Old Guys Rule

Latter Day Saints

2012-02-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

Are Mormons Christians? During this campaigning for the Republican nomination for president, Mitt Romney's candidacy brings this question into the public arena. It is likely that if you have a Mormon neighbor, friend or co-worker, this question has arisen (or now may soon arise). Many Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) will say something like this: "We believe in Christ the same as you do."

They seem so clean cut and morally upstanding. Their "Joe college" boys who ride their bicycles with white shirt and tie, including the neat, crew cut hair, look like the decent kind of boy every parent would like to introduce to his/her daughter. How can a church that represents itself with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir be anything but wholesome, heartland American? How dare you call them a cult! That is a vicious, judgmental accusation. Isn't it arrogant to say you are Christian and they are not?

You need to know that the name calling began with Joseph Smith. Mormons and members of any historic Christian denomination cannot both be Christians, and Joseph Smith himself demanded that we see it that way. In the publication "Joseph Smith Tells His Own Story", he claims to have met God in the year 1820. He said that God told him not to join any of the existing denominations, and that "all their creeds were an abomination in His sight." This, of course, includes my creed, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1648).

If what I believe is an abomination in the sight of God, then there is no way we are both Christian. Logically it is possible that all Christians up until 1820 were deceived and only Mormons are true Christians. Or it is possible that Mormons are following a cleverly devised cult, and historic Christianity is indeed the Christian faith. The one proposition that cannot be true is that "We believe in Christ the same as you."

The ambition of a good Mormon is to be god. Shockingly identical with the luring words of Satan when he spoke to Eve in the garden. "What we are now, God once was, and what God is now, we may become." That is a mantra for striving Mormons.

For historic Christianity, Christ bore our sins in his own body on the cross, and He merited the righteousness that justifies us before God, and we receive that righteousness by faith, not by works.

For the Mormon, though it is said that Christ died for our sins, what they mean is that Christ undid the plight of original sin and set us on the path of earning our place in the highest heaven we can attain by our works. How far you get is totally up to you, and based on just how good you can be.

That Christ died for our original sin in Adam is of little comparative value. This is true because the sin of Adam was a "good" sin. Mormon doctrine teaches that God allowed Adam to be put in a position that he had to choose to sin. The first commandment God gave Adam was to multiply and replenish the earth. The second command was not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Since Eve had been tricked into eating the fruit, Adam had to choose between joining Eve so they could multiply, or refrain from eating the fruit and letting the world go on without increasing the population. Mormons call Adam a good prophet because he made the right choice. And the guilt incurred by that good choice is the only thing Christ removed by his suffering and death on the cross. (A Study of the Articles of Faith" by James E. Talmage, p. 65).

My point is simply this: the way of salvation is 180 degrees different between Mormonism and Christianity.

Now when it comes to politics, it may be true that in our pagan culture (of course our nation was never truly a Christian country) Christians may find a number of moral points of agreement with Romney. It is conceivable that you will say this unbeliever (certainly that is what a cultist actually is) is preferable to other unbelievers who are candidates.

It is not my desire to address that subject in this brief post. Just don't be hoodwinked by the old hack that Mormons believe in Christ the same as other Christians. Whatever else you want to believe, that cannot be so.

Hooray for lust, errr..ah...love.

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, there were several martyrs named Valentine. Whoever was born/buried on February 14 had nothing to do with the kind of traditions we have attached to this day. Chaucer is to blame for most of it, and, of course, it is perpetuated by the commercial interests of confectioners, jewelers and florists. To speak against Valentine's Day would be to cast oneself in the role of loveless killjoy. I have no intention of doing that. In fact I love the day and the celebration.

Cupid, whose name means "desire", appears on this day, doing his mysterious thing. He is the god of lust, and when he hits you with his arrow--wow, the magic happens. Eros is a legitimate part of love, and more often than not, it is where a loving relationship begins.

I vividly remember the moonlight hike at family camp when I first held hands with my sweetheart. At the risk of evoking scornful laughter, I confess to you that this was a very erotic moment in our relationship. It was exciting and it was effective interpersonal communication.

I think love is grand, and I enjoy seeing it bud and blossom in sweet young people all around me. But there is a tragedy in our culture. So many of our young people stall out at the erotic level of a relationship. The American milieu has it's throttle stuck on sex, and not many know how to love because of this.

The excitement of a marriage of eros only, cannot last long. This is true simply because emotion is like that. The thrill of a roller coaster is momentary. The excitement of a touchdown is fleeting. Those who are addicted to adrenalin must necessarily seek a new and higher thrill.

Love, on the other hand, vividly remembers all those thrilling moments of eros (and plans to create more of them), but as it matures, it seeks the comfort and pleasure of the beloved. "It's not about me." When young lovers give of themselves for the good of the one loved, this creates a happy and thriving love. All you ever wanted from a spouse comes to pass as the natural flow of this kind of giving love develops a relationship. When I love her the way I should, she increases her caring and catering to me.

I am called to love her as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for her. She is to submit herself to me as the church does to Christ in all things. This doesn't just happen. It develops. And it all begins when you begin to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge. Herein is love: not that we loved God, but that he has loved us, and given us his Son as the propitiation of our sins. Not enough people understand that so go back and read the epistle of First John in the Bible.

I say Hooray for Valentine's Day! Hooray for eros! But especially hooray for the real and lasting love that comes after that!

Griffith Observatory

2012-02-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

Looking out over the hazy horizon, I saw the broad view of my home "town", Los Angeles. It's a city with which it is easy to hold a relationship of love/hate. Out there in the middle of those tall buildings there used to be a hospital named, "The Angeles Hospital." My mother gave me birth there in 1934, only those tall buildings were not there at that time. No building was allowed to be taller than the 454 feet of city hall until the 1950s.

We were standing on one of the terraces of the Griffith Observatory yesterday. It was our personal field trip of the day, and we discovered all over again, the wonder of our solar system. Dwarfed by the monster Jupiter, our little blue marble seems relatively insignificant, floating in the vast hollow of space. Then there is tiny Pluto (recently demoted from planet status) that looks like a pea at unimaginable distance. I suppose all this reaffirms the dogma of the atheist, but for me the awe of God's immensity is what impressed me. Once again I was thinking with David, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?"

The incredibly young and energetic take the dirt hiking path up to the entrance. We, on the other hand, found a space to park in the handicap lot. More power to the hikers! I can remember young and energetic years, but I have to reach way back. Oh, yeah, it was on one of those trails in Griffith Park where a human head and the severed hands were found by a hiker's dog just a few weeks ago. Another argument against trail hiking, as if I needed one.

When low blood sugar set in, we ate an energy bar and headed for a restaurant. Just down the hill from the observatory we found Louis' place. In ancient times this was the famous "Brown Derby" restaurant where Hollywood stars would hob nob. Rush hour traffic along Los Feliz Blvd. made it seem that you can't get there from here. But we finally did.

We had eaten here before, but not for some time. It was wonderful food and great service. And the price was so reasonable for all this. I ordered "Chicken Balsamica" from the engaging menu. My plate included braised spinach and roasted vegetables. I had found that wonderful combination of delicious food that was also good for me. Close enough to heaven for now.

Firestone fosters prayer

2012-01-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

The year the the Firestone Tire Company hyped an ad campaign for a super tire for the family auto was the same year the Keller family was vacationing from Wilmington, DE to California to visit parents and others. It was a natural move for us to buy the two new tires we needed for this long trip from Firestone. So we packed our station wagon with kids and dog and headed west. However, this highly touted rubber donut turned out to be infamous before the year was finished. And thereupon hangs a tale of our adventures.

We must have been in Wyoming by the time we realized we had purchased two of those pneumatic wheel covers destined for recall. Really, really in the middle of nowhere the cadence of our tire hernia grew more and more pronounced until we had to stop and check. Of course we had a spare, but it was not fun to empty the rear of the station wagon and get the spare and the jack. A rat (perhaps a prairie dog) had found refuge under the wheel I had removed, and it made me jump when he dashed away as I was picking up the old tire. Now what? It was a new tire, and we were determined to get a refund. So with a handy rope or bunji cord we tied the defective tire to the roof of the station wagon, and drove on.

When the station wagon is loaded with 6 children 2 parents and a dog, traveling can be an adventure with many distractions. We used to say that the dog was the best traveler of all. Talitha, our faithful poodle mix, was happy to be with her family, and as long as we filled her bowl with water whenever we stopped to eat or gas up the car, she was quite content to lie on the floor beneath the feet of the children. Or occasionally she would lie across a couple laps and enjoy strokes from one or more of the kids.

But traveling highways in deserted country is just a bit unnerving to a father who felt responsible for all these souls in the midst of hostile environments. Not dissimilar from that of the patriarchs in their prairie schooners. Okay, so that was a little over the top, but you get my point. We were in the desert, and I felt vulnerable.

Traveling with this restless crew is most readily accomplished by covering as many miles as possible while most are sleeping. This requires the driver to drive all night, and she who rides "shotgun" to help him stay awake. This strategy brought us into the wilderness of Nevada in the early hours of the morning. Now the steady drumbeat of the next tire hernia was detected by all. We couldn't change the tire since the spare was already in use, and the other tire was awkwardly strapped to the roof of the car. I slowed the car, hoping we would get more mileage with gentler use. Also there was the consideration that a blowout on the highway might not be so injurious at a lower rate of speed. But the next town was several miles ahead. What should we do? We were feeling desperate, and desperate people learn how to pray with importunity. Providence had us in training.

Weary from the tension of the circumstances, we saw the green sign announcing the approaching town. Some relief began to creep into our bodies. At least from here it would not be far to hike to the nearest service station, if need so dictated. As we approached the first gas station we saw it was closed. Remember this was rather early in the morning. Then we had the boldness to seek a station for which we held a credit card. We never seemed to have much money, and didn't carry much when we traveled. It would be best if we put the expense of the new tire on our credit card. After passing another station simply because it was not a sponsor of our credit, we found a Mobile station.

As we were pulling into the driveway, just passing the gas pumps, there was a rather loud "bang" as the latest hernia ruptured. Barbara laughed and said, "Well, I guess they don't need to ask us why we are here." Now the tension was over and prayer was wonderfully, and humorously, answered. I have been certain since that moment that God has a sense of humor.

We saw a place for breakfast just across the street from the Mobile station, and the kids were dazzled by the fact that even here there were the famous lights and one-armed bandits so famous in the silver state. How satisfying to have our car road-ready again and our bellies filled with ham and flapjacks. So off again, but now with two misplaced tires tied to our station wagon roof.

Auto Mechanics and Prayer

2012-01-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

Did you ever pray for the "healing" of your car? Well, I did, and I confess it was to my surprise that God wonderfully answered that prayer. I had to be at youth camp. I think I was "the man" in charge. The water pump in my car had sprung a leak, so I would be delayed. I asked God to help me know what to do. But when I started the car again, the leak had stopped.

The weekend ministry was accomplished. Kids are always challenging, but such great fun. As far as I recall we were all blessed with the word of God and good fellowship (and, of course, a certain amount of silliness).

After this was over, and I had returned home, the water pump began leaking again. I'm not going to say that mechanical problems are best solved by prayer. But the facts are that I prayed for help, and that's exactly what I got. God "healed" my car for just long enough to give me a successful weekend of ministry with young people.

Being a poverty case preacher, of course I set out to fix it myself. I removed the old water pump, took it to Pep Boys and laid it on the counter. My father's expert mechanic friend taught me to take the part to the store and compare every screw hole and flange with the new one. Often the paper work identifies the "right part" that has an extra protrusion or slightly different screw holes that can only be identified by eyeballing the two.

I put the car back together, and what's this? The water pump was squirting like a baster. I'm no crack mechanic. I must have done something wrong. Maybe I forgot a gasket. So I took it all apart again. If you've done this yourself, you know that it always seems to require the removal of other things like the air conditioner pulley or some other housing just to access the part. So when I finally pull out the water pump, it looks perfect. Gaskets are intact and bolts had been tight. Well, I put it together again, only to find the leak is still there!

This time I pulled the part and took it back to Pep Boys to have them tell me what I was doing wrong. The guy at the counter says, "Just a minute." When he returns to the counter, he tells me that they tested the part in the back and found that it was defective. He gave me another one, and this time it worked.

So the sum and substance is this: the worn, defective part--the part that was prayed over--worked for the needed time. And the newly refurbished part--the part that just came out of the box--did not work. God likes to work the ironic. Little is much when God is in it. A man's skill or wisdom is a fearful thing to trust. Proverbs 3:5, 6 comes to mind.

Resolutions

2011-12-31T14:03:00.000-08:00

My wife still remembers sitting in the doctor's waiting room, overhearing a girl with a broken leg who said, "I'm giving up dancing for lent." Just how impressed did she think God might be with her resolution of self sacrifice?

New Year's resolutions are ridiculous. The concept itself carries the proof of the insincere intentions. The fact that one waits until the New Year to make the resolution is the evidence that there is no hearty resolution about it. I'm going to keep my New Year's resolution to never go sky diving again. The fact that I have never had a desire to do this, plus the fact that I am 77 years old and have no business trying such a foolish, dangerous thing, makes this resolution most certainly successful. But what does such a resolution mean?

If something is worth changing in your life, why wait til New Years to make the change? If it is something wrong or bad, that is to say sinful, then it's worth doing December 30 or January 2 or any other day of the year. "I resolve to stop killing other people, starting New Year's Day." No, that won't fly. Obviously ludicrous, but when we are talking about sin, it is no more ludicrous than saying, "I resolve to stop coveting the riches of others, starting on New Year's Day." Oh I see, that leaves you one more day to indulge that sin. Better do a lot of it to make up for the deprivation you will suffer in the future.

It's like Mardi Gras, fat Tuesday, as a day of debauchery and gluttony before the self-deprivation of lent. Does anyone actually suppose God is fooled by such obvious ill intentions? Does anyone actually want to serve such a small-minded god? It's only a game quite like the New Year's resolution.

Christian friend, you know your resolution. I resolve to kill sin more effectively and live more godly. But, dear friend, we must remake that resolve every day, and alas, more than once each of those days.

Singing apocrypha

2011-12-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

You have to realize how doctrinally hard nosed is my church before you will appreciate what I have to say today. This is the church who chooses not to sing "and opened the life-gate that all may go in" when we publish "To God Be the Glory" in our hymnal. The committee took the pains to modify Fanny Crosby's first verse to read "that we may go in" instead. The original could have been construed to mean that Jesus is the Savior of the whole world, meaning every race, tongue and tribe have one, and only one Savior offered to them in the Gospel. But just to jealously guard the doctrine of election, we needed to modify it. Okay, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is doctrinally up tight--even paranoid? I love this church, and partly for that reason.

What amuses me at this time of year is how we let sentiment, tradition or whatever it is, lead us into singing outlandish apocrypha. Try "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" (Trinity hymnal #200). Where is the Scripture that tells us Jesus was born at midnight? The hymn makes no reference to Christ or His saving work. Instead it anticipates a golden age that eventually comes over the earth with peace. It leaves out reference to the saving atonement because it was written by a Unitarian pastor who didn't believe in the atonement.

How about # 204, "Away in a Manger"? In the second verse baby Jesus wakes up, but no crying He makes. How do we know that? Is it sinful for babies to cry?

"See, amid the Winter's Snow" (#199) has great words, but what's this stuff about winter's snow? Bethlehem gets plenty cold in late December (too cold for shepherds to be abiding in the field with their sheep), but snow is rare at this latitude and altitude.

I'm not outraged (should I be?). I'm not crusading for hymn revisions. I'm simply amused that my doctrinally hard nosed church sings apocrypha this time of year.

Chaplain Lynn Wade

2011-12-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

We all have met unforgettable characters during our life. One of those outstanding humans for me is Chaplain Lynn Wade. My first knowledge of Mr. Wade came from tough sailors with whom I came into contact in church. They learned to trust in Christ because of the influence of Chaplain Lynn Wade while they were stationed on the island of Guam. It seems he confronted men with the gospel in the most militant ways imaginable. He was not a roughneck himself. I remember him as tall and trim--even wiry. He wasn't a buff bruiser, but his voice was strong and demanding. He was military in personality.

Once when he preached in our little church in Eagle Rock, his tithing sermon was from the text in Malachi that says, "Will a man rob God?" He made his point indelible by reaching over the railing at the stage, grabbing a handful of money from the offering plate and shoving it into his coat pocket. Change went jingling and rolling across the floor. But not a soul who was there missed or ever forgot this message. Well, at least we didn't forget the illustration.

We were a very small congregation, and I'm afraid we had become a bit lax in our prompt attendance, especially for the evening service. One night we arrived two minutes tardy (maybe three) for evening service, only to find Rev. Wade's note pinned to the door. "I was here at worship hour and evidently you cancelled it without giving me notice, so I went elsewhere to worship."

We were so impressed by his zeal for the gospel that we even named one of our sons for him. Paul Wade Keller was our third son.

I was told by someone who was there that Lynn Wade once rode his motorcycle on the sidewalk in Philadelphia when he was in Westminster Seminary. When I brought it up to him, he didn't seem to think there was anything funny about it.

During the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, held in Denver, CO, many preacher's kids were in attendance, and they wanted to have fun. When Mr. Wade discovered that one of the kids had filled the sugar container with salt, he rose to his feet in the dining hall and bellered out a brief sermon, rebuking whoever it was that had wasted God's good provisions. It was his own son who had pulled the stunt, however, and I don't think he ever confessed. It can be tragic when such an intense person cannot balance his life with a sense of humor. I cannot pretend to know how things developed in their home. I do know that the children were made to memorize the catechism rigorously. But I also know that his children rebelled when they had the freedom to do so. I hope they repented and came back to the Lord in later life, but I just don't know.

Lynn Wade was suffering with cancer and radiation treatments when I drove him to a speaking engagement. He was lovable because he loved Jesus, and so do I. But I didn't have to live with him. He said that the treatment was sometimes worse than the disease. I think that was the last time we spoke in person.

It is my observation about Lynn Wade, and many other good men since, that gifted men are often also severely flawed men. I'm sure Mr. Wade brought more men and women to Jesus Christ than I have in all my ministry. I know that he made an impression on men who would never be fazed by my attempts to share the gospel. God uses all kinds of people. The good is all of grace, but personality is part of God's preparation for such ministries. Martin Luther is a wonderful case in point.

At War With Each Other

2011-11-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

While riding my stationary bike the other day, I was playing a CD of Barbra Streisand. She was singing a song called "Being at War With Each Other". It went like this:

Everyone comes from one father, one mother
So why do we complicate our lives so much
By being at war with each other?

Mmm...maybe I'm crazy but I don't understand it
Why do we seem to vote to dig more holes
It's such a waste of a planet

There must be a reason that I can't see
Maybe somebody else now knows better than me....

I'm pumping the pedals, trying to get lost for 20 minutes while I engage in this minimal bid for exercise that seems so hard for me. And I'm actually listening to the words this time. If you are able to ignore her politics long enough to bathe your ears with her torch song mode and strong convincing voice, it yields such auditory pleasure. But this time I'm actually listening to the words, and I say--almost out loud--Hey, Barbra, I know the answer to that one! You're not going to believe it, but God has actually given us an answer in the Bible. In fact the brokenness of human nature is one of the major themes of Scripture.

And then it occurs to me that my pagan culture does see the problem, but they are terrified to admit it. We are all broken, and only the original Manufacturer is able to repair us. And that is the story line of the entire Bible. Part of that broken condition is the stubborn refusal to repent and cry out to God for help. Like a foolish toddler with a kitchen knife, we'd rather do it ourselves. So we go to 12 step programs, or to psychiatrists, or to the local pub and seek solutions. Hundreds of dollars and years later we have only discovered there are a lot of other broken people out there to join us in our misery.

The Bible teaches us that human misery and human sin are related as cause and effect. When we declare independence from our Maker, and kid ourselves that we can make it on our own, we become "square pegs" and it hurts when we try to fit square pegs into round holes (the world as originally designed by God). But the problem is so much more than the logistics of square pegs and round holes. There is a moral dimension.

We are not just "broken" but instead we are rebels against the holy God who made us and all things. We find ourselves hating Him because He will not let reality revolve around our personal interests. He wants us to be holy, loving and helpful. We want pleasure, attention and wealth. We want to be god. And that was exactly the sin committed by Adam and Eve. Yes, we all come from one father and mother, and that is only part of the problem. They passed on to us those perverted chromosomes, and we are guilty, hellbent, broken sinners.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love toward us has made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up and seated us together with Christ in heavenly places. By grace you are saved. This is the heavenly position that is given to everyone who turns from his sin, and asks God to forgive him for Jesus' sake.

Date Night

2011-11-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

Over the years date night has been important for us to cultivate our marriage. Besides that, Barbara is really my best friend, and it's just plain fun to be together. Okay, before you puke over this drippy sentimentalism, I want to share with you one of our special date nights. It must have been on or about our 15th anniversary. Our plans were not very imaginative: dinner and a movie. But God's plans injected a little tragedy/humor that made it a little more memorable. (Otherwise it might have been lost in my deteriorating synapses.) We were in Wilmington, Delaware, and the weather was threatening. Actually there was steady drizzle, though not a true eastern rain. The kids were safely in the charge of a trusted baby-sitter, and we were on the road, when suddenly our car sounded like an airplane. The muffler popped loose from the exhaust pipe. If that has never happened to you, I want you to know that it is a racket that you cannot blithely ignore. Our family car was making rude noises in public. Like loud flatulence at a Quaker meeting, this had to be stopped! Finally I pulled the car to the side of the road where we could be a little secluded. My suit was a little old so I removed my coat and slid under to see what I could do. During my wriggling and contortions I managed to tear my pants all along the crotch seam. I gerryrigged a wire coat hanger and quieted the car, but now I had the challenge of continuing my date with clothing disrepair. Returning home would seriously truncate our evening plans, so we plunged ahead. Only when we reached the restaurant did I realize the extent of my seam damage. I asked Barbara to walk close behind me, and we must have looked like a clown act as she stuck to me as close as chewing gum on the bedpost. We were seated at a table with a covering that extended over the edge but a few inches. I was suddenly keenly aware of the challenge facing modest girls in short skirts. I was seriously distracted all through dinner, trying to remember to keep my legs crossed. As I remember, we both got the giggles before the evening was over. What had begun as a "tragedy" turned into sublime providential humor. As you can tell from this log, it has become a lasting memory.

Tarantula

2011-10-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

When I was in grade school we lived about two blocks from the hills in Eagle Rock. We kids climbed around those hills daily during the summer months. On occasion we saw the Occidental Cross Country team running by us. Castor beans grew in the wild and oak trees dotted the landscape. There were trap door spiders to observe, and/or capture. But the most discomfort for an 11 year old boy was the tarantula. I remember a neighbor sweeping one off his driveway into a large jar. It's not a love/hate relationship, but rather a terror/fascination relationship I have with spiders. And when one is as large as my hand, and black and hairy as well...it really creeps me out.

I've been told that tarantulas are really not dangerous. Well they may not be poisonous, but the danger for me, waking up with one on my chest, would be the danger of a heart attack. I know they are available in pet stores, of all places. I remember reading in the paper about a boy who brought his pet tarantula to school for show and tell. As boys are prone to do, he tried to show him off by not only handling him, but giving him a kiss! According to the newspaper account, the spider bit his lip, but he only suffered a painful swollen lip for the prank.

One of our trips through Kings Canyon National Park encountered about four tarantulas crossing the road. I was fascinated. Telling the kids to stay in the car, I stepped out and approached these scary little beasts. You will have to tell me if it was my imagination, but I'll swear that they hissed at me. I could see the lead spider raise its head and front legs at me, and I heard a distinct hiss. Of course I turned on one foot and headed straight back into the car. It was a classic case of cross cultural communication.

Murder in Seal Beach

2011-10-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. Another wicked man has taken his gun and blown the life out of 8 people in the clean, friendly neighborhood of Seal Beach, CA. I hate when this happens. I hate it, but I'm not astonished as many seem to be. God has told us about the moral warp that has infected the human race after the fall. In fact it was rather early in history that God said, "Every intent of the thoughts of his heart is only evil, continually." Or Psalm 14 that says that God looked down on the children of men to see if any did understand and seek God, only to find that they are all together become filthy, and there is no one that is good, no not one. The events in Seal Beach on Wednesday are just another unfortunate outcome of the sinful condition of human nature. There should be no great surprise here for a Christian. Grief, yes, but no surprise.

The irony is that our culture seems fanatically determined to believe that human nature is basically good. This is what gives the media commentators pause when angry sinners lash out with irrational slaughter like this. Sooner or later (for the defense attorney it will be sooner) someone will try to give a reasonable excuse for this behavior. They seem to display a religious commitment that requires the isolation of this man from society. He was out of his right mind because of his boating accident, or because of the threat of losing custody of his 7 yr. old son. There has to be a reason...something other than admitting that there is a dark side in every one of us that will drive us to unspeakable deeds if left unchecked.

Then we might hear the skeptics and atheists cry out, "Where is God when things like this happen!" I'll tell you where God is. He is still saying that these were not worse sinners than any others, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Life is suddenly over for 8 people, and the lives of dozens of others have been irreparably scarred by the loss of loved ones. Providence teaches, no, shouts at us, that life is short. Life would be senseless if that is all there is, but when you know that after this there is a judgment, it begins to come back into perspective.

The very first message that Jesus preached was summarized by, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." Every man, woman and child needs to know that they could be snatched into eternity without even a moment's notice. If that innate sense of justice is going to be satisfied, we'd better believe in the judgement seat of Christ. Without it, the existentialists are right to say life is absurd. But they only say that. They do not live as though they really believe that. When Jean Paul Sartre railed against his own government for cruel behavior against the Algerian guerrillas for their immoral behavior, he had to publicly admit that he was speaking in flat out contradiction to his philosophy. We all know right from wrong, and when right is not rewarded or wrong is not punished in this life, there is no resolution if one stubbornly refuses to hear God speak of heaven and hell in the bible.

Proper dignified minds may belittle the belief in a "sky high heaven and red hot hell" but without the Bible's perspective on eternity, those same proper people are left with no ultimate meaning for life.

Let us morn those who were senselessly murdered. But let us take this harsh lesson to heart. It is appointed to men once to die, and after this: the judgment.

Little Stars

2011-10-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Whenever I attend a wedding (rather than conduct one), I look for the stars of the show. That would be the flower girl and the ring bearer. They are such cute miniature humans! They can be so delightfully unpredictable, and therefore account for some of the most memorable moments in what occasionally becomes a tedious routine in our culture.

Barbara, the preacher's daughter, remembers the groom who fainted...twice! They finally brought him a chair to finish the ceremony. She also clearly remembers a wedding performed at the manse during which the ring fell, rolled along the floor and fell down the vent of the floor furnace.

But I digress. I was reflecting on the little stars of the show. Like little Raymond who was the ring bearer for my daughter's wedding. At rehearsal, he balked and cried, and simply WOULD NOT walk down the aisle. The next night, we were prepared to conduct the wedding with or without his cooperation. But this time, sporting an adorable little tux, and now with a church full of terrifying people, he marched down the aisle like a pro. You never know.

When my son was married in Memphis, the ring bearer DID become terrified by that great crowd. They begged, cajoled and finally dragged him down the aisle. And when he arrived, he anchored himself to the leg of my other son, serving as a groomsman, clinging for dear life, and never let go.

More recently when our nephew was married in the San Francisco area, the scene was outdoors at a picturesque park, seemingly made for the purpose. Someone had thoughtfully sewed the ring to a satin pillow for the ring bearer to carry to the pledging couple. But when he arrived, alas the pillow was there, but not the ring! The groom's father, known to be a quick thinker, took off his own ring, and the embarrassed couple used it because of the urgency of the occasion. I still have a snapshot of the wedding party, on their hands and knees, routing through the grass, looking for the lost ring. They didn't find it until they brought a metal detector the next day.

The little flower girls have not left me with such dramatic recollections. I remember a flower girl, with a basket full of flower petals, who did not drop a single one on her trek to the altar. Some have cried all the way. And I do remember one who shouted "No" to her mother, who was trying to tend her after she arrived up front. The memorable part of this scenario was that she shouted right after the minister asked, "Will you take this woman to be your wedded wife?"

Hair

2011-10-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

I heard Dennis Bartell on the radio this morning, with his little great composer quiz. The question was which composer was vain about his hair which was blond and flowing. He was small of stature and his face was pale of pallor, but his hair was outstanding, and he was proud of it. The answer is Mozart. Actually I guessed the correct answer, but it got me thinking about hair.

I remember when classical musicians were called "longhairs" with something of disdain in the voice. But culture evolves, and at my age I can see that culture evolves all too rapidly. So this "longhair" epithet has fallen into disuse because today it is the rock musician who has the long hair, and it is part of his shtick. Young impressionable girls swoon over the shrieking rock star as he nearly swallows the microphone and his shoulder length hair flairs around him. It is far more likely that it would be the fan of classical music (who is usually much older) who might use "longhair" as a derogatory epithet for the rocker.

Then I remember when men with long hair were excluded from proper Christian fellowship. Now it is quite common. In fact that same rocker mentioned in the last paragraph might lead a worship team on the stage of a church with "contemporary" worship style. We are so influenced by culture. If we are not adopting worldly standards of culture and behavior, we are at least confused by culture, and our senses become dulled. We major in the minors.

Ray Commeret, a now deceased colleague of mine, was a bit maverick in his methods, and generous in his sense of humor. I remember the day he drove in to French Creek Bible Conference with a full black beard, rolled down the window of his car, and said in his excellent Brooklyn Jew accent, "Is this the House of David?" He had just returned from an extended vacation to pick up children at French Creek, and it was obvious that he had not taken a razor with him on vacation. I understand that he hadn't used his razor yet when he first entered his pulpit after vacation, and his sermon title was, "How Long is Christian Hair?" I have no idea what his text was, nor just how he preached Christ from it, but knowing his integrity as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm sure it was a legitimate Bible text, and I'm sure he pointed people to the Savior. Compared to some of the dramatic antics of Old Testament prophets, this was not really far out of line. He was a living example of how we can major in the minors.

When I look at old photos of myself, I sometimes laugh at the hair. It wasn't that long, but it was simply old fashioned--and the sideburns!

Somebody obviously thinks that Jesus had long hair. In fact the famous Salmon portrait of the Christ portrays a rather effeminate, western European face with long hair. Who is this? Are we to believe that Christ sat for the portrait? In what museum might I find the ancient camera that captured His likeness? And yet every "miracle" appearance of Christ in porch light shadows or burnt pancakes is identified by the same general image. Why do we reject the rendering of the black Christ?

Scripture says that there is nothing outstanding about His physical appearance. There is no beauty that we should desire Him. His human nature must bear the Mediterranean Jewish coloring and bone structure. I wonder how many westerners would be pleased with his appearance.

I love Jesus because He first loved me, and gave himself for me. His physical looks will not even be noticed by believers when we see Him face to face. In that day we will see perfectly, and when we see His face, we will see the lover of our souls, and that is all we will see.

Jerome, Arizona

2011-09-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

When we visit Sedona, as we did again this Summer, we always take a day to see Jerome again. It is a tourist trap with personality. There are galleries, shops and restaurants that all have a glint in the eye because they know they have something few little towns have. They have a wild and scandalous history that lingers in the air--or at least in the museum.

One of the infamous madams of this town served as mayor for a while. At least two sheriffs have had to shoot and kill the bad guys. When the copper mine was founded, workers needed housing, and that is the beginning of Jerome. It became a bustling settlement on the side of the mountain where the main street is a switchback that becomes narrow enough in one place that it becomes a one way street. This is the infamous highway 89a. T shirts and caps carry the slogan "I survived highway 89a".

At one point in its rich and varied history, the high school boasted a state champion football team. But where you find hard working men such as these, you will probably find the provision of wild entertainment designed to help them spend their money on a "good time". And so there grew up with this town several bars and more than one bordello. The unique topography of the town, everythting being on a steep hillside, afforded an escape route out the back door of the brothel to the street below. When a suspicious wife came looking for her husband, he was seldom found thank to this service.

The fortunes of the town rose and fell dramatically, depending on the need and price of copper. At one point in her history, Jerome was the fifth largest city in the state of Arizona with fifteen thousand citizens in 1929. But after that fateful year, copper lost it's value, the mine closed and men looked for work with the WPA.

What eventually saved the town seems to be the influx of an artisan crowd of hippies and flower children, moving to the hills and making it an artist's village, cashing in on the rich history of the town to interest visitors and keep things going as a tourist trap. Whatever the town was, it is now a charming town above the Verde Valley where, just incidentally, the OPC is "mining" for souls with a fledgling church plant in Cottonwood. If you are ever in the area, you must visit Jerome, and if it is a weekend, visit our little church in Cottonwood.

Memorable felines

2011-09-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

I always had a cat, growing up. Early blogs of mine tell of Blondie, my favorite feline of my youth. But after we were married and had kids, we had cats adopt us. There were many. Open the front door and in walks an adorable cat. It meows and rubs against your leg so affectionately that suddenly you have a cat. Of course it is true, what they say about dogs may have masters, but cats have staff. All those sayings about cats have at least a strong element of truth. Thousands of years ago cats were worshipped in Egypt, and somehow they never got over it. If this intimidates you, you become a cat hater. If this amuses you, you become a cat lover.

We had a cat named "Mahershallelhashbaz" (which, roughly translated, is: "hasten the spoil, rush on the prey") Now that seems a fitting name for many a hungry feline. It has the added benefit of being a Bible name. But alas it was not really clever for us to name it thus, because Corie ten Boom mentions her cat by that name in her famous book, "The Hiding Place". The only remarkable thing I can remember about this cat is that it left some poop on the stairs which Barbara discovered as it came up between her bare toes. Cats know who likes them and who doesn't. They have this way of making a statement with a turd. Our friends, Barry and Trisch Dorsch, had a cat who held a mutual contempt with Barry. One day after tossing the cat out of his desk chair, he found an exclamation poop behind that chair. Now that's an eloquent statement!

Once we actually owned a pedigreed Persian cat. All other experiences were with the alley cat variety that adopts it's owner, er... staff as mentioned above. But our youngest, Jonathan, had made up his mind that he would like to have a Persian cat. His mother bargained that if we made enough money in a coming garage sale, he could buy the advertised bargain Persian. It worked very well, and he was a beautiful model of fluff, posing for the admiration of all. We named him Cyrus, after the great Persian king of old (also a Bible name). But other than laying around, looking beautiful, he did nothing. The most boring cat we have ever owned. He got some ailment, caused by his delicate digestive system, that cost us $180 at the vet. Not long after this he seemed to have the same ailment, but this time he disappeared, presumably to die. I'd rather think that some Persian admirer swiped him, but we will never know in this life, because they didn't have micro chips in those days.

I'm sure I mentioned our white cat in an early blog of mine. The story of her chasing savvy squirrels into the trees of Wilmington, Delaware, is a favorite. How they would jump from the end of a limb, leaving her clinging to this bobbing tree branch, was fun to repeat.

We had another white cat that moved with us from Modesto to Carson. This one was named "Pernicious" (you know, as in "pernicious anemia"). In order for us to get her in the car to travel with a modicum of calm, we had to drug her with a powerful pill from the vet. Wow, did she fight against the effects of that drug. She could barely open her heavy eyelids (actually cats have a dual set, and we could see one set she was unable to open). As I drove the VW bug down highway 99, she would occasionally emit this low feline noise, a miniature version of a lion's growl. But she made it. And she grew old with us. By her 13th year the family was strongly lobbying me to put her to sleep. When some sort of infection ate away one of her ears I finally relented to the ugly assignment.

Most of our cats were necessary to serve as pets for our famous dog, Talitha. We discovered that during a period without a cat, our dog was moping around the house. She was always a peppy, friendly canine, and so we noticed her poor mood. But as soon as the next cat adopted our family, Talitha revived her interest in life. Our eldest son, Phil, taught our dog to "get that cat." She would catch the head of the cat in her mouth, while the acclimated cat would kick with her hind legs. They frequently played like this and nobody was hurt. That night we would see them curled up together to sleep. It was only a problem when Phil took the dog for a walk and gave her the order with a neighbor cat. Since the neighbor cat didn't know the game, she was usually treed. So I say most of our cats were pets for Talitha. She was not really a pet. She was a member of the family and she grew up with our children. We had her for more than 16 years.

Bill Cosby had it right when one of his routines, describing the difference between cats and dogs, pictured the dog as carrying master's slippers and saying, "What else do you want, Master?" But the cat is sitting on the couch watching TV. He says, "Hey, you, cat."
"You're not talking to me."
"You haven't caught any mice lately."
"I'm full, man."
Yeah. Cats have staff.

More baseball lore

2011-09-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I could play baseball all day long, and on more than one occasion I did exactly that. My first "organized" team was in a playground league at Ladera Park, near Dorsey High School. We were a scruffy bunch of rubes who just liked the game, even though we stank at playing baseball. As the season progressed, and we lost every game, some of my friends lost their loyalty to the team or to me or to the institution of baseball itself. We were not unlike Charlie Brown's team.

The team evolved and new players asked to join. Inevitably they were an improvement. Eventually we came to the point that I was the last player from the original ragtag group. But I didn't want to quit. It was my team (i.e. it was my name that was registered with the playground organizers as the contact person for this team). So, since all the new guys were better players, it turned out that no one wanted to play catcher. Neither did I, but I wanted to play, so I became the catcher. When Tim McCarver refers to the catcher's gear as "the tools of ignorance", I know with intimacy just what he is talking about. It's uncomfortable to squat for the whole game. When the batter just nips the speeding pitch, the ball changes direction just a tad, and that is enough for it to miss my glove and hit me. When opposing runners are trying to score, and someone pegs the ball to me, it never comes into my glove. It frequently hits the dirt just in front of the plate, raises a cloud of dust, and I have to try to snag the ball and make the play. It all looks so simple on TV, but it's not. I ate a lot of dust, and took a few hits from sliding runners, and if I didn't succeed in tagging him out, my team mates would get all over my case for not making the play. That was my introduction to organized baseball.

The playground announced that there would be a baseball clinic for us to attend, and a local celebrity would be there. It was Billy Schuster, who played shortstop for the Cubs, and then for the triple A Pacific Coast League "Los Angeles Angels". He was known to be a clown, as many ball players seem to be. I went to the clinic, and learned tips on throwing, catching and batting. It was the basics that I needed to learn.

Billy Schuster told us the following story. There was this guy we'll call "Joe" who played for a professional team. This team was making a tour of small communities and playing against the local men and boys all across the country. (They did that in the old days before the Major Leagues moved west.) Well, as the story goes, the team visited a town so bush league that the ball park didn't even have fences. When the batter hit the ball hard enough it might roll for 600 feet or more while the batter rounded the bases. The outfield melded into desert landscape with mesquite and tumbleweed bushes dotting the landscape. Joe played center field, and didn't want to get stuck in that position. Joe had an idea. Early in the morning of game day he took a bag of baseballs out to the park, and carefully hid one behind each bush he thought might be useful.

Well, game time arrived, and Joe was ready to surprise the local yokels. And it worked very well. Some big cowboy would drive that ball between fielders and start running. But Joe just reached behind a bush and tossed the planted ball to the infield, holding the runner to one or two bases. This worked without a hitch for 6 innings. But the local cowboys were hitting well, and Joe's pitcher was not one of the club's premium players. Finally it happened. Joe chased another line drive to left-center, and when he reached behind the bush he found that ball had already been used. He tried the next bush with the same disappointment. The runner was rounding second at full speed, and Joe had to do something to stop him. The next bush was a real surprise to Joe because when he reached behind the bush, his hand grabbed a rabbit by the ears. Here he was looking at this little rabbit in his hand while the runner was rounding third, heading for home. Joe thought, "What the heck. I've got to do something." So he tossed that little bunny into the infield. The shortstop relayed him to the catcher, and guess what! The runner was out by a hare!

Tubing the Stanislaus

2011-09-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to be the young people's leader in all the churches I served. Sometimes it clicked and sometimes it flopped. But I do so enjoy being with jr. and sr. high young people. Truth be told I enjoy all ages.

Well my story today is about youth group I enjoyed in Modesto sometime between '74 and '83. I decided we ought to go tubing down the Stanislaus River. There are no rapids to maneuver and it looked like a perfect day's outing for the group. The problem was that I had no experience. I didn't think it required experience to float down a river in old inner tubes. What's so complicated about that? Have you any idea just how meandering a river can be? By my estimation we should be in the water by nine and at the bridge by mid-afternoon at the latest. No one corrected me. If someone expressed doubt I plunged ahead with a leader's confidence. "Follow me!" You know that a leader should exude enthusiasm to engender the confidence from his followers that he needs.

We passed one home that I recognized, and I was alarmed to think how near the beginning of our little outing this home stood. Families began to express concern. Little Ruthie got snagged on the branch of a submerged tree, and I rescued her. It didn't appear to be a life threatening situation, but she was very grateful nevertheless. As sunburns were brewing and parents were pacing it became apparent to all of us that something was amiss about my calculations. There didn't seem to be any neutral stopping places along the way. All we could see were the back yards of bordering estates. Joel was bold enough to stop along the way and approach one of those homes, and knocked at the back door. When no one answered, he walked in and borrowed their telephone. Remember those were the days way before anyone had a cell phone.

Now at least thanks to Joel's bold home invasion and phone message all the folks at home were aware of the fact that we were safe and floating. I think it was nearly nine o'clock in the evening before the last of us tube adventurers was fished out of the Stanislaus River. We all ached for a couple days, and even laughed about the whole trip. It was a memorial monument to the foolishness of their fearless leader, but they loved me enough to just laugh and not hold it against me.

A corker of a mechanic

2011-08-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

By necessity I learned auto mechanics. When pastor's salary qualifies him for poverty level benefits, he finds ways of saving money. One of those ways is to eliminate (or at least reduce) the obscene price of auto repairs. So I used to change the oil in all my cars, including the filters and make minor mechanical repairs. So it was not strange for me to replace the fuel filter on our old, green Pontiac station wagon. That was 30 years ago. Cars were mechanical contraptions way back then. Now they are just a large piece of computer hardware.

Now it so happened that at that point in our lives Barbara was working for the transportation department of Modesto Junior College as a secretary. She got to know the "boys" who were bus drivers and mechanics. It was very natural, therefore, for her to ask them about any problems I might be experiencing in my efforts as home mechanic. We had a cute VW bug as well as the green monster wagon. As each of our kids reached that magic plateau of driving eligibility, they learned how to operate the four-on-the-floor stick of the VW. Everybody loved that "scooter", and they still hold it against me for turning it in for that stupid Sapporo. Whenever all eight of us were traveling, however, the choice of comfort was the green monster. There was no seat belt law in those days. (Yes, I am very old indeed.) Two or three kids could always stretch out in the back on a mattress in the bed of the wagon.

The fourth of July was approaching, and I was having a problem with the green monster. It would start and idle normally, but as soon as I tried to put it in gear and pull away from the curb, the monster would cough and quit on me. We were planning to drive from Modesto over to the San Jose area to see relatives and enjoy fireworks with them, and we needed to use the green monster for that. So Barbara asked her buddies at MJC for suggestions. I wasn't too proud to try them all. Nothing seemed to cure the Pontiac of the feebles.

We put it up to a vote among the kids. Shall we spend the fourth here, or shall we cram everyone into the VW bug and go see uncle John? Uncle John won the vote. Did you ever see the circus clown act in which a dozen clowns climb out of some miniature vehicle? They had nothing on the Keller family. Philip found enough room behind the tiny back seat to contort his body. Two kids sat on the back seat, each with another kid on his lap. Baby Jonathan sat on his mother's lap as she rode "shotgun". It was an 80 mile trip, and only once did the crew insist on stopping to stretch. I wonder if anyone was watching. At least no traffic cop was looking. Even in the dark ages we must have been violating some existing law.

Some days later, out of desperation, I made a more radical check of the Pontiac. Some of the boys from the traffic department, when they heard that I had recently changed the fuel filter, suggested that I check to make sure it was not a faulty part. One of the laws of mechanics says that if you have recently worked on a part of the car, it is most likely that it is the recent change that is at fault. So I tore it all apart and carefully examined every part. Uh oh! Now I remember that when I disassembled the gas line in order to install the filter that the siphon effect was spilling my fuel onto the ground. I solved that problem by finding a tiny cork to plug the line. To my complete embarrassment I found the cork still doing it's job. It seems the cork had turned at an angle just enough for a trickle of gasoline to flow through. But when I stomped the gas pedal and the carburetor gasped for a flood of fuel, it was still getting the tiny trickle, so it coughed, sputtered and stalled.

You can imagine Barbara's buddies at MJC holding their sides and wetting their pants after she told them.

She's a delight!

2011-08-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

If you see a twinkle in my eye, it must be a reflection of my great granddaughter, Lillianna Jeannette Christian. She is only four, but she's a delight. She is computer savvy. She asks to play the games on my phone, and when I let her (of course) she asked me to help her because she was stuck. When I looked, she had begun downloading games to the phone all on her own. Only this time it was stuck because the program was asking for my credit card number! "No, Lilly, we only get the games that are free."

We were playing a kid's game on the computer which required the player to duplicate the ordered cake for the bakery. When the cake is mismatched, the chief baker comes out to bawl out the player. Since Lilly does not yet read, I have to read it for her. He says something like, "That cake was not what the customer ordered! You have to match the picture." Yadda yadda. This time I decided to entertain her by reading these lines in character. My voice was loud and gruff. Lilly reached over her shoulder and patted my face. "Calm down, Papa, calm down."

She enjoys helping her Papa water the plants in the back yard. I fill a watering can with water and she pours it on the most remarkable places. (You don't think I would trust her to hold a spouting hose, do you?) In spite of my efforts she usually gets a little wet during this activity.

Now her fifth birthday is approaching, and watch out world! Her mother asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and she responded, "A dirt bike." Please tell me where a little tyke comes up with an idea like that. "No, Lilly, you're not getting a a dirt bike for your birthday." "What else do you want?" "A boat." Do you get the idea some meddling adult has been whispering in her ear? "No, Lilly, you're not getting a boat. Now think about it. What would you really like for your birthday?" Her mother reported to me that she was stopped at a red light so she could see in the rear view mirror her eyes peering up and a very thoughtful look configuring her little face. "A driver." she said. A what!? "A driver." What would you do with a driver? Where do you want to go? "A driver could take me to see you at work." I didn't know the concept of a driver was even in the vocabulary of a four year old. I conjured up a distorted image of "Driving Miss Daisy". She's either been watching the wrong shows on TV or some mischievous adult has been playing games with her head.

In the Tomb

2011-08-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

It rather frightened me when I took the call to serve the OPC in Wilmington, DE. I was leaving a tiny new church plant in Neptune, NJ to be the pastor of the fifth largest church in our denomination. They were going to hire a secretary for me because they finally realized how much work the former pastor had laid upon his shoulders. Jay Adams was my senior pastor at the time, and I asked him what I was going to do with a secretary. She can't write my sermons for me. Jay said, "Put her between you and the phone. She'll be worth more than 6 assistants." And that is just what happened. It was nice to have a charming buffer between you and the irate church member.

But there was no place in the building that was built to be an office. They took a large closet and made it a tiny office. We had one window, but being below ground level we could only see daylight from the window well dug below ground level for the purpose. We had two nice desks in there, but the space was so limited that the desks reached from one wall to the opposing wall with no space between them. On the counter space immediately behind us as we sat at our desks was the mimeograph machine on which we printed bulletins and other documents. Needless to say that I spent as little time as necessary in the office. I set up a nice desk at home, using a varnished wood door supported by two metal filing cabinets of the right hight. That made a mammoth desk on which I could spread out all my books and papers needed for my current studies.

Vit Paul, my secretary, had an ironic sense of humor. She named the office "the tomb". We had to leave the door open all the time for fear of claustrophobia or lack of oxygen or both. When Presbytery realized that I now had a secretary they elected me Clerk. I could hand my rough drafts to Vit for her to transcribe into the numbered pages of the Presbytery minute book. Bottom line was, the time the church saved me by hiring a secretary, was more than used up by my responsibilities as Clerk of Presbytery.

Then there was the day we had a fierce thunderstorm. Unless you have lived in the east, you do not know what a thunderstorm actually is. To get the effect you may sit in your car while you get junior to pour a bucket of water slowly over the windshield. It couldn't have been more than 30 feet from my front door to the car in the driveway, but if I didn't use an umbrella I would be soaked to the skin getting to the car. This thunderstorm struck on a Sunday afternoon, as I remember. I was concerned that the tomb (office) might be leaking since it was underground. I drove over to the church to investigate. Now a truly wise minister realizes this is a trustee concern. He learns how to delegate labor. But I was not a truly wise minister. My concern about water was not without merit. When I stepped into the tomb I could see the water above the sill of the window about four inches. It looked like an aquarium. And not unexpectedly, the water was leaking copiously through the cracks into the tomb (office). Instinctively I dashed to the window and opened it! This swift action of mine, of course, brought that four inches of water immediately onto the floor of the tomb. So I closed it, of course. Why, I cannot now tell you. I think I was hoping the water would still be there in the well instead of on the floor. At this point I did what I should have done in the first place. I called one of the trustees and reported the mess.

Aren't there certain instances in everyone's life that are good to recall just for the purpose of maintaining a modicum of humility?

Zoo trip

2011-07-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

These are only a few of the funny animals you can see at the zoo. We buy annual membership in the L A Zoo Association, and usually go twice or more every year.

My personal favorite is the giraffe. They are so gracefully lanky, and they stride with majestic symphony of sinews and frame. They remind me of a slender model, walking the runway with beautifully patterned clothing.

Lilly, my almost 5 year old great granddaughter, remembers the last time we visited the zoo that her "papa" didn't get to visit his favorite exhibit: the giraffes. So this time we planned to see them first.

Of course I lingered there as long as was seemly under the circumstances with several other people in our party and several other animals to observe.

And what zoo trip is complete without seeing the monkeys? Of course this monster is not a monkey, but close enough. This giant orangutan spent most of his time in the little shade he would find. Sometimes he looked out at the people to see these silly creatures who kept gathering outside his home. No, this variety does not throw excrement at the public. We have visited primates that do this in our past zoo experiences.

One of his shady spots is found next to the glass in one of the observation pavilions. When he is resting there he is about 4 inches from my hand as it is held against my side of the glass. Lilly took very cautious steps toward this heap of fur that was so close. Just then he rolled over and lifted his Kong-like hand up to the glass. Wow! Lilly instantly jumped backward about two feet. It was a creepy, overwhelming sight for anyone, but especially for a human small enough to fit in that hand.

Lilly's brother, David, is our wind-up toy. He goes like crazy, bouncing as he runs. He hasn't yet learned how to walk, just run. But when he winds down he really crashes. Water vapor was pumped into the air around the umbrellas that overshadow the picnic tables where we ate. Some of that water damped the pavement near us, and little David kept trying to make it splash by stomping his adorable little feet on the wet spots. But eventually he succumbed, and there was no reviving him once he hit the wall.

Two year olds

2011-07-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Aren't they fun! Now that I am a great grandfather, I can enjoy these raw mannered, miniature human beings without bearing responsibility for their embarrassing behavior. Last night I was reminded of this by my own great granddaughter in Souplantation. She was running wild, and as a two year old she is very good at it. There are only two time references in the mind of a two: now and never. When you don't give them what they want right now, their understanding is that they will NEVER get it. At this age a child is incapable of registering a quiet complaint, of course. Instead the body gyrates as we hear high frequency vocalizations worth many decibels. At Souplantation everyone has an interesting tray in front of himself/herself. Cassie made the rounds, pointing to this drink and to that interesting entree, even sticking her cute little finger into messy things without licking off the residue.

We see ourselves in the bald-faced bid for attention, and the unabashed demand that it's all about me! We do it with such practised disguise. It will take them several years to learn to pull this off with deceptive and convoluted reasoning. That is what we learn as adults, but the basic concern about self is just as ugly as it is raw in a two year old.

It is somewhat amusing to see the way adults behave when a two year old is in the crowd. All these mature conversationalists suddenly become blithering idiots. In any group there is one or two personalities whose natural tendency is to dominate the direction of conversation. Not when there is a two in the group. Adult conversation never gets very far before it is interrupted by the needs (demands?) of a toddler. And nobody seems to mind. I know when it is my great granddaughter, my mind (if not my mouth) says, "She can do no wrong." I'm such a terrible theologian when I am around her!

When we are in a restaurant without family, I know I search the other booths for the eyes of a little one. I love to flirt with babies and toddlers. I've found an interesting thing: there is a wide variety of responses I get from kids. Some eyes are full of mischief, and they are so happy to respond to the faces I make with grins or grimaces to entertain me.

Then there are some kids who studiously refuse to make eye contact with me. I surmise by the family behavior (especially a humorless authority figure in the family who is making unreasonable demands) that life for a kid in this family is a drudgery. Surely they will run away or get married (do they still do that?) at a very early age.

The Paper Route

2011-07-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

It's a rite of passage for a boy to have a paper route. He learns to have a little responsibility, and gets a Jr. grade lesson on running his own business. When I was just a lad I had a paper route near my neighborhood in the Crenshaw district in south Los Angeles. It was not very scary territory way back then, and I was never in danger, except the danger of going into debt. Normally the boy must buy his papers from the company, and he sells them for a profit. But if he gets lazy and doesn't finish collecting from all his customers, he is in danger of coming up short of his bill. Now there was one small complication to my route, and that was the fact that this neighborhood newspaper was thrown on everyone's porch whether they ordered it or not. I was told to ask for a quarter a month for this service. I was begging--soliciting a handout. Even then 25 cents was not really that much, consequently many people payed me cheerfully. Others were belligerent and cursed me for cluttering their porch. So another benefit of this paper route was to learn human nature at ground zero.

Much later in life my boys had a paper route. One boy prepared with his clothes neatly laid aside the night before, in order to get a good start out the door. When the other boy did this route he was often heard banging around, looking for socks, shoes or some other necessity at 5 in the morning. We were living east then, and I had mercy on my boys when it was snowing. We packed the papers in our VW and I drove the route while they would direct me. There was an infamous dog at one of the homes, who leaped against the door, barking loudly. I think he even broke glass in that door on one occasion. It so happened one snowy day that my third--and smaller--son begged to go with us. As we came to the home with the ferocious dog, my smallest son wanted to deliver the paper. There was no denying him. So he carefully tiptoed up to the door, delivered the paper, and turned to come back to the car, when suddenly this barking, growling beast came racing out from behind a bush in the yard. Our little guy ran with a panic for the safety of the car, but the dog actually bit him on the derriere before he made it. He was not really hurt, but he was thoroughly terrorized. However, he provided a howl of a story that we have never tired of telling.

Happy birthday, America

2011-07-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

The Moore home in Jamestown

It had to be the hand of God else we would have never made it. When I read McCullough's "1776" I was on the edge of my chair (figuratively at least). There was a time when I was certain the Patriots had no way they could win. British troops were more experienced and outnumbered us. We lost ground again and battle after battle until Washington crossed the Delaware and surprised the celebrating Hessians at Trenton.

When Patrick Henry et al. signed the Declaration of Independence, they were sticking their heads in a noose. That was an act of treason! The Brits had barricaded New York harbor, and there was a time the Continental Congress had to move from Philadelphia for fear of capture.

I'm afraid I would have been a loyalist instead of a Patriot. I would have felt constrained by Romans 13 to submit to the powers that be (Britain) and take my lumps (taxes).

Washington must have been quite a man. Where ever he rode through his troops he stirred up courage and loyalty among them. When it came time to elect a president of this upstart nation, he was the unanimous choice of every party. Northerners and Virginians (southerners) didn't understand or trust one another, even then. But everyone seemed to agree on Washington (even though he was a Virginian). He also had a way of charming the ladies at a banquet or a ball. Men, women, northerners and southerners all considered him a man of integrity in leadership.

Then there was the special appeal of old Ben Franklin. I understand he had quite a way with the ladies as well. But it was the unusual esteem of the French for Franklin the inventor that helped encourage the French to help us fend off the British and win our independence. They thought Franklin to be a genius because of his experiments with electricity. Franklin and John Adams were very different in character. Adams was a no-nonsense negotiator with strictly business on his mind, when they were an emissary to court the French. He was a prig. Franklin was more amiable, liked to party and knew when to drop a word appropriately.

On our trip east we saw the Moore home, the place where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington. We were told that Cornwallis refused to deal with these rebel British subjects, and sent a representative while he stayed in his quarters, ostensibly feeling ill.

Such little pieces of providence fit into the time line along the way. Coincidences and finesse along with courage and determination not to let this nation across the Atlantic to "tread on me". There are men to thank for our freedom to be sure, but those who are alert to the details of history must ultimately thank God. I'm proud to be an American. Happy birthday, America!

Tomatoes

2011-06-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I used to get tomatoes that just started to fruit, and when I began to get excited they would develop the blight, or get hit with tomato worms, or just set tiny fruit to my complete frustration. I hope we are turning the corner on good tomatoes. Last year's crop was still yielding red Romas in January! Okay, maybe they were a bit green, but when I picked them and brought them into the house, they turned red and cooked up well.

This year we put out only two plants. I forget if one of them is a "big boy" and the other an "early girl" or what. I thought I would remember but I have two problems: 1) I am not actually a veteran farmer, and 2) I am 76 years old and there are a lot of other things I don't remember either.

But I just had to show off this nascent crop. One of these is as large as a fist. We are going to pick the orange ones and leave them on the kitchen counter while we are away at Family Camp next week. I expect to enjoy several BLTs when we get back.

The weather man says our weather is going to dramatically warm up this week, so I will have to flood them thoroughly on Monday, and water them as soon as we get home Friday afternoon.

Our zucchini are waxing prolific again this year. I planted them in various locations in front and in the back yard. I even stuck one in a pot. It is very interesting to see them develop at differing rates, probably depending on the different degrees of richness of the soil, and perhaps the exposure to the sun. The lone plant in the far back yard seems to be thriving the liveliest with 6 squashes about ready to eat already. The one in the planter is the scrawniest, but it has already yielded an edible squash. Fried with onions in olive oil and sprinkled with generous dashes of Parmesan cheese, they are a delight. I see I need to drag out my zucchini recipes again. Maybe a baked zucchini dish, or zucchini bread. We've already had stuffed zucchini. I found a chunk of baked salmon in the freezer. I put it through the food processor with a slice of whole wheat bread and some Italian spices and a little grated cheese, and this made a luscious stuffing for the squash.

Thanks, Pastor Dan

2011-06-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

Dan Overduin has been my pastor for almost 10 years now, and upon his retirement I want to say "Thanks be to God for raising up faithful shepherds like pastor Dan!"

He always preaches Christ, an essential for any minister who deserves the adjective "godly". But he does not organize his thoughts in traditional, hermeneutical categories. He is not difficult to follow, and is clear in his diction. I was going to say he is pleasing to the listener, but that would give the impression that there is no conviction of sin, and that is manifestly not so.

His style is personal, unpretentious, and thought provoking. He usually presents a twist or insight that I did not see coming. And without ostentation, Dan evidences that he has done his homework in the study.

But Dan is my pastor, not just my lecturer. He cares about me, and I know it. He has been at my bedside in the hospital when I thought he ought to be taking care of some other of his demanding responsibilities. I am not actually a member of the local church, being a member of Presbytery. Yet he (and his warm hearted flock) has made me feel I am really part of the family.
On the occasion of his retirement, Presbytery has prepared the following minute to record in its minutes:

"Upon the retirement from regular pastoral duties of the Rev. Daniel Overduin, it seemed fitting that Presbytery mark this occasion with a recorded thanksgiving to God for raising up and equipping this godly and humble servant of the church and of her Lord.

"Both the longevity and faithfulness of Dan’s ministry in this Presbytery require a minute of recognition. Mr. Overduin has served the Lord in the bounds of this Presbytery since his ordination March 8, 1968. He briefly served as associate pastor in Manhattan Beach, before being called as pastor of our Beverly congregation in 1969. Faith Church, Long Beach, issued a call to him in 1975, and he has continued in this position for 36 years.

"Mr. Overduin has shepherded his present congregation for these many years until it has become the warm and active family of God that it is today.

"His service in this Presbytery includes several years in which he served as chairman of our Missions Committee.

"After 43 years of ministry in the Presbytery of Southern California, Pastor Overduin has the distinction of seniority among us by many years. We are grateful to God for this service, and we pray that he may find fruitful ministry among us for many years to come."

I couldn't have said it better had I said it myself...oops, as a matter of fact I did write it myself. But I was asked to compose it by the Presbytery.

General Assembly

2011-06-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

The 78th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church begins with the handing of the gavel from the retiring Moderator, Alan Pontier, to the newly elected Moderator, Danny Olinger. This was preceded by a stirring sermon from the retiring moderator from Revelation 12. The singing is always uplifting because there isn't a timid voice in the house. Men's voices, singing in parts, with enthusiastic volume is rather breathtaking to hear. These are men who believe the gospel, and sing it with convincing boldness.

Mr. Olinger, characterized by a sweet servant spirit, has been leading the most efficient, quiet and smooth running assembly in the history of the church. In my judgement this is because everyone came for the purpose of celebrating the 75th anniversary of the denomination. There was no work for the Committee on Appeals and Complaints. Almost every election has been a white ballot for the incumbents. This is a disappointment because since the last time I was a commissioner to GA they have gone to electronic balloting. Each commissioner is given a hand held device (gizmo) about the size of a small cell phone, with buttons to push, electronically recording his vote, and I have not been able to use my "gizmo" but a few times.

Every committee has had a good report, and every advisory committee has been silent on the reports. In the early days of the church, nobody seemed to trust committees to do their work, but that has all changed. I hope that is indicative of the maturation of our church rather than complacency.
Whatever it is, this assembly (with fewer hours allotted this year) is about over and we have the resort reserved until Tuesday noon. I think we will do a bit of partying, er rather, rejoicing in the Lord.

Heart-rending reports came from the mission fields--especially Japan--telling what the Lord is doing to bring men and women to himself. The earthquake and tsunami devastation has loosened the soil of many hearts which has been hard for generations. Young Japanese pastors are begging us to send more young missionary helpers to fill this new void with the saving good news of Jesus and His love. If I didn't have so many medical liabilities I would be tempted to go myself. But I don't want to get there and keel over so as to be another problem for these overworked servants on the field.

Bloody Lane

2011-06-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

Behind the Piper farm there is a sunken road, worn by the years of wagon wheel traffic and erosion. Beyond that is a field and woods in the fertile, green rolling hills of Maryland. The Mumma farm is out there a few miles, and their farmhouse was the only one burned down. The Confederate troops were fearful that this was too good a rallying point for Union soldiers who may seek refuge at a later point. And because it was the Confederates who destroyed this property, they were never reimbursed for it. The guarantee was given that if any property was lost because of Union soldiers' occupation, they may file a claim and be reimbursed. But there was no such provision if it was damage caused by the Confederates.

General Hill deployed his troops along this sunken road, since it formed a natural trench from which his men could fire at the enemy while relatively under cover. Just before the Union advance, General Robert E. Lee rode by, encouraging his men.

A Frederick Hitchcock remembered How "reaching the top of the knoll we were met by a terrific volley from the rebels in the sunken road down the other side, not more than one hundred yards away....The air was full of whizzing, singing, buzzing bullets." Another soldier's recollection was "a savage continual thunder that cannot compare to any sound I ever heard." Colonel Parker reported that the Confederate volleys "brought down the enemy like grain falls before the reaper."

For more than three hours these combatants fired at one another at point blank range until the Confederate line was broken and the southerners were driven toward the Piper Farm.

About 5,500 soldiers were killed or wounded during the fighting in and around the Sunken Road, today known as Bloody Lane.

The Piper farm

2011-06-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

What was your great great grandfather doing on September 15, 1862? I would guess that my great great grandfather was raising a stein of ale after a long day in front of the ovens of a bakery in Germany. Barbara knows what her great great grandfather was doing. Henry Piper was witnessing the troops of General Robert E. Lee commandeer his farm northeast of Sharpsburg, Md. Generals James Longstreet and D. H. Hill chose Henry’s farmhouse to be their headquarters during the battle of Antietam. The Piper daughters served dinner, and offered wine to the generals, but Longstreet declined, fearing the drink might be poisoned. Only later, when Hill was unharmed did Longstreet imbibe.

As staff officers and orderlies swarmed the farm property, Piper knew that a battle was imminent. He took his family, and found refuge on another Piper farm not far away. It was the farm on which Henry played as a kid. The rumbling of canons and supplies gently shook the ground as the Pipers fled on the evening of September 16. The hideous noises of canons and hand to hand combat were heard even from the Piper’s temporary quarters all day on the 17th, as the battle of Antietam snuffed out the young lives of 22,000 boys and men.

Tragically, when the day ended, stunned survivors, nursing the ghastly wounds they or their friends had sustained, strategists calculated the battle was a “draw”. Once again we learn that nobody actually wins a war.

Henry Piper and his family waited to hear news of the property and the safe opportunity to return to the farm. On the 19th they returned to see crowds of soldiers moving out of their property and down the road for further deployment. Only then did they see the house still standing, and though few edibles remained, and their furniture was strewn about and stained with the blood of men seeking cover from the heat of battle.

This is just some of the fascinating information we are gathering about Barbara's family, and their place in history.

bird nursery

2011-05-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

Up in the corner of our porch is this little nursery. We would like to have documented it further, but we are going out of town for three weeks, and the little ones may have flown the coup by that time.

We are not authentic birdwatchers, and consequently we have no idea what is the Latin title of the varieties we have seen at our feeder, and now see right on our porch. But we do care enough to mount a bird feeder, and in the front yard, a hummingbird feeder. Yes, we CAN tell them apart from the others.

We think the birds are cute, and we enjoy watching them, but neither Barbara or I seem to be committed to the necessary book research, and we don't speak Latin.

So here is what we caught with the camera. Maybe an ornithological type person would like to tell me if this is a finch a wren or what.

We have enjoyed our bird feeder, and the crowd of feathered friends that chirp and flutter around it like a flash mob. We look for wild birdseed on sale, but even that gets expensive in the long run. The feeder sports 6 holes, each with a perch, and then a wider circle at the bottom to catch the spill. It doesn't. When I fill it and retreat my distance, the bolder ones cautiously perch and begin to chow down. Then others come and begin the game, chasing one another away to the fence while they nibble a little. Whoever first said, "She eats like a bird." cannot have meant it as a compliment. Some varieties eat half their body weight in one day. (Okay, that statistic maybe bogus, but I think I read something similar to that.)

From the seeds that spill, some germinate amid the rocks below. Last year I let them mature to see what they were. But grain bearing weeds just cluttered the landscape. This year I already tore out a crop. The weird thing is that the snails seem to like this stuff. Is that possible? Anyway I have had my way with those snails. I wish some varieties of birds would eat them.

Christ is coming

2011-05-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

It is certainly tragic that Harold Camping is making Bible believing Christians a laughing stock before our increasingly cynical culture. My son called me today to say, "Hey, I guess I'll be seeing you tomorrow." Of course I got a good laugh out of it, but in more sober thought I realized how I should be more upset than I seem to be. I think it would be wonderful if Jesus did come tomorrow, because I belong to Him and He belongs to me. That always makes tomorrow a good day. If He returns, then it would be the best day ever.

Then I was reminded by an article in World Magazine just how hard it is going to be for those who have spent themselves and their substance because they followed Mr. Camping's directions. If they are real believers in Jesus, they will recover (and we church going believers ought to hold out a hand to them). If they only have a temporary faith, then a whole new host of cynical folks will be hurt beyond repair.

Then it occurred to me that we have been thinking about the return of Christ a lot more than we usually do, just because of Harold Camping's crusade of publicity. For me, personally, that has been a blessing! Yes it has. I found out in the past few days just how pleasant it is to think about Jesus coming again. I was just wondering how He can deal with all the people of the world in a personal, one-on-one manner, as the Bible seems to teach. From there I said, of course He is God, and God can do this without a problem. We will not be waiting in an enormous line for our turn. The experience will no doubt be one-on-one, personal, with every person who has ever lived at the same instant. It simply has to be like that, if you think about it. And that is what I have been doing lately--thinking about it. I'll be able to look into His face and thank Him for loving me, and giving His life for me, and it will be intimate and personal, but millions of others will be having the same experience at the same moment it time. Time!! Did I say "time"? You see how difficult it is to think about these things. Time will be no more. I am actually getting a bit excited and even wishing Camping were right.

Yes, for me personally, Camping's heresy has been a blessing! It's always a blessing to think about Jesus, and His coming again.

Let's remember to pray for, and reach out to those who have been bitterly disappointed.

It IS Spring!

2011-05-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

Some cool weather has crept up on us today--and even some drizzle. But it is, nevertheless, definitely spring. I read in a gardening book a long time ago that in cool weather tomatoes sulk. Well they may be in sulk mode today, but they have already experienced several warm days of spring, and are showing the results. I planted two tomato plants in the "fertile ring" in which the zucchini overwhelmed me last year. It is a raised, circular planter in the middle of my cement patio. And the ideal soil that last year gave life to these prolific gourds, now seems dedicated to supplying a plethora of tomatoes this year. All I added to the soil was a heap of steer manure, and the plants seem to be very grateful for that.

We replaced the watermelon with another watermelon. Only this year we put out the killer snail bait early enough to support this now spreading vine. Yum, yum.

Another six pack of zucchini got planted. That quantity seems to be the smallest available at our nursery. This time I planted them in various places in both the back and front yards. At least three of them are sporting yellow blossoms (and they tell me the blossoms are delicious when dipped and deep fried).

My lettuce didn't do that well. I show a photo of the head of leaf lettuce that looks great, and tasted fine as an accoutrement on my last salmon patty sandwich. But when I planted early seeds, we made the tactical error of planting just before we left for a few days. Those days proved to be rather hot, and the soil baked the seeds to death. Then the heads I purchased got a little scorched, one went to seed, and I gleaned a little from what was left.

The long and the short of it is that I see salad growing before my eyes. Oh yes, there are the three peppers. One is a giant bell pepper. One is an Anaheim chili and the third is a jalapeno.

Running Boards

2011-05-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought this term was obsolete I see an advertisement for truck running boards. It seems to be the latest and coolest accessory for your chic truck. A running board is a fancy step just under the door of your truck to help you climb into your monster. Baloney! I remember when all cars (and trucks) had a running board. Ecclesiastes is right: there is nothing new under the sun.

I fondly remember my Aunt Rose's model A Ford. It had a rumble seat (go grab your dictionary for that one), and it had running boards. It was so cool to stand on her running board and cling to the window frame as she drove slowly down our street. For a nine year old boy this was such daring fun. But in my youthful judgement the ground was not going past me all that fast. Before my Aunt could stop me I jumped from the running board to the pavement and said, "Bye!" only to discover my running gait was not as quick as I had calculated. I hit the pavement with a resounding "splat". Of course Aunt Rose immediately stopped the car to see if I was injured. When she discovered that it was only my pride that was damaged, she breathed a sigh of relief. And from that day forward she loved to tell the story, with great dramatic flair, especially with the onomatopoetic "splat" to finish the account. I was (and I guess I still am) sensitive to the "dissing" of embarrassing stories about me.

Then there was LeRoy Rafner's running board. He was a high school buddy of mine. When the "gang" wanted to go to the movies or play a little over-the-line, it was not uncommon for us to help LeRoy deliver papers on his route so we could get going sooner. He must have had an old Chevy sedan circa 1938, with running boards from which we would toss the papers at his direction. One of the guys handed a paper out the window to one of us on the running board on either side of the car, depending on which side of the street was the next target house. To tell the truth I'm not sure we saved all that much time, but we did it because it was fun.

Looking back on these intimate experiences with running boards, I'm wondering how long it will take our nanny government to pass laws against the stuff we did as kids with these new fangled things called "running boards".

Obama got it right!

2011-05-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

I want to say something positive about the President of the United States. He had the courage to give a "go ahead" to the Navy Seals, when they took out bin Laden. Can you imagine the amount of grief he would have taken had our intelligence been wrong again, and bin Laden was not where we thought? This was a work of military precision and years of intelligence focusing. It was a success of the special forces we have out there protecting our country. Thanks to all of them!

But when vengeful gore seekers demanded the publication of photos of the bloody body of Osama bin Laden, our President gave a firm, "No!" I think he got that just right. As long as we know we got the right guy, we don't need to prove anything to anybody else. The President exercised his sensible judgment and presidential statesmanship when he said, "That's not who we are." "We don't need to spike the football." I say he got that right.

Now I hear the voice of moral confusion raising it's silly objection, "Was this murder?" It's the same moral confusion that cannot distinguish between the heinous crime of murder and the justice of capital punishment inflicted by the state. The Bible makes a clear distinction between personal vengeance and the vengeance of justice ministered by the state on behalf of God Himself. When this distinction is obliterated only moral confusion is gendered. Romans 12:19 plainly says, "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.'"

Then in chapter 13:4 we read, "[civil authority] is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil." The context explains that there are no authorities but those which God has ordained. And when it is time for justice to bring punishment--even death (sword)--God expects the civil authority (the state) to be His servant in accomplishing this.

This is why cops who shoot the bad guys are not guilty of murder. If investigation proves that it was a "good" shoot, it was the wrath of God coming down on the one who practices evil. And it is the same principal that applies to agents for the US government (e.g. Navy Seals) when they shot Osama bin Laden.

I salute the Seals and the President because I believe they acted in obedience to the will of God.

Baseball lore

2011-05-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

Pie Traynor was known as a very mild mannered, good playing third baseman for the old Pirates about a generation or so ago. He was clean of reputation until so offended by a decision of the famous Beans Rearden, that he spoke one note of severe criticism and was thrown out of the game. When Rearden called "safe" a sliding runner whom Traynor had clearly tagged out, he screwed up his rebel spirit to say, "Mr. Rearden, I'm getting sick and tired of your stupid decisions!"

When the famous Dizzy Dean was pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals, he was seriously beaned by a line drive back to the mound. The game was stopped as his team mates gathered around the sprawled pitcher. His brother, Paul Dean, asked, "Diz, are you hurt?" Staggering to his feet, Dizzy said, "Shucks no, Paul. It were just a glansin' blow."

In 1935 (I recently read, and no, I wasn't there) at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, they had an overflow crowd at the stadium, and fans spilled onto the field. They say it was rather chaotic. A local burlesque queen by the name of Kitty Burke, ran up to the batter, Babe Herman, grabbed the bat out of his hand and dared the pitcher, Paul Dean, to pitch to her. He did. She hit his underhand toss back to the mound and was thrown out at first base.

Some upstart catcher kept muttering complaints about the way Beans Rearden was calling balls and strikes. Finally Rearden tore off his mask and barked at the catcher, "Shut up and play the game or I'll bite your head off." The provoked and eloquent retort was, "If you do, you'll have more brains in your stomach than you do in your head."

When you mention "the catch" to a real baseball fan, everyone knows you are talking about the famous catch made by the "say hey kid", Willy Mays on September 29, 1954. The New York Giants were playing the Cleveland Indians in the first game of the World Series. Sal Maglie was lifted in the 8th inning with two men aboard and heavy hitting Vic Wertz coming to bat. Manager, Leo Durocher, brought in Don Liddle, a lefty, to face him. When the count drew to 2 and 2, Wertz hit a very long and high drive to deep right center field. Anywhere but the cavernous Polo Grounds it would have been a home run. But Willie Mays turned and sprinted straight back to the warning track to catch the ball over his shoulders, whirl and throw it back to the infield to prevent the stunned base runner from advancing more than one base. Durocher then brought in another relief pitcher, Marv Grissom. As Don Liddle handed Marv the game ball, he said, "Well, I got my man."

Trains in my memory

2011-04-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid this is another story about the "old days" from an old guy. In fact it was so long ago that I was 4 or 5 years old. My parents had divorced, and we were living with my aunt Rose and uncle "Butch" somewhere in Highland Park, California. I remember being my uncle Butch's favorite until his daughter was born. I remember my mother fell, running for a street car to go to work. She bit her tongue and required a few stitches. One of the stitches broke, and for the rest of her life she showed off the lump on her tongue.

My aunt Rose's house had the remnants of a walnut grove for a back yard. I love walnuts and I used to love climbing trees. There was an alley next to the house, and on the other side of the alley were the railroad tracks. These were not the diesels you see pulling Amtrak today. These were the smoke-belching steam engines that hobbyists prize. They were black with huge wheels and the rod connecting the wheels that thrusted back and forth with majesty and power. There was the steam whistle that echoed across the landscape with that unique two-tone dissonance that was so characteristic of the steam engine that the sound itself brings pangs of nostalgia to many of us old guys.

I wondered how flat this huge engine could make a penny become. So I tried it, placing a penny on the track. When the next train roared by I couldn't wait to find my flattened penny, but I never found it. I suppose it was vaporized, or turned into a copper spot on the monstrous wheel. In my uncle's garage I found a piece of solid steel bar, about 4 inches long and maybe a half inch in diameter. Huge trains require larger chunks of matter to flatten. Yes I did! I carefully placed the bar of steel on the track. I waited for the train to come by. I knew about when the train was due because, of course we lived there, and people who live right next to a railroad track do hear them and learn the schedule. So I stood and watched as the next engine charged through. It was dusk, and I distinctly remember seeing the bar of steel turn red-orange and then it began circling on the great wheel for several turns. I figured that it instantly turned molten and later fell off onto the gravel along the track, but I only searched in vain.

In later years I imagined the scenario of derailing the whole train. But in my memory this behemoth didn't even flinch.

Sinking Saturday

2011-04-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning thinking about the disciples and how they must have felt on that Saturday before the resurrection. Remember how Peter rebuked his Lord when Jesus foretold his death and resurrection? It was unthinkable for the disciples to imagine the end of the ministry of that One to whom they had committed their lives as the long awaited Messiah. They must have often read or heard the scriptures which prophesied the glorious reign of Messiah, and that the glory would last forever.

Remember how the disciples spoke to the, as yet unrecognized, resurrected Savior. They told this "stranger" on the road to Emmaus that this Jesus was the one whom they were hoping was the one to redeem Israel. The communication implied that their hopes had been dashed by the crucifixion, and they were trying to make sense out of these things. This betrays their frame of mind between the crucifixion and the resurrection. They were not stuck in unbelief, but they were certainly in confusion of mind. Their high hopes had seemed dashed to the ground. Certainly it was sinking Saturday for them.

Remember how Luke records that the women disciples had visited the tomb to find it empty and hear the angel proclaim, "He is not here, but He has risen." When they reported to the rest of the disciples, Luke also records: "And these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them." This also reveals a mindset that must have included dismay, confusion, depression and justification for my title of "Sinking Saturday".

Everyone knows that people who are dead for three days do not come alive again! Unbelievers today see the message of the resurrection as nonsense just as did the disciples, and why not? We know that brain cells begin to die a very short time after the blood stops flowing. Even though there are sensational stories of people who came back from apparent death, none of them leaves an interval of three days. That's just nonsense.

Whoa, hold on just a minute. Let's remember that we are talking about something that God has done to send us a message. It's the same God who called matter into existence by the power of His word. Are we actually going to say that this God could not do such a thing? It is the very fact that resurrection is "impossible" that it makes the perfect kind of event to tell us that Jesus is really the Son of God, and that our sins are actually left at the cross. Someone has said that we do not believe in Christ because of the resurrection. We believe in the resurrection because we believe in Christ. Only He could lay down His life and take it up again, because He had the word from His Father in heaven.

I suppose someone somewhere who is a true enemy of the gospel can claim this story to be a grand conspiracy of the church. But no honest investigator can pretend that the explanation of the resurrection is the "swoon theory" or that the gospel writers intend for us to understand a "spiritual resurrection" that doesn't fly in the face of modern science. No, it is the very fact that it does contradict universal human experience that God made it happen this way. There is no doubt that Saturday was a downer for the disciples, but it made resurrection day just that much more glorious.

babysitting

2011-04-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

Do you have any idea how ludicrous is this picture? Septuagenarians watching children who are four years old and 18 months old can be a mite challenging.

That would be our great grandchildren. I can imagine a scenario ending with sudden cardiac arrest or an episode of temporary insanity. But it is worth the risk. It turned out to be a refresher course in human depravity. Believe me when I say that doctrine is much more vivid when it has little shoes. Our home lost it's baby proof qualities a long time ago. Little David is afflicted with compulsive button pushing syndrome. So when he walks by the TV it suddenly comes on--or off--whichever is the opposite mode from that which I had chosen. Music boxes mysteriously play music. And little Davey's compulsion is dramatically exacerbated when he has been told "That is a no no.". The next time the crime is perpetrated it is done with the most winsomely charming grin.

While all this is happening, big sister, Lillianna, is behaving like an angel because she has already made herself a first rate computer operator. She is helping Woody rescue somebody in a game on the Disney website. But now and again she wants to play one of our games. Unfortunately there are not enough games for four year olds in our home, and then she says, "What else?" She loves to help Papa in the garden and then chores take twice as long, but I also get twice the pleasure because she "helped" me.

I asked Bub (that's what they have dubbed this adorable little boy) if he had a load in his pants, and he immediately said, "no!" shaking his head with exaggerated certainty. But his lie was betrayed by the most toxic stench imaginable. At our age this becomes a two person project, but we haven't forgotten the basic technique.

So we decided to wear them out at Pirate Park. The place is designed for the smallest of citizens, and they really like it. This time, prompted by the example of other kids, Bub decided to climb the stairs to come down the slide. It's made of cement and is a model of safety design. If a little body happens to descend more rapidly than desired, the floor is made of rubber composition, and the traveler will bounce. But our caution proved unnecessary because little Bub came down feet first on his tummy. This created a braking friction as his shirt hiked up and his bare belly dragged all the way down. Nana watched in frozen disbelief as he opened his bottle of water and calmly poured it down his shirt.

When this active toddler decided to explore the landscape outside the park, of course I followed, carrying his shoe that seems to invariably dislodge itself several times a day. I knew he needed to travel a long distance before encountering danger, so even though I had him in view, he must have been 50 feet from me when we both spotted a tiny puddle left on the pavement. I'm sure we both knew what was about to happen. Now if he were headed for a busy street I'm sure I would have found it in me to run enough to avert tragedy. However at this point in my life I no longer consider a wet sock a tragedy. He found such giddy pleasure stomping in that puddle that I knew this was a time when it was okay for boys to be boys. I sorta wished I was his age so we could have shared the obvious joy together.

We love it when the great grandchildren come, but we get all the exercise we need in a day when they are in our care.

Hymn choices

2011-04-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Did you ever analyze hymns that people choose to sing? There is really quite a bit of difference between a foxtrot ditty and a stately chorale. There are those who refuse to join the congregation singing anything other than a paraphrased Psalm. I love to sing the Psalms, but I have not yet been convinced that God is displeased when we sing the name of Jesus! But that is a different fight than the one I want to pick today.

I remember when the original Trinity Hymnal was published. My friend, Howard Porter, who was the organist at Calvary OPC, Glenside, PA (the church right across the street from Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia), told me that he had a friend who was organist at a Roman Catholic Church in the area. Both men being musicians, Howard loaned a copy of the Trinity Hymnal to his friend to see how he appreciated the classical tunes. When he returned the book, his comment went something like this: "The music is beautiful, but the hymnal contains a lot of grace doesn't it?" I wish all OPC church members would appreciate that--but as a note of commendation, not criticism.

What a great difference there is between "Little Brown Church in the Vale" and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" just for a quick example. One is full of sentimental schmaltz and the other confronts one with the awesome depth of Christ's love for poor lost sinners.

Contrast "Sunshine In My Soul Today" with "O Sacred Head Now Wounded" for another ludicrous example. One is celebrating how I feel now that I'm saved, while the other is uttering the most solemn devotion to Christ, crucified.

My point is simply that there is too much emphasis on how good I feel or how victorious my Christian life has become. I feel like a hypocrite when I sing the second verse of "Blessed Assurance". "Perfect submission perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight; angels descending, bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love." Those are beautiful words. That is the ideal Christian life. But I need to confess to you that I have never been able to say my submission to the Lord was "perfect". Maybe that's just me. I feel much more honest when I sing, "Jesus, what a strength in weakness! Let me hide myself in Him; tempted, tried and sometimes failing, He, my strength, my victory wins." (Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners).

These thoughts were triggered in my head because of one of the hymns sung last Sunday. "We Have Not Known Thee As We Ought". The fourth verse confesses, "We have not served thee as we ought; alas! the duties left undone, the work with little fervor wrought, the battles lost, or scarcely won! Lord, give the zeal, and give the might, for thee to toil, for thee to fight." That is what I need to sing more often than I care to admit.

My pastor, years ago, pointed out to me the most insidious hymnal editing I have ever heard of in my entire life. It is a great example of why there is an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The original Presbyterian hymnal included the children's hymn, "Around the Throne of God in Heaven". It flows so simply and beautifully from a description of the blessedness of children around God's throne in heaven into the question, "What brought them to that world above...how came those children there?" And the gospel answer is "Because the Saviour shed His blood to wash away their sin... The final verse celebrates their sanctification by telling us, "On earth they sought the Saviour's grace, On earth they loved his Name; so now they see his blessed face, and stand before the Lamb, Singing, 'Glory, glory, glory be to God on high.'" But when the hymnal was revised, after the church turned sour, they simply excluded the next to last verse. Then the answer to the question as to how those children got to heaven becomes, "On earth they sought the Saviour's grace... " Suddenly the way of salvation is works, rather than grace. It is what those children did for Jesus, not what He did for them.

Do you see why it is so important to think about what words you are singing?

Angels in disguise

2011-04-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

The bible encourages us to bring guests into our homes by saying, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." (Hebrews 13:2)

My family would tell me that we have never done that, not because we have never entertained guests, but because no angel would take the kind of disguises we have seen. In fact it may have required guardian angels to protect my family from some of the "guests" we have shown hospitality.

There was the guy who came for dinner and needed Maalox. You need to know that we made it a policy not to give money to transients. If they claimed to be hungry we invited them to dine with us. Raising 6 kids made it seem that one or two more at the table was not a big deal. Anyway, this guy needed Maalox before dinner (it wasn't because of our cooking). Barbara found a bottle in the cabinet and handed him the bottle while I got a spoon. But before anyone handed him the spoon, he put the bottle to him mouth, took a swig, and handed it back. "No, you go ahead and keep it. You might need some later."

Of course there was Kevin Johnson, a young black who was fresh out of prison and needed a temporary residence. He was so charming and lovable that our whole family enjoyed him. We even finagled a job for him, policing the traffic in a roller skating rink. He shocked the socks off us when he answered the phone, "Hello, Keller residence. House nigger speaking." He thought that was so funny that he made a routine of it, until we forbade him to answer the phone. Some time after he moved on, we heard that he fell to his addiction of car theft once again.

One guy pressured me for money so he could get a coat since he was going to be on the street. I gave him my heavy eastern overcoat, and we never heard from him again. We had recently moved to Modesto from Wilmington, Delaware, and I was rather certain I would never need that coat again.

Then there was the family who sent their barefoot kids into the church just after the benediction to ask money for groceries. I went to talk to the father out in the car, and found him watching TV which had been installed so he could watch from the driver seat! We didn't give him money, and he didn't want our hospitality.

Then there was the Cambodian refugee who was so grateful for our sponsorship that he pulled all the weeds from the yard. He left the dandelions, thinking they were flowers or food, I suppose. Needless to say our kids thought this was great. At the dining table he would stop me and insisted on serving everyone before he took any for himself. Maybe he was the angel.

About book covers

2011-03-28T07:32:00.001-07:00

Things are not always as they appear. In fact they are seldom as they appear. Those super toys we used to get by mailing box tops to the company turned out to be cheap and tinny. That was our first lesson. Then when Poor Richard warned us not to judge a book by it's cover, we were conditioned to believe him.

Recently we participated in Mobil's reward program. If we buy 100 gallons of gas within a couple months, they would reward us with $50. Since we had already planned to visit family in Tennessee, we signed up. Well we did buy the petrol. And we did get the reward, but it came in the form of plastic. We had anticipated a $50 gift card. But instead it was a club card that needed to be redeemed on line. Well when we went to the restaurant website, we only found obscure little dives, struggling for existence,desperately seeking new customers. So we picked a couple of the most promising establishments that were reasonably near us.

The first one we tried sounded like a charming Irish restaurant not far from our home. But it turned out to be a pub in a mini mall. Barbara was so skeptical of a positive outcome that she sent me to investigate while she stayed in the car. I meekly opened the door, only to find shuffleboard and pool tables with two toughs loitering there. But when I stepped in I could see the bar and some casual dining tables. I asked the proprietor if they were serving food, and he gave me a very friendly affirmative. So I retrieved my wife, and we enjoyed a tasty cuisine of shepherd's pie and a Reuben sandwich. We will definitely try this place again. But once again, things were not as they appeared at first.

The other place we tried as our reward had the word "bamboo" in the name. It was labeled a Hawaiian restaurant. But when we walked in, we found ourselves to be the only diners in this small place in the tenderloin section of Long Beach. The old man who tried to understand our questions was not Hawaiian, but Cambodian. What I understood to be his grandson had tuned their large screen HDTV to an episode of "Spongebob". Once again our situation was not what we had expected. We eventually ordered our food by numbers on the menu and hoped for the best. To our happy surprise it was excellent Chinese-ish fare. When the old guy's nephew returned we found him to be a well spoken and friendly proprietor.
The ultimate surprise in things not being as they appear is found in the biblical warning: "there is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death."

Garden pests

2011-03-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

When we lived in Modesto, we paid a nickel for every tomato worm the kids collected. It's astonishing how much they can eat in such a short time. Capital punishment for these pests was usually a toss onto the hot summer roof of the house. By the time they were baked out there was no carcass for disposal. They must have been 99.9 % water.

So far in our present home, the major offenders are snails. Pitching them into the street is a lot of fun, but it doesn't work for the culprits I find in the back yard. These perps simply get stomped. I put out snail pellets, and many of them meet their demise with slow agony. (Do they actually experience pain?) But mercy at my hands (or feet as the case may be) means the quick and messy death under my shoe.

Last year I planted my first effort at growing a watermelon. To my horror the sprout was barely visible the next day because the leaves had all been eaten, and one of the stems was severed. I loaded the flowerbed with poison overkill, and to my delight the plant even survived this horrific ordeal. In fact we grew a delicious, juicy watermelon which has been celebrated in an old blog post.

This year, among other plants, I put an eggplant in the exact same spot where the watermelon grew last year. I don't learn very quickly, however. I was again horrified to see the leaves disappeared overnight. More stomping and more poison. I'm hoping the little stalk will recover like the watermelon did, but there aren't many signs of hope as yet.

I have lettuce plants under whose leaves some snails have sought refuge, but so far they have systematically been plucked and stomped. Just before the recent rain storm I sowed lettuce seeds under the happy fig tree. I also have two tomato plants that are looking strong and healthy. One even sports two blossoms, and they both show several promising buds. Summer BLTs are already making my salivary glands pump.

I'm glad I'm not a Hindu.

Overwhelming disaster

2011-03-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

The great earthquake and tsunami in Japan has overwhelmed more than the Japanese people. Because of the remarkable technology that places these awesome and frightening scenes into our living rooms this great disaster has overwhelmed the whole world. I know it has overwhelmed me.

One of the questions that inevitably arises is, "Where is God in all of this?" But when that question is posed, I know that the author is quite unacquainted with God. I mean the God who reveals himself in the Bible. If by the term "God" we mean the Creator and sustainer of this universe, then the answer to the question is obvious. "The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these." (Isaiah 45:7)

Unbelief lashes out against God for cruelly dashing into oblivion ten thousand people in one fell swoop. It's mean. It's the act of an ogre rather than a merciful God. I say it is unbelief that throws out those imprecations because they refuse to include the facts revealed by God in his word. "And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). Death is inevitable for each and every one of us. If that death comes quietly while we sleep, or suddenly when a tsunami sweeps us away, it is still grim and final. But in fact it is not final! After this comes the judgement. Death is the wages of sin. We brought it upon ourselves. It really is our fault, not God's. The only real tragedy of death is when it happens to one who faces that judgement without a savior. The Christian who is so swept away is immediately swept into the arms of his Savior. Where is the tragedy in that? Unbelief sneers at such theology, but has no explanation to offer, and so concludes that this life is meaningless. Weep for those who are blind.

But if by the term "God" you are thinking of a super being who causes good, fun, pleasant things to happen, and is helpless to prevent accidents and "natural" disasters, then you are talking about a god of human invention. He is really irrelevant to actual history. He lives next door to Santa Claus, and he has no more help to offer than his next door neighbor.

The real question you mean to ask is: "Why would God allow such devastation as the recent Japan earthquake, the tsunami and the pending nuclear pollution?" Well, there is no chapter and verse in the Bible that answers such specific questions. He calls upon us to love our neighbors and do good to all men. Just because He is God, He is not required to answer to any higher authority. He is the highest authority.

But God has made it quite clear what we are to do. He has given the church a commission to tell everyone the good news that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners. The greatest calamity that will ever fall upon men is to enter the final judgment without a savior. That is why we have sent missionaries to Japan for many years. As they have sown the seed in Japan for these many years, they have found the "soil" to be quite hard. There is something of stoic privacy in their culture that prevents them from opening up to admit fear, vulnerability or ignorance. That tendency has been witnessed by all the world through the media during this awful disaster. We saw a woman who survived several days of entrapment in a collapsed building being rescued by Japanese responders. And we have witnessed her polite bow to the crew in thanks for their efforts that saved her life. But then we learned that she was suffering the grief of having her daughter torn from her arms during the tsunami, never to be seen again. She actually had the poise and immense courtesy to bow to her rescuers while shouldering this terrible weight of grief.

But that same cultural detachment has made the Japanese people relatively impregnable to the gospel. I don't want to tell you that this whole ugly disaster occurred as part of God's plan to open hearts of these people. I would have to be God to be able to say that. But that seems to be the actual results in some cases.

Now we are hearing stories of missionaries and Christian friends who drive all night with a pickup full of bare necessities which they bought at Costco to supply churches and schools in and near Sendai, and then return to do it all over again. There are people who, in the past, had been visited by missionaries, now coming out of their homes and shelters to be touched by the love of Christ seen in these men and women who are helping them.

I know that many of us have prayed that God would open the hearts of the Japanese people, and maybe--just maybe--this is part of the answer.

Volkswagen

2011-03-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not into the naming of cars. We usually have a simple utilitarian attitude about cars. It's great to have a piece of transportation that gets us from here to there. That's it. The tube throws advertising at me suggesting that I should have some sort of love affair with the car they want to sell me.

If I did have a sentimental attitude, I probably would have had to name our 69 beetle "Fritz" or something German. It was the best thing Hitler ever gave us. Like the time we drove from Modesto to San Francisco with 8 people stuffed into the bug. Or the time we impulsively bought a 6 foot ladder only to realize we had the bug in the parking lot. We got home with the ladder, but at this moment I'm not sure how we did it. I think it had to stick out the front passenger side window. When we finally had to get rid of the VW (it was mortally crippled), our children never forgave us. All of them drove it one time or another, except for Phil (who never drives) and Jonathan (who was too young when we owned Fritz).

We found the bug in an ad in the paper for a reasonable price. Sometime after we bought it, during an inspection (they do that routinely in the east), we were informed that there was something bogus about the machine. The original owner's manual was in the door pocket, and it indicated more miles than what shown on the odometer. The inspectors knew what to look for, and discovered that someone had taken two VWs, cut them in half, and welded them together. One was wrecked in the front and the other was wrecked in the rear, so some enterprising shop put them together. The bogus part was that they never told us about it. Now even though we felt cheated, we were happy enough with the car that we kept it. The law put a restraining order of some sort on the shop, forbidding them to ever do this again.

When we moved from Wilmington, Delaware to Modesto, California, we had a church acquaintance drive it across country for us. We all used Fritz while we lived in Modesto. We moved it to Carson, and didn't junk it until a few years after that. That is a span well over 10 years.

Of course it was a four-on-the-floor stick shift. And when the clutch went out, we just had to push it a little and drop it in first. We were familiar enough with the whine of the engine to know just when we could slip it to second gear etc. Once when Bobby was late getting to church we found that he had a fire in the engine compartment of the bug. He was just a block away from home, and some guy digging in his yard threw a couple shovels of dirt to douse the flames. The insurance adjuster wrote us a check for the repairs, saying, "I had the same thing happen to my VW. There is a manufacturing flaw in the gas line." We got enough from the insurance company to replace all the burnt lines, and even enough to repair some other parts. The bug came out of it in better shape than it was before the fire. We need to thank God for all small blessings.

We had a Pontiac station wagon for family travels, but there was a holiday when the wagon was not working. (I had recently replaced the gas pump, and when I corked the gas line to prevent leakage during the repair, I forgot to remove the cork.) On this given day--when we had not yet discovered my embarrassing mistake--we gave the family the choice of staying home from uncle Jack's house or traveling in the VW. The bug got a unanimous vote, so we piled in like circus clowns. Phil found a space behind the back seat, somehow four kids sat on the back seat, and Jonathan sat on his mother's lap. We found it necessary to stop for stretching only once. Can you imagine doing such a thing now with the seat belt law?

Spiders

2011-03-11T16:14:00.001-08:00

It's not really a love/hate relationship. I would rather say my relationship with arachnids is more of a fear/fascination relationship. Why I'm thinking about this is that I killed a black widow in the garden today. It's not the first time I have done that. Several years back, when we lived in Modesto, we used to grow lettuce. We had some luscious butter lettuce heads in the garden. Before dinner I would pick out a mature head, lift it from the ground and tear off the roots. But on one of those occasions I was terrified to find I had almost touched a large black widow who had nestled herself between the head and the roots of this plant. I pumped a large dose of adrenalin and immediately dropped the lettuce. The spider was dislodged and I stomped it.

Yes, it was a black widow. I know those dames quite well, having done more experimenting as a kid than I should have. My mother was far too indulgent with me growing up. With her permission I had a widow in a quart jar on the mantle. Since we had a stone fireplace, it was a trifle dangerous to house her there. But when she built one of those cocoon balls for babies, mom had the good sense to order me to part with my spider. Even when I was about to dispose of her in a fire, I curiously began to open the jar, but she darted toward the partial opening until I slammed the lid back in place.

When I was a teen-ager we lived in Eagle Rock, and across the street was a detective of the Los Angeles Police Department. He had a Kojak personality, and he even resembled Telly Sevalis with his bald head. Chatting with my dad in the garage one evening, he informed dad that we had black widows in our garage. When my father denied it, Kojak grabbed a big black spider by the leg and turned her over to reveal the red hour glass marking on her belly. "Are you crazy?" my father yelped. Kojak just said, "It can't get me as long as I hold it's leg. Even if it tried it wouldn't get through the callous on my finger." He enjoyed showing how tough he was.

Oh about today: I was trying to free my fountain of a clog of grass clippings. We have a small solar powered fountain where the water is pumped to the top canister and pours out into a series of pans until it gets to the large bowl to be pumped up again. During my cleaning project I noticed webs in that top canister so I reached in to clean them out. But when I discovered these web strands to be exceptionally strong, I immediately knew what that meant. So I looked in only to see a humongous spider looking back at me. I may have touched her! It makes me shiver to think about it. I put my garden gloves on, and went back to smash her. You know, I have, on occasion, used my teeth to help pull off my gloves. I don't think I will ever do that again.

Baby blessings

2011-03-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

When our Calvin was born, Phil was already 16 months old. He didn't actually walk as yet, but he would crawl over to the tiny crib, pull himself up and reach in to touch his baby brother's head. He stroked it very gently and said, "Baby...baby." "Yes, Phil, that is your baby brother." We thought it was great the way he took ownership of this new intruder into our lives.

Tragedy loomed over us, however, when tiny Calvin had to return to the hospital with jaundice when he was but 8 days old. His bilirubin count kept increasing. Philip, however, didn't know what had happened, and so he crawled over to the crib, pulled himself up and reached in, only to find empty sheets. He searched with his little hand, and then looked up at us and said with a plaintiff question in his tone, "Baby?" It broke our hearts. We were skating on the edge as it was.

We had a private prayer meeting, committing our Calvin to the Lord. We admitted that he was only on loan anyway, and acknowledged our heavenly Father's right to take him if it was his sovereign will. Little did we know that God would not only spare his little life, but drag him into the ministry of the gospel. Yes, he did go kicking and screaming, as it were. We did not mean this when we had that prayer meeting. And I know better than to suggest that God mistook our prayer.

I remember Barbara driving over to the local hospital (just incidentally, it is the same hospital in which Bruce Springsteen was born) three times a day or more just to nurse her tiny, crying baby. She did this for the three straight days he stayed there. Since he had been released and re-admitted, he could not be placed in the nursery. He was in a huge adult bed and did a lot of loud crying. She would hear this cry as soon as she stepped off the elevator. I understand that a woman finds it difficult to lactate when she is under stress, and I would say there was supernatural providence to enable her to spread her mother's love so far. The doctor was no encouragement, telling her that she ought not to be nursing. "We can give him a bottle here." What do doctors know?

Just before his bilirubin count mounted to the marker for a blood transfusion, the corner was turned in his condition and the count began to subside. One doctor was convinced there was a blood incompatibility at work (AB-O is a common problem combination). But our pediatrician said he just has a slow liver which finally caught up to his needs.

That was a crisis time in our lives in which we praise God for answered prayer. A year later we began playing my boys' favorite game: Boys Climb on Daddy. My senile memory banks will probably never forget those days.

Fishing one more time

2011-03-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

Bobby had never been fishing before, and I suspect he has never been fishing since. But on one given day, Bobby enjoyed a pinnacle experience of fishing when we were yet living in Modesto. We never talk about fishing, and he has never relayed any stories of taking his kids fishing, so I am concluding that he doesn't go fishing. Of course only fanatics tell everyone about their fishing experiences (oops! Am I painting myself as a fanatic? I may be a fanatic, but not really about fishing).

One day during our time in Modesto, Brad took Bobby fishing with him to Don Pedro reservoir. Maybe it was another location, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of my story. Brad was a great friend for my children, and he was very generous spirited. He took Bobby trolling in a rented or borrowed boat. As an experienced fisherman, Brad explained how to catch bass in this lake, and he even loaned Bobby a rod and reel from his own stock. They spent much of the day out on the lake, and we were glad that he was having a good time in the company of a young man we admired very much. We knew that Brad would be a good influence because he is a sincere Christian young man. What we hadn't anticipated was that Bobby would be a source of testing for Brad's sanctification. When the day was ended and the boys returned to Modesto, Bobby had landed a record bass and Brad was empty handed.

Brad did quite a bit of muttering, but his integrity and good humor gained the best of him, and he feigned angry complaint against providential blessing that fell on Bobby and passed him by.

Fishing, part 2

2011-03-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

One of our wonderful vacations in Maine was spent in a lodge right on the banks of Owls Head bay. At the invitation of Barbara's brother and sister-in-law we enjoyed the accommodations of the family vacation cabin. Barbara's parents also joined this party. My father-in-law, the Rev. Russell D. Piper, a charming and engaging scrounge, accepted the invitation of the neighbor to spend the day on his lobster boat. He returned with eight lobsters which he "stole" for $6. They were boiled in an iron pot which had probably been used identically for 60 years or so. So here we all were, dipping lobster meat in reservoirs of drawn butter, licking our fingers, and thinking, as the bay gently lapped the shore not 200 feet behind us, "It doesn't get better than this." Our kids ate all the hot dogs they wished, and only years later bitterly complained that they were deprived of this feast.

The next day I took our three boys fishing. There were challenges against this project. Our only boat was a leaky row boat with no anchor. To exacerbate the challenge, the shore was quite rocky and the wind was determined that we steadily head for those rocks. Not to worry. There was a cut out gallon milk jug for bailing the water, and Daddy was here to protect his crew. We loaded the boat with clams for bait, and rowed out 100 yards. After a while I developed a routine. After rowing, I would bait three hooks and help my apprentice fishermen cast out their lines, usually in different directions. When that was finished, I took to bailing out the considerable amount of water we had already taken aboard. This was barely manageable, but the additional "problem" was that these fish were exceptionally hungry. I had to abandon my bailing to help the boys land each fish and then bait each hook again. By this time the rocks were ominously close. "Lines in!" It was already time to row out again. This was the kind of work that kept me busy all day. But it was delightful work because the kids were having so much fun.

Later that day Calvin asked his grandfather why he didn't catch as many fish, since he was reputed to be a great fisherman. Russ just laughed, having a good sense of humor, and not willing to explain that he was fishing for a variety that required a good deal more finesse.

When my sister-in-law treated us to a typical Maine clam dinner, steamed over an outdoor fire (with seaweed for the steam), I ate very few. It was not possible after the events of the day to associate these critters with anything besides slimy bait.

Fishing

2011-03-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

I don't really have a bucket list, but there is one thing I yearn to do before I do kick the bucket. I would like to learn the finesse of true fly fishing. I have this image of wading in the creek of a mountain meadow somewhere in the Sierras, gently laying my tantalizing fly on the waters over hungry rainbow trout. Now there is real sport in that.

Oh I've been fishing many times. As a kid my parents used to take me to June Lake when there was only a dirt road and we had to make our own camping spot. We hauled the water and took a trowel up the hill for lack of an outhouse. Now it's a city, but that is another story.

I remember learning how to catch my limit of large trout on Twin Lakes from an obvious expert. He was camped near our tent, and he saw my fishing persistence and my trifling results. Every day we would see his long string of huge trout as he packed them in his ice chest. He must have been doing something right. I guess he had compassion for my plight, and I was a nice thirteen year old boy, so he volunteered to take me out on the boat with him.

His tackle was unorthodox, and his bait was a bit different too. He used salmon egg clusters which he had sun dried, but only partially. When they were pasty but nimble they were ready. He broke them into quarter sized clusters. "Small hook, small fish. Big fish need a big hook." he insisted. Well, I was used to using a tiny hook, and only one salmon egg at a time. He used a fly pole and tapered fly line for tackle. Everyone else had fiberglass rods, conventional reels and nylon filament line. He would take his large hook and wrap it with one of these clusters, rolling it in his palms like mom forming a dough ball for cookies. There was a swivel and leader at the end of his fly line, but no sinkers. The weight of this salmon cluster was sufficient for his purpose.

We rowed out to a certain spot on the lake that he knew to be a "hole" where the big fish used to hang out. He would roll out a cast for several feet, and then let the bait slowly sink toward the lake bottom. Then, holding the pole upside down (the loops were looking down at the water), he would ever so slowly draw in the line a foot at a time and stop. After doing this twice with no results he pontificated, "There aren't any fish here today."

We moved to another favorite hole of his. He repeated his routine, only this time he got a strike. After a second strike, he jerked on the line and hooked a mammoth trout. "Okay, let down the anchor. The fish are here." he announced with proven authority. When I tried his method, even though I didn't execute with the same degree of finesse, I caught several large trout. It was amazing how I could actually feel the fish bumping my bait. Experience would tell the fisherman the difference between a bump and a bite. When it was a bona fide bite, he would jerk the line and hook the fish's mouth. I would like to try that again someday, but as long as I am dreaming I would make it genuine fly fishing for my fantasy.

Gay marriage

2011-02-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

The great debate here in California is whether or not to redefine the concept of marriage. It is not a case of discrimination against a minority. Gays already have the right of domestic partnership. If there are some insurance and tax advantages they miss in that category, this "left coast" state will gladly give it to them. But that is not what this debate is all about. How shall we define marriage? Proposition 8, which the populace itself passed, defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. This did not surprise anyone. That has been the understood meaning of marriage since time began. Even our liberal culture knows the definition of marriage, and that is why the proposition passed. Gays are NOT prohibited from getting married. Using the heretofore universal definition of the term they simply do not want to be married, that is, to a member of the opposite gender.

Changing the definition of marriage is not a simple measure. It is a cultural paradigm shift. If--by definition--marriage includes same sex couples, then we will be shifting the foundation of culture itself. It will necessarily require a revamping of our educational system. Sex education is not the only subject that will have to be revised. The assumed definition of marriage creeps into many disciplines, literature is an obvious example.

It is not gay coupling that produces a family. "Families" with two mothers or two fathers must always be artificially contrived. Nature itself teaches us that it takes a male and a female to propagate the race.

In spite of recent propaganda for "unisex" rearing of children, those who have actually done it know full well that boys are wired differently than girls. Men from Mars and women from Venus stuff strikes a responsive chord in all of us. Boys like trucks, dirt and daredevil tricks. Girls like Barbies, tea parties and shopping. My point is simply this: the most favorable couple to raise a child is
a loving heterosexual couple. To cite a dysfunctional home as proof for either side is sloppy logic. Anecdotal cases are not a scientific sampling. In the very nature of the case it is only the heterosexual couple who are able to supply a fully rounded milieu. So for begetting children or for raising them, it requires a mom and dad. That's why marriage, by definition, is a male/female relationship.

I live on the left coast of a pagan nation. The Christian memory of our culture is quickly fading away during my lifetime. And for some it can't come a moment too soon. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not want to shove my moral standard down anyone's throat. That is why I have written this post without appealing to biblical teaching. I believe God finds homosexual acts an abomination in His sight for reasons which are discernible to all of us in nature itself. If gays want to enter a committed domestic relationship, it is not against California law even as we speak.

If you do not love Jesus first and best, if you do not trust Him alone to wash away your sin and govern your life, you are headed for eternal damnation. Whether or not you adopt a homosexual life style will not change that. It is just symptomatic of a heart that does not submit to Christ. Heterosexual fornication is also a symptom of the rebel heart. This is not gay bashing. That's just a lot of political sympathy mongering.

Sequoia revisited

2011-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

I love Sequoia National Park. We camped there several times, usually for a week at a time. That was in the old days when we could still get down on our hands and knees and crawl into a pup tent. The hardship was getting up and down. The pup tent was not a hardship. We had a three inch foam mattress that covered the entire floor of the tent. With a double sleeping bag we were cuddly and quite warm. The very large drawback and the actual reason we stopped camping at Sequoia (or anywhere else) was Barbara's allergies. She went to an allergist, who gave her the test, and when her whole arm turned white and hot he said, "You are allergic to every tree God made." So I composed this poem from her perspective. She disdains it as doggerel, but I think it is encapsulated truth.

I love to see these giant trees
If only for a day.
They aggravate my allergies
And so I cannot stay.

The storm brought heavy thunder
The rain came steady down.
The clouds of moist congestion
Brought pain and forced a frown.

For though the sun is shining
And skies are clear and blue,
The raging tumult in my head
Drones on without a clue.

Some day the clouds will dissipate.
Some day the rain will stop.
But now my nose precipitates.
My head swears it will pop.

Fresno is so flat and hot!
Who’d ever choose this place?
But wait, my sinuses unstop.
A painless smile now forms my face.

That world is worth a photograph
A periodic visit to revel,
But I was made to live and laugh
In cities at sea level.

Pastor's Study

2011-02-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I took seriously the motto that the OPC stands for the "only perfect church". But I quickly learned that the only perfect church is the church triumphant in glory. But in my early days I enjoyed a fierce denominational loyalty that created in me an attitude of condescension toward others. It is a healthy thing to learn existentially that the holy catholic (universal) church is so much wider than the OPC.

That revelation hit me hardest while I was in Westminster Seminary. You must understand that when I attended Westminster (Philadelphia was the only location of a seminary by that name) the institution was virtually an OPC seminary. Almost every professor was a minister in the OPC (Young, VanTil, Stonehouse, Wooley, Clowney), and that fact tended to encourage my loyalty. It was the student body that opened my eyes to honestly respect other denominations as part of the great body of Christ. My buddy, Rex Boda, was just as loyal as I, but to his denomination, The Christian Missionary Alliance. I found him to be every bit as reformed in his theology as any minister in the OPC. He had a good heart, and a godly walk. Another very intelligent, godly man was in the Mennonite church. Another guy was a Baptist, of all things. They were all good guys with reformed convictions. This experience took the wind out of my sails, the sails that had been full of the wind of denominational snobbery.

Later in life, I joined the Minister's Fellowship in locations where the Lord had placed me. Again I have met good men who shared my convictions about the sovereign grace of God. This is always refreshing and encouraging, but it was far too infrequent.

Have you ever heard a "sermon" that was a series of cute stories, awkwardly tied together with scripture verses? It is no accident of spontaneity. It is calculated. The Minister's Fellowship visited one pastor's study and observed his desk with book holders that propped up the most recent work of his research. I was startled to discover two of them were joke books! You have to know that a Westminster graduate expects to see in-depth reference works and commentaries on a pastor's desk, so you can imagine how jarring this discovery was for me.

I remember the time (early in my ministry) that I had been wrestling with an Old Testament text, and some OPC ministers happened to visit my study during a Presbytery meeting. When they saw a Hebrew Bible and Hebrew lexicon among my books on the desk, I was accused of deliberately setting it up for display. I was insulted. I thought every OPC minister might be found with a similar study condition. I must admit that those books are less frequently found on top of my desk, but then again I have a much smaller desk, and most of it is cluttered with stuff to put away some day. These days, if you know where to go on the web, you can find the Hebrew text and get a lexical reference to the words.

Masked Killers

2011-02-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

Pastor Dan preached from Psalm 120 last Sunday night, and brought to light how hostile is this surrounding culture. And, of course, according to the Bible we are aliens living in a pagan culture until we get to glory. I guess we all know that, but the problem is that when a semblance of what Francis Schaeffer called a "Christian memory" lingers in our culture, we easily get lulled into thinking we are among friends. Then every once in a while we are shocked by our American culture's easy adoption of blatant immorality (abortion or fornication, for example). Then it is time to let theology inform our alien walk here below.

My friend, Chuck McIlhenny recently experienced just that. Of all people, he knows this experience all too personally. (Read his book, "When the Wicked Seize a City".) He has been working as a hospital chaplain. Isn't it great that our society still sanctions chaplains? Whether it is in war or at a hospital bedside, what is more important than offering the hope that only comes from our Savior and His promises? But wait a minute, that is the one thing a chaplain in our pagan culture is not allowed to do! If you happen to be ministering to someone who already believes in Jesus Christ, and if he wants you to do this, only then is the gospel sanctioned by the powers that be. Chuck is a little bold for Jesus, and doesn't mind stepping over the lines of sanction in order to save a soul from eternal damnation. But the chaplain's office has actually called him on the carpet for this very thing! He has been severely restricted for this. Like cold water in the face, we realize once again, this is not a Christian country. As Isaac Watts said in one of his great hymns: "Is this vile world a friend to grace, to help me on to God?"

Didn't our Savior warn us that this world hated Him, and it would hate us too? Isn't it still the culture of the world, the same one that killed our Master? When they smile and agree with us over the rising price of gasoline, or the shame of politicians on the take, we forget that it is a mask they are wearing. They hate our Jesus, and when we identify with the gospel, they hate us too. They are masked killers. Jesus said we must love them and pray for them, but he also warned us to beware of wolves in sheep's' clothing.

High tension day

2011-02-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, here's another one from the archives of our family memories. In fact is was New Year's eve, 1975 when I took the young people to the mountains for fun in the snow. I brought my belly sled, and when we climbed the hill for a whack at the sledding path, I volunteered to take the first trial run just to make sure it was safe for the kids. Actually it was my sled and I was the sponsoring adult and felt responsible for the safety of these kids. So my word was law. The sled path had a bend, and we were not able to see the bottom of the hill from where we stood at the top. What we had not calculated was the fact that this was a frosty morning which followed a slushy evening the night before. It seems that someone had used this run for tobogganing the day ahead of us, and in the slushy snow, the rounded front of a toboggan had left several scooped indentations in the slush, which had now turned to solid ice. So when I flopped onto my sled and began to fly down the hill, I was just beginning to enjoy my breakneck speed when I turned the bend only to see these walls of ice the toboggan had created. The last thing I remember was pondering whether or not I could make it between a wall of ice and the trees just to the left of it.

Later one of the kids said I looked like Evel Knievel sailing high over the icy walls of ice. I woke up with a circle of young heads staring down at me. Someone was asking me, "Mr. Keller, are you alright?" I gasped out the honest answer, "I don't know." In a little while I began to struggle to my feet with the help of several strong, young hands. I immediately knew I had broken my collar bone. It felt as though my shoulder was going to slide right off my body and fall on the ground.

The nurse at the ski ER gave me a shot of Demerol and told me to come back for a second one before I left for home. I got the distinct impression that this tough old nurse dispensed drugs as she saw best and whenever the doctor makes his visit to this station he signed approval for those prescriptions.

When I found they were calling an ambulance from Stockton, I told them to call my wife in Modesto. She can make the trip just as quickly from Modesto. So that is what we did. Poor Barbara was preparing for a sleepover for Donna's birthday, which also happens to fall on New Years Eve. The trip was an hour plus, and before we left we stopped at the infirmary for my second shot of Demerol. I need to tell you that I was feeling no pain! My sweet wife, fearing I was blacking out from concussion, kept interrupting her driving to wake me up. I'm sure the ambulance driver would have not been as quick in getting me down from the mountain. At the hospital they asked me why I was there,and I told them I had a broken collar bone. After the x-ray they simply confirmed my own diagnosis, "Yep, you have a broken collar bone." Walking toward the door with a prescription in my hand, the nurse advised me to fill it in their pharmacy before I left. When I told her that I was feeling no pain, she simply asked me, "How many shots of Demerol did you have?" When I told her, she said, "I think you'd better get it filled." As unnecessary as I thought it might be, I had to humor her.

In God's inscrutable plan, that was not yet enough stress for one day. So Jonathan, our youngest, began to show spots on his belly that began to spread over the rest of his body. Chicken pox had also invaded our house. So Barbara had to watch her injured husband, monitor her daughter's sleepover and nurse her first grader with chicken pox all on New Year's Eve. We've had many a memorable New Years Eve to recount, but this one is head and shoulders above the rest.

That night after 11 p.m. all of my elders came to the house to pray with me, and as it turned out, we were praying when the new year arrived. What nobody knew until the next week is that I also fractured and displaced four of my ribs. Little wonder that I felt like I was tearing my back apart every time I tried to raise my body from the bed. One doctor even briefly thought I had punctured a lung. So about the time that our prayer meeting ended, I was VERY glad the nurse had bullied me into filling my prescription.

Something for nothing

2011-02-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

My Dad taught me that nobody gets something for nothing unless someone somewhere is getting nothing for something. In Las Vegas this means the house never loses. Gambling games are calculated to guarantee this. Odds are designed to make it impossible for a casino to pay out more money than it takes in. Because human nature is warped as it is, we only want to remember the stories of big winners. They are the ones that brag. Losers go home broke and do not get interviewed by the media. This makes great advertising for the casinos who never claim bankruptcy, but simply keep building bigger and better hotels. When you come away from Vegas with more money than when you arrived, it is simply because several other people lost enough money to pay for your winnings and the casino's enormous profits as well.

I am guessing that you already know this. But my point in bringing it up is to make an analogy to the way government works. The federal government has no money except that which has been collected from each of the states in the union. Without a strong militia, for example, we cannot long exist. This is a national expense, and a legitimate one at that. According to Romans 13:6 this is the very reason we pay taxes.

But when politicians have as their primary goal to be re-elected, queer things begin to happen in congress. They print flyers boasting of their effectiveness to their constituents by claiming that they are able to bring more money into the state than has been taken out. We got more federal funds than that other state out there, and therefore we ought to re-elect senator Jane Moneygrab. She can do more for us than Joe Goodheart. You see where I am going with this. While we are getting something for nothing, someone else is getting nothing for something. They may have poor congressional representation, or they may have morally superior senators. It just might be that they vote for bills that send disproportionate funds to another state because in the nature of the case it is the right thing to do.

How much money can our struggling economy save if we cut out the "earmarks" and "porkbarrel riders" from our legislating process? I am not an economist, nor have I studied political science, but this doesn't take genius to see. I am as sure as I am sitting at this console that no one gets something for nothing unless someone somewhere is getting nothing for something. Am I missing something?

Speaking Truth

2011-01-31T15:42:00.000-08:00

I'm remembering a dear brother in Christ from about 50 years ago. Let me introduce you to my friend by first doing a little preaching. Ephesians 4:15 exhorts us to be "speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ." In it's context those words are telling us how we contribute to each other's spiritual growth. The body is a unit, but each of us has his or her own contribution to the good of all the rest. And at least one way this is done is by the way we talk to each other. Here the apostle tells us to speak truth to each other.

I can imagine at least three ways in which speaking the truth in love can be understood as designed to build up one another. First, of course, is the sense in which untruths will only lead us astray. And that never helps us grow. Vital, helpful relationships are characterized by honesty. My wife always asks me how she looks in a particular combination of clothing or jewelery. I never allow myself to be cruel about it, but I know she expects the truth from me. I'll tell her why I like something else better. The lesson here is that a wife should never ask her husband questions like this and then get miffed when she is told the truth. In the long run, the honesty is appreciated as helpful and contributes to the intimacy a couple enjoys.

The second sense in which speaking the truth can be understood, is found in verse 29 where the apostle insists that we never speak corrosive words, but only words that build up and minister grace. This is akin to the old adage that if you can't say something nice about a person, don't say anything at all. That may not be a bible quotation, but it is biblical in its sentiment.

But I can't shake the notion that the phrase "speaking the truth in love" carries an even more profound sense. I think we need to speak THE truth to one another. Not necessarily just quoting bible verses to each other, but reminding each other of bible truths will certainly be edifying.

I think I have experienced this. When I was in seminary (many years ago) we attended a little OPC in Philadelphia called "Mediator". Barbara and I worked with the Jr. Hi kids in this church, and there was an elder there whose name was Charles Mayson. I love that man. He had the most uncanny ability to stimulate my thinking in godly ways. In natural conversation he would ask questions like, "Do you think Jesus knew our names?" Then we would talk through who Jesus is, and see the obvious conclusion together. "Does God change His plans in order to answer our prayers?" We both knew better than that, but chatting about the answer took my mind in good spiritual pathways. I wish I could identify a friend today who stimulated me the way Charles Mayson did.

A few years ago we found Barbara's baptismal certificate in our archives, and were taken aback to find it was signed by elder Charles Mayson. It seems that Barbara's father, the Rev. Russell D. Piper, also attended Westminster Seminary, and knew that same elder when his first child was born and was presented for baptism.

I think I'll pray that God will give me a friend like that. Better yet, I need to pray that I might be that kind of friend to someone else.

"Healing Power of Jesus"

2011-01-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

Those were the words that caught my attention. They were in a 4 page advertising flyer that came into our home. Actually I used the coupon on the other page to get a cheap haircut. But now I am confronted with another cheap ad that takes my Lord's name in vain. It's just a cheap, copper, bracelet with magnetic therapy with the name "Jesus" molded into it. It claims to provide the penetrating power of magnets and also the soothing power of copper. If you wear this bracelet, and believe in the miracles of Jesus you will be combining "the most powerful forces of heaven and earth!"

The blasphemy makes me want to scream.

The only thing that makes it worse is the picture of some dude with shoulder length hair that I have learned by experiencing my culture is supposed to be Jesus. They didn't have cameras two thousand years ago. No portrait artists asked Him to sit for them. But I think I recognize this guy. We had several guys who looked almost exactly like this back in the sixties. Only then we called them "hippies". This guy looks far too western to be the middle eastern Jew that Jesus must have resembled. The Bible specifically says he has no form or comeliness that we should desire him. Teenagers did not nudge one another and call him "hot". He was no rock star with frenzied crowds following.

The draw that Jesus had was found in his words and deeds that came from heaven. His words are the words of life, and his deeds pointed to Him as the Lord of glory who can heal and save.

This bracelet that can be bought for less than 10 bucks makes Jesus so cheap!

I haven't even touched upon the breach of the second commandment. This is certainly intended to be a graven image of Someone in heaven. If God is jealous for the glory of His Son, He must be angry at such degradation of our Savior represented by this newsprint hawking of His blessed name.

Ugly Anniversary

2011-01-24T21:36:00.000-08:00

No, no, not my anniversary. The anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1973. One of the very few times our denomination ever addressed the president of the United States was the occasion of anticipating the legalization of abortion. I was there at that General Assembly. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is extremely reluctant to communicate with any representatives of our government. Others do so with such frequency and relative frivolities that we shy away from any appearance of church interfering with the state.

I attended the premier viewing of Frances Schaeffer's film series: "How Shall We Then Live?" in the Oakland auditorium. C. Everett Koop, who served the USA as Surgeon General, was there, telling us that the thinking of our medical and academic liberals were demonstrating intellectual schizophrenia by declaring that a fetus is not a human an hour before it is born, but actually is a human as soon as he is born. We learned that human life is actually determined not by objective scientific determination, but by the whim of the mother. If she doesn't want the fetus to become a child, it doesn't. On the other hand, if an expectant mother is abused, resulting in a spontaneous abortion, the abuser can be charged with the murder of a human being.

We've come a long way since 1973. The unconscionable slaughter of one and a half million babies a year for almost 40 years creates an appalling debt of national sin. It is hard not to believe that God's patience will soon come to an end and break forth with judgment against us.

More recently I remember carrying a sign on the side of the road on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade a few years ago. These Christian protesters had signs like, "Equal rights for unborn women" or simply "Abortion Kills". A pedestrian passed me with a frown, saying, "And what are we going to do with all the extra children?" Of course I was able to say, "Well we adopted two of them. How about you?" But he kept walking and grumbling.

Is it possible that abortion advocates actually believe they are not killing innocent human beings? Is it possible that they really believe that five minutes before birth she is not a true human life? Is this the kind of warp that develops in human thinking when we are determined to sin? It must be so or else why in the world would "civilized" human beings perform or defend partial birth abortions?

At least Norma McCorvey (the real name of Jane Roe) has been forgiven and received by Christ. Now she crusades against the infamous court decision that bears her name. But nobody listens. When a culture becomes hell-bent on justified slaughter of innocents, there is no reasoning with it. The Ammonites did the same with their sacrificed babies in the red hot arms of Moloch. But God's judgement finally broke loose on them.

The Rat

2011-01-21T15:00:00.000-08:00

Modesto Christian School encouraged the students to be engaged in the pursuit of science, and it seemed that hands on experience was a good way to do that. Accordingly, Bobby's 6th grade class had a live rat in a cage in their room. Perhaps everyone has had a similar time in their schooling. We found out about this project the day Bobby came home with a large cardboard box containing this white rodent. "What's this for?" "Each kid in our class is taking a turn to bring him home for the weekend to make sure he gets fed." Well, of course, all six of our kids appreciated this cute deviation from family routine. He got plenty of attention. I don't remember if we gave him a name, or if he already had a name, but if I accurately remember what kids are like, it is likely we called him something other than "rat".

I'm guessing that every weekend was a grand gastronomic vacation for Mr. Rat, as kids tend to be overly kind to these beasts. At any rate we had the room and the curious inclination to host him for the weekend. What we foolishly ignored was the fact that Mr. Rat came to our home in a cardboard box. We had no wire cage. It usually does not require inductive experiments to realize that rats gnaw. And cardboard is very easily gnawed by a rat. And therein lies the tale (tail?).

During the night Mr. Rat discovered the emotion of loneliness. He missed the attention that six adoring young humans had been lavishing on this rodent all day long. Now it was dark and quiet. Are rats nocturnal creatures anyway? Seeking human companionship, he quickly gnawed a hole in his box, and began to explore the house. We put him on the service porch where the vacuum was stored, but nobody even thought to shut the door. It was a sprawling ranch house. He passed through the kitchen and the family room and down the hall. He passed the bathroom, Donna's room and two other rooms that served as boys dormitories. We found no evidence that he explored these rooms, but he certainly may have done that. He turned the corner and scampered down the hall directly into the master bedroom.

Now our king sized bed was situated in a way that Barbara's side was the longest distance from the service porch, and yet this is where he made himself known. In the middle of the night she screamed my name: "Rollie!" and threw the rat on me. It seems that she woke up with the rat walking through her hair. I guess it was worth screaming, but when she screamed my name, it made me feel that it was all my fault. Heads of household tend to get that feeling anyway. I think the kids were awakened, so I gathered the rat and returned him to his sleeping quarters, only to discover the huge hole in the corner of his box. But this time we had the sense to simply shut the door for the remainder of the night.

Barbara reminds me that in the morning Bobby was looking very guilty for the incident, since he had brought this guest into our home.

Killing my father-in-law

2011-01-19T17:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, now that I have your attention, let me tell you another yarn from my memory banks. Barbara's father lived to see his 100th birthday, and he was a sharp witted enjoyable guy almost til the end. He got to ride horseback on his 98th birthday, but that is another story.

When he was a mere 96, we traveled east to see him. The family that lived across the street from our family (40 years ago now) had moved their parents to an elegant retirement community near Lancaster, PA. Combining the two visits seemed wise. Quarryville, where dad was living in retirement, is an excellent place to spend one's latter years. There were always alternate choices of cuisine, and the tables were set with fine plates, crystal goblets and cloth napkins. It was clean and comfortable. The place is populated with former ministers, their wives and assorted Presbyterian retirees. One of dad's table mates was the professor who wrote the Hebrew grammar from which I first learned the language. At another point in his long stay in Quarryville, he had a lady table mate who, with dad, did so much laughing at lunch that they were frequently asked to tone it down. He used to bring a page from his joke telling desk calendar for her to read, and they would giggle and guffaw like 4th graders.

It turns out that the dining hall at the other retirement place was a step higher in elegance than the beloved Quarryville. We had to show dad. Since our friends invited us all to dine with them, we took dad to taste for himself. But when we put him in the wheelchair and headed for the elevator, we were told that the elevator had stopped working. We were not to be thwarted, however, and decided to carefully maneuver the stairs with dad still in the chair. Now the caveat was this; I was still recovering from hip replacement surgery. My progress must have been a trifle slower than I thought. This was a short flight of stairs, because there was a landing after about 6 stairs before the stairwell doubled back to reach the next floor with another set of stairs. I carefully navigated the first stair, tilting the wheelchair back and taking one step at a time. The second stair also went without incident, but about the third stair I began to realize that I had tragically over-estimated my repaired hip, and by the time we hit the fourth stair something tragic was ominous. My footing was compromised, and the chair slipped from my hands.

To this day I can replay, in slow motion, the picture of my aged father in law tipping out of his chair, hands flailing in the air, and the chair crashing after him to the landing. What have I done!! I've killed my wife's father! No bones were protruding, no blood was evident, and he even was able to gain his feet soon after. But the remainder of our trek down the stairs, dad chose to take the stairs on his feet with a tight hold on the banister.

Later that evening, as we dined elegantly at the other home's buffet, dad made a joke about his son-in-law trying to kill him. It was at that point in the evening that I knew he was his old self, and had successfully survived my ostensible attempt on his life.

He's a good boy

2011-01-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

Last week the whole nation was caught up in the grief filled aftermath of the 22 year old who shot so many people in Tucson. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords took a bullet point blank that was a through and through of the head. An adorable nine year old girl was slain, and several others took bullets. I caught a quote from the boy's mother,"He's a good boy." Oh really? Forrest Gump might have said, "Good is what good does." But then I remembered one of the girls from the infamous Columbine high school shooting was quoted as saying she still believed in the basic goodness of mankind. It seemed to me that the press was all too quick to print this sentiment. It seems that the public forum always reaches for the ludicrous affirmation of the basic goodness of human nature when the ugliness of total depravity breaks forth in some obvious display.

The reason for this is that reality tends to shatter the basic religious convictions of the world. The basic goodness of man is one of those convictions. How can one stand to be a humanist, knowing that human nature is sinful. Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. If you believe that you have to abandon humanism as a religion. The alternate is to believe in biblical religion, and fallen men can never do that.

It is interesting to note that although this world likes to believe in the basic goodness of man, yet they also argue that this man is never perfectible. After all we are only animals, a few steps higher than other primates. If humans engage in a little sin it is interesting, exciting and excusable. But when this despicable behavior assaults other humans, the philosophers stutter and spit out the all but humorous mantra about the basic goodness of man.

They say that man is basically good, but never able to be perfect.

The Christian says that man is basically bad, but he is perfectible.

This is only to say that biblical truth matches reality as we experience it much better than the maxims of worldly religion. That man is made in the image of God explains the great potential for good things that we know to be in man. The fall of human nature into sinful rebellion against God explains the filthiness, violence and selfishness of people. The whole point of the gospel is that the soul who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Man is irreparably broken, and God alone is able to repair him. Jesus receives sinners--and changes them. So the Christian sees the coming of our Savior as the time when we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Man is perfectable, but God has to work this, and His promise is that He is doing it as we speak, and will complete the job when we see Jesus.

Bar Hopping

2011-01-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

Rambling through my mind, I recalled a rather unique experience in evangelism many years ago. The Rev. Jack Miller invited a few of us new ministers to work with him in projects of evangelism. The one I am remembering was bar hopping evangelism. Jack was an up-front guy, so the first thing he did when we entered a neighborhood bar was to introduce himself to the bar tender, and explain that we were not here to cause trouble, but just to talk to anyone who wanted to share their problems. Most bar keeps are a bit weary of hearing the same problems from the same guys day by day anyway.

So when we had permission to be there, we ordered drinks and sat on bar stools at different places around the room. I ordered a ginger ale, and proceeded to nurse my drink for about an hour, wondering what in the world was I doing here. Next to me, at the corner of the bar, was a talkative young man, gulping down several beers, faster than I can drink water. My frustration was that he was talking to the guy on the other side of him, and I had no idea how I could wedge my way into the conversation in any fashion that seemed natural. More than once he needed to excuse himself to visit the men's room. What goes in must come out, and there was a lot of fluid going in.

Just about the time I thought this experiment was a failure, this guy turns to me and asks, "And what do you do?" (gulp) Okay here goes nothing. As soon as I tell him that I am a minister, I'm sure that will shut off the conversation--but it didn't! "I'm a minister of the gospel." "You are?" he responded with a genuine enthusiasm. "I've got a lot I wanted to ask a minister." That encouraged me to be a little bolder. "Yeah, we came in to talk to any guys who want to talk about their problems, but mostly to talk about how you can have eternal life."

I told him a few of my favorite gospel stories, and he listened with what I judged to be sincere attention. His big question was, "How can you be so sure?" I told him my story of conversion while watching Billy Graham on television, and my timid call to the ministry, and he still wanted to know how I can know. Well, of course, when anyone asks the epistemological question, we have to get them into the Bible. The evening ended with the guy weeping while we prayed for him and left him with the gospel of John. "Read this and pray, asking God to show Himself to you in this book." I never saw the man again. But I have often thought about trying that venue for evangelism again. I guess I am a coward because I have never tried it again--at least not yet.

Vacation addendum

2011-01-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

So we thought our 2 hour wait on the I 40 was a hardship. We were glad to safely arrive home in sunny southern California. But we discovered that our homeland had been inundated by an uncharacteristically drenching downpour for a week before we arrived. It was probably that storm that formed snow where we had been in New Mexico. I grew up with the slogan of the Chamber of Commerce: "It never rains in California". Of course the footnote to the slogan is that this describes the Summer season only. But I have lived here for some fifty or more years of my life, and I can remember very few downpours like we experienced in the east.

As for the snow we had to tensely combat for miles before we descended the plateau of Arizona that houses Flagstaff, that too was a trifle compared to the inconvenient mini blizzard that closed the passes into the L.A. basin from the north. Today I heard of friends who were delayed by the snow to travel one mile in three hours. This was on another Southern California highway north of us.

So I want to publicly thank God for His good providence that has wonderfully overruled our stupidity several times to get us home safe and (reasonably) sound. Plan as we may, it is ultimately in His hands. And I wouldn't have it any other way. In Him we live and move and have our being. But even more than that, He has promised His own: "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

Tomatoes in January

2011-01-06T17:06:00.000-08:00

After slipping and sliding on the roads east of us, we quickly remembered that in the rest of the country it is winter. Back here in California we found tomatoes still growing in our garden. Okay, the vines are dying, and there is not a great abundance, but I needed to show you at least one.

Here it is. And there are more, but they are not as impressive. Next to the tomatoes are my jalapeno peppers.

There was a large watermelon also, but the vine had withered and died, so I picked it and stored it in the auxiliary refrigerator in the garage. I'm not about to boast of my farming abilities, but I can testify to the great growing season here in Lakewood, CA. As John Calvin would have said, I lucked out on the soil amendment I picked up at the local nursery. That is what made our fig tree so happy (old post: "The Happy Fig").

Vacation Adventures, part 2

2011-01-03T10:05:00.000-08:00

"It's freezing in here!" I wish I had a nickel for every time my wife has said this. During our treacherous trek across New Mexico, she said it again. We were trying to get to Havasu, NV in time to celebrate Donna's birthday (Dec 31), but the weather turned on us. The driving was tension filled (see blog below) and slow. When it was no longer safe for me to try to drive any further because of the weather and because of the tension fatigue in my back and arms from fighting the steering wheel, we stopped in Acoma at a casino/hotel we had visited on our way east.

The room looked very nice, and we settled in, and Barbara recited her famous line. It wasn't exactly 32 degrees, but it was rather chilly. In order to accommodate her needs, I walked over to the unit which was spilling out tepid air into our room for the purpose of setting the heat a bit higher. The unit was built with dials to regulate the AC and the heater. But the knobs for these dials had been removed! I reached into the empty hole in the casing to see if I was able to grasp the stem on which the missing knob had been affixed. My efforts were vain, however.

As I lay recuperating on my bunk, I noticed that prior to the blower on this tepid unit there came a distinct electronic "click" from the opposite wall. Sure enough there was a thermostat located there. I struggled to my feet to report to Barbara that the number in it's window recorded a "72" degrees. She said, "I don't care what it says, it is NOT 72 in here." I agreed with her. There were buttons on the thermostat, so I attempted to adjust it. I found that the only change it would let me make was whether or not to show the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. At least this proved that the "72" it kept reporting was not a decal.

Then I decided that if I cannot adjust the temperature setting, then I was going to fool it into thinking the temperature was less than it actually was. I went down the hall to gather ice cubes at the machine. I tied them in a plastic bag, and affixed it to the thermostat with a rubber band. Surely this would give us an extra blast of heat. But alas, this unit kept throwing tepid air into the room, and turning off periodically, pretending it had responded to our need for heat.

At this frustrating turn of events, it occurred to me that this was a casino. My experience is consistent with the casino philosophy. We all know "the house never loses." Barbara had earlier observed a woman feed $20 into the penny machine, only to come away in a few minutes with 11 cents. Right after her, another woman came to the same machine and threw away another $20. You see, they are rigged to give the player the allusion that she is in control, when she is not. Okay, that describes my frustrating experience with the thermostat. The whole place must be rigged!

We both cuddled together in one of the two queen beds and shivered through the night. When we decided to try the road again the next morning, we opened the outside door only to be blasted in the face with the coldest air these Californians have felt for a long time. Now THAT was freezing! We found out the next day that the temp was only 4 degrees. We were glad to have a nice car that threw good, hot air into our faces in rather short order. We picked up our water bottles only to find they were frozen. They were not even slush, but solid bricks.

The I 40 parking lot

2011-01-01T08:07:00.000-08:00

We planned this auto excursion to Tennessee and back, thinking "surely snow crews would keep the interstate clean" and thought we would be safe and unhindered along our trek.

Well, we weren't quite that gullible. We did reserve in mind the possibility that we would have to take an unscheduled extra day in motel culture. But that would have spoiled our itinerary, which was intended to place us at our daughter's doorstep on her birthday, Dec 31.

So when we left Memphis, we did some serious marathon driving (700 miles one day, 400 the next and 500 for the third). You may have guessed that I am just a tad weary of driving. But I have learned that all driving is not the same. It is not the number of miles alone that make for a tedious driving day. Packed snow and streaks of glare ice which make driving a series of brief bobsled races interspersed with pavement recovery sections to keep us on the roadway--that is what I call tedious.

Somewhere east of Gallup, New Mexico, we took part in a social phenomenon which I will call, "parking lot pageantry". You've heard of the "flash mob" Christmas caroling presentations at various shopping malls. The first one I was aware of happened in Macy's of Philadelphia, and they called it "a random act of culture" when there was a "spontaneous" outbreak of the Hallelujah Chorus. What we experienced was similar inasmuch as unexpected activities took place in a public location that was originally created for a different purpose. The Interstate 40 was created for high speed travel. On this occasion, however, we involuntarily participated in massive parking lot pageantry.

Both lanes ahead of us rather suddenly came to a halt. Neither lane moved. We waited, but nothing was moving. People began to come out of their cars, looking ahead along the highway to see what might explain this. When I took to the road on foot I could not find an answer either. The snow was coming down, beautifully and dramatically in huge flakes that floated down like large white platters under water. It was piling up rapidly, and we began to wonder if the highway was closed, or at least restricted to vehicles equipped with chains. I took out my cell phone and tapped my yellow pages app for the New Mexico state police. When I called, I heard only a recording that said some areas experienced slowing because of road work. No reports of road closures, nothing.

We saw a lady jump from her car, form a snowball and throw it back into the car to pelt her trapped passengers. An elderly gentleman pulled along side of me, driving along the shoulder of the road, and asked me if I knew what was the matter. After my disclosure of ignorance, he asked if he could pull his car into the space ahead of us. (There was only about half car space which remained after someone else had vacated his place in the pageantry to cross the median strip and head the other direction.) His car only partially left the shoulder of the highway by pulling the nose of his car ahead of us. We were parked there for a full hour, enjoying the show, when there came a horn blast over my left shoulder. It was a huge wrecker (tow truck) which stopped to swear at the guy ahead of us whose car was still partially blocking the shoulder of the road. After humiliating the old gent (look whose calling him "old"!) the tow drove, straddling the shoulder and the median to creep on ahead to tackle the problem. At this time we had confirmed our suspicion that there had been an accident.

It was a good 90 minutes before we began to move--slowly--west along this high speed road. When we got about two miles along the road, there was little evidence of the accident. Disturbed areas of snow in about three or four spots that seemed to indicate it had been a multiple car incident.

White Christmas no dream

2010-12-27T04:55:00.000-08:00

On the very day! If you ever notice, the song, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" takes place in Beverly Hills, LA. The verse lead into the familiar part of the song specifically says that. Well I am no longer dreaming because we experienced the storybook reality here in Chattanooga, TN. It was almost as dramatic as the timing of the snowfall in the movie. About six in the morning the flakes began to fall, and they kept falling gently and steadily until we had four inches. It was gentle enough to make piles of snow on posts and branches. Our time with the family was idyllic.

Why do you need Jesus?

2010-12-20T18:32:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow OPC minister, Tom Champness, preceded me in the pulpit of Grace Church, Modesto. One of the members there told me how Tom once asked the congregation, "By show of hands, how many of you consider yourself to be a sinner?" The response was unanimous. They knew the scripture that says "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." But Tom was not satisfied. He then asked, "Who considers himself to be a dirty, filthy, rotten sinner?" Only a few people were willing to raise the hand at this. Not all of them realized that in God's eyes these questions are identical.

And it is precisely that reason that I need Jesus. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. His death on the cross is designed to cleanse the filth of sin. His atonement paid the price of sin in our stead. Jesus said that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

But just how can we invite dignified people to join our church if we are calling them filthy sinners? We can't win people over by insulting them. The great temptation we have learned from the salesman model is to modify the packaging of the appeal to outsiders, so that coming to Christ will be more attractive. Repentance is just too negative a package.

Here in Memphis there must be a dozen mega churches that have a more or less reformed affiliation. It's a cultural phenomenon that I have not experienced any other place on the face of the earth. The tragic disappointment for me is when I find one or more of these churches have slipped on the temptation to dress the gospel in a more saleable package. I attended one of these churches only to find that the message was that we need to come to Christ because of our problems. It was almost said that we need him because of our sin, but the message fell short. Not only was the word "repent" not heard, but the concept was not clear at all. I came away with the impression that people were invited to come to Christ because he makes it easier to live life here below. He helps us face difficulties. He comes to us personally and never leaves his own. God with us is a wonderful experience.

All these things are true and wonderful. I suppose the appeal is legitimate, but not without the mention of repentance. John came to prepare for the Messiah, and his message was to "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus' first recorded message was identical. Was the gospel actually preached? I am hard pressed to say that it was. Am I being too picky? Is it not possible to invite people to come to Christ without belaboring the point of being a sinner?

We found Groom

2010-12-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

Travel can be far more fascinating when you stop more often. Case in point: Barbara's doctor who did the knee replacement, advised her to stop every 90 minutes to walk and stretch because she is still recuperating. We didn't actually keep a perfect schedule, but we did stop within two hours of the last rest, and it made for some interesting experiences.

Sometimes 90 minutes pass and there are no appropriate places to get out and stretch. The other day in Texas, for example, the wind was whipping us at gale force (or nearly). The car was dancing on the highway, and the only "rest" stops along the interstate were picnic areas. We tried one, but I wouldn't let her get out of the car for fear she would be blown over. The alternative was to pick the next town and drive in to find someplace.

That place was a town called "Groom" Texas. The population was something a little less than 600 people. Not all roads were fully paved, but what appeared to be main street was. It made Barbara remember "Bridgewater, SD" the town she escaped following her high school graduation. There is a special charm to a small town that can only be found there. The friendliness of the people is so un-contrived and winsome. While there may also be a special terror in such a small town, it is of no concern to the brief visitor. The young teen who was laying out rugs from the market and sweeping them, greeted us like we could have been favorite relatives.

As we slowly struggled our way up the block and back to the car (remember our purpose was to walk and stretch), a balding middle aged proprietor came out of the local emporium, greeted us, and offered us the calendar his business distributes. He knew we were new in town (in a town that size everyone knows everyone who belongs there), and I'm not sure but what he wanted to check us out to be sure we were not there for some nefarious reason. But he too was so neighborly that we were overwhelmed with the gesture.

I'm so glad to have the calendar because I do not want to soon forget this little piece of small town pleasantness, and I can be reminded all next year whenever I look at this calendar.

Those Texas Rangers

2010-12-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

They ride speedy crossovers now instead of fleet ponies, but they are just as vigilant as ever. My son, Calvin, warned me about the sneaky speed traps on Texas highways. He claims that small towns count on tourists for much of their revenue by suddenly decreasing the speed limit, and then posting rangers at those strategic places to nab unsuspecting motorists who simply remove the foot from the accelerator and let the car slowly coast down to the posted speed. Between the first limit sign and the compliance of one's vehicle several hundred feet of road will find you inexcusably moving at excessive speed. Since uncle Fred is the judge there is no point in appealing.

I think his imagination was getting the best of him again, so I set my cruise control three or four mph over the posted limit like all cool California drivers do. Sometimes (on long trips, for example) we tend to go as much as 5 or more miles over the posted limit, hoping that a display of cool demeanor and otherwise careful and courteous driving habits will dissuade the officer from actually administering the costly citation.

We told our son that since we were taking the interstate highway, there would be none of those small town shenanigans. But today, as we cruised through the Texas panhandle region, one of those diligent gendarmes nabbed me. We were courteous. We had license (without recorded offense). We had proof of insurance. We had valid registration. He must have noticed that we were California cool, and he was especially impressed that we were on a mission to visit the "kiddos" (his term), he issued only a warning citation. We thanked him and continued on our way. Only now this same woman who had been coaxing me in other states to get us there as quickly as possible, now was ragging on me for the least overage. The speed limit is a generous 70 mph, and we made it to the border at 69.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

2010-12-15T18:48:00.000-08:00

Did you ever think that Jesus' mother got a bad rap? Think yourself in her position after the shocking announcement by the angel. When her pregnancy was disclosed, who really believed her? The Bible tells us that even her pending husband was sure she had been unfaithful. He was planning to get rid of her privately.

Come on now, if your daughter says to you, "Daddy, my pregnancy test was positive. I've tried it a second time. But I've never had intimate relations with any guy." "Yeah, right! And did you see any pigs fly today?" Two thousand years ago they knew about the birds and the bees. It took a special revelation from God to turn Joseph's mind, and presumably he was the one person who trusted her most.

When the angel explained the details of her virgin pregnancy Mary submitted herself to the Lord's will with humble praise. She was truly a pious chick. But what about the neighbors? What were they whispering behind the hand? At her cousin's home it becomes apparent that Elizabeth was on board with highest honors for cousin Mary. And Mary erupted with praise to God, her Savior, mentioning that all generations will call her blessed.

Unfortunately we protestants have over-reacted to the Roman Catholic Church who are coming ever closer to worshipping Mary (the last thing she would have desired then or now). So when we hear the phrase, "The Blessed Virgin Mary" we react in revulsion. We would never use that phrase, and yet Mary anticipated that it would be appropriate down through the ages, and she was right.

At the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus said something that sounds a little like a rebuke to Mary. She tells Jesus that the embarrassed couple had run out of wine, and Jesus responds by saying something like, "Lady, what business do we have with each other?" Maybe we don't get it, and maybe he is reminding his mother that in the miracle business He has no assistants. At any rate humble Mary simply tells those waiters to do whatever He tells them.

When we get to the little band of disciples gathering after the ascension of Christ, there is Mary among them. She had learned long before this that Jesus, even though He was her son, is her Lord and Savior. It must have taken amazing mental and spiritual gymnastics for her to understand her place, but, young as she was, remember Mary was always keeping these things and pondering them in her heart. She is my sister in Christ, and she is a wise and wonderful one. Let's give her all the honor that is appropriate.

Three cheers for the blessed virgin Mary!

First vacation crisis

2010-12-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

Last minute packing can be a hastle. Ours was no exception. When we were an hour later than we proposed to leave I was cramming the last box of stuff we simply "had" to include into the back seat of the car. Oh, oh, I need to straighten something on the other side of the back seat. I'll just walk around and take care of it by opening the door on that side of the car. Here, I'll just shove it in a little. "Crunch, wham!" Oh no! What was that? The box I had just crammed into the other side of the car was at the other end of my push. It fell to the ground upside down. Of course there was no top to the box. That would have protected at least some of the contents from spilling out on the ground. Now I am crabby. I am jamming the "essential" garbage back into the box and back onto the other boxes on the back seat. Oops, there's a Hershey's Kiss that rolled under the car. Forget it. I am in no condition to be getting on my ancient knees just to retrieve a stupid piece of candy. Let the neighborhood scavengers find it.

It was only after we arrived at Donna's house in Lake Havasu City, AZ, that Barbara asked me to get her partial that she had packed in that box. Yes, THAT box. Even though the box was not large, I searched it twice, and a couple other boxes just for good measure. It was not there. The roof of her mouth was irritated by this set of teeth, so she sealed them into a small Tupperware container with a little mouthwash. She installs them when needed, but they were not there this time. The Tupperware container was round. When the box fell in the driveway, it had rolled all the way out to the curb. I don't remember feeling a thump when we pulled out of the driveway. I'm reasonable certain I didn't run over them. Hey, today is the day the street sweeper comes. I don't really want to follow that scenario.

We called our sweet granddaughter, Stacy, and asked her to go to the house and see if that is what actually happened. In the car our four year old great granddaughter, Lilly, asked her mom, "Where are we going?" "To Papa and Nana's house." Lilly knew we were gone so she asked, "Why?" "Because Nana dropped her teeth." "How?" "Her teeth come out." At this, Lilly threw her head back, smacking her forehead with her hand, and dramatically sighing, "Ooooh!"

Sure enough, the container was there in the gutter. The street sweeper had not yet visited. Thanks to Stacy's help, the teeth are headed for our next visitation station: Bobby, Lori and the kids in Memphis. They tell us, "If it fits, it ships" and it did.

Quick healer

2010-12-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

The physical therapist told Barbara she needn't make any more appointments. She can bend her knee 120 degrees, and almost completely flat (the other direction, of course). She had back to back appointments today, so she saw the surgeon too. Although he admitted that he didn't remember her knee because he has done 30 knee replacements since then, he too was impressed with her movement, and gave us license to ravel to Tennessee next week. She was kicked out of PT with her first knee replacement in a remarkable 3 weeks. Well, she did it again.

The secret is that she stepped on the edge of a box top the other day and fell on her derriere. I was not available to help her up, and so she sat there pondering her predicament. "How can I get to my feet without damaging my knee?" You see, these are the problems that are pondered more often than the problem of world hunger when you become a septuagenarian. Did I say this episode was a secret? Well it might have been a secret except Barbara has no pride. She blabbed fluently to the doctor, and anyone else she has been talking to about her knee. When I finished my important business and finally entered the room, there she was sitting awkwardly on the floor. After she assured me that she was not hurt, I tried to lift her from the floor, but I'm not the man I used to be. I gave it my best shot, but miserably failed. Before I could contrive a successful scenario, Barbara got on her newly replaced knee and pushed herself up with the other leg. I guess she is more healed than I realized. Now if I could just help her manage her pain a little better, I would feel like I'm worth her keeping me.

Seasons

2010-12-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to admit that I miss the seasons. Lakewood, California is not New England, but we do have some fall colors. There are several trees like the one above near our house. There is a very yellow tree showing off just a few blocks away. God's Fall paintbrush does touch Southern California modestly.

We never lived in heavy snow country, but I can remember spectacular snow storms that struck Christmas eve. Many nostalgic memories include picturesque snowfalls. Something romantic like a scene from a Christmas card forms good memories for a sentimentalist like me. Good Shepherd Chapel was our church plant in Neptune, NJ in the early 60s. We developed the popular tradition of a community Christmas eve service of Scripture readings, carols and brief sermon. It became the one time of the year that neighbors came to our little church, so we gave it our best. The most memorable of these services was the night we had a blizzard during the service. Cars couldn't get our of the parking lot. After singing "Silent Night" with candlelight at the conclusion of the service, we emerged from the church to see the silent snow covering everything in sight with its thick blanket. I remember helping push several cars out of the lot, and one car needed the help of a rope and horse who happened by when we needed him.

Of course this doesn't mean that we were better at worship that night, but it did leave a pleasant memory for everyone who pulled together through the combined beauty and ordeal of the blizzard, and worship was associated with that pleasant memory. Snow is also part of God's amazing handiwork.

I enjoyed the eastern springtime as well. The lively shade of green in new growth around us, the crocuses jumping up through the thin layer of late snow, all meant that the sharp colors of Azaleas were not long after. It was the long, hot, humid Summers that made me long to return to the left coast.

C. W. "Chuck" Lee

2010-12-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

My dear friend and longtime next door neighbor died September 19. I just heard this news almost by accident yesterday. Chuck Lee was a retired college professor, an atheist and a nudist. And he was easily the best neighbor I ever had. When we first moved to Carson, he was my friendly welcome to the neighborhood. Early in our relationship he came to the door in the buff and acted as though nothing was amiss. When I returned home and reported what had just happened, my daughter freaked out. She never went to his house the whole time she lived with us until the day she married.

Chuck had planted his yard to resemble a mountain meadow as much as possible in the city. Over the years his trees grew very tall, and only recently he consented to cut down the trees in the front yard. All the other neighbors had their bids for house beautiful with neatly trimmed and varying shades of green lawn. Not Chuck. Thanks to his landscaping, his yard was a veritable forest, intruding itself into this city block like something out of another dimension. His back yard included a grotto with a bench for meditation. Two white rabbits populated this yard until a hawk snatched one of them.

He didn't have a mail box. He only took his mail from a rented box at the post office. Measuring all the junk mail we received over the 26 years we shared on Jay St.I'm not sure but what he had the better idea.

Barbara enjoyed his HO model railroad that actually tunneled through walls of his upstairs bedrooms. He had created little stations that were supposed to represent early renditions of actual depots of early California.

He never used his stove. The manufacturer's cardboard sheet was still at the bottom of the oven when I saw it.

When he disclosed to me that he was an atheist, I, of course, believed God moved me there for the purpose of witnessing to him. I'm afraid I didn't do it enough, or cleverly enough, and yes, I believe God was in control even of our relationship. But now that he has died it doesn't leave me feeling very good about it. Once he told me that his daughter fell in with the wrong crowd and became a born again Christian. He said that her IQ fell by 50 points after that. She went to New Guinea as a missionary for New Tribes Missions. I could see God's irony at work here, but Chuck only saw her wasting her life.

Once I got him to came to our church when we were showing a series of films about the Christian response to Darwinism, and he was quite unimpressed. But if he needed a plumber or an auto mechanic, he always asked me if I knew of a Christian tradesman to do the job. Is that transparent or what?

He borrowed the book, "Born Again" because he was interested in the autobiography of Chuck Colson. We prayed that God would move his heart, but he returned the book in an astonishing few days. He said he skipped all the "religious" stuff.

He was always courteous and considerate. Even when we were talking about God our conversations (though far too brief) were always conducted politely. He trusted me with the key to his front door, "just in case water is flowing out of my garage while I am away" and even after we moved he insisted we keep the key "just in case."

He was not at all overweight as many of us contemporaries are. In fact he walked frequently, and at length all over Carson. He was seldom sick, and I think his death was quite sudden. He was just a year older than I, and God has given me another reminder that I should enjoy each day I spend with Him and with my wife.

Thanksgiving secrets

2010-11-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, we're well past Thanksgiving now, but I've been busy. I cooked the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings for 13 people. Judging from the rave notices, I was a success. It wore me out, but it was a lot of fun. I find that I really like to cook, especially when the people I serve seem to enjoy my cooking. When meat gets over cooked, or gravy turns out lumpy or anything surprises me with a nasty taste, then cooking is not much fun.

We had turkey, dressing, potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, creamed onions and pickled beets and eggs. I guess my greatest compliment was the fact that everyone ate and raved about whatever was in their mouth.

Along the way I have picked up a few Thanksgiving secrets. The cream sauce for the little had a little Chardonnay. Mashed potatoes are greatly improved by a generous portion of cream cheese and real butter. Turkey will yield juicy white meat from the breast when it is roasted upside down. It does not have that Norman Rockwell photogenic quality, but since all the juices flow toward the breast, it is moist and delicious. We also own one of those very old and very large roasting pans with cover. It's just too big for anything other than a 22 pound turkey, and so we must store it among all our other trash, uh, stuff for the rest of the year. We are annoyingly trashy (we do resent those reality shows about hoarders). But when it comes to an item that we need, such as this roasting pan, it's very convenient to have it on hand. It holds the moisture better than anything else I have seen. This promotes the moist white meat and great base for the gravy.

The down side is the fact that I gained a few pounds on the leftovers. So it's back to the veggies for me.

Shuffling along

2010-11-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

Barbara was told by a friend that when she had her first knee replacement surgery she said it hurt so bad that she would never have the other knee done. She didn't remember saying that, but today she understands why she said it. I asked her the other day if it was worth it, and without hesitation she shouted, "No!" Just now I asked her again, and her answer was, "I don't know. Right now it's throbbing." Although she was up and around today, as we spoke she was lying back in her Lazy Boy. But I heard her tell someone today that her pain is a little diminished.

From My perspective she is doing famously. Her physical therapist raves about her progress. She is able to lift her leg, and hold it in the air. She now bends her knee 90 degrees. Last time she discovered that she would be released from PT when she could bend it 120 degrees (which she did in 3 weeks). She had her surgery just 10 days ago. We all think she is making amazing progress. She is my hero.

Skateboards

2010-11-23T20:26:00.000-08:00

As I waited for a traffic light to change today, I noticed a teen-ager on his skateboard maneuvering the intersection. He was careful. I could tell because of the way he alertly glanced toward each lane of potential traffic as he crossed with the signal from East to West, and then (because as yet there was no flow of traffic either direction) he crossed from North to South and down the street. Had he no board he would need to be jogging at least to make that distance in equal time. So I pondered the compared health factors between the good exercise of jogging which he was avoiding, and the coordination skills and sheer athletic ability required to propel his board as smoothly and as efficiently as he did. Maybe it was a trade off, and since the board was obviously more fun than jogging, I suppose he was on the right track.

Now when I was a kid, skateboarding meant something else. There was no such thing as the commercially manufactured boards such as I saw today. We had roller skates--you know the kind with 4 wheels on each foot. The insane invention of in-line skates had not yet been perpetrated either. When our roller skates began to get worn and we were begging our parents for a new pair, we used the old pair to make skateboards. This was usually a scrap 2x4 and an orange crate. The local grocer had oranges delivered to him in wooden crates. They may have been 24" by 36" or somewhere thereabouts. We nailed these crates to the 2x4 as a front grille of the conveyance. The 24" side of the crate was nailed flat to the 2x4, with two smaller pieces of wood attached to the top diagonally for handle bars. Since these skates were made to come apart into two sections of tandem wheels, we simply nailed one section under the front portion of the 2x4 and the other section to the rear. That was a skateboard when I was a kid.

Today there are many sizes and shapes, and I suppose there are custom made models as well. My granddaughter used a longboard. I've observed many different sizes and composition wheels. They are all much more silent than our old skateboards, I'll have to admit. And when I see x-games with jumps and twists on the half pipe, my mouth drops in amazement. I cringe at tricks that have gone afoul, such as riding a hand rail pipe, and falling to the crotch, or when a curb or stone suddenly removes the board from under the feet of a speeding rider and he loses skin.

I remember my son used to ride around his base in the Air Force on a skateboard. He carefully read the rules, and determined that he did not need to salute officers when he was in transit with some sort of conveyance. Although those who wrote the manual may never have anticipated this scenario, he found this a legitimate way of tweaking the nose of authority, which has always been his favorite amusement. Ya gotta love him.

Ouch! That smarts.

2010-11-20T21:40:00.000-08:00

Yeah, Barbara is thinking something like that these days. She came home last Thursday, and baring a torrential rain (which is predicted) she plans to struggle into church tomorrow. She says it is more painful than she remembers from the first knee replacement.

But you ladies know how the Lord prevents accurate remembrance of the pain of childbirth. All I know is that Bill Cosby says it is like taking my lower lip and lifting it up over the top of my head. I don't know that he is an expert on labor pains, but I got the picture lasered into my imagination.

She is walking a little better each day, and even getting into her own bed. She is already taking AVON orders, but piano lessons do not begin again til next week. She is a tough lady, and right now she is my hero.

The Physical Therapist visited once already, and he was amazed at her progress. He has three other cases of the same surgery, and he says she is ahead of the others. She can already bend her knee 70 degrees, and the nearest to her can only bend his knee 50 degrees.

You go girl!

Dangerous Hospitals

2010-11-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

We all know about antibiotic resistant germs that tend to lurk about hospitals, but that was not the theme I had in mind. Neglect and mistaken drug dispensing are also dangerous, and not unheard of during a hospital stay. But we prepared for that by keeping a presence in Barbara's room as much as we could. There are other dangers the consequences of which may seldom be fatal, but they are very annoying. We experienced some of them this time.

On the first day after her surgery, I called from home fairly early in the morning and got the busy signal. Okay, someone from back east must have called. When I tried again later in the morning I got a ring. The ring continued until I was imagining a scenario where the doctor was visiting and giving her some important information, or she was out walking with the physical therapist, or she was whisked away to the ER or something else equally dramatic. After the third vain call attempt, I called the desk of the third floor and tried to explain my problem. Evidently I did not communicate clearly enough because all he did was connect my call to the line to Barbara's room, the very line of which I was complaining. The results were the same. Plenty of ringing, but no answering.

Needless to say we (our daughter and I) jumped into our clothes and drove over to see for ourselves. We found Barbara moping because she had not heard from me (or anyone else). I explained the situation, and housekeeping began to work on the problem. After trying two other phones and discovering it was possible to call out, but incoming calls still did not make the phone ring, housekeeping put a call in for the telephone expert. When he came and shared his superior wisdom, he unwrapped a brand new instrument, mumbled something about these being cheap trash, and installed a phone that actually worked.

There was a machine that pumped leg pouches to encourage circulation and prevent clots. On the second day it stopped working. Donna noticed this and told the nurse, but nothing happened. Since we were there for just a case as this, we made sure that it was finally fixed.

The nurses all were very sweet and caring-even Sergio and Florante, her male nurses. They assured Barbara that when she need a Demerol shot she only needed to push the call button. You may have already guessed that that was not working either. Again my presence helped to cure the problem post haste. It seems the cord was not plugged into the wall. The connection was similar to the kind of connectors that a monitor uses to talk to the computer. And it was barely fitting in its connection junction. After that, every time she wanted to call the nurse, I had to look above the door in the hallway to make sure the light was lit.

Over her knee, with its 18 staples (yes, I counted) there was another pouch through which ice water was pumped to minimize the swelling. Then a hospital gofer came to install the bar over the bed with the dangling triangle so Barbara could pull herself up when she tended to slip down toward the foot of the bed. He had leaned some of the poles of this contraption against the bed, and one of them fell to the floor. But instead of hitting the floor with a clang, it struck the ice water pump at the exact point where the hose is attached, broke the hose and spilled water all over the floor. I now see why so very many towels are used in the hospital. He grabbed about four or five of them and just tossed them in the puddle. Providence made sure that another machine was readily available, and eventually the pump and the bar were successfully installed.

Just imagine: this was all during one brief hospital stay!

Under the knife

2010-11-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

I used to be in awe of my mother who experienced so many major surgeries. She even "died" on the operating table once. In that moment of our surgical history, death was determined from the time the heart stopped beating. That is how she "died". With a shot of adrenalin directly into the heart muscle, it began beating again. The extra drama of the event was the fact that the needle, when withdrawn, was missing the tip. To her final dying day we suppose she carried that tiny piece of surgical steel all her life.

Well I guess we have learned a lot more about measuring death, and a lot more about surgery too in the seventy years since then. Now we don't face surgery with the same fear that used to dominate. My mind is wandering this direction because of my sweet wife's impending surgery come Monday morning. She is having her second knee replacement. She will then have two bionic knees, and perhaps be able to run circles around me. She's not particularly interested in running circles, but in removing the constant, and increasingly excruciating pain that every step gives her just now.

On the other knee she toughed it out to finish PT in just three weeks. When she could bend her knee 100% her therapist told her to get out. "I don't want to see her again." Others in her group were congratulating themselves for the progress they had made in 3 months. Barbara felt embarrassment at her unusual success because she necessarily made the others envious. Now she expects to do the same work and get the same results. I hope she is right. But at least this means she will enter the surgical theater with a positive attitude, and I know that goes a long way.

We have both experienced problems with our hospital care givers, and so I am planning to hover over her with TLC. I am already planning to smuggle in some real food, as well as make sure they are giving her the pain medication the doctor ordered.

Our daughter made the final move to Lake Havasu today--in fact as I write these words. After unloading the final shipment of household goods, she plans to return Monday to sleep on our couch and help me in my hovering project. She is a wonderful daughter, and genuinely compassionate. She may do a better job than I, but I will give it my best effort.

Since my wife will be the only thing on my mind, I'm sure that will be the subject of my next post, so if you are interested, stay tuned. If not, please be patient until I return to some other strange recollection or offbeat musing.

Smoking

2010-11-10T23:32:00.000-08:00

Did you know that tobacco was the first successful commercial product of the settlers in the new world? It was the Plymouth Company of England that financed ships that populated the new world, and they expected a saleable product to export in return. Turns out that they were all failures until the Indians taught them how to grow tobacco.

We've come a long way since then. I'm old enough to remember smoking ads on the radio, then later on TV. I remember the weekly "Lucky Strike Hit Parade", a top radio show that performed the top ten selling recordings for the week. They featured great singers to perform the most popular songs in the nation. This was sponsored by a tobacco company who manufactured "Lucky Strike" cigarettes. I remember how every movie that employed the most popular movie stars featured them as heavy smokers. In fact the drama of lighting up and taking a long drag formed important scenes in almost every one of them.

Then came the report of the Surgeon General of the United States that declared the link between smoking and lung cancer. An elder in our church quit his habit about that time, and when I asked him, he said he did not quit because of the report of the Surgeon General. He said that he discovered that tobacco had a grip on him. He said that it was controlling him, instead of the other way around. His conscience bothered him about being a slave to anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the climate began to change at that time. That was long ago, but I am old enough to remember all this. Peer pressure usually got teen started because they wanted to be cool. Our club was called the "Meridians" and we thought we were extra cool because instead of smoking cigarettes we each had a pipe. I also remember the night I tried a hunk of chaw (chewing tobacco). It filled my mouth with a sweet juice that seemed to draw an extra flow of saliva, and before I could get outside to spit I had swallowed a lump. I was so sick my face must have been green. That was the last time I ever put tobacco in my mouth. Well there was one other time. I smuggled a cigarette from my mom's purse so Barbara could see what she was missing. She hacked and gagged (as I knew she would), and her curiosity was more than satisfied.

Now I hear that the legislature of California is considering banning smoking from any public place--indoors or out. It is now cool NOT to smoke. Yes sir, we have come a long way.

I actually heard my Urologist say that I had a beautiful bladder. He explained that smoking actually scars the lining of one's bladder, and I do not smoke. So when he inserted a catheter camera into me, he felt compelled to remark about my "beautiful" bladder. You may think this is weird. But my doctor is a bit weird.

The Best Start

2010-11-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently died, and at the viewing (I hate this mawkish tradition) I was talking with a girl who cared rather deeply for my friend. She was telling him during his last days that he was going to be a grandfather. She was comforting and encouraging him as best she could. The problem is: his son, who is soon to be a father, isn't married. Apparently this girl did not have a clue that this might be a problem. I know for me the news was a grief. This boy only has seasonal work, and I don't even know if he plans to marry the girl. If I were that soon-to-be-grandpa, this news would have disquieted my soul. What she wanted to convey was, "Isn't it a joy to know that your progeny is proceeding to another generation." But I would have heard her say, "Your son is engaging in fornication. Isn't that wonderful?"

Then I picked up the paper only to see a headline that declared, "72% of black babies born to unwed mothers". We used to derisively call them bastards. But that was unfair. The child is the only innocent party in this type of procreation. These young parents are simply reflecting the style of our media role models. When movie stars and sport celebrities unashamedly announce the arrival of a new bastard, we do not wag our fingers to shame, but relish the "happy" news!

Raising my voice against the praise of lasciviousness makes me the bad guy. Of course my opinion is quickly dismissed as passé, and if I am excused for holding this archaic opinion it is only because I am patronized as an old duck with strange beliefs. What has happened to my culture is called the evolution of social sin. So what is it that separates our sexual practices from that of a pack of dogs? Please refresh my memory.

It's not just that we believe in marriage (and have enjoyed the institution for 52 years). I'm not just saying, "I think my style is better than yours." It's what God had in mind when he created Adam and Eve. The apostle Paul tells us that marriage is an imitation of the loving relationship that exists between Christ and His church. Do you have to have Christian convictions about marriage to believe that bringing children into the world and helping them get a start in life is best done by a team of husband and wife? Or is it simply that so many people have had terrible home lives that they can no longer believe this? On one hand I want to rebuke my culture, but instead I think I should weep for it. Oh God, give us more Christian homes for an exemplary footnote to what we preach!

October 31

2010-11-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to share my thoughts all week, and rather than let another Sunday pass before I make some random comments about October 31, I felt compelled to say something, even if it is not as elegant as I would like.

I am in an isolated (and insulated?) minority, because this date means "Reformation Day" to me.

Grocery markets enjoy an influx of business for Thanksgiving, but other than that it seems to escape the glut of commercialism that burdens the other holidays. Now we find Halloween rivaling all other holidays (besides Christmas, of course) for it's commercial appeal. Horror movie DVDs, candy, costumes and frightening lawn decorations are proliferating wildly in my long experience on earth. Here in Lakewood we even have a store that is named simply, "Halloween". For weeks they have paid some out of work college kid to wear a costume and swing an arrow sign with the name of this store. He stood at the corner of Lakewood and Candlewood, gesturing toward the store. The great theme parks went to great expense to hire more of these enterprising college kids to spook the wits out of the teenagers who venture there.

At least 99 people out of a hundred (probably a lot more) will tell you October 31 is Halloween. But I say it is Reformation Day! It is the eve of All Saints Day, and so it was called "hallowed even" which eventually slurred into "Halloween".

It was on that day back in 1517 that Dr. Martin Luther challenged clerical scholars to debate several propositions, all of which questioned common practices in the church. They were called "theses" and there were 95 of them. The bulletin board for posting such academic challenges was the great wooden door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg. But because God had providentially prepared for it, this activity began a political, religious and social firestorm that has not yet fully subsided.

There was general unrest in the social milieu just waiting for an excuse to rebel against the politial authority of the church. There were other Bible scholars who also realized that the Bible clearly teaches salvation by grace alone. It is the gift of God, and can never be earned by works, and is never dispensed by the church. Luther was a tenacious and courageous spirit like no other of his time. Someone local just happened to be present, who translated the theses from the academic Latin into the common German of the people of Wittenberg. God further provided the invention of Caxton's printing press just in time to print and distribute these 95 theses far and wide before Luther was even aware of it.

So last Sunday, before sweet little children were committing extortion ("trick or treat"), we were being lifted into glory by the Holy Spirit, speaking clearly in Scripture. He was pointing us to Jesus, as is His promised practice. Pastor Dan Overduin read Jeremiah 5, which is about God looking for a real man of true integrity, and finding none. He developed this theme just far enough for us all to get the point that none of us can fill the role. Every man falls pitifully short. All have sinned.

Pastor Dan took us to Jeremiah 31 where the Lord promises a new covenant in which He will change the hearts of His people, call them His own, and forgive their sins. Then he showed us Jeremiah 23 where God promised a descendant of king David would be a righteous "Branch", and His name would be, The Lord our Righteousness". This is our Jesus, who is set forth in the New Testament as being in the lineage of David, and as being the righteous One who takes away our sin.

As we were being thrilled by seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the world outside our door was preparing for ghoulish foolishness.

I wish they could all see my loviing Savior instead of what they are doing.

Pondering Technology

2010-11-04T23:06:00.000-07:00

Since a very good friend of ours gave me a gift card for the Olive Garden restaurant for my birthday, we decided to use it tonight. After buckling up in our air conditioned car, we fired up the Garmin GPS locator. We asked it for Italian food, and sure enough, there was the Olive Garden. Punching "Go" we were given explicit directions by a pleasant female voice.

We've had fun musing about sarcastic versions of the GPS (maybe someone has already invented it?) or a voice with a New York accent and attitude. Your imagination can go far with this.

We easily found the eatery, and had a great meal. I discovered Venetian Apricot Chicken which was offered with veggies and cost me only 380 calories. However the potato and sausage soup added another 170. Nevertheless I kept within a weight loss limit of calories today. Barbara, not feeling very imaginative or adventuresome today, enjoyed a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, tomatoes and olives. She didn't eat much of it, but it makes a great breakfast (or lunch).

But it is the GPS that got me thinking. The lady knows where the restaurant is located, and tells us just how to get there. Never mind that we lost satellite reception twice, briefly. I'm still in awe of the technology that is represented by this little metal box.

Then I remembered Sputnik in October of 1957. It was only 23 inches in diameter and orbited the earth every hour and a half or so. I actually could see it from my back yard in the city. If one looked for it at dusk, when the sun was just below the horizon, he could see the silver dot slowly moving across the sky. Radio news let us monitor the heartbeat of Lika, the dog that gave her all to be the first animal to orbit the globe. I remember thinking, "That is a great trick, but what a waste of money and resources just to be the first in space. Of what possible practical use could this ever be to mankind. It is just a political chest-thumping venture of the Soviets."

I could never have guessed!

Physician falibility

2010-11-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

When we were children we worshipped doctors as gods, and they never got over it. Pardon the borrowing of terminology from an old quip about cats. The older we get (and we are really getting old), we are recognizing that doctors are real people, and people are often mistaken. When my doctor tells me to jump, I no longer ask "How high?" Now I say, "Not until you tell me why." Well, all that verbiage is just to give you a little attitude background for the brief story I want to tell.

Barbara has voluntary surgery coming November 15 to replace her other knee. Kaiser will not let her do this until she takes all kinds of tests and quits most of her pills and takes a class to prepare her for the surgery. That sounds like a good idea, but she has already been through this routine once for her right knee, and she recovered faster than anyone else who was in her physical therapy group. She thinks she knows what to expect. But you know that bureaucracy insists on herding everyone through the same hoops, even though each case is different from the others.

She doesn't mind most of the stuff they have demanded, but it becomes very time consuming.

Today her primary care physician doubled her prescription for a certain drug that will lower her blood pressure. She thinks Barbara has high blood pressure and that makes her a poor candidate for surgery. I was there to tell her that I thought she was making her judgment on too little evidence because whenever she tries the meter at home she has rather low or at least normal blood pressure (120/60 and less).

Actually we had the preliminary discussion about this the last time Barbara saw this doctor. When we assured her that Barbara's blood pressure was low or average, she immediately assumed that our monitor was defective. She asked us to bring it into the office so it could be checked. That seemed like a good idea to us, so that is what we did today.

Her medical assistant tried the office meter and knew it was false because it gave a pulse rate of 140 when by the MA's own count her pulse agreed with the portable meter we brought to the office (80). So she tried the office meter once again, and this time instead of giving us a reading, it said "E 11). She pulled out the code chart and found that E 11 said, "Internal error". She trusted the portable meter we had brought to the office and had to report the office meter as broken.

Now the doctor is trying to tell us that Barbara has high blood pressure by using a monitor that isn't working. I thought that was humorously ironic! But the doctor still likes to assume that posture of a god, dictating terms to her surf.

Now we've learned to trust the Great Physician, whose providential hands direct the fallible physician.

Garden spook

2010-10-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

Our garden is very limited in tillable soil. Most of the back yard is cemented patio. There are two circles of soil, edged with brick, that have yielded almost all of our produce this year.

One of these circles now contains a jungle of tomato greens. There are a few green tomatoes still struggling to turn color, but at this point in the season it seems to me that we need to pull out these shrubs. The Romas were left to spread on the ground, and they did this with a vengeance.

The fauna of this region include a calculatedly diminishing population of snails, grasshoppers (both small and green and very large and brown), and some mature garden spiders. Just the other day, however, I started to reach into the heart of this jungle when I heard a decidedly threatening hiss or buzz. I quickly withdrew my hand, and began to wonder whence this spooky sound emanated.

At first I thought a Farrel cat might be down there, but quickly dismissed this idea. For one thing there was not enough room in that exact location without him making some rustling escape. It could have been a nasty opossum, but I haven't ever seen one around our new home. Then I though of a gigantic mutated killer spider, but I immediately realized that was my bizarrely dark imagination overworking. But then I was puzzled. The only realistic answer I gave myself was that it must be a noise made by the grandpa grasshopper. Have you ever experienced such a thing?

Birds, part 2

2010-10-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

It is only fair to tell you that the former post does not reflect our total experience with birds. We also have birds around our house, and they are more friendly. We have (had?) a hummingbird feeding from our front porch. At least we used to have one. I think I made a batch of glucose that was extra rich on our first experiment. When our bird discovered it he became voracious until it was gone. You may say it was more than one, and you may be right. But those cute little beasts are very territorial, and it is just as likely that all other birds were frightened off by his intimidation. You know bullying takes place among birds too.

I have discovered that it is no compliment to tell someone that he eats like a bird. If you care to insult a glutton, maybe you want to say that, but those babies really know how to chow down. When he drained our feeder of all the liquid, I quickly refilled it with a more conservative dose of glucose. We haven't seen him since then. It's possible that he died, but it seems more likely that he got used to the "candy" I put out the first time and he is boycotting the new batch.

In our back yard we have a conventional feeder with six holes to forage for the seeds. It's fun to watch when I first mount the feeder because they really go berserk. They have no daintier appetite than the hummingbirds. You're going to ask me what kind of birds, and I frankly don't know. They are mostly grey, but some of them have a little dusting of ruby feathers in the head. I figure whatever variety they are, it is the males with the color. Isn't it always the case that it is the men who must dress with class if they want to get the woman they crave? But we were talking about birds, weren't we.

When I ride my exercise bike,the birds gather on the power lines above me and stare. I can hear them thinking, "Okay, Buddie. Hurry up and finish so we can get a meal!" Every now and then a very hungry dude will grab a few seeds anyway.

We even set out a second feeder. It's much smaller and lower to the ground. The birds never eat from this one. I was concerned that the seed might mildew or rot, so I poured them out into the open feeder, and they were promptly devoured. You don't suppose that feral cat lurks for them at the more accessible feeder, do you? Nah. They sometimes come to the ground to eat fallen seeds. I'm sure the cat spooks the birds, but he can't be in our yard constantly.

But these birds (finches? wrens?) do not meet in convention as the pigeons mentioned in the former post. I'm not afraid for gang activity here. Nor do they seem to be plotting a nefarious scheme of terrorism. Instead, they (and my thinning hair) remind me of Matthew 10:29-31.

The Birds

2010-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

There is a corner near our house where birds congregate. It is an intersection over which lights are suspended by corner poles with arms that reach out over the intersection. There must be 8 of these arms, and on at least two of them are perched a dozen or more pigeons. They seem to follow some strict code of order because they are spaced about six inches apart, all facing the same direction. They never randomly disperse themselves, but seem to prefer crowding onto one or two of these perches. A few stragglers are seen on other poles, but by far the main concentration is found on two of these poles/perches. The stragglers appear to be suffering a shunning discipline for some offense to the flock.

Are they attracted by electrical vibes that create an ornithological comfort zone? After all many creatures in the animal kingdom are super-sensitive to stuff of which we are not aware: magnetic poles, impending earthquakes, supersonic sounds for example.

Are they merely waiting to scavenge after careless diners at the nearby Weinerschnitzel stand? I even consulted a blog about pigeons and problems that develop from citizens attracting flocks by feeding them in the back yard. It is definitely not courteous to neighbors who would like to picnic next door.

Are they competing with one another to see who can splatter the most moving targets below? I guess we all know that it happens!

Most of the obvious answers seem to be eliminated by the fact that they do not perch on light standards that are identical to these but located at other intersections.

If people were to congregate in similar droves at the intersection they would probably be arrested for loitering. They would poise a threat to patrons of the three gas stations on opposing corners. Most of us would suspect some kind of gang activity and take our business elsewhere. But these birds seem to hang out with impunity. I think they are planning some terrorist act. Yes, I remember Hitchcock's classic movie. Now I'm sure this will play out like a Stephen King scenario. Beware of the perching, gawking pigeons. They may be agents of him who is the prince of the power of the air.

Actually it is not fanciful to paraphrase Scripture by saying, a pigeon does not perch without your Father in heaven.

Opinions about truth

2010-10-17T14:53:00.000-07:00

I remember a cartoon where two teen-agers are sprawled on the floor with an open Bible in front of them and pencils in hand. Apparently the parent just entered the room, and the kids explain, "We already know what we believe on the subject, but we are looking for proof texts." Isn't that the trouble with far too much of our Christian knowledge? It's a tad blatant in these kids. We adults have learned to be much more subtle.

I can recall a minister who was strong on man's autonomous free will, being confronted with Romans 9 simply said, "Oh that's a Presbyterian text."

And speaking of predestination, I can say I have found that doctrine relatively easy to prove from Scripture, and I have used it to beat fellow Christians over the head for the fun of proving them wrong. I know I have a gut reaction to revival hymns like "Softly and Tenderly" when it says, "Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading, Pleading for you and for me?" Jesus is the sovereign Lord. He is the God who has predestined our coming to Himself (John 6:37).

And yet I still believe it is better to let Scripture modify my theology rather than have my theology modify Scripture. Of course there is an important place for the analogy of Scripture to help us understand any isolated text. If we are reading a text that seems to flatly contradict a well documented truth of Scripture, we need to go back and read it again, asking God to show us how we fouled up the exegesis.

I guess what I have in mind is the idea of the doctrine of predestination fostering in me the notion that Jesus does not plead with sinners to come home. When I first grasped the doctrine as biblical, my concept of God briefly shifted from a loving, caring God to something akin to a giant cosmic computer, cold and calculating. A little more reading of the Bible helped me see that our God does indeed have everything planned, and that nothing can happen outside of that plan. This is a good thing. But the Bible also shows God with a loving heart, making an emotional plea for sinners to repent. "Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 18:31) And we are cast in the role of Jesus pleading when we are told, "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." (II Corinthians 5:20) Dear friend, there is emotion in that text and I for one do not want to forget it. God does care, and He does beg sinners to be reconciled to Him.

Hero to goat

2010-10-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Watching the playoffs, I felt so bad for the second baseman who made three errors in the same inning. That's enough to be engraved in the record books, but who wants to be remembered that way? My memory took me back to my baseball days once again. I was going to say "glory days", but there were far more ignominious shame days. Like the time I went from hero to goat in about 20 minutes.

We were facing a "junk" pitcher and my team preferred fast balls. I was more intimidated by fast balls, however, and seemed to have little trouble hitting curves and other squiggly things. Well, I did hit his squiggly thing into right field and it was tailing away from the fielder, so I made it to second base. I had knocked in a couple runs and my team made a lot of noise for me. It felt great to be a hero. That doesn't happen very much in the average Joe's life, you know. The next half inning I was playing left field when the other team loaded the bases and this buff looking black kid came to the plate. My center fielder was well experienced in the league, and apparently he knew something about this kid because he beckoned me to move back. I did move back several steps. He kept motioning me to move back, but I felt I was too deep already, and I hoped to be able to catch a lazy fly ball over the infield, rather than allow it to fall in which would let them score one or two runs. Then it happened. This black kid (I wish I knew his name because it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he had made it to the majors) crushed the ball and it was heading my direction. That solid sounding bat immediately tells the outfielder that he better go back for the fly. As my perspective saw the ball rising higher and higher I knew that meant that it would be way over my head by the time it reached my location. I turned my back on the infield and ran top speed, hoping to make one of those circus catches you see on baseball replays. It was a vain hope. We were playing on a field that was built adjacent to another field so that our left field melded into the right field of the other diamond. This ball landed about shortstop position on the other field and one hopped to the fence. By the time I retrieved the ball and tossed it to the relay man, all four runs scored. When the inning was finally over and I came to the bench, not a soul spoke to me. Hero to goat in 20 minutes!

Our team was Southern Pacific Railroad, and our league was dubbed an "industrial league". I'm not sure what that meant, but I think you would call it semi-pro. They tell me that some guy on this team was signed by a major league scout the year before. I had the dubious privilege to be low man on a good roster. I was what you call a utility player. I usually played second, third or outfield. Maybe I played a little short, but not much.

I remember the game when they needed me to play third. That is not my favorite position in hardball. It really is the HOT corner. Early in the game someone hit a scorcher right at me. I'm afraid I looked bad because I turned my head. After all I didn't want to mar my beautiful face. But my glove snared the ball from the ground and I threw him out. A couple innings later here comes another threatening grounder. Again I turned my head, but my hands handled that one too. Once again a nasty ground ball came bounding my direction. Once again I turned my head, but this time the ball skipped instead of taking its expected bounce and passed right between my ankles. I heard the crowd moan in unison, and I cringed. I never looked good at the position, but I was getting the job done up to that point. Now I really looked bad.

I remember when I played American Legion Baseball I made the last out of the season, and the coach cried.

My wife talks as though I was a great ball player, but it seems as though all I can remember is the gaffs. It wasn't a sterling career.

Boom!

2010-10-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

There was panic-or at least deep concern-in the city of San Pedro this week when an explosion was reported somewhere in the complex of the Clarion Hotel. The police were called. A car in the parking structure was discovered with its glass broken out and a hole in the door. Police called the bomb squad, and because of the ever-present thought of terrorism, the hotel was evacuated. In fact several nearby buildings were evacuated and the main street that runs through San Pedro, Gaffey St., was closed down for a few blocks. The bomb squad sent their robot to investigate, and when they had determined that there were no other bombs in the car, they took a closer look. They determined that the vandalized auto was unrelated to the explosion. While owners were away someone had broken into the car and rifled through it. But it was only discovered now because of the bomb scare. At some point it was determined that someone had set off an M-80 (a giant firecracker) in the parking structure which amplified the noise. The residents were allowed to return and the street was reopened. Several of the displaced families were actually in town awaiting to embark for a Mexican cruise (on the same ship which recently hosted us on the same cruise route). A bus came to transport them to the loading dock.

The whole incident jarred my memory bank. When I was a naughty teen I dropped an M-80 into the mail slot of an apartment building, and I remember that the noise echoed in the hall to the insidious delight of this teen boy. Boys like to blow thing up, you know. Only later did I think about the human effects and hoped that I wouldn't read about a heart attack at that address.

Religion, sweet and innocuous

2010-10-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read about the blessing of the animals. In honor of St. Francis of Assisi (who spent much time showing kindness to animals) there is an annual blessing of the animals. Bring your horse to church, and he will never throw you again. What self-respecting atheist could find objection to something so innocent as blessing the animals? Surely this is not the religious activity that makes activists scream about separation of church and state. The event was held at Marine Stadium in Marine Vista Park, and no less than eleven clergy persons from various churches were on hand to convey those blessings. Cats, rabbits, dogs, a boa, a miniature horse, a bobcat, and a chinchilla all were there to benefit from religious silliness at the expense of the belittling image of religion that was thereby reinforced. Can you imagine the offense and outrage if a real Christian stood up to quote the apostle Peter who referred to "natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed"?

I thought I was finished shaking my head in disgust at the embarrassing things that are done in the name of "religion" when I picked up this morning's paper to see an article about the hundreds of people who gathered in Huntington Beach for the "Blessing of the Waves"! The surfing priest was quoted as saying, "We find that the ocean can bring people of all faiths together." How sweet is that? This ecumenism casts a very wide net. There were representatives there from the Roman Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Islamic and (get this) Zoroastrian faiths present. The estimate was that this event attracted 3,000 people.

While this was happening at the beach just a little south of us, we sat in church, hearing a simple message of how God is calling us to buy wine and milk without money in 55th chapter of Isaiah, and how Jesus fulfilled that promise. He said "If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." The rich blessing that Jesus alone can convey is not for animals or waves, but for poor lost sinners who repent and look to Him for grace. How sad that there were only a couple hundred there instead of the 3 thousand who are attracted to the surf and the tomfoolery that took place.

God always blesses his animals and gives His surf for the pleasure of the just and the unjust alike. Clergymen add nothing to the wonder of His creation by "blessing" it.

A small cultural aggravation

2010-09-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

Last month I received notice from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that it was time to renew my driver license. I had already done this the automatic method twice. So this time a written test is required. I remember the common sense nature of the questions they ask, but I obtained a book anyway. I immediately called for an appointment. This is a convenience that DMV provides so that I need not stand in that horrendous line the curls around the building every day. The soonest I was able to obtain an appointment was six week hence. I took it. Yesterday that day arrived and though I almost had forgotten my appointment, I arrived at the office 45 minutes early so as to have a little time to cram while waiting. But they took me early. I must say I was feeling rather smug when I stepped on the red carpet (yes, they actually have a red carpet for those who have made an appointment). While the other line curled down to the horizon (well, almost), here I was getting attention. But I soon found that this was a very special day--the computers were down! I don't mean the computers at the local office, but the DMV throughout the state of California. They weren't quite sure how to handle the situation. They did give me a vision exam, and someone even pointed me into the testing room. I breezed through the exam of obvious questions like an educated man being insulted with common sense questions, and I failed. What!? How could I fail that simple test. Boy am I embarrassed! After waiting for a while they sent me home, telling me to come back the next day with my paperwork in my hand.

Today I awakened a little after six, my sweet wife prodding me. After a shower and a little bit of cereal I was off to beat the crowd before the office opened. Okay, so much for that Idea. There was the line curling back toward the door after reaching to the end of the building. Couldn't I butt in front because I had made a reservation? I looked and found the red carpet conspicuously empty and all the people in line were headed for the only window that was open. It was labeled "appointments" but all personnel were obviously ignoring it. I dutifully waited for 65 minutes to get to the window. I was honestly thankful that my arthritis was at its minimal discomfort level, otherwise I am not sure I could have survived the hour standing in line. The next holding tank was a room with lunch room chairs and I could now sit. Everyone waited until a computer voice called his number "F014 now being served at window number one". Bingo! That's me. My thumb print was electrically recorded, my eyes tested (even though that had been done yesterday already). Now I paid my $31 fee, and I was qualified to wait in the next line to have my picture taken. Now I am thinking I understand why driver license photos are notoriously lousy. By the time the potential driver arrives at the camera he feels that he has been dragged through a keyhole, and smiling is the last thing he thinks of doing. I was determined to fool them this time. I remembered to smile and I ruined the whole game.

Next it was the written test again. Another line. The guy at the window wanted to know when I had taken the failed test. I told him "Yesterday." "But the receipt has today's date." I told him that I was here yesterday when the computers were down, and nobody knew what he was doing. "That's not very nice to say." "Well, okay, some people didn't know what they were doing, because other people were telling them what to do. I heard them. Somehow I got sent here to take the test without paying my fee." Now I was wondering if my unkind remarks were going to prejudice this tester when I brought the test back. No, I'm sure it doesn't work like that. But I had better spend a little more time with these "obvious" questions than I did yesterday. I only missed one of the common sense questions. So now I have a temporary license that will sustain me until the new one arrives in the mail. Wait, I already have a valid license until my birthday, October 21. Wait again! The way bureaucracy moves, I had better hold on to this temporary license because my valid license may expire before I see the new one in the mail. Making an appointment doesn't always work. Instead of wasting one morning I wasted two mornings because I had made an appointment on the fated day the computers were down. I remember George Carlin saying, "The computers are down? Awwwwww. Let's cheer them up!"

More Cruise ramblings

2010-09-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be so nice to see Mexico and get a feel for the people and the region. When we disembarked in Puerto Vayarta, we were immediately bombarded with stall after stall of tourist items. Hats here, jewelry there, serapes and skirts and blouses, trinkets of every kind. At least they were not "made in China". But the path was paved with red brick, and the entire trail was obviously designed to attract the Yankee dollar. Since we were in the harbor, we had at least 15 propositions to take us for a water taxi, tour, glass bottom boat ride, et al. It suddenly occurred to me that we were seeing nothing of the real culture of Mexico. We could have been in Tijuana or on a Hollywood sound stage for that matter. I suppose an argument could be made that this was part of the culture--especially in places like Puerto Vayarta which so heavily relies on the tourist trade. And we did see the beautiful geography of our ports of call.

We ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant (third stall from the left) which served excellent food. We both tried fish tacos for the first time. I have often heard that they were delicious and that I ought to try them, but we never got around to it until now. Yes, and by the way, they were great. But I was most impressed by the large wooden bowl with many internal bowls of salsa. They were arranged in order by the degree of "caliente" ascribed to each. We ate more than we should (at least I did), and went back to the ship for dinner!

Oh, by the way, I have now lost four of the six pounds I gained during the cruise. I don't want to be called "Rotund Rollie".

Cruising the Mexican Riviera

2010-09-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Well we were not dancing (though many others were), nor did we climb the rock wall (but some enterprising 89 yr old did), but we were there aboard the Mariner of the Seas (Royal Caribbean) for 7 days. It is overwhelmingly large. When it was built it was the largest RC cruise ship afloat. One of the comedians quipped that it was like a floating city. "In fact I heard that on deck 4 there is a bad neighborhood." Just coincidentally the casino was on deck 4.

There were 14 decks in all, counting the wedding chapel way up on top. My favorite line did not come from a stage performer at all. When we were at the photo department, Barbara got out of the wheelchair (yes, she needed it for all the walking both aboard ship and when we were ashore) and stood at the counter. Since there was a lot of foot traffic just then, I decided to move the chair to a more convenient location. Now we had saved a banana from breakfast in case we needed a snack later (now that is funny). She had left the banana on the chair, and as I walked the chair to a less congested area, a female Brit, with distinctive accent, said, "Are you taking your banana for a walk?"

So we gorged ourselves with an elaborate breakfast buffet every morning. Everything from custom made omelets to a plethora of fruits to biscuits and gravy, pastries, corned beef hash, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs (with or without herbs) oatmeal, grits, etc., etc. I tried to kid myself that I would make up for my gluttony by pushing Barbara all over creation in her wheelchair. I gained about 6 pounds in that week. (But I have lost 3 of those pounds since we have returned.) Of course the assigned dining room was like a 5 star restaurant every night. When lobster night finally came, both Barbara and I had two of them. One night, when I complained that the asparagus was tough, the waiter brought me a plate full of better stalks. I wasn't going to say anything, but they come around and ask how the meal was. I just told him. When Barbara had a tough steak, the waiter wanted to bring another complete entree, but she was behaving herself with much more conservative cuisine resistance and insisted that she had had enough to eat. She only gained 3 pounds, and if you have ever gone cruising you know that is very conservative.

Stay tuned for more about the ship, and some impressions of the Mexican Riviera in the next post.

Patriot Day

2010-09-11T20:56:00.001-07:00

I hope to see it printed on the calendar that way soon. September 11, 2001 is a memorable day, a life-changing day. America lost it's naivete on that day. Organized baseball suddenly realized they were playing a boy's game, and maybe they should give it up as too trivial in a new-found sense of sobriety. I'm glad they didn't, but I am equally glad they began the new tradition of singing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch as well. And somehow it seems when I am watching a Yankee game, these cynical New Yorkers have grown much taller in patriotism and you can sense it when that 7th inning vocal is belted out. Have you heard the singing cop sing it? You really get the feeling that he means every word. Yes, we lost our innocence, but the new wave of patriotism that has erupted is a healthy response to the ugly attack that has brought war to our own continent.

Here in Lakewood, there was a Patriot Day Concert featuring the 300th Army Band. The appropriate dignitaries were present, and a country western singer belted out typical heartland brand patriotism. It was a great celebration of the American spirit. There was even a prayer offered, but it was offered to a god who apparently is not the God of the bible, nor the God who promises to hear prayers offered in Jesus' name. Political correctness dictates that public prayers be innocuous and generic, but has not yet extinguished the idea of prayer altogether.

Three thousand miles away there is a pastor of a tiny church who has gained international attention by threatening to burn a copy of the Quran. It seems at this juncture, that he has had a sign from God that made him cancel (or postpone) his plan. He doesn't get it. I would hope that his "sign" from God was the simple instructions of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute and spitefully use us.

On the other hand, I find it thought provoking that Muslims on the other side of the world took this occasion to burn American flags, beating their clubs on the ground or raising their fists and chanting in cadence, "Death to America". Violence was anticipated all over the world because of this. I was wondering, would nations fear violent retaliation if somewhere there was a Muslim leader who ceremoniously burned a Bible? Would it even gain the media's attention? Can you imagine a crowd of angry Christians chanting, "Death to Turkey!"?

Watermelon

2010-09-07T09:12:00.000-07:00

I've never tried to grow watermelon before. It looked invitingly healthy as a tiny plant at the nursery. Although I was there for other things, you might say the purchase of a watermelon seedling was an impulse buy. Now you must realize that our yard is taken up with a cement patio, a gazebo and a few hedges, and consequently there is very little space for the planting of crops. Between the edge of the gazebo and the cement patio, where I had an exotic Mexican weed removed, there seemed a sufficient space to house this tiny plant. I enhanced the soil with "Black Forrest Compost" which seemed so helpful to our happy fig tree and the flourishing tomatoes. There were two stems of the nascent watermelon, which looked promising. But in a couple of days, when I inspected this baby sprout, a disgusting snail had eaten one of the stems with fatal damage. Remedial steps were taken, and the product I had chosen made quick work of the rest of the snail family.

That one stem, however, proved to be quite virile. I had no idea how far one watermelon plant would send its runners. They are under foot. They have invaded the gazebo and the yard to the distance of 20 feet or more! I was impressed. But when we left for a week in Sedona, we asked our friend, Jennifer Kooi with her children, to water our plants while we were away, and Jen's own admitted personal pledge was that nothing was going to die for lack of water on her watch. When we left there were a few tiny melons about the size of a small plum. "How cute" I thought. And while we were away we received a report by way of Face Book that the watermelons were getting large. How large can they get in just a few days? I will be happy on my first attempt if I can grow a watermelon the size of a cantaloupe. But when we returned home we found the melon bigger than two cantaloupe. I went to the store and happened to notice that the watermelon there were all smaller than ours in the garden.

My new problem was simply, when do I know it is time to pick the thing? I went to the Internet and got conflicting advice from the "experts". Jack Harvey, our long time friend in the church, was a Nebraska farm boy. But he was no help. He said that at home they didn't plant watermelon until after barley harvest. Then when the vines began to die and subside, the whole field was populated by melons. As a boy he said they would pick one up, drop it, and then just eat the heart out of it and leave the rest. Then our friend, Fred Alexander, was passing through and he thumped the melon and checked it's belly and told me that it had plenty of water (little wonder after all the exaggerated watering it had received by Jennifer and myself) and that it was ready for harvest. Fred is a bit of a farmer from Paso Robles, so I took him at his word.

It seemed to be the logical progression of events to invite the Koois over for lunch, and ceremoniously open the watermelon for dessert. I hope the pictures tell the story.

Preaching sick

2010-09-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

I call it "preaching sickness" but most simply call it nervousness. I've been preaching the gospel for 48 years now, and I must confess I still get preaching sickness. When I am about to enter the pulpit my thoughts wander to "how can I possibly give these dear people a message from God?" Or, "I have nothing to say" or "I just can't do this!" I don't really lose that edgy feeling fully until I begin to actually preach. Then I get lost in the word of God. I am excited about the wonderful news of God's love in Jesus Christ that I find it relatively easy to flow and gush over the pulpit and into the congregation. Then (so help me this is true) I never cease to be amazed that someone is blessed by something that came out of my mouth. I have often prayed, "Lord, you can make something of nothing, therefore bless this sermon." God used a dumb ass to speak to Baalim, and it is just as miraculous that He uses me to speak to people.

But recently my sickness was more literal. On vacation in Sedona, AZ, I was asked to preach at our mission station in Cottonwood, about 25 miles away. Before Sunday dawned, I was bent over the toilet, vomiting. I felt crummy from head to toe, and weak as a kitten. But I had a responsibility to fulfill, so off we went. Barbara had to drive the car while I dozed. I leaned on the pulpit and gasped for breath as I gave it my best effort under the circumstances. When I was finished, and about to administer the Lord's Supper, I had to ask for a chair to finish. Of course I made it a point not to touch the elements for fear of spreading the plague. I sat for a while rather than greet folks at the door, but this being a small group informality was in vogue. After being chauffeured back to the resort, I crashed for the remainder of the day. I didn't have the strength to change my clothes. Strangely, the next morning I was fine, and even a bit hungry.

That reminded me of another sick preacher I witnessed in my early Christian years. Before we were married, both Barbara and I were worshipping in our OPC in Eagle Rock, CA. On certain Sundays, when our pastor was away, we had other men supply. One of our favorites was a man named Paul Lovik. He was faithful to the word, and he was positive and enthusiastic in his manner. But on the given Sunday I have in mind, during the evening service, he had to abandon the pulpit in mid-sermon, to leave the auditorium through a side door, but he barely made it before we could hear the unmistakable gaging and splattering of him puking. When he felt he was finished, he returned to the pulpit and finished the sermon. Frankly I don't remember what he was preaching about.