For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue... and godliness with brotherly affection, 

and brotherly affection with love.

II Peter 1:5-7, ESV

 

I have been talking with a good friend in recent months about something which both of us find deeply disturbing. We have both observed that people just seem to have little patience with one another. This lack of patience has led to a noticeable decline in civility, and that lack of civility is leading to a society that is, for a lack of a better description, just getting mean.

 

Both of us have worked in professions that have placed us around a lot of people for quite a number of years, so our observations are based on a pretty significant sample size and the conclusion seems inescapable: Society really is degrading to a point that should concern each and every one of us. People really do seem to have lost that vital trait of brotherly affection or, if not completely lost, it is certainly drastically diminished. Fortunately, there is a solution, and it is one I first learned when I was a little kid. And what is that solution?

 

When you find yourself in a rock fight, stop throwing rocks!

 

One sunny morning when I was about five years of age, the bigger kids in my neighborhood were engaged in a literal rock fight. It looked like great fun to me, so I joined right in. I was told not to, but the conflict seemed exciting and was therefore irresistible to my immature mind. What happened next was entirely predictable, as I quickly took a hit in the middle of my forehead that left a nasty and painful bump for days afterward. In the subsequent years, I found myself in another rock fight or two, always with the same result: Somebody always got hurt.

 

But these experiences were not completely without benefit, as I learned a few valuable lessons. The first was don't get in a rock fight in the first place. The second was if you do find yourself in a rock fight, stop throwing the rocks back. The other guy will eventually run out of ammo and will tire of the game and quit the fight. The third lesson may have been the most important. If you find yourself in a rock fight and the other fellow won't stop, go home! There is little glory in getting hit by a rock, and even less in being the one who threw it in the first place.

 

So, what's all this got to do with our original topic? It's just this: The Apostle Peter was inspired by God to instruct us in the importance of growing our faith. This would lead to important virtues which would help us get along with our fellow man. As these virtues matured, they would eventually result in important characteristics such as having an affection for one another. 

 

And when we have an affection for one another, we stop throwing rocks. When we stop throwing rocks, a civility returns. And when civility returns, we start talking to one another again in ways that only reasonable people can understand. And when we become reasonable, we can not only listen to the other person's point of view, but we can begin to understand it. This will lead to an actual sympathy for their situation, and this sympathy will lead to peaceful solutions. And when you read the full passage above, you will see that all this begins with faith and ends in love.

 

And this mean old world needs love, does it not?  

 

Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God; defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from workers of iniquity and save me from bloody men.

Psalms 59:1-2, KJV

 

What will we do if they come for our daughters?

 

It has recently become a very real question that must be answered. A committee of the U. S. Congress has approved in their recommended budget a provision for a draft that includes all U. S. citizens, male and female. So far as I know, this bill has not been voted on in the full House or Senate, but it will come to a vote if we do not do something about it. So, we need to be thinking about it right now, and we need to be doing something about it before it becomes law.

 

The first thing we can and must do is pray. There has been a steady beat of the war drums to get the U. S. into a conflict with Russia under the pretext of supporting Ukraine. Without a vote, the U.S. has been providing weapons for Ukraine that are being fired into Russia. Our President gave them permission to do so, and the Russians don't like it. "Good!', you might be thinking, "I never did like the Russians anyway." That's fine, but would you think if Russia provided weapons to Mexico and gave them permission to fire them on America that this would be fine as well? I believe any thinking person can see that this is a provocative act. And this is exactly what we have done to them... and now the House and Senate are seriously talking about the need to include women in the next draft. We need to pray!

 

The next thing we need to do is contact our senators and representatives. I intend to do just that and let them know that if any such provision is approved - whether they voted for it or not, I will not vote for them. Why do that, if they opposed it? The reason is that they play games. They sometimes see who can afford to be for or against something without making their constituents too angry, and then they pass what they want. Make no mistake, an elected official who permits our daughters to be included in future drafts no longer has claim to the best interests of those they have been elected to represent.

 

I am in no way taking about the women who volunteer. That is clearly their option - their choice. If they want to take part in battle, then that is up to them. But what of those who may someday be conscripted into battle, who have no desire to go? Are you going to stand idly by and let this happen? In America?

 

What will you do if they come for your daughters and granddaughters? You may not have any of fighting age now, but people you know do. The German people stood idly by when the Nazis came for their neighbors. Then, when their neighbors were taken, there was no one left to defend them. We look at these people who did nothing in much the same way we view the Nazi leaders: As worthless, cowardly, and evil. Will you stand idly by when they come for your daughters?

 

It is not a silly question, for Congress is certainly considering the inclusion of this provision in their budget for 2025 and I think we need to let the rest of the House and Senate know that we will not tolerate such evil among our leaders. It's a serious matter, I believe, perhaps one of the most serious we have had to consider in a long time. We are distracted by many things. Just trying to put food on the table is getting to be a struggle for most, so letting your leaders know what you think will not be convenient. But like so many things that are important, sometimes we just have to do inconvenient things. I think this inconvenient thing is one of them, for what will you do, if they come for your daughters? 

 

One last thought: You may think that such things should not be discussed on a Christian platform such as this. But if Christians do nothing, the children of Satan will. I believe it is something that we need to be praying about, and something we need to be talking about. We have let too many things go by in the past without any response or objection. Will this be one of them, or do we view our daughters as worthy of the effort and courage that it will require to speak out? It's something to consider, isn't it?

Cast thy burdens upon the LORD, and He shall sustain thee: He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

Psalms 55:22, KJV

 

Don't you hate wasting things? Maybe you bought something on sale that you couldn't return, only to find out that it didn't fit or you didn't need it. Or maybe you spent a lot of time on a project at work. You know the one. It was that project that was time consuming and difficult. You might have even knew that it was a waste of time going into it, and you would have told the boss just that if he had let you. But you persevered and got the project done, only to find it "scrapped" at the end because they didn't need it.

 

I remember a basketball tournament on a winter day in a distant town. I couldn't believe that they would risk the kids and the fans, for the roads were icy and the trip was miserable and a little dangerous. As we neared the town, we got the news that the games had been cancelled, and we had to turn back. So we had risked the weather and made that long drive for nothing, and those that had made it were not all that happy. It was just one big waste of time for nothing.

 

Things like these will drive us crazy, especially when they could have been prevented with a little forethought, and a little courtesy. Nobody likes to take unnecessary risk. Nobody likes to expend unnecessary effort. Nobody likes to spend money that is hard to come by when they didn't have too. In short, no one likes wasting important resources.

 

Oddly enough, one of the things we waste the most time, effort, and even concern on are things that are totally preventable. I don't even mean that the circumstances that we find ourselves in are preventable, but they way we react to them are. God has promised us that He will sustain us in hard times - that He will not allow the righteous to suffer in a manner that is not needed. Yet we often find ourselves doing that very thing. We suffer with worry. We suffer with a loss of peace. Sometimes we even suffer by having to put in extreme, yet unneeded effort and expense, all because we forget to do one simple thing:

 

We forget to cast our burdens on the LORD!

 

And by doing so, we keep these unmanageable loads all to ourselves. We carry such burdens as fear and angst and depression, all because we forgot (or maybe we never knew in the first place) that God does not want the righteous to suffer in unnecessary ways. So He determined long ago that He would handle those things that we could not be reasonably expected to take care of ourselves... if we would just let Him!

 

So, what kind of unnecessary burdens have you been trying to carry all by yourself? It may very well be that these burdens have crushed you to the point where your very faith in God has wavered at times. What a shame, and what a waste! God loves you and has promised that He will never allow you to even be tempted in a manner greater than you can bear, much less allow you to carry an unbearable burden. It's true that this life is a test, so He does allow us to be tested from time to time. But the tests and trials of life are never intended to become a crushing weight that we cannot bear, for God has promised us this:

 

He will never allow us to be tested to the point where it will move us away from Him. In fact, He has invited us to cast our burdens on Him, and that means we will grow closer to God, for you cannot hand a burden off to someone else to carry unless you are close enough to hand it over to them in the first place. 

 

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time,

casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

I Peter 5:6-7, NKJV

 

Have you been suffering under the heavy load of anxiety, fear or depression? Why not give your burden to the only One who can carry it, and cease to waste your time, efforts and emotions, straining under burdens that God has never wanted you to carry in the first place?

The LORD is my Shepherd...

A psalm of David

 

I think we have all known of people who have seemed to have led charmed lives when it came to getting through difficult times. Sometimes we look at such people and wonder how they even survived. My Dad was such a man.

 

He grew up in the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression. When he was about five, things got so bad for his family in Texas that his father could no longer make a living. So, they loaded up a borrowed car with four or five kids and his mother pregnant with another. It was like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, only it was no story. At my Dad's funeral, my Uncle Bill told how it was so cold on part of their trip that my Granny would hold a candle and run it along the inside of the windshield just so they could see. 

 

They would sleep in a tent they brought, and the conditions were so difficult that the sweet woman who would become my Granny lost the baby. By the time they got to California, the only work my grandfather could get was as a guard for the fruit pickers during the times of fighting between the strikers and the strike breakers. They would later tell of just how dangerous it was with my grandfather being involved in gun battles, and one instance where my Granny literally stood guard with a butcher knife when they thought trouble was coming to their tent and my grandfather was not able to be there. 

 

A few years later, Dad would find himself serving on a ship during the Korean War. One of their missions involved the detonation of one of the hydrogen bombs at the Bikini Atolls. He said that this particular blast was so much more powerful than the Navy had anticipated that rust rained down on them from the force of the explosion. Dad said his job was among the most important. After the test, they had a bit of trouble getting a timely supply ship into the area, so they had to pilfer their coffee from one of the now deserted Islands. He ran the Geiger counter to determine when the coffee was no longer too "hot" from the radiation to be used for human consumption. I can remember seeing a letter from the War Department, or some such other agency, inviting him to come get a physical to see if he was suffering any effects from the radiation from their proximity to the explosion.

 

A few years later, still, found him at a mortgage banker's school in Los Angeles in August of 1965. He and some other would-be mortgage bankers were "stretching their legs" in a section of Watts that was recently in the news. A black gentleman spotted them and asked them what they were doing, and they told him they were just out for a walk, looking at the sights. This man took pity on them and told them they needed to get out of there, and quick, because it was about to become a bit dangerous. A few hours later (and a few miles away) Dad and some of his associates watched the smoke rising from the fires started by those participating in what was to become known as the Watts' Riots.

 

I've wondered more than a few times how Dad even survived. My only conclusion is that God was watching over him - the Lord really was his Shepherd. And there have been times in my own life that I have looked back and wondered how I got through them, relatively unscathed. I look at my mom's medical problems, having a childhood asthma so severe that the doctor told my grandmother that she might not make it to adulthood, and I realize that in many ways I was fortunate to have even been born. 

 

I suppose if we all looked at our lives that we would all see many such instances where we might not have made it through difficult times, or even been born in the first place. Yet, we still survived and we must therefore conclude that God does indeed watch over each one of our lives, and that He does indeed have plans and expectations for us all. Add that to the obvious fact that He loves each one of us and we will come to this conclusion: The Lord is the Shepherd for everyone of us, and we ought to recognize this fact with appreciation and devotion.

 

And, since we have all have indeed survived, maybe we should think a little more often of just how much He does love us, and just how much we owe Him.