. You can step into the shower in a hurry to get ready for work, but an unplanned "slip" on a wet floor may lead to serious injury or worse. You can head out onto the highway for a quick run to Walmart or to "eat out" in another city – and a drunk or sleepy or distracted driver may change not only your day but the rest of your life. And if you get to the restaurant, an unseen microbe in your salad or in the meat dish you order may bring a very unplanned and unwanted case of "food poisoning." And I almost forgot – there can be pandemics where an itty bitty, microscopic-sized thing called "Coronavirus-19" manages to escape from some place in China and jump across oceans and continents until its presence has affected practically every person in every corner of the planet! Add to that a political and social climate polluted with malice, unrest, angry and sometimes irresponsible rhetoric and you have all the ingredients for widespread uncertainty and a high level of anxiety and feelings of helplessness.

 So what can we do? I don’t want to oversimplify, but remember the quote from Shelton – "Control what you can. Pray about what you can’t." That may sound kind of "preachy" and like a religious cliche. It is what we expect preachers to say, but preachers didn’t make it up. The word from God is that prayer can bring the power of God into our lives! Charles Hodge wrote, "I don’t believe in prayer, I believe in God: therefore, I pray" . . . Prayer is power because God is God. Prayer works because God works!" (The Voice of Faith: Resource Publications, 1966, p 11) Prayer may or may not alter what is going on around you. And praying may not give you the complete control you long to have in the middle of a pandemic and rabidly partisan political season. But through prayer God can alter what goes on inside us as we submit our lives to Him in trust. Prayer helps us remember God is always in control. So pray – and do it without ceasing. 

       by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

 

God, Your Gold, and Your Soul!

Fort Knox is a 109,054 acre army base near Louisville, Kentucky, built during World War I. In 1936 an area within Fort Knox was transferred from the army to the Treasury Department for the purpose of building the United States Bullion Depository. A fascinating online article by Shimon Rosenberg @ zmanmagazine.com describes Fort Knox as "the most secure building on the planet." He refers to Fort Knox as "America’s Treasure Chest." Security measures at the fort are extensive and extreme to the max, and for good reason. Locked inside the vault of the depository building are many billions of dollars worth of gold, secured by 30,000 soldiers and hundreds of army tanks with cutting edge weaponry. The vault "is constructed of such robust materials and protected by such advanced security measures that it is literally impenetrable." According to Rosenberg, the 5,000 tons of gold bars stored there equal 2.5% of all the gold ever mined in the history of the world! The underground vault housing all that gold has a 250-ton door that no bomb is capable of blasting through. Truly, the gold and other treasures laid up at Fort Knox are protected in one of the mightiest bunkers this world has ever seen!

If you could get your earthly treasures into the vault at Fort Knox, they would be in the most secure place on earth. The bad news is you can’t get them in there! Even so, there is good news. There is a vault that is even more secure than the one in Fort Knox, and the treasures it protects are quite literally out of this world! The treasures and the vault that protects them are described by Jesus Christ in Matthew 6:19-21 where He charges His disciples: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." Heaven stretches human imagination. Its glory is (many believe) metaphorically described by the apostle John in Revelation 21. Verse 18 says "the city was pure gold" and shortly later he wrote "the street of the city was pure gold." Besides gold, along the way John also mentions the most precious and valuable gemstones known to man (verses 19-21). And yet, astonishingly, Jesus, declares other even more precious treasures are being "laid / stored up" in heaven. Not in the form of gold bars. Instead, to coin words used by William M. Golden in his gospel song "A Beautiful Life" (1936), the "treasures" Christians put on deposit in heaven are "golden deeds." Verse one of Golden’s hymn says, "Each day I’ll do a golden deed, By helping those who are in need." We don’t think of common, everyday little things we do for others as "golden" or as something we would call a "treasure." But the Lord does. Jesus Himself attached great worth to the smallest of good deeds, promising that whoever gives "only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple shall by no means lose his reward" (Matthew 10:42). There is no eternal reward in simply heaping and laying up gold here on earth. If you owned all the gold in Fort Knox, and if no thief could break in there to take it away from you, the cold, hard fact remains that death would take you away from it. That’s the inherent weakness in ALL earthly treasures and the vaults we deposit them in. Now, how much treasure have you laid up in heaven? Let me encourage you to make daily deposits. God will take good care of your gold, and your soul – forever. Even Fort Knox can’t do that.

    by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

 

SAMO, SAMO – NOT FOREVER!

 Poetic words from the pen of Arthur Guieterman provide food for thought on what we call "progress": "First, dentistry was painless Then bicycles were chainless And carriages were horseless And many laws enforceless. Next, cookery was fireless, Telegraphy was wireless, Cigars were nicotineless And coffee caffeinless. Soon oranges were seedless, The putting green was weedless, the college boy hatless, The proper diet fatless. Now motor roads are dustless, The latest steel is rustless, Our tennis courts are sodless, Our new religions, godless." You might be surprised to discover Guiterman wrote those words in 1936 – 84 years ago! For the most part they sound as if they were written today. 

 We are told, and told, and told (by people who supposedly are smarter and more sophisticated and advanced than people in days gone by) that everything has changed. And that all this change has brought us to a "new normal" – not only a new normal, but, we are told, a much, much better normal. So they say. But wait a minute. Before you buy the idea we are so different and new and advanced and better than ages past, hear Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10: "That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’ It has already been in ancient times before us." 

How can he say that? Some insist his words are ridiculous. They point out Solomon never flew on a jet liner or experienced space travel and never owned a personal computer or had a cell phone or did email. He never logged on the internet to see world headlines or posted a message @ wiseman.com. There are a thousand other things that are "new" that were undiscovered or undeveloped and unknown only a few decades ago. And yet, by inspiration Solomon confidently declared, "There is nothing new under the sun." Before you dismiss the ancient wise man’s statement, consider the next verse at verse 11 – "There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things to come By those who will come after." Paraphrased, the passage suggests that as a whole humankind just doesn’t learn much from history! 

The wise man asserts that from a moral and spiritual perspective humanity keeps plowing the over the same old ground again and again. Yeah – we have new and improved cars, tools for communicating, health care and medical techniques, yada, yada, yada. But surely you’ve noticed that while each generation and its technological advances are new, not everything about us is improved! Not by any stretch of the imagination. Sin, in all its many forms, is as out, loud, and proud as ever. Much of what the apostle Paul called the "works of the flesh" two thousand years ago in Galatians 5:19-21 ("sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies ...") show up in today’s headlines and daily news cycle. Rudyard Kipling expressed it this way: "The craft that we call modern, The crimes that we call new, John Bunyan had them typed and filed In 1682."

Morally and spiritually, it’s the SAMO, SAMO (that’s "same old, same old" story!). One other thing is always the same – "Jesus Christ (and His gospel) is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). That’s what sustains our hope! Someday He will make all things new (Revelation 21:5)! Praise the Lord! For those in Christ it won’t be the SAMO, SAMO forever. 

         by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN

 

Improving the Silence!

 

Frank told about seeing his friend Fred one day. Frank said, "Fred had a bewildered look on his face, so I asked him if he had a problem. He looked at me and said, ‘I misplaced my dictionary, and now I’m at a loss for words.’ " Credit Fred for wanting to think before he spoke or wrote. Most of us would do well to speak less. The Bible admonishes "let every man (the Greek word includes every man and woman) be swift to hear, slow to speak" (James 1:19). We live in a loose-lipped world where people talk, text, tweet, and post on social media platforms. We are inundated with words. But not all words are equal or helpful. Many of them would be better left unsaid. The Greek word translated "slow" in James 1:19 means "slow, as in taking time to deliberate, unhurried, while still moving forward after considering all the facts" (HELPS WORD-studies). Edmund Muskie, a long time U. S. senator from the state of Maine, once said, "In Maine we have a saying that there’s no point in speaking unless you can improve on the silence." There’s not much silence left in America. The silence has been greatly diminished. America is awash with loud mouths that do nothing to improve the silence and very, very often horribly harm the silence. Out of people’s mouths come vile, vulgar, vain, and violent words. From cursing and swearing to complaining and grumbling to gossip and slander, there is sound pollution on every hand. On the street, online, on TV, in the music, in the movies, in the halls at school, and on occasion even in the church building and, God forbid, even in some pulpits, you may hear different kinds of trash talk and vile and inappropriate words. With the tongue people lie, flatter, blaspheme, backbite, tale-bare and dish the dirt. There is idle chatter, hate speech, harsh attacks, and cutting remarks. People use words to incite fear, stir up anger, spread half-truths and misinformation, discourage, and demoralize. If not careful our words can help to spread error, assassinate other people’s character, and ruin reputations. As part of his description of a largely godless society, the apostle Paul said in Roman 3:13-14 (quoting a string of psalms): "Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit; The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." It’s not just smokestacks that foul the air and dirty up the environment. Filthy mouths do, too.

 Jesus warns us Matthew 12:36-37 we all ought to exercise great care that the words we choose to say will improve the silence – "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." Jesus is not telling us to never speak up or out, nor was James in the passage noted above. Rather, they both call us to exercise our brains before we just start flapping our lips – or our pens or keyboards. The word Jesus uses for "idle" is a word that means lazy, thoughtless, careless, unprofitable, or injurious. These words about words and how we use them ought to jar us and make us think. Our words will show up at Judgment Day according to Jesus, and they will either condemn or justify us when we appear in God’s courtroom. American actor James Van Der Beek said, "It’s a free country and I can keep my mouth shut whenever I want." That’s a freedom more of us ought to exercise. A Spanish proverb says, "If your mouth is shut, the flies won’t get in." Or out, we might add. Does what you say improve on the silence? 

             by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN