I suppose I have to do this to bring everyone up to speed. Really, I wanted to write something funny and glib this week. However, in addition to not feeling funny and glib, I know a lot of you have been concerned for Marsha and myself as our marriage has now officially ended. And I came away with some blog worthy thoughts in the process. If you don’t wish to read about it, then don’t. I certainly will not be offended. However, there is nothing bad here, no shouting or name calling, no mean language. Just a few thoughts.

          First, my GPS. If there are any bad thoughts in my head, they are for my GPS. For my GPS I will use feminine gender pronouns because my GPS has a female voice. I originally bought her about eight months ago. I don’t like the things, but sometimes they are handy. So far, just to see if she works, I used her to get to Walmart in Warsaw, Indiana and to a doctor’s office two weeks ago, also in Warsaw. Not really a challenge. She worked OK. Cleveland, however, was another matter. I know the route from Indiana to Cleveland pretty well and I knew where I was going that first night to spend the night, although I had never been there. It was just off the highway, not a problem. The GPS did fine until we were approaching the exit, but she was not advising me to get off. We had been driving for several hours and I supposed she was napping, but when I got off, she immediately began to tell me that I had gotten off at the wrong exit. Once I was headed to the motel, she became insistent that I needed to turn back. When I pulled into the parking lot, she was imploring me to turn around. I mean, she would not shut up. I had this reaction with the funeral home’s GPS in Pittsburgh years ago, but I really was turned around then. Once I got to my room, I had a long talk with the GPS, but she did the female thing and just sat there all silent and moody. The next day I put in the address for the courthouse knowing I was not going directly to the courthouse. Cleveland has some pretty neat neighborhoods and I know a lot of them and I just wanted to take the tour. I wasn’t really thinking of the GPS or that she was going to be angry when I deviated from her instructions, but boy, did she get angry. All I was hearing was ‘RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING!’ I explained there were places I wanted to revisit, but she was pretty annoyed. In fact, once I made a right hand turn on Bishop Road. As I was completing the turn, I realized that at some point in the last four years, Bishop had become a one-way street and I was turning the wrong way. The GPS, in the voice of a woman who has just had it proven that the male in her life is a total idiot, said, “You have now turned the wrong way on a one-way street.” Of course, I had to turn around, but I was laughing so hard it was hard to find a place to turn. And then, once I quit the tour, I began to follow her directions to the courthouse. I have been to this courthouse on funeral home business dozens of times, but I was in the neighborhoods and needed her help getting there. She got me to the courthouse just fine, but insisted that it was on the south side of Lakeside Avenue when it is actually on the north side. The differences between the modern buildings on the south side and the two block long, one block deep 100 year old marble Cuyahoga County Courthouse on the north side are quite striking, but she was absolutely sure, once again, that I was an idiot. Actually, I think she was stressed out. Cleveland can do that. After I left the courthouse and got back in the car and fired the GPS up again, I just hit the HOME icon. I am telling the truth, she seemed to sound relieved when she said, “Please drive to the highlighted route.” She was very pleased to get home.

          The second thing I came away with is that we live in a society that is moving toward ruin. Cuyahoga County is home to 1.3 million people. Compare that to Wabash County’s population of 33,000 people. Actually, Cuyahoga County used to be much larger. As manufacturing jobs went away the county and the city of Cleveland dwindled. Now, much of the area is in decay, both physically and morally. I got to the courthouse just after noon for a 2:30 appointment and, once I got away from the entrance, I became depressed to see how run down the building had become. On the third floor I found the room I wanted and sat down to wait.

          There are family court judges, but the divorce portion of family court is so busy that they do not use actual judges. They use magistrates. These are attorneys who have as their sole job the task of making sure all the ‘i’s have been dotted and all the ‘t’s have been crossed. We sat before the magistrate for 10 minutes of our 2:30 to 3:00 appointment. A few questions and boom, 44 years of marriage were wiped off the books. There are three magistrates covering divorces for family court in Cuyahoga County. They have 30 minute sessions all day every day. That is all they do. Process divorces. I was there two and a half hours early and it was very sad.

          But another thing I saw as I sat waiting was how filthy the place was. Built at a time when things were built to look grand, the doors had patterns on them and scroll work in the marble walls and door frames all around. Once beautiful, in 2019 you can see the caked in dirt and residue from years of neglect. Cracks in the marble look to be growing. In the time I was there no one came by to sweep floors or empty trash cans. In fact, the only maintenance/janitor type I saw was a guy standing at the security desk drinking coffee and talking to the security guard as I was coming in. Society seems to be like that everywhere. Morally corrupt and with a lack of care and compassion.

          And then, I received a lesson on change. I didn’t recognize Marsha at first when she walked up to me in the hall. She is now a blond. I had never seen that look. It didn’t look bad. It kind of looked unnatural, but I am sure that is just because I had never seen her that way. Also, she is getting remarried on the 19^th of October, which should be enough time for the divorce decree document to get to her and for them to get their marriage license. To her, this was just another step into a new life.

But the final thing I learned that day was that when people are praying for you, you can feel it. Actually, I feel it every Sunday when I preach and there is someone in the prayer room. But this was different. Hundreds of miles away in the middle of the day and still I knew that people were lifting me up. Pretty cool.

High points? No traffic problems. No car problems. Had a great breakfast on Monday morning. Passed a tornado in a field a few hundred yards away on the way home. Got to drive around Cleveland. I wasn’t a bad trip overall.

 However, it was sad. The hardest thing I have ever done. Now that it is over, though, there is a sense of stress being relieved. I feel better physically that I have in a while. This ordeal will never be fully over, but the impact is in the past, if you know what I mean. Life will go on.

 I have a very big personal day coming up next week and I intend to enjoy it. I haven’t enjoyed very much in the last year, but that changes as of now!

 Blessings.

          I indulged myself a bit this morning. I read Mary’s blog first thing. I don’t normally do that. It is Friday and I have much to do. In fact, my blog is normally done over a period of two or three days. Not constantly over two or three days, but kind of like letting a plant grow over a period of weeks or months. But this week my mind is hard to bring into focus. Too much of a personal nature going on. So, I read Mary first and it got me to thinking.

          Without getting into what she wrote (if you want to know what she wrote, go to her blog and read it at https://mary-marysmoments.blogspot.com/) she discussed the difference between weeds and grass. She brings it into the Spiritual realm and it is quite interesting. But with my scatter gun brain this week, my mind took off in another direction.

          Growing up on a farm, I was taught that weeds were our mortal enemy. If you let them get ahead of you, they would destroy the corn and the soybeans and choke off the garden. Meanwhile, we had a couple of acres of rolling lawn of mostly Kentucky blue grass. Beautiful stuff. Only I didn’t see it like my parents saw it. We didn’t spray our fields so we had to run the cultivator through them. Each field was cultivated once a week, which kept me busy all week. This was done until the corn or beans got high enough that the cultivator might damage the crop. By that time, the weeds were not going to be a problem. I have two sisters and their job was to hoe the garden, so I didn’t care about those weeds. The grass in the lawn was another matter. My father didn’t believe in riding mowers, so I mowed the grass with a hand mower. You were walking either up hill or down hill. Given my choice, I would have rather ridden on a tractor attacking the weeds than pushing a hand mower up and down grass covered hills.

          Growing older, I began to notice other things. My mother worked hard in her flower gardens to make her blooms beautiful. Meanwhile, wild weeds often had small blooms that were just as beautiful. I pointed this out to Mom one day and was surprised at her reaction, which was not good. After that, being the good and loving son, I pointed this out quite often. Always got the same reaction from my mother. I think I drove her crazy.

          And, just for the record, who made the decision that a pansy is a flower and a dandelion is a weed? I have read that the dandelion is part of the sunflower family. You can eat parts of it, use other parts to make tea and still other parts to make wine. And it is abundant. Pansies take time and work and all you can do with a pansy is look at it. Personally, a dandelion filled yard is a welcoming yard.

          Anyway, we are talking about weeds. The area I come from is hilly with some deep valleys. There is also a vast difference in soil content. Just in our township, the area from Lake Erie to North Ridge Road is all sandy. Between North Ridge Road and Middle Ridge Road it is a mix of sand and loam and is very fertile. From Middle Ridge Road to South Ridge Road it is a combination sandy, loam and clay, also very fertile. Mostly, we farmed between North Ridge Road and South Ridge Road, although we did have a forty acre field north of North Ridge. Being hilly, we didn’t have a lot of acreage together like here, but the fields were apart from one another. It was just different. And, while there were differences in the soil and fields running from north to south, there were also differences running from east to west. I grew up in Lake County. The next county to the east was Ashtabula County. And, right at the county line, the soil changed yet again. Ashtabula County is Ohio’s grape country. Wines and jellies and juices and some of the best grapes you could ever eat come from Ashtabula County. The wines win awards against Napa Valley brands and even win awards in international competition. A large portion of Welch’s jams and jellies and juices come from Ashtabula County. Many of the rolling hills in Ashtabula County are covered with vineyards rather than corn and soybeans while in Lake County you would be hard pressed to find a single grape arbor. Another wonderful thing no one really knows about unless you live among grapes is that every year, right about now, the grapes are coming in and the smell is amazing. And between the rows in the vineyards are weeds. Mowed and kept short, but weeds.

Mary’s blog set me to thinking about the difference between weeds and grass, which led over to the soil from north to south back in Northeast Ohio, which led my fevered brain to think about how odd it is that on the west side of Countyline Road the soil is rich and good for crops and on the east side of Countyline Road it is wonderful grape soil. And I should finish this travelogue by pointing out that on the eastern side of Ashtabula County to the Pennsylvania state line and on into Pennsylvania is apple country and the home of apple cider donuts. Ooooooooooooooooooo!

You see, when a person’s mind is fractured it can go in a dozen different directions. And there is still one more major wrinkle in this mindless wandering.

I pastored in Geneva, Ohio for years. Geneva is in Ashtabula County and is actually where most of the grapes are grown. For many years, Coca Cola had a bottling plant in Geneva. They didn’t bottle Coke, though. They bottled Welch’s grape juice and apple juice and peach juice. Big operation, lots of people worked there. And they had offices and labs and such like places that needed cleaning. For a while when we first went to Geneva, I needed a part time job I could do at night and they needed someone to clean these places. So, I got a part time job at the bottling plant.

You cleaned the front offices, then you walked through the darkened plant to the labs in the back of the building and cleaned those. It was a long walk through the darkened rows of machines and equipment. It never bothered me. I was never afraid that someone might be there. Mostly my thoughts centered on when the church was going to be able to afford me full time. (Which actually happened pretty quickly, much to their surprise.)

But then one night, one o’clock in the morning, I knew I was being watched. I was about halfway through the plant when I felt it. Eyes. Someone was watching me as I walked through. I was suddenly alert. My pace slowed as I scanned through the plant, although other than distant EXIT signs there was no light. I reached the labs and set to work cleaning them, but my mind wouldn’t rest. No one was supposed to be in there, so if someone was, they were up to no good. I locked the lab doors behind me. I cleaned and swept and mopped in pretty quick order and then gathered my cart and set out for the main offices. Walking through te dark I was straining my eyes to see anything. Then, I came around a particularly large machine and in the gloom I saw him. My height. All I could see was his silhouette. I didn’t know who it was, but I knew he didn’t belong and I figured I was in danger. I lashed out with a right that had all my strength behind it and I nailed him on the chin. He went straight down and I turned on my flashlight. It was a grisly sight.

Lying on the floor, not making a sound, was an old time heavy cardboard cutout of a Coca Cola deliveryman. What made it grisly was that I had knocked his head clean off. It was the kind of thing you might have seen somewhere in the 1940s advertising Coke. Why it was there, in a juice bottling plant, I don’t know. But I figured it had some age and was therefore valuable. I stood him up and retrieved his head and tried to tape it on with electrical tape. All I got was a jaunty Coke delivery guy who looked like he was walking with a broken neck. I hurried up to the main offices and checked out, figuring I would get a call the next day. I never did and two weeks later I was able to quit, so I never did find out what it was all about.

          There is a moral here……Never, ever get me started on weeds.     

          It has only been eighteen years. The country was blindsided by a cowardly man who somehow managed to manipulate his ‘followers’ to do the nasty work he was afraid to do himself. Fly planes into towers and kill people. It was a statement. If they just wanted to kill a bunch of people, they could have flown just one plane into an NFL stadium on gameday and 10s of thousands would have died. But that wouldn’t have been a big enough statement. But, take out the twin towers and the Pentagon and whatever the target was for the plane the passengers tried to retake and that crashed in Pennsylvania. That was a statement.

          As a nation, we rose to the occasion. I remember the shock and grief, but it was mixed with a growing pride. People running away from the falling buildings, as they should have been doing, but police and firefighters and EMTs running towards the buildings to try and save lives. At the Pentagon, the generals and colonels and admirals and captains and staffers who had all grown comfortable in their roles in the biggest office building in the world all of a sudden reverted to the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines they had started out as in their military lives. A man from the community I pastored in was visiting the Pentagon with his wife. Their son had just been transferred there and they were walking down a hall when that plane slammed into the building. This man told me that immediately military efficiency took over. He told me that if there was any panic, he didn’t see it. The entire nation was energized. Less than a year before a hotly contested presidential contest had divided the country. (Remember Florida’s hanging chad problem?) But, suddenly, the Republican president was accepted as the President of all the United States. And we were united.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          A grossly divided country. Personally, I have no problem with lawmakers who are Muslim, so long as they recognize and promote American values and ideals. What we have are Islamic lawmakers who want to install Islamic law. I have no problem with people who disagree with me politically. That is what we are built upon. But when those people would rather see me dead than at the ballot box, then that is a problem. And when a major news source, in their remembrance of a national tragedy just eighteen years after the fact, never mentions that the planes that were flown into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania that the hijackers were radical Islamics are engaging in a history rewrite, that is just wrong. Their reporting made it sound as though the planes did the attack, just as their reporting makes it sound as though it is the gun’s fault in a mass shooting.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          We are in a bad way. Eighteen years ago we rallied behind the flag. Nothing wrong with that, not at all. But more was needed. There were voices calling out for it, but those voices were mostly ignored. However, if those voices had been heeded, even just a little bit, we would be living in a different country.

           It is common in our country to hear someone shout, “We have the right!” And that is true. This is the United States of America. We have rights. A video is out there of American children whacking away at a piñata, seeking to break it open so that they could get to the candy inside. The piñata was made to look like the president of the United States. The parents of the children stood around shooting video and laughing and cheering on their little ones as they taught the lesson of disrespect. But they have that right. Another video. A FedEx driver heroically shoulders his way into the middle of a protest to save an American flag from being burned. He had a right to do so and, apparently now, the protester had the right to burn the flag. We all have rights, or think we do. But we have neglected the most important right of all. The very thing that would have really changed things eighteen years ago.

I know I go on and on about this, but I am a Christian first and foremost. If I am a good Christian I will be a good American. So, the Bible is my one essential in life. I read the Bible daily and I also read the Constitution of the United States through yearly. The precepts in the Constitution emerge from the Bible. And this I find in the Word of God;

          2 Chronicles 7:12-15---Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Why have we turned our backs on being humble before the Lord? Why have we turned our backs on praying to Him and seeking Him out? Why have we turned our backs on righteous living and instead chosen evil? If we had listened to those voices crying out eighteen years ago to turn back to Him, we would not be in the mess we are in now.

          Sometimes you read something that is really fascinating but that also raises some questions. 
          Three years ago a Texas doctor, Dr. Darrell Cass, inform his patient, Margaret Boemer, that her unborn child had a tumor on her tail bone that, left unchecked, would eventually block the blood flow to and from the baby's heart and the baby would die. There weren't many options. Let the baby die or do surgery. Doing surgery on an unborn child has been done many times, but this would have to be different. This surgery, because of the nature of it and location of the tumor, would have to be done outside of the womb. Then, the child would have to be put back into the womb so the mother could carry her to term and give the baby all the time needed to finish forming. Margaret and her husband agreed to have the surgery, despite the danger to Margaret. The baby was what mattered.
          At twenty three weeks the surgery was performed. It took five hours, but only about 20 minutes on the baby. The process of opening Margaret's womb, extracting the baby and then putting her back and sealing the womb back up was the painstaking part. What followed then was twelve weeks of bed rest for Margaret and then, baby LynLee was born. The little thing is now doing well and is progressing normally. In an interview Margaret said, "We love that LynLee's story of Life is being shared! Giving hope to others and giving testimony to God's hand on her life! LynLee is truly a miracle and blessing from the Lord!" Just an incredible story.
          But, it does pose an interesting question. Many, many people today, maybe even the majority of people in this country, believe that life begins at birth. Until the child is born it is just tissue mass. Not really alive except as part of the woman. LynLee was born twice. Now, obviously, these were parents willing to do anything to save the baby's life, including risk to the mother. They loved LynLee, sight unseen. But let's suppose something. Let's suppose Dad goes to Mom during that twelve weeks of bed rest and says, "You know, honey. I have just looked at the pictures while the fetus was out of you and that thing has your aunt Bessie's nose. I don't think it would be fair to the fetus to have to go through life with that nose." (I know that some people think that terminating a pregnancy is only done in cases of possible death to the mother or other extreme situations, but those people are wrong. Termination can be done at any time and for any reason.) "Oh," Mom replies. "You are so right. Let's abort and save the fetus the grief!" So, they go to their local, friendly abortion clinic and have the ugly lump of tissue removed. However, LynLee has already been born. She is just in a natural incubator. Is the one who performs the abortion guilty of murder in the eyes of Texas law, which does not allow the killing of an infant after it is born alive? Is Mom and Dad complicit in the murder? How would the law handle this situation?
          The obvious defense would be that during the surgery that saved LynLee's life, the umbilical cord was not cut. (That is my assumption only. I could find no reference. My assumption is based on the fact that where the tumor was, attached to the tail bone, it would be unnecessary to cut the cord.) If uncut, the child would still be attached to the mother and would therefore still be a part of the mother. So, still just tissue. But there have been cases where an expectant mother has been killed, either by accident or on purpose, and the person responsible has been brought up on charges as being responsible for two deaths, mother and unborn child. How is that even legally possible? But staying with this case, if life begins at birth, then what is birth? LynLee was out of her mother! She likely squirmed and complained. She was, literally, less than a handful at 23 months. Was she not born? Yet, we know that if her parents decided to abort, it would have been legal. LynLee can always be grateful to modern medicine for her life, but she should always be grateful for parents who loved her unconditionally without even seeing her.
          When I worked at the funeral home, we took in the body of a baby that had been born, lived a few minutes and then died. I didn't know the child or the parents, but grief just overwhelmed me. Taking the child up in my arms, I sat down in an office chair in the prep room office and I just rocked that little girl for twenty minutes, tears running down my face. You see, I believe that it is in each of us to hold life as sacred. I also believe that it is each of us to marvel at the creation of life while it is in the womb. To me, that deceased little girl was still sacred, even in death. But, sadly, I also believe that humanity wants to have everything both ways. We want to have life, but we also want to end life when it is inconvenient. When it hampers our lifestyle or when it will put burdens on our lives. Life has become precious, but only in certain circumstances. I believe that when a child is conceived it is already in God's hands and is loved by the Father. When that child's life is terminated, he/she has been snatched from God's hand. I don't see God being pleased.
          I would really like to shake the hands of the medical team that pulled off that surgery. I would really like to hold LynLee. But mostly, I would love to embrace that Mom and Dad and tell them how great and mighty they are.
          Blessings.

          I was a victim of a home invasion Thursday morning. It is the only thing that makes sense. I am a little shaken, but there was, as far as I can tell, no harm done.

          Let me explain the sequence of events.

Last Friday some thunder and lighting rolled through the area. As is typical, I lost my Wi-Fi. Happens every time. Since my home computer is very old, it is not Wi-Fi compatible, so it is hard wired to the unit in the apartment. I do not lose the internet. However, my television is a ‘smart’ television and is dependent on Wi-Fi to play anything. So, I had no television. Not really a problem because I do not watch a lot of TV. Actually, very little. I went till Tuesday before I called my provider. When they originally came out and hooked me up, they said they would be there between 8:30 and 11:00 AM. On that day the guy got there at 6:15 in the evening and was gone by 7:30. I was not a happy camper. Since then, when I have had a problem, I have called and, after listening to awful music for a period of time, they have talked me through the fix on the phone. But this time was different and involved a lightening strike that overloaded something. They would be out, they said, between 8:30 and 11:00 AM on Thursday.

 Being pretty certain I would have to be waiting all day, I took the stuff I was working on home on Wednesday. At 8:30 I was turning on my home computer when my phone rang. “Hello?” “Hi, is this Mr. Wade?” Great, I thought. Open the day with a telemarketer. “Yes, it is.” “Mr. Wade, this is your Metronet technician. I am on Main Street right now and should be at your location inside 5 minutes. Is that OK?” “Ah, what now?” “This is your Metronet technician. I am on Main Street right now and should be at your location inside 5 minutes. Is that OK?” “Oh, um, yeah, sure. That would be great.”

 Obviously, it was a scam. Somehow, they had hacked Metronet’s schedule and they were going to use that to gain entry. I watched out the window expecting to see a rusted out S-10 pull up with a cardboard sign on the side saying ‘Metronet.’ Actually, it was a very respectable work van emblazoned with Metronet logo and phone number. I couldn’t help but be impressed at the attention to detail these scammers were using. A young man, mid 30s, dressed in what appeared to be an actual Metronet uniform, hopped out of the van and headed to my door. Oh, these guys were good. But I am pretty sharp. He carried no electronic equipment or tools, so it reinforced my certainty that he was there to do harm. I might be an aging old coot, but I was not going to be easy.

 He came in and I showed him where the equipment was located. He pulled out his cell phone and called in to tell someone where he was and what he was doing. Of course, I knew he was letting the other guy in the truck know he was going to be needed soon. Foolish of him to not even bring in something that looked vaguely like electronic equipment. Not even an ohmmeter, for goodness sakes.

 But then, he turned on the television and, using his cell phone, began going through all kinds of technical data. It occurred to me that this must be why it is called a smart TV. My son bought it for me and told me it was a smart TV, but I had just rolled my eyes at the time. Now, however, it was certainly acting smart. Next, the supposed technician walked over to my computer, after asking first, and began entering more data. A few more phone calls were made to clear up his confusion (he told me that this was truly a mess due to the nearby lightening strike) and then at 9:30 he slipped his phone back in his pocket, said his farewells and left.

 I looked around. It didn’t seem he had taken anything. Maybe he had seen that I have nothing of value. Well, I do have a couple pair of neat socks in my sock drawer, but he never looked in the bedroom. No, he must have realized that I had nothing worth taking. Obviously, a home invasion, but a pointless one. And, my television works now. I don’t know. I am confused.

 This morning I am still thinking about it. All night I expected someone to slip in and take my cool socks. Nothing happened, except I lost some sleep. Could it have been that he really was a Metronet tech? Actually on time and efficient? Were my misgivings foolishness?

 Not really. No. We have become so certain of incompetence that we expect it in every facet of our lives. Two days after my open heart surgery a man walked into my room pushing a machine. He began to take close up pictures of my legs. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was mapping the veins that they would have to extract in order to do my by-pass. “I’M HAVING ANOTHER BY-PASS?” “Oh, you’ve had one before?” “TWO DAYS AGO!” He checked his paperwork and said, “No, I don’t think so. You are on the schedule for tomorrow.” I am laying in bed, pretty well wrapped in bandages and drainage tubes and my legs have nasty looking surgical incisions on them and this genius is telling me I am having surgery the next day, I complained about it and just got a snicker from my nurse. We become used to incompetence in our medical, in our politicians, in the service industry, in restaurants………..actually, in everything. We come to expect it. And when someone actually is competent, we hardly know how to act.

 Thursday evening we had a Board of Christian Ed meeting at the church. I looked around the table. Brian chaired the meeting. Brian’s brother-in-law, Jeff, was shot recently. He became a focus of prayer. In spite of the seriousness of the injury, Jeff was out driving a little the other day. A few days after that, Brian had cancer surgery. He became a focus of prayer. He is doing really well now. On the other side of the table from me, Tonya sat in the meeting. She had cancer surgery on Monday. She became a focus of prayer. More tests need to be done, but it seems she is cancer free and she was in the meeting three days later. Next to me was Mary. Two weeks in a row saw two grandsons have pretty serious surgeries. They became a focus of prayer. Both are doing well. Mary and her daughter will be traveling to the Cleveland Clinic next week to address some issues Terri has. She will be a focus of prayer. They are not really worried. And that was just one meeting on a Thursday night. On Sunday morning we can look around and see those stories repeated everywhere in the church. Incompetence may surround us, but we have the confidence that the Lord is fully competent.

There are a number of contemporary Christian songs with the title, “What A Mighty God We Serve.” I like the one performed by Vickie Winans. There is a lot of repeating of lyrics, but the principle lyrics are these:

What a mighty God we serve
What a mighty God we serve
The angels bow before him
Heaven and earth adore him
What a mighty God we serve

All the angels said it
Heaven and earth declare it
Lift your voice and say
He is a mighty God

He is a Mighty God!

          The recent clean out of the parsonage was difficult for me. Memories were around every corner and in every cubby. Not memories of the house, but memories of the life I was privileged to live with my wife. However, as I went along, I refused to dwell on those memories. It wasn’t until the last day, the day of the sale, (AND THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HELPED AND WHO CAME BY TO PURCHASE THINGS) and it had nothing to do with my marriage. Standing in the kitchen with Terry and Carla, I looked down and saw a piece of plastic that I recognized, but not from this life. I reached down and picked it up. It was pink (the one I had was green) and it was plastic (the one I had was tin). It had a little button on the top and when I pushed it, it made a loud clicking noise. The three of us talked about it for a bit. It may have been Marsha’s for some reason, but I had never seen it. It was a toy, a noise maker, but it brought back a memory thread that had been buried.

          Back when I was a little boy, we played Army. My friend Keith (my age) and his older brother Kevin and I all had plastic helmets and plastic Army guns and we played a lot of Army. Army shows were on TV and Army movies played and our Dads were WWII vets and Vietnam wasn’t yet a thing. I don’t ever remember playing cowboys and Indians. That stuff was on TV and the movies, too, but we didn’t play that. We played Army. Toy makers knew that boys played Army, so they make plastic replicas of guns and helmets and hand grenades and all kinds of stuff they couldn’t have now. If that stuff existed now they would be saying we were raising a generation of murderers. Funny how we missed that memo back then and all seemed to grow up pretty normal, relatively speaking. Anyway, we were equipped with authentic looking plastic Army gear.

          And then the toy maker Hasbro came out with this little clicker thing. The advertisement had actual video of paratroopers landing in fields at night while the announcer told the story of paratroopers landing the two nights before D-Day back in 1944 to carry out sabotage behind German lines. The troopers would land and get rid of their chutes and then, in the dark, use little clickers to locate one another. Now, Hasbro was selling these little clickers just for you so you could have what them real soldiers had!!! And, they were real metal.

          Within a month, every boy in school had one. The teachers were taking them away so fast that they were filling their desk drawers fast with the little things. I imagine they were super annoying. Just a flat, loud click. You could keep the clicker in your pocket and click it in secret there. They were going off all over school; classrooms, busses, hallways, library, music. They made the teachers angry and made the boys laugh like loons. Pretty soon, they were all gone.

          As a toy craze, they didn’t have real lasting power. Other than clicking them, you really couldn’t do anything else. On the last day of school when the teachers handed back all the things they had confiscated throughout the year, we got our clickers. They weren’t fun any more and most of them just wound up in dresser drawers in our homes.

          Jumping forward a few years to junior high. All of us boys thought we were thrill seekers with a solid streak of ‘bad’ in us. It was coming up on Halloween and everyone was talking about what they were going to do. We were, of course, far to grown up to trick or treat, so we planned to create a little mayhem. Toilet papering the trees and soaping windows were high on the list. Keith and I lived on the same toad, but that was it out there at the time. Just us. I had two sisters, Cathy and Debbie, and Keith had a brother and sister, Karen. My sisters were older, in fact Cathy had graduated from school and Debbie was a senior, and Kevin was older, also in high school. So, they were not going trick or treating. Karen was two years younger than Keith and me and was at that pest age. Actually, she had been a pest all her life just because she was a girl. At that point in time, except for the pest, it was just Keith and me.

          We decided we could be bad. We grew up in Perry Township. There was also a Perry Village, which seemed big to us but was really a collection of houses. A gas station, a bar/pool hall, a little, tiny grocery store, a little place they called a delicatessen but was really sweet shop with a four stool soda fountain in the back, a feed mill, a lumber yard, a post office half the size of Urbana’s and a small volunteer fire department. And there was a barber. He also ran the bar/pool room and had the barber shop in the bar. You got a better haircut if you caught him early in the day. But it was the village and it was where Keith and I were going to be bad on Halloween.

          We dressed all in dark and told our Mom’s that we were going to be bums. We carried bags that were supposed to collect candy, but that actually carried our objects of terror. Keith brought several rolls of toilet paper and I had the soaps we needed to terrorize the Village. Karen, being unusually perceptive, knew we were up to something and wanted to join us. But her Mom told her that the boys didn’t want to look after her and that they would go elsewhere. Yay Mom! Keith’s Mom drove us into the Village and my Mom would pick us up. And in the meantime, the Village would be so rocked that it would never be the same!

          Things didn’t go right from the beginning. The reason was that, while we were bad boys at heart, we didn’t know how to be bad boys. We had planned this all out. Keith would go and toilet paper some trees. I would go and soap some windows. We would meet back at the feed mill by using our clickers that we still had (just like real soldiers) and then just wander through the village innocently observing our daring raid. Except……..

          You stand away from a tree and hurl the roll of toilet paper up. It unravels in flight, leaving a strip of toilet paper draped over the tree. Then, you went and picked up the roll and did it again until the toilet paper ran out. He had three rolls, so he was all set. However, toilet paper then, as now, has a light adhesive on the end to hold it together until used. Keith never thought to peel that away before he threw. So, he chucked a roll skyward and it didn’t unravel. He ran over and picked up the roll and tried again. Same thing. Like throwing a white football into the trees. The grass was wet because it had rained earlier, and after the second throw that roll was wasted. He pulled out the next roll and wasted it, too. Frustrated, he just threw the third one into the weeds.

          Meanwhile, on the soaping front, I had brought a box of Tide. I tried to rub the powder on the windows and that was as pointless as trying to toilet paper a tree with a roll of toilet paper that will not unravel. Terrified now, I booked back toward the feed mill. I pulled my clicker out and began to click like mad. The mission had to be aborted! All of a sudden, clickers went off all over the village. In the shadows you could see figures bent over and running like crazy. The clicking grew louder. Apparently, most of the boys from my class, grouping off in twos and threes, had the same idea as Keith and I. They would descend on the village, make their raids and use their clickers to locate or abort. My call for Keith was taken as a general retreat.

          The next morning I imagine people were surprised to find soggy rolls of toilet paper in their yards and bars of Zest beneath their windows. Someone, I am sure, was very puzzled as to why there was a half full box of Tide in the weeds by the feed mill, just as my mother always wondered what happened to her box of Tide. As the stories circulated, one of the guys had three lunch bags with dog poop in them. What you were supposed to do was put a bag of dog poop on a porch, light it on fire and then ring the door bell and then hide and watch the home owner come out and stomp it out and get poop on his shoes. This guy had brought the bags of poop but forgot matches, so when the retreat sounded, he just threw the bags away. That was also an interesting find, I am sure. The destruction of the village was not happening that night.

          The fact was, we were not bad kids. We all grew up and made something of our lives. Death has claimed several, though none for a while now. When we communicate, either by e-mail or phone or Facebook or, for those who live close still, getting together, the talk is kids and grandkids and aches and pains.

          No one, though, ever talks about that Halloween night. Seeing that clicker on the floor brought it all back, but I am not saying anything.

          However, I do have a story of that little pest if anyone wants to hear it.   

          Psalm 119 has 176 verses in it, making it, by far, the longest chapter in the Bible. Most people know next to nothing about this chapter except for 119:11, Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee and Psalm 119:105, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.          I put those two verses in the King James Version because many would not recognize them in the version they read. It is kind of like the Lord’s Prayer…..we like it the way we learned it.

          But, back to point. Psalm 119. Those 176 verses are divided in groups of eight verses. Remember, the Bible as written originally did not have verses like we have today. The chapter and verse headings were added later for ease of reading. Nothing else was changed. Imagine if that was not the case. Sunday morning. The sermon is from John. I step to the pulpit and say, “Now, go to the Book of John and in the first third of the Book, I would say toward the end of the first third of the Book, maybe the beginning of the second third of the Book and look for a sentence that says “Even His brothers did not believe Him. Raise your hands when you find it. No, Ed, the Gospel of John, not First John. It is the first third, or maybe the second third of the Gospel of John. Is anyone having trouble? Well, yes Carla, you would be having trouble. Let Terry help you. Anyone else…..” and so it would go for ten minutes or so until everyone found the verse. So much easier to just say, “Turn to John chapter seven and verse five.” Even so, Ed would still be in First John and wondering why he couldn’t find it, but that is OK.

          The Psalms, however, are different. The Book of Psalms is the song book for the Jews. Like our songs, they are written in verses. In the language they were written in, Hebrew, they have meter and rhythm and rhyme. The 119th Psalm has twenty two song verses which are each broken down into eight Bible verses. Each song verse begins with a character, or letter, of the Hebrew alphabet, of which in old Hebrew they had twenty two letters. Each verse of the song has eight distinct lines in it, which breaks down into our Scriptural verses. To explain this, let me use our song ‘Amazing Grace.’ Our hymn book has five verses. Imagine singing a song that has twenty two! Anyway, just verse one: Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. That verse has seven different lines of thought in it. If you were breaking it down in the manner that our Bible is written, it would be one song verse with seven divided lines, or verses, in it. All twenty two song verses in Psalm 119 have eight lines in them, which are broken down, in our Bible, into eight Scriptural verses. If you are having trouble with that, it is OK. It is just for explanation purposes and has no real bearing on the this blog.

          This Sunday’s sermon comes out of Psalm 119. Also, the reading for this week comes out of Psalm 119, just two different places in that one Psalm. As I was putting this week’s reading and sermon together, I was struck by something unusual. The reading is Psalm 119:105-112 and the sermon reading is Psalm 119:9-16. In both cases, every Scriptural verse has either the name ‘Lord’ in it or a pronoun referring to the Lord. You or Your or, depending on your version, Thee or Thine or Thou. Of course, the whole Bible points us to the Lord, but where else are there eight verses in a row that specifically mention the Lord? And yet, here was a single chapter in the Bible that has two sections like that. I was considering this on the drive in this morning (in case you wonder what the pastor thinks about in idle moments, it is stuff like this) and I began to wonder if there might be another section of eight verses like this in Psalm 119. So, when I got to my desk, I read the chapter. EVERY VERSE IN PSALM 119 REFERS TO THE LORD OR GOD IN SOME FORM, EITHER NAME OR PRONOUN. In a single song verse, which is eight of our Biblical verses, there are eight to sixteen mentions of the Lord. The Psalmist was completely focused on the Lord. When he mentioned himself, it was to point out how good the Lord had been to him. Another thing that makes this really interesting to me is that there are twenty two song verses, each beginning with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet, starting at the beginning and going through to the end. This is their alphabet song that they used to teach their children their alphabet and, at the same time, fill them with the goodness of God.

          OK. That is interesting, but how does that fit with us today?

          Godly Jews were completely sold out to the Lord. There were, of course, Jews who were greedy and underhanded and far away from God, but the Godly Jew was a true soldier of the Lord. In reading the 119^th Psalm, we see the Psalmist went to the Lord with everything before stepping out and then he stepped boldly. Now, let’s contrast this with Godly Christians in the 21^st century.

          Before you bought that car or truck you now own, did you pray about it and did you buy what God wanted you to have, or what you wanted to have? Does your appearance edify God or are you simply comfortable? Do your actions and language glorify the Father, or do your actions and language just relieve your stress? Did God have one set of expectations for the Old Testament believer and another set of expectations for the New Testament, and modern, believer? Obviously, no. Godliness is Godliness.

          It shows up in our thinking. We had two mass shootings last week, one in Dayton and another in El Paso. Lots of people killed. In addition, there were the regular dozen or so shot and killed in Chicago and other places. It has become a political issue. But one thing everyone would agree on is that this stuff has to stop. Stronger laws, remove all guns, more background checks, increase vigilance on the mentally ill. More police, stop video games, curb movie violence….it just goes on and on.

          Here is a thought; back in the old days when Godly Jews were completely sold out to God and would do whatever He wanted, there was this verse written: 2 Chronicles 7:14, If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Keep in mind, this was written to Godly people giving them instruction on how ton bring their nation back to God. They understood the personal sacrifice required to be His people. What if the president used this verse and said we must all devote ourselves to prayer? People would laugh themselves silly. For one thing, Christians in our world today are not known for their prayer lives. Marching on Washington to protest abortion, flocking to hear preachers promising them health and wealth if they just have faith, sneaking around to have their fun. This is what the world knows about God’s people. A vulgar and foul mouthed president is supported by religious leaders. That is what the world sees. Someone would say, and they would be right, who in government is humble? No, you couldn’t use this verse. You might say we need to bring prayer back to school, but then our kids would be praying to whatever god the teacher specified. You might get worked up over cashiers not saying Merry Christmas and feel good about yourself. You might turn your radio up so that your Christian music can be heard on the street. But those things will not heal our land.

          I consider myself part of God’s people. I need to humble myself before the Lord, just like the writer of Psalm 119. Everything I do needs to be done with God’s will first and foremost on my mind. I need to give it completely over to God. I need to pray without ceasing, as Paul said. I need to seek God out in every way. I need to turn from my wickedness. Me. I have to do that if I want my land to be healed.

          “But,” you ask. “how do we get the nation on board?” We do not. We are responsible for ourselves. We cannot control others. What happens to them is between they and God. We have to do this ourselves.

          My high school had a rifle team and they had shooting matches against other schools. The kids on the team brought their rifles and ammunition to school on the bus. The kids that drove to school all had rifle racks in the back windows of their trucks and during hunting season those racks would have guns in them. In my lifetime, that has ended. If we as Christians will put aside our worldliness and devote ourselves to Godliness, we will see change. Slowly, gradually, but change. No president, no Senator, no member of the House, no local politicians, no law….nothing will ever make a difference. But, God’s people can make a difference.

          We need to be humbled before God. Next we need to pray and seek His face, which means we have to ask for His will, not our own. And then we need to turn from our sin. Actions, language, even thoughts of evil. Knowing we are not perfect, but at least striving for His way. Things will not change on the spot nationally, but our lives will begin to change for the better.

          This isn’t a Democrat thing or a Republican thing or a liberal thing or a conservative thing. It is a Christian thing and is our responsibility.