Showers, showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.

Old spiritual song

 

Jackie Pyle owned the filling station in the town I moved to. He didn't have a lot of school-learning, as the saying goes, but he had about as much practical wisdom as anybody you will ever come across. I used to have the diet coke habit, so I would venture into his station just about every day. He didn't always say a lot (though he could if you would stop long enough to listen), but the little he did say usually was worth listening to.

 

I remember one thing he said that changed my entire perspective on praying. We were talking about rain (the #1 topic in any farm and ranch town) and I said something about praying for rain. He said he had heard an old preacher talking on that topic once who wondered if instead of praying for rain, we should really be praying for crops. I have thought about that statement quite often since that day. I have noticed that some of the wettest years have yielded very little in the way of wheat and corn because the heavy rains coming at the wrong time could spoil the harvest. I've also observed that some of our best harvests came with below average rainfall, but the rains we did have just seemed to come at the perfect time for the crops.

 

Since that time, I have focused more on praying that we would get the rain we need for our crops and cattle. I have also prayed more and more that we will be able to handle the dry years and the wet, whether or not the blessings came in the time and amount that we had hoped for. I honestly don't know if those prayers have helped anyone else - I hope they have - but I know for a fact that this new way of looking at things has helped me.

 

We just got a snow this past Sunday that extended for over a hundred miles in our part of the world. It was one of the most timely snows we have had in a long while, and it will go a long way towards helping this year's crops, as well as helping the grass that our cattle need. I believe it is a perfect example of what Jackie Pyle was talking about, for while we haven't had an unusual amount of moisture these past few years, we may end up with a beautiful harvest.

 

But, whether we continue to have the timely moisture or not, we will praise the Lord, for He has always given us just what we need. Last year He gave us help to get through a dry year, this year it may be help to get through the harvest. Either way, we will surely have showers of blessing. And for that, we are grateful!

Do not be deceived: Bad company corrupts good morals.

 

 

We've all had best friends, but some of us have also had "best enemies". Mine just happened to be my best friend's big brother, Mike. I remember all too well his last name, but I will not use it here on the off chance that he has since repented and no longer needs to be held up to public ridicule. Also, if there are some other men who were formerly naughty little 11 year-olds named Mike, then it will do them good to call their past sins to mind in case they need to repent.

 

Mike taught me how to fight. Perhaps a more accurate statement was that he taught me how to get beat up, for he was older, bigger, and much meaner than was I. He once locked me in a wooden "fort" they had in their back yard and I got in trouble for being late for supper. He was the one that enticed me to eat that red hot chili pepper that I can still feel burning in my throat to this day. But the worst was yet to come!

 

I still have no idea why I was playing with him that fateful night. Perhaps he had hit his little brother (my best friend, Steven) over the head with a shovel. Maybe all of the rest of the population of Kirkland, Washington had leprosy. Whatever the reason, I ended up hanging around with him for a while. We found a heavy fishing weight in my dad's tackle box and had tied an old strip of cloth to it somehow. We would swing the weight around and around by holding onto the end of the cloth and then let her fly! The weight would carry the makeshift streamer far into the sky and we would watch it come down to the ground with the streamer now looking like a comet's tail.

 

It was pretty cool, when I think about it.

 

My dad loved cars, (can you see where this is going?) and had just bought a brand new 1968 Plymouth Fury III. If memory serves me right, it had a 318 engine. It was only a few weeks old, and she was a beauty! I say "was" because that fishing weight landed smack dab in the middle of the hood! I can still remember seeing it drop out of the sky and hoping against hope that it wouldn't hit that car that I had just then noticed parked in the driveway. Mike, whose turn it had been when the weight was thrown, ran away like the yellow-bellied coward that he was. I courageously hid behind a tree.

 

When dad found me (and he did find me) he was too mad to listen to reason. He would hear nothing of the fact that it was Mike who threw the weight. I might have even shared with him the notion that it was all Mike's idea. It was he who made us take the weight out of the tackle box. It was he that made us tie the streamer to it. It should have been an open and shut case, your honor, but dad wasn't buying it. He had this unreasonable notion that the accomplice in the crime should receive a penalty just as if he were the one who had pulled the trigger. And, since the trigger-man was not his son - was, in fact, no where to be found - I was the fall guy.

 

We kept that car from the time I was nine or ten until I went away to college. The dent was always there as a mocking reminder of the sins of my youth. It also reminded me of the truth contained in the Apostle Paul's inspired message above: Bad company corrupts good morals! I only wished that I had learned that lesson then, for it might have saved me an awful lot of "dents" later in life. How about you?  

O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory.

Psalm 108:1, KJV

 

His name was Ben and though he had enjoyed a certain amount of success before his accident, it was nothing compared to what was to follow after. Ben's father committed suicide when he was 12 years old. He shot himself in the chest and lived just long enough to tell his family that he was sorry and wished he hadn't done it. But it was too late.

 

Ben was a small boy and it seemed that he had to fight for everything he had. His family needed the money so he went out and sold newspapers. It was a competitive field and the boys fought for the best locations. The better the location, the more money you could make and Ben's mother needed that money. So he learned to fight. Later he found that golf caddies could make 65 cents an hour! He didn't know anything about golf, but he walked a long way to get the job. What he found was another fierce hierarchy in which he fought for just the opportunity to carry clubs for some rich man. Eventually the other boys learned that Ben would not give up, and a new career was born.

 

After about a year, Ben bought his own clubs and began to practice. He eventually got good enough to play and he spent his hard earned money on entry fees into tournaments, which he gradually began to place high enough to win some prize money. Now Ben finally had a job in which he did not have to fight just to work. He was able to get married to a good woman who would make all of the difference in his life. Ben was shy and absolutely focused on the game, but the crowds and reporters alike mistook his reservation to mean that he didn't much like or appreciate them. So Ben Hogan, though now one of the best golfers in the entire world, just wasn't that popular. That was okay with him, or so he thought, because he had his wife Valerie and his golf.

 

He was driving with Valerie one foggy day at the height of his success. As he rounded a turn he came upon a bus that was trying to pass another vehicle. Ben threw himself across his wife to protect her, and she came out relatively unscathed. Ben, on the other hand, had a crushed pelvis, broken ribs, and a broken ankle. He would be lucky to ever walk again and his career, so everyone thought, was over.

 

But they didn't know Ben and a year later he was not only walking, but he was actually trying to play golf again. At his first tournament, the crowd went wild at his approach to the first tee. To their amazement, Ben Hogan, the ice man who cared nothing for no one, lit up with the warmest and most genuine smile they had ever seen. He went on to become one of the best golfers in history, and retired with a newfound love for others that was eagerly returned by fans and reporters alike.

 

He was later asked in an interview what the change was. He said that a few weeks after his accident, letters started arriving from strangers all over the country. The letters told him that they were praying for him, that they had in fact been praying for his life every since they heard the news. The stream of letters turned from a trickle into a flood of thousands of letters from concerned fans all over the world. The letters were different of course, but all had a common theme: They were praying for him and his wife Valerie.

 

And Ben, as best as he knew how, turned his life over to God and was determined to repay the kindness of those who had poured out their concern and love for him. And his heart which had previously been fixed on his own success and glory, now became fixed upon the Lord and his fellow man. When Ben Hogan finally put his golf clubs down he achieved a record for victories that is still the fourth on the all time list. But, more impressive than that, his glory now included God and his fellow man. 

 

How about you?  

I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

The great woodsman Daniel Boone's reply when asked if he had ever been lost

 

I was 14 years old the night I waited outside for my dad to pick me up from basketball practice. It was a frigid night, with temperatures hovering around zero degrees, and I had already waited outside for about thirty minutes before I finally decided to walk home. The gym was already locked and I had briefly considered trying to break into a car that was outside in the parking lot, but I had been raised to respect both the law and other people's property, so I discarded that idea.

 

The school was a couple of miles from our home and while I had walked before, it was never at night and, like the great Daniel Boone, I became bewildered. We had a friend who had passed away from freezing when he and his brothers got separated from their family while on a hike on Mount Rainier when we lived in Washington State when I was about eight years old, so the understanding that you really could freeze to death was already deeply ingrained in my mind.

 

Still, I can remember becoming so sleepy that I was ready to lay down in the snow in the front yard of a house I was passing by. You may wonder why I was so stupid as to not just ring somebody's doorbell and ask for help, but by that time I was completely disoriented and more than a little unsure of where I even was. I guess God wasn't quite through with me yet, because it was about that time that headlights flashed from behind and a car slowed to see who I was.

 

It was my dad, and I imagine that I had never been so happy to see anyone in my life. You see, I was lost, but now was found!

 

I never went to the doctor, but since that night every time the temperature gets near freezing I get severe pain in my fingers, toes, nose, ears and cheeks. After that the pain numbs for a while until I start to warm up again and go through the same series of pain that I experience when my body temperature drops, so I guess I got frostbite on all of those extremities that night.

 

So, what's the point? Just this: There are millions of people who are feeling lost, right now, in this world in which we live. This feeling does not always come with the realization, however, that one is genuinely lost. It more often comes with the feeling of being bewildered and disoriented. Sometimes it comes with pain, at other times a numbness of mind and body that just makes us want to lie down and go to sleep. But the fact remains - we are lost.

 

The comfort we can take is this: We have a loving Father who is seeking us out if we genuinely want Him to. Just as I was hoping against hope that my dad would find me, so many people who are lost are desperately hoping that God will find them. The good news is that Jesus came into this world to seek and save that which was lost. He still does so to this very day, if we will let Him, but we indeed have to let Him before it is too late and we fall asleep for that final time.

 

Jesus tells us that there is rejoicing in heaven over the finding of even one lost sheep, so we know that neither He nor the Father want us to remain in our lost state. The only question is, do we want to be found? Our salvation hinges on the correct answer to that very question!