Anger challenge

“Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools.”

Ecclesiastes 7:9 ESV

Many times I’ve come to crossroads, as we all do. A stirring will occur in my circumstances, typically a crisis type event. Anger is easy because something or someone is going wrong in my situation.  I am so surprised that foul language, no matter how long suppressed, never seems to be far enough away. The shortest distance between peace and rage comes through a feeling of helplessness. Bad words and terrible actions can easily follow.

The stirring could come from anything, a boss, an illness, an unexpected bill, a relationship, or any other kind of setback or hindrance. The issue, whether a what or a who, challenges me. It becomes a battle, which must be fought.

Anger and/or bitterness becomes easy at this point because I perceive the issue as a threat. Threat points me at an adversary and often aims me like a weapon. Anger is a looking-over-my- shoulder, a looking-back moment. I want to attack my adversary instead of hearing and moving in the direction the Lord prefers for me. Anger tends to silence and block the voice of the Lord because it appeals to my most base self.

Following the Lord does not use anger or bitterness to travel. Following the Lord may not change anything in my issue except to free my eyes and my heart. Following the Lord easily acknowledges the failure of this world and my failure in it. However, the Lord gives the direction – to Him and toward the goals He has for me, not to satisfy sour emotions by hurting others in anger or rage.

Say my job is going badly or the management is creating suffering (happened lots). I may be stirred toward a job change, maybe not.  Either way God wants me to go will satisfy my vision and ministry in Him. Staying in a bad job might be a call to fulfill some plan I may not see, but the Lord has for that place. I can be at peace because the event is in the Lord’s hands. Leaving for a new job can be to fulfill the Lord’s plan by moving me in a direction for His purpose. Either way, the decision to come or go is to be based on my relationship with the Lord and not the emotion of the situation. 

The stirring is simply a call to get close and hear the Lord clearly. My concern can become more about what the Lord wants and where He and I are traveling together instead of what a corrupt and broken world is doing to me. 

The shift from situational to Jesus even frees me from my own mistakes by allowing the Lord to grow me in His direction. I become open to the Lord’s correction as I seek Him.  The change in focus rearranges anger and kills bitterness. Godly purpose overcomes hurt with the presence of Jesus and an intentional move toward His joy. My goal is to be stirred toward Jesus. Being stirred and moving to Jesus always creates the best outcomes. “Lord help me not to give in to anger and rage, but into you and your plan.”

My wife and I traveled to Cocoa Beach for a four day, three night vacation. The hotel bill was paid by the company who wanted us to come see their timeshare program. I should have seen the shark fin cutting the surface of the water regarding the Timeshare meeting.

I’m sure timeshare is good for someone because so many people buy them, and some people even have multiple timeshares. The timeshare program doesn’t work for me. The first hour and a half of the meeting was interesting, touring the resort, learning about the company, and all the places we could visit. Beyond that, it was an uphill struggle.

The agent absolutely declared that they were not hard sell, as they led me, many times, right around my “no” to return to their pitch. They weren’t hard sell, but they didn’t understand “no” with an explanation, “no” with an affirmation, “no” with incredulity that we were saying it again, and many other forms of “no” until I demanded to see the manager. Then I was only required to say “no” emphatically, with dramatization and clear facial expression, to the manager and the next person who was supposed to arrange for our hotel credit. All my self image of being courteous was completely exhausted, and I was facing my raw, most irritable self.

We headed out to get some lunch. We had been at the timeshare place for three hours. I was hungry and frustrated. Tona saw a restaurant on an app that looked good. I chanced upon the same one. The confirmation clinched it. We were off to Southern Charm in Cocoa Beach. It truly lived up to its name. The owner welcomed everyone as though he had personally invited them into his home. The food was fabulous.

A woman in the next table overheard some of our comments and started a conversation. She was a Christian with a beautiful relationship with Christ. Tona and I joined her and spent the next hour or two in fellowship. By the time we finished talking, we could have walked on water because we felt so light and cheered up. We found out that she was down because she was facing health issues. Only the Lord would put two frustrated, struggling people together for them to cheer each other up.

We found out that she was riding the bus and hadn’t planned to stop at Southern Charm. She pulled the bus stop wire without thinking. Our meeting had been choreographed. We also found out that her grandfather had my birthday, and her grandmother had Tona’s birthday (same birthdays, but not the same age). There were other of those “divine coincidences,” convincing us that Jesus was working on our attitude and outlook. Our outlooks and perspectives had been completely transformed. I had gone from exhausted irritability to rested and peaceful.

Faith is an eye opener. It allows us to see that we have a loving Father who is always at work for us and our healing. Sometimes He just makes a point of letting us see it so that we don’t forget when we don’t see it. Jesus models what faithfulness and loving kindness really looks like.

This post was started by a note I wrote to a friend about watching his son preach. “It was great to see your son struggling like Jacob did with God and changing in the struggle — not only that — but allowing his struggle with change to manifest Jesus to others. We are the paper on which God writes His words so that others might read of His goodness and life.” 

I have often said that I wish I could introduce others to the Jesus I know because He is generous and merciful and not all the harsh and judgmental things hurt people say. All good things in my life have come through His hands.  He removed the alcohol and many other things which consistently destroyed my life and relationships. He has given me hope in impossible places, impossible places where I put myself and where others put me. He gave me a family, a career, wonderful friends, and so much more. Then I realized — I am the paper on which God writes His words so that others might read of His goodness and life.

If you are reading the words on my life’s pages, what are you seeing? Is my life portraying the goodness of God or the meanness of Harry? I am challenged! My job isn’t to control the world around me, but to be the kind of person that Jesus is working to heal and grow in my life. 

Too sadly I sometimes find that I try to force the world and people around me to behave the way God is trying to teach me to behave, voluntarily. It is not easy for me to open myself to correction. It is much easier to see what others need to do to be the perfect person I wish I was. God says to me “Behave in a loving, truthful, honest, just way, and I respond by telling others to behave that way without hearing the correction intended for me. I apologize to you, my reader, and to all I know, for sometimes being the person I dislike most in the world, demanding of you what was meant for me and not being accountable. 

I think I would like to warn people to wear hard hats around me, as they would around a construction site. You never can tell when a board or brick will fall. Sometimes the tools are left all over the place and become trip hazards, or the support structures for the workers need shoring so they won’t fall. I think maybe I should wear a sign that says something like “If you are looking at me and expecting to see Jesus, you will be disappointed.” Then again — the fact that Jesus hasn’t given up on me and continues to faithfully work on my healing and restoration should be encouraging to any who see me. Maybe that is a sign for the back so I could wear sandwich signs everywhere I go.

Maybe I should say that I know that I’m not living up to anyone’s perfect standards, but Jesus hasn’t quit and neither have I. Maybe I should say that I’m not what I will be, but at least I’m not what I was. There are so many things I wish I could say perfectly but can’t find the right words at the right time. Maybe I should just end with, “I know I’m not perfect, and you aren’t either, but I know that Jesus loves both of us. He has a much better plan for making our lives a better place to live than we have for ourselves. Let’s walk together and find that better life in Jesus.

The newspapers, news, media of all types are full of the corona virus. Panic has ensued around the world. Businesses have dropped their hours, their services, and their employees. Travel has been diminished to a point of locking the world out and us in. The stock marked plummets like a man without a parachute. Stockers and hoarders strip the markets of daily supplies, forcing people to go without necessities in an “every person for themselves” manifestation of selfishness.

We show and easily put on display where our hearts are by our actions. Don’t touch becomes don’t greet. Social distancing becomes alienation and failure to care for one another. Responsibility in handling the possible exposure to an illness becomes an isolation, which contains elements of rejection toward others and dying compassion for other sufferers. Pastors often teach that what is in us will show when we are under stress. Is this wrong — no.

All of us suffer from the limits of humanity and the need for self. It is not that these temptations are in us or part of us, it is how we choose to face them, deal with them. We can see ourselves in scripture and choose to behave the way we wanted our Bible counterparts to behave. God is with us. We are not alone. I say, because I struggle with all of this – “I am not alone!”

The Israelites were amazing people. Their lives were filled with both miracles and terrible challenges. They left Egypt after having been rescued, miraculously by God. Soon they were at the Red Sea in a total panic. The sea before them and the Egyptian army behind, and them sandwiched right in the middle. This same pattern of miracle and crisis, rescue and disaster followed them all the way into the promised land.

The Israelites became panicked every time they hit a disaster and celebrated every time they were rescued. Somehow – they were only okay when their circumstances were okay. That is where they missed the greatest opportunity. They were looking to God for His provision only (His hand instead of His heart – as the preachers say). They had the availability of a profound relationship with God all the time, every moment of every day. They felt they couldn’t live without ________ (fill in the blank {toilet paper}). They didn’t go to God except when they had a profound need. Yet, He was there all the time, available, desiring a deeper relationship with His people.

I see myself like the Israelites in their situations. I want to write a new script. I want to seek God all the time, not just when there is trouble. Recently, before all the virus crazy, I was online looking at my finances. I was happy seeing that I was able to retire because it had seemed impossible for most of my life and career.

Quietly, inside, I felt the nudge of inner revelation. “Do you trust in the nest egg or Me?” I immediately saw that I was looking to my physical circumstances. I began thinking of all the times I was up against the wall and felt like I wouldn’t make it. I could list many of those events here, but you would be reading all day. I arrived at my old age with a nest egg and retirement because He had given it to me. I had survived innumerable catastrophes because He had carried me through so many Red Seas that I should have been convinced that puddles would part when I walked by. It would be a shame to my life and a very generous Lord to fail to trust Him now.

I have as much reason to trust Jesus as the Israelites did after their miraculous deliverance from Egypt and all the other major events of their journey. God has been as involved in my life and the lives of those around me as He was in their lives. I write this post to remind myself that I want to choose Him instead of my situations, just like I wanted the Israelites to do. I want to learn from my mistakes and theirs. God really is faithful.

God can bring a cure to any situation. However, if He does or doesn’t, I want to do what I wanted for the Israelites. I want to walk with Him and love Him because of Who He is and what He has been to me through my life. I want to appreciate Him now because He has spent my lifetime proving His love and faithfulness. As a savior and friend, He won’t fold in this crisis. I don’t want to fold toward Him. I am confident that, no matter what it looks like, I/we have not been abandoned. He is closer than our next prayer. He is still worthy of praise and thanksgiving, no matter how bad it may seem.

I recently went by the church office to joke with my pastor. I told him I was on the way to commit an act of manual labor and wanted him to talk me out of it. What I really wanted was some comfort. I’ve known the Lord a long time, but I still struggle. Sometimes I wonder if I struggle as badly as I did when I was a new believer. I don’t think so. I began my faith walk struggling with whether or not God was real and whether or not Jesus was the savior. Those questions have been answered. The current struggles are about walking forward and growing deeper.

My humanity, me, keeps getting in the way of what could be a beautiful human image of a Christian testimony and life. I’m on planet earth in my human form. Have I missed it? Am I not doing enough? And many questions just like this, many with the answer, “yes.”  God is so great that He turns those failings into comfort for me and others. My redemption becomes my testimony to Him, even though it is created completely out of my shortcomings. I provide the fertilizer. God provides and grows the flowers. God’s image of a testimony is much better. 

Recently the Lord addressed some  of this internal struggle in an image I had during a church service. The image was of God on His throne with all the glorious golden lights emanating out from Him. The light became separated into golden threads, which pierced the gulf between heaven and earth. Each thread wrapped around a believer and was tied into a knot over the believer’s heart, connecting her/him to God. I could see the thoughts and love of God pulsing through the thread and encouraging, strengthening, and giving insight to the believer’s heart. One thing that puzzled me was that, even as the thread pulled the believer ever closer to the final destination of heaven, the believer was unable to hold on to the thread. He was completely dependent on God’s intent, and God’s knot.

I believe that the Lord works with my cooperation and willingness. He uses my decisions to teach me. However, I am so tied to my own thoughts and understanding that it is easy to be on the way to heaven making mistakes all along the way. Somehow, possibly the reason I became a teacher, I want to be able to understand everything and be able to explain everything. I realize that I am often limiting my own growth because God is beyond my understanding. My need to understand is not necessarily wrong, but it can be a hindrance when trust would be the better choice. God is trustworthy.

I talk about my choosing to be a teacher. Actually that is incorrect. I was unable to get a job, and teaching was the only job which came my way. The job was as desperate for someone to fill it as I was to have it. I spent the next several years, after getting the job, doing everything I could to get out of teaching and find another job. I found I was cemented into that job. I eventually realized that God had put me there for a reason, and the job fit my heart better than the jobs I was chasing. Understanding can become a hindrance. God is trustworthy.

I will always be a step behind God’s plan because He is ahead of wherever I go. I am following Him, not the other way around. What I understand today is less than I will understand as I continue to follow Him. The Lord is taking me into the unknown each day, unknown to me, but well known to Him. My hands-free attachment to the thread of heaven is the knowledge that Jesus has done what I could and can not do with my greatest understanding and greatest effort. I trust Him because He has connected me to Himself. He has tied His salvation line to me knowing that I will be making mistakes all my life, for the rest of my life on earth. He has tied His string of salvation to me so I would not get separated or lost, knowing my humanity, but He is divine. Jesus is completely trustworthy. 

I’ve had a request to provide some information about Santa in my blog, so here goes —

Santa was originally a bishop of the Catholic church in Myra, which is now Turkey. He was orphaned at a young age and wealthy through inheritance. St. Nick was quite generous. One of the favorite stories of this time was his throwing gold through a window or dropping it down a chimney to provide a poor man with dowry money for his daughter. The money landed in a stocking hung by the chimney — creating the stocking story and tradition. 

The Catholic tradition requires a variety of miracles and other proofs before a person is considered a Saint. I know of some miraculous stories like saving sailors, but I don’t know all that went in to his becoming “Sainted.” All accounts that I’ve read indicate that he was a Christ-centered man who was extremely generous and concerned with the well-being of others – a model for the rest of us.

He had many adventures through the hands of believers after he died. Italians stole his remains and put them in a church. I believe they still have a tradition of carrying his statue to the sea once a year so he can bless the boats. William the conqueror prayed for him to bless his efforts before leaving France in 1066 to conquer England. Many churches have been dedicated to him through the years. Revolutionary Americans created St. Nicholas leagues as opposed to the St. George leagues of the loyalists in our early years. Jacksonville, Florida was named St. Nicholas Ferry for a while before it became what it is now. John Pintard started the New York historical society in 1804, naming St. Nick the patron saint of the society and of New York.

Washington Irving joined the New York historical society and wrote the Knickerbocker’s History of New York, including the St. Nick character. This was a majory influence on the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” which was published fourteen years later in 1823. 

The early 1800s were a rough time for Christmas in America. St Nick had been kicked out of the church in the 1500s through the efforts of the Puritans. Christmas had become secular. St. Nick and the traditions were still popular and hung around. Americans tended to celebrate Christmas in rowdy ways, which was a growing concern for churches and leaders. Childhood was beginning to be recognized as its own stage of life requiring more protection and consideration. Another book called the Children’s Friend was published in 1821 using St. Nick to teach good vs bad. Good gets presents, and bad gets switches. Irving, Children’s Friend, and “Twas the Night  Before Christmas” held powerful influences in returning Christmas to a family and wholesome celebration. Furthermore, the domestication of Christmas and the Oxford Movement brought caroling and Christmas songs back into the church at large. St. Nick was working for the church, even as a secular character.

Thomas Nast, a Civil War cartoonist who gave us Uncle Sam, the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant, started painting St. Nick in 1863. His first was St. Nick in the stars and stripes. Lincoln believed St. Nick was an advantage to the Union. His last St. Nick image was in 1881. By this time the modern image was nearly complete. In 1931, Coka Cola picked up St. Nick as their endorsement celebrity, making him an internationally recognized figure and solidifying his look around the world. This brought St. Nick/Santa to the modern view we have now. There is a lot more information about Santa on the internet. This was just a brief sketch regarding how we got our current Santa image. Consider the St. Nicholas Center online for more.

My personal experience of Christmas took a while to develop as well. I have the opportunity to be Santa at the Lake City Columbia County Museum. I will be there on the following dates this year: December 14, 20, and 21. Check the paper or lccchistory.com website for details. I wrote about it a year ago and suggest you consider my Christmas testimony: https://harryadventure.com/2018/12/12/a-harrable-about-christmas/

I think I’ve always been a little jealous of people who have never really experienced sickness. I grew up with allergies and asthma so strong that I missed a grading period at a time in school and was under constant medical care. Medicines and doctors have been a way of life all my life. Actually, I’m pretty fortunate that the additions of doctors and medicines haven’t caused me to miss much of life. I have been blessed, but I have learned the value of taking my medicine.

Every so often I will receive a Bible verse or two,which I take like daily medicine. I recommend the following verse for your consideration.  “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 ESV  I consider this verse as standard treatment, not excluding medical treatment, for the most common types of mental and heart strife common to man.

I have been a person prone to depression, self doubt, and other forms of negative thinking and self talk. I can truly say that Harry gets on Harry’s nerves. As a matter of fact, it is not that uncommon for me to pray for the Lord’s intervention because the twins are fighting (Harry and Harry) typically over some doubt, put off decision, procrastination, embarrassing moment or other like things and sometimes more. The Lord is an amazing mediator and often comes into these thoughts and prayers, reording and resyncing my priorities above the level of self-preoccupation in which I am usually dwelling at that time. 

In the verse I mentioned above, I highly stress the part which says “in all circumstances (everything).” I had a particularly difficult time with that. “All circumstances?” Getting fired from a job? Being too sick to take care of the things which must be done? Rejection by friends and/or family? The verse says “in,” not “for.” You can be thankful in a circumstance in which you get fired from a job, but not necessarily for getting fired. However, I could also make a case of being thankful for all things. The worse things in my life have become some of the best things in my life because the Lord got involved in redeeming them. 

I remember the Lord showing me things about thankfulness as I tried to learn about this verse. One time, I was encouraged to think of an extremely sad or unthankful moment in my life. I thought about the birth of my second child. He was born and went immediately into neonatal intensive care because his lungs weren’t completely developed. I was standing in the hospital hallway, alone, looking through two sets of windows, watching the doctors work to save my son’s life while other doctors and nurses were rushing into the recovery because my wife was hemorrhaging from the surgery. I was in a complete state of terror. I was alone. I thought I might lose one or both of them. I was young and didn’t know what to do or how to face all the problems in and related to this emergency. I was totally overwhelmed. I was not grateful. I have other examples of times when I was not a model of thankful virtue.

I stood beside my image in the memories at the hospital, going back into the feelings of despair, when the Lord suggested that I step back from my experience and consider my surroundings. I was so consumed with the feelings of the moment that I completely failed to take in the rest of the story. I had many people in the waiting room praying for my family, among them were wise people who could counsel me through this time. Beyond them were several churches who were praying for my family. There were also people who were making food and making sure that we had meals for the week. The doctors were expert and doing all they could and brought both my wife and child into good health and recovery. They are both doing quite well all these 30 – odd years later.

The image of being alone was a lie. The image of being helpless was a lie. The image of being overwhelmed was an image of my short comings, not the Lord’s or His ability through all the ones with whom He had around me. My feelings represented the size of my faith in the moment, but not the level of help and support I was receiving and had all around me at the time. It took me time to get past the moment to look back and see how big God was and how much He was doing. 

Moments like that one have taught me, in looking back and seeing the Lord, how to trust and look forward. Giving thanks can become an expression of that trust. I am thankful because, as He has always been faithful, He will continue and always will be faithful. I am thankful because the Lord’s character is one of true faithfulness and reliability. I am grateful because I am never alone and never without help. I take my medicine daily and realize more and more that there is no end to the amount of things for which I am grateful and no end to the Lord’s provision, seen and unseen.

Have you ever wondered why the obvious isn’t obvious to everyone? I recently spoke to a group of students and asked them the following questions. “Where did you get the first cigarette, snuff, chewing tobacco, vape materials, or the like? Where and with whom did you try any of those things? Where did you get a taste or interest in anything related to any type of drug or alcohol?” The answer was generally, “from friends.” I reply that people who introduce you to obviously harmful substances aren’t friends. They are enemies. But — it is not obvious to them. It is to me. I’m healed alcoholic who did a lot of extreme drinking while I was in high school. 

There are lots of things like that. It is a standard joke that all you have to do to get someone to do something, especially something bad, is to tell them not to do it. Why is that? Is it an inner rebellion which defies logic? Don’t touch the wet paint becomes an urge to see and, possibly, add a new stain on good clothes. “Warning, hot” can easily translate into blisters.

Consider all the warnings put on many of the things you buy, like irons, which warn you not to iron your clothes while wearing them. (Someone must have done that for the warning to be on the label to protect from lawsuits.) A temptation taken turns into an excuse, or series of excuses, (a lie to cover a fail) to promote the argument that the temptation was too powerful to resist, irrisistable. The excuse only works on the person telling the lie. Obvious? — not when you are the one lying.

I avoided Christianity because it was the religion of “don’ts.” Don’t drink. I did and became an alcoholic. Don’t cheat in school. I did, got caught, and faced the punishment. Don’t go to certain places where trouble rules. I did and found trouble waiting for me. It was glad to see me arrive and provided all the hardship I never wanted. The list goes on and on and on and ….. Somewhere in this list you might come across the obvious fact that the “don’ts” I hated would have kept me out of a lot of trouble, hurt, pain, and suffering. 

My parents were full of “don’ts.” Now I look back and see that they offered wisdom and an easy way out. I would have avoided trouble and found success. I would have gone straight through high school and college, started my career at twenty-three instead of thirty-four, and you can calculate the obvious benefits. Instead, I spent the intervening years wandering between troubles. Then the day arrived.

 I was focused on the “don’ts” even in the early years of my Christian faith. I had made so many mistakes that I put all my energy into stopping doing what I knew best, failure. It was stressful to say the least. It was like holding your hand a quarter inch from the wet paint and not going the last distance. It is so difficult to do the right thing when all your feelings are aimed in the wrong direction. My habits and inclinations were wrong and aimed in the wrong direction. My knowledge had accepted the obvious. “Don’ts” rescue from harm.

The great awakening began to arrive sometime (I don’t know when) from “don’t” to “do.” What I was leaving was not nearly as important as where I was going. You can’t plow a straight furrow while looking over your shoulder. “ Proverbs 29:18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Looking forward provides hope. Looking back provides discouragement.

Instead of “Don’t drink to excess,” I began to focus my eyes on building real friends as opposed to those who just wanted company in the direction of sorrow. “Do” build a life of giving, which creates joyful memories and accomplishments you can enjoy without cringing. All the “don’ts” had a corresponding “do.” I realized that the Lord had saved me from the “don’ts” so that I could walk, with His help, in the “do’s” that satisfy, comfort, encourage, strengthen, and so much more. The more I walk forward in the direction that Jesus leads, the less sorrow and the more help I find along the way. 

I am amazed at how long it took me to realize that walking in the “do’s” with Jesus is travel toward and with Joy, the exact opposite of the distress I imagined as an outsider. My Christian friends shrug and say, Obviously.” It wasn’t then, but it is now. Salvation and walking with Jesus is the joy that continues giving without end.  

Murder equal to lying?

-C.S. Lewis from _The Screwtape Letters_: “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

– Solomon 2:15

– 15 Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”

How do little foxes equal bears? How do cards equal murder? The key is that the basic function of life is not as humans see it. In the human view, murder is obviously worse than cards or a lie. The real key to understand the seeming discrepancy is the connection to Jesus is a critical necessity, an eternal necessity. A lie can separate us from Jesus because it is a step out of heaven and away from Jesus. The lie is getting on the pathway to murder because it is choosing the path to death. “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” James‬ ‭1:13-15‬ ‭ESV‬‬ https://www.bible.com/bible/59/jas.1.13-15.esv

Lying, in the human view of small sins, is the complete plant, including death, in seed form. It is the choice which kills because it comes from the heart and equal to the sin of murder which was within the seed when it was chosen. We know that we are growing corn when we plant a corn seed, an olive tree when we plant an olive seed. The physical is an image of the spiritual. The seed we choose/plant, is the one we will grow, physically or spiritually.

Choices toward the Lord or away from Him are complete seeds. They will bear fruit in our lives. That fruit will be good or evil according to the seed. A good plant will not bear bad fruit and vice versa. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.” James‬ ‭3:10-12‬ ‭ESV‬‬ https://www.bible.com/bible/59/jas.3.10-12.esv

Marriages often die because of a cumulative effect of small choices, the little foxes. As Lewis says, “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Marriages require an active work ethic, a constant effort to make it healthy and viable. Marriage is a concrete example of a living relationship with Jesus. “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John‬ ‭3:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬ https://www.bible.com/bible/59/jhn.3.12.esv Marriage is an example to teach us about our heavenly relationship.

The above can sound pretty hopeless to anyone who is self aware and understands how many bad choices he or she makes on a regular basis. For me, the number of bad choices (bad seed) by the end of breakfast can be daunting/intimidating. We are growing good crops and bad crops at the same time. It may be impossible to measure the seeds we’ve sown or the amounts. However, we have been given the greatest gift of all, mercy from heaven and the gift of repentance. Any bad seed in our lives can become good through repentance and forgiveness in Christ. Just like our own souls, destined for hell without the salvation of Christ, we find that all our seed are the same. As we are redeemed, our seed can be redeemed. The joy of maintaining a healthy and viable relationship with Jesus is total redemption, our selves and our seed.

The greatest testimonies I’ve ever heard or shared were horrible people turned to heavenly emissaries and terrible choices turned to producing heavenly fruit. The true joy of salvation is that it operates every day in every way because Jesus never fails and His love is beyond measure.

Do things ever just strike you and make you wonder?

I regularly run into former students. This particularly relates to former high school girls. I remember them chasing boys and being chased. Covered in the trends of the day, wallowing in the culture of their youth, warring with all the awarenesses that are coming of age. Everything relating to hair, style, looks, relationships, and occasionally school were important.

Now I’m retired. I see them out in the world beyond high school, no longer the children they were and not quite the adults they will be. They are now paying rent, some married, many with children, holding on to life with drive and commitment. They are existing in a different world than the one which surrounded them in school.

I ask. “Do you remember who you were in high school, your priorities, your dating, what crushed your heart and what lifted it to the heights?” They remember because they are not that far from it. A teacher, a class, an assignment, getting a phone, the right kind of pants and clothes, and so much more crowded their thoughts. Friends, the drama of teen life, boys and holding hands – emotions crowding out and being pushed around by various responsibilities, which were dominated by others pushing them into the responsibilities. (I accept that some of this is overgeneralized and not accurate for all.)

I ask, “Now you are the MOM (to the girls who have become parents). How do you feel about that?” The cascading waterfall of comments fall out of them. They love their baby. All that brought them joy in high school is no longer important. The health and well-being of their child is the center of their attention. They are moved and motivated by their caring position of responsibility. Their hearts are dictated by the needs of another and the other’s well being. They are searching for answers and ways to protect and train. In many ways, they are no longer the person I knew at all. They are not the center, but pushed out to the side, no longer pushed into responsibility, but chasing it.

I ask, “So what do you think about your mother, now?” The view of their own mom has changed radically, but some parts remain similar. Their mother knew more than they understood in high school, yet they still believe they know more and can do better even now. They have a plan to be something to their child and overcome the difficulties their child faces, recognizing only faintly and not realizing completely that they are retracing the exact footsteps of their mom at that point of life. The circumstances may be different as the world changes over time, but the overlapping similarities are hard to miss.

Then I ask, “Do you say to your child some of the same things your mom said to you?” “Yes” is the most common answer. Mom’s care and protect. They say caring, protecting, and correcting things like they have heard because that kind of relationship is common to all ages. You must do —-, and must not do —-, and so much more. 

Here is the fascinating thing. Though they have completely changed their outlook, perspective, and priorities, they continue to see themselves as the same person. They do not loose their core identity as they transform into the next phase of self and the next. They see themselves as always identifiably the same soul even though all things within and without have changed. How is that?

Somehow this relates to salvation in my mind. Jesus saves and enters the core of a person’s life. All the time circumstances, feelings and experience come out of that core, the “unique me” they see, the “unique me” I see. Jesus enters all phases of our life and life’s timeline from that core identity position. He is able to go into any area of our lives and heal and redeem and restore. Our entire life timeline is open. I have seen Him redeem things long in my past and destructive and turn them into productive in my present. I can see Him then and now because He accepted all of me, the total package connected to the “unique me” when I accepted Him one day in my life timeline. Jesus is God of all.