Humbug Christmas

After Bob married Doris and two children came along, Bob noticed TV images of shoppers stampeding to buy Christmas gifts.

“Looks like the Oklahoma Land Rush,” he said to Doris.

The next year, Bob thought more about the commercial exploitation of Christmas. He imagined merchants fingering Christmas cash and irreverently singing “What a Friend We Have

in Jesus.” He thought about Christ entering the Jerusalem temple, driving out moneychangers and shouting, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!”

“People have taken Christmas and turned it into a moneychangers’ holiday,” Bob told Doris.

“Bob, don’t lose the spirit of Christmas because some people enjoy the material aspects of the holiday,” Doris said.

“Bah, humbug!” Bob said.

Bob usually functioned normally but transformed into a different person during Decembers, when his wife shopped alone and his children avoided him. Bob’s friends hated to see him coming during the holly-jolly season.

“Uh-oh, here comes Bob with another of his Santa-is-of-the-Devil lectures,” one friend said as he and two others scattered when “Humbug Bob” approached.

“And Jesus wasn’t even born in December!” Bob yelled after them.

One year, during an evening in December, Bob felt tired after one of his tirades against the commercialization of Christmas. He fell asleep on his couch, while his children were nestled all snug in their beds. Doris lovingly laid her hands on Bob’s balding head and sent up a heavy-duty prayer.

Bob awoke later and said, “I had a dream. I saw myself kneeling at a tiny manger, offering a gift – and my gift…well, it was the bad attitude I’ve had about Christmas celebrations. I’m going to try to enjoy Christmas this year, regardless of excesses I see.”

Doris smiled and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace … heavenly peace!”

Christmas Response

  “SELFISHNESS makes Christmas a burden; love makes it a delight,” someone said.

  
One Christmas when I was near seven years old, I found selfishness in my heart.

My family attended a small, rural Pentecostal church north of Greer, South Carolina in the mid-1950s. Our young pastor announced that the church would give a bag of fruit and nuts to each family attending a special Sunday night Christmas service.                                                          

On the night of that service, we saw the bulging grocery bags beneath the tall Christmas tree in our sanctuary. As I recall, we enjoyed carols and a Christmas play before the evening’s last event, the giving of the fruit. The pastor handed a bag to each family representative who came forward.

In a pew near the back of the church sat a family I had never seen before. They were obviously poor. There was a mother with—as I remember—three children and a husband who seemed shy and backward. It was the thin, haggard mother who timidly came forward to receive a bag of fruit.

I remember thinking, “They don’t go to our church. They just came to get the fruit.”

As that thought echoed in my mind, I sensed I was wrong in my attitude of heart—even if I was right about the visiting family. As our young pastor smiled and handed a bag of fruit to the mother, I watched the pastor’s eyes, and in his eyes I saw no hesitancy, no judgment, no burden—only delight.          

Life Care Pregnancy Center of Carthage, N.C. -- 'There' for O'Maille Family

 

The O’Mailles: pictured (from left) at a recent Life Care Pregnancy Center event are Alanna, Lori, Audrey (holding her son, Grayson) and Patrick. (Photo contributed)

Lori O’Maille of Pinehurst, N.C., spoke at two recent gatherings in Owens Auditorium at Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, telling about help she and her older teenage daughter, Audrey, received from Life Care Pregnancy Center of Carthage, N.C.

O’Maille, a coloratura soprano who teaches voice lessons, served as publicity chair for Life Care Pregnancy Center’s gatherings at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 20, 2012, at SCC. The programs featured O’Maille’s testimonial and showings of “October Baby,” a movie about a young woman who survives a failed abortion and learns, as a teenager, about the circumstances of her birth and adoption.

“‘Life Care’ needs to become a household name in Moore County,” said O’Maille, as she told her story to about 100 people gathered at the 2:00 p.m. meeting.

Her daughters, Audrey and Alanna, and her husband and she returned home in 2010 from their first visit to Florida’s Disney World.

“It was the first Sunday of January 2010,” O’Maille said. “Audrey was acting a wee bit strange.”

Audrey, then a sophomore at Pinecrest High School, sat down in the room where her mother was taking down Christmas decorations.  

“I have something to tell you,” Audrey said. 

O’Maille, who said “time stood still” and that she knew somehow what was coming next, said, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

Audrey said, “Yes! And I’m keeping the baby!”

The O’Mailles, ardent Catholics, attend St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Southern Pines, N.C.

“Abortion was not an option for our family,” O’Maille said.

Her husband, Patrick, a doctor of psychology who serves as a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, was nearby. He was soon involved in the conversation.

“I was in shock,” said O’Maille, whose father was a “love child.” Also, she, as a teenager, had some friends who became teenage mothers. “I knew from all aspects what Audrey was going to go through.”

O’Maille “sat three weeks in a room,” going through emotional turmoil. A parent of one of her music students told her about Life Care Pregnancy Center (LCPC).

Suzanne Clendenin, LCPC’s executive director, helped advise Audrey and her family during the pregnancy.

O’Maille said about Clendenin: “I would look at Suzanne and see the face of Jesus in her.”

Audrey wanted to go right back to school after having her baby, but Clendenin advised her to stay home for a semester after delivery and take online classes. She told Audrey, “I see a bright future for you.”

During her senior year, Audrey became Pinecrest High’s 2011 homecoming queen. Her son, Grayson, and her family were present at that crowning. She finished Pinecrest in June 2012 as a “N.C. Scholar” with a 4.2 GPA and is using a $50,000 scholarship (spread over 4 years) to study pre-nursing at UNC at Pembroke. She is active in the school’s Health Careers Club and is an “initiated sister” in Kappa Delta Sorority. She also works part-time.

Grayson was two years and two months old at the time of the recent LCPC meeting. His mother held him onstage as that meeting concluded.

O’Maille said about her grandson, “He’s the sun, moon and stars to me, and I would do anything for him.”

Life Care Pregnancy Center of Carthage, “a Christ-centered ministry that promotes the sanctity of human life,” may be reached at 910-947-6199 or by e-mail at lcpc01@embarqmail.com. Donations may be sent to LCPC, P.O. Box 519, Carthage, N.C. 28327.

 Lori O'Maille (left) and Patrick, her husband, greet Life Care Pregnancy Center event attendees. 

 Suzanne Clendenin, executive director of Life Care Pregnancy Center in Carthage, N.C. 

Quiet Places

Perhaps being raised for the first ten years of my life on a small farm in upper South Carolina helped cause me to love quiet places.

I often feel a twinge of guilt for seeking solitude and quiet escapes. I like the title of a book published in 1874. That book is “Far from the Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy, an English novelist and poet.

  

“Madding” means “Acting in a frenzied manner —usually used in the phrase madding crowd to denote especially the crowded world of human activity and strife.”

I have, in error, sometimes referred to Hardy’s novel as “Far from the Maddening Crowd.” “Maddening” means “irritating, vexing, tending to infuriate.”

Getting away from folk can be an escape from duties, however. Much of human labor involves working with people. Laying down one’s life for others often involves taxing interaction with people.

Quiet places offer harbors in which to rest and recuperate. Harbors are places where battered ships – and depleted minds – can be restored and mended.

As a child, I loved the stillness of evenings on the farm. I recall lying in a grassy field near my family’s barn and looking at white clouds while I wondered about God and his creation. I heard only the sounds of nature – no sounds of motors, bustling shoppers or honking of horns.

Jesus knew the value of quiet places. Recorded in Mark 6:31 are these words he spoke to his disciples: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Shelia Walsh, a Christian singer and author, said, “We can’t always withdraw to quiet hillsides to pray, but Christ will meet with us in the quiet places of our hearts.”

Should Christians Vote?

If Jesus walked the earth in bodily form, today, and was a U.S. citizen, would he vote in the upcoming election?

I believe he would.

Jesus’ “real kingdom” is “not of this world,” but those who believe in him ought to help improve America by voting and participating in a government that’s still, so far, “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Jesus preached that “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people,” and he promoted (and still promotes) good stewardship, which means taking care of talents, wealth and privileges we possess. Participating in government by voting is a privilege Jesus never enjoyed during the time between his birth in Bethlehem and his crucifixion at Calvary.

Jesus spoke powerfully about one's relationship to government when critics asked him about paying taxes to Rome.

“Tell us, is it right to pay taxes to the Roman government or not?” some disciples of the Pharisees asked Jesus (pardon my paraphrasing).

“You hypocrites!” Jesus said. He asked them to show him some money.

“Whose image and signature is on this coin?” Jesus asked.

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

“Then pay Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give God what belongs to God,” Jesus said (Matthew 22:21).

That direct-from-Jesus command indicates people desiring to follow God should also attempt to be good citizens by participating in the privileges and obligations of government. We may be shirking part of our God-endorsed duties if we stay away from voting booths. 

Some religious people may believe voting in an election is a “worldly” activity. An old gospel song contains these words: “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through….”

We’re all “just passing through,” but we shouldn’t neglect our temporal tasks and duties, while we pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

Jesus told this story about a Good Samaritan: Robbers beat a traveler, stripped him and left him for dead. A priest saw the injured man but passed by on the other side of the road. Then a Levite passed by on the other side. Levites were reportedly dedicated to God.

“But a certain traveling Samaritan came upon the wounded man,” Jesus said, “and when he saw him, he felt compassion.” (Samaritans were mostly despised and considered “low class” by priests and Levites.) The Samaritan bandaged the man’s wounds, “put him on his own beast,” carried him to an inn, took care of him and left money with the innkeeper for the man’s further care.

Our American culture is being beaten and bloodied by secular humanism, atheism and socialism. Proponents of these philosophies ignore God’s Word. Some pastors say God is already judging America. Let’s feel compassion for our country and help bind up its wounds.

I believe Jesus would vote in our elections if he walked among us, today, in his earthly body, and was a U.S. citizen. I believe he would vote for candidates who support Christian values. I believe we should, too.

What Is the Best Thing You Can Do for Your Country?

Immediately after taking the oath of office to become President of the United States, John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural speech on January 20, 1961:


“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God….

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty….

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

He ended his speech with these words: “Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

President Kennedy’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,” has been repeated often.

So, what is the best thing an American Christian can do for America?

I believe that living for Christ, spreading the Gospel (by words and deeds) and praying for individuals, our country and the world is the best thing a U.S. citizen can do for his country.

Writer Robin Calamaio says there is one God who is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

“The Bible does not have an Old Testament God…and a New Testament God,” she says, noting that the Bible has plenty of information about God’s dealing with nations. “He speaks of their formation, life-span – and demise. But God, in a present grace and power, still addresses the nations – granting promises…and issuing warnings. As believers, we know that disaster is waiting at the end of unheeded warnings.”

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).

Calamaio writes, “Nations that reject the dominion of the living Creator will be aborted by Him. The God of the Old Testament is alive and well. He always has been.”

She says “power positions” belong mostly to non-Christians, but even if believers filled those positions, leaders can only control a small part of human activity. Attempting to morally contain people is like trying to herd cats, she notes.

While “our citizenship (‘conversation’” is the word used by the KJV in Philippians 3:20) is in heaven,” our lives in our current society are very real, she says. “Family is real – and so are our friends, co-workers and fellow countrymen.”

Though many Christians believe the “end times” are near or already here, we must not give up and wait for the rapture of the Church and neglect filling our Christian roles in society.

Calamaio writes, “When the Israelites were exiled to Babylon, God told them to ‘seek the welfare (peace) of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on his behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare’” (Jeremiah 29:7). There are two directives here. First, benefit that society by doing positive things. Second, pray for that society. Could it be that God directs us in the same vein toward our native country?”

St. Paul tells us, “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4).

What can we do to best help our country?

Yes, we should vote in elections and speak up, but I believe the greatest contribution we can make to help our nation is this: Live for Jesus Christ, spread the Gospel, pray for individuals, pray for leaders, and pray for our country and the world.  

The Spirit of Truth

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Pictured above is the Rev. Michael Dubbs of Southern Pines, N.C. 

“The Spirit of Truth cuts through all the clutter and give us the meaning of life,” the Rev. Michael Dubbs said, speaking as a guest minister on a recent Sunday morning at Community Congregational Church in Southern Pines, N.C.

Dubbs, who has two adult daughters, is a 2007 graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. He worked as a township manager in Bloomsburg, Pa., before serving as a youth pastor and later as a pastor at Millville United Methodist Church in Millville, Pa. He moved last year from Mount Union, Pa., to Southern Pines to live in a house he inherited from the late Lt. Col. William “Billy” Dubbs and the late Therese Dubbs. He works as a guard at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Generating Station in New Hill and preaches when opportunities arise. 

Dubbs told of recently reading a sports news article that was generated, or “written,” by a computer.

“Computers may someday be able to tell us everything in a minute, but what they can’t tell us is what it all means,” Dubbs said. “The Spirit generates inspiration as well as information.”

He said the Holy Spirit helps Christian discipleship go from external imitation to internal motivation.

“The Holy Spirit came to tie it all together,” Dubbs said. “The Spirit will do all the ‘heavy lifting.’ We need to make ourselves available for God’s will through the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives.”

He listed four spiritual protocols:

1. Don’t resist the Holy Spirit.

2. Don’t quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19).

3. Be available for the Spirit.

4. Be filled with the Holy Spirit, who produces an internal “excitement or energy that can’t be ‘me.’”

“When we open ourselves to God’s Spirit, the results can be staggering,” Dubbs said.

He told of escorting a youth group from Millville, Pa., to the Dominican Republic. After a long, hot day of helping with projects in that country, the youth group found the electric power out of service.

“Kids were hot, tired; they couldn’t shower; some were crying,” Dubbs said.

He maintained a policy that each young person had to talk before they left their end-of-day meeting. Some, resenting the power failure, wouldn’t talk.

“The Spirit told me to sing ‘Amazing Grace,’” Dubbs related. “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ I didn’t do anything. Then the Sprit said to me, again, ‘Sing Amazing Grace.’”

He did not sing. But for a third time he felt impressed to sing “Amazing Grace,” and he began to sing.

“Barely a word of singing came out until the lights came on,” he said. “The kids were happy.”

One youngster asked Dubbs, “What made you sing ‘Amazing Grace’ at that moment?”

Dubbs told him God impressed him to sing that song, adding, “If I had sung it the first time, you’d have had your showers five minutes earlier.”

Dubbs said that youngster ran and told other youths, “God spoke to Pastor Mike!”

“We are called to embody the truth,” Dubbs said. “The world needs Christians to embody the truth. People are watching. They want to know what difference Christianity makes in your life.”

He noted that Jesus told Pilate, “I came into the world to testify of the truth.”

Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”

“The Spirit takes the truth of Jesus and seeks to embody it in us,” Dubbs said. “The Spirit wants to embody the truth in people.”

He said we need the boldness to speak the truth, in love, to the world.

“The truth that gets lived out in you and me … that’s amazing. As Christians, we’re all called to embody the truth.”

'Outside the Wire' - Chaplain Carey Cash Speaks

Navy Chaplain Carey Cash talks with an attendee who heard him speak on May 28, 2012 at Aberdeen First Baptist Church in Aberdeen, N.C.  

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Lt. Commander Carey Cash, a U.S. Navy chaplain and author who recently spent nine months in Afghanistan, spoke at Aberdeen First Baptist Church in Aberdeen on the Sunday before Memorial Day.

In introducing Cash to the audience, the Rev. Mike Branscome, pastor of Aberdeen FBC, said he thanked God for those who died for America.

“Many of you know how hard military life can be – for those serving and for those on the home front,” said Cash, who wore a Service Dress White uniform.

Cash’s book, “A Table in the Presence,” describes his experiences while serving with a U.S. Marine battalion in Iraq in 2003. A former football standout at the Citadel, Cash served in 2009 as a chaplain at Camp David, where he sometimes spoke in front of President Barack Obama. During that time, the President said of Cash, “[He] delivers as powerful a sermon as I’ve heard in a while.”

Cash and his wife, Charity, have eight children. Charity is the daughter of Dr. Larry and Jan Ellis. Dr. Ellis co-pastors Trinity Christian Fellowship of Pinehurst. Cash is slated next to serve at the U.S. Naval Academy as its senior protestant chaplain, a position his father-in-law filled 30 years ago.

“The military remains one of the most fruitful mission fields,” Cash said, adding that Jesus was similar to a soldier in that he “rushed into harm’s way” to save others. “My job [in Afghanistan] as a Navy chaplain was to travel the country and look after the spiritual needs of 2400 Navy personnel.” (Navy personnel serve in support positions in Afghanistan.)

He said new terms are associated with recent wars: FOB (forward operating base); IED (improvised explosive device); and TBI (traumatic brain injury).

“Concertina wire” is a type of barbed wire or razor wire formed in large coils; along with regular barbed wire and steel pickets, according to "Wikipedia." it usually is placed on the perimeter of combat-zone U.S. military bases.

Cash talked about the term “outside the wire.”

“Outside the wire is the wild and unpredictable world of Afghanistan,” Cash said. “Where you are in proximity to ‘the wire’ is inquired about.”

Being outside the wire in Afghanistan enhances your prospect of being wounded, he noted. 

“It’s also the only place where any lasting good happens,” he said. “Someone has to go outside the wire … where an old world gets to hear about a new one. … With the people is where any good occurs. There is a spiritual truth in all of this.”

Cash said we should ask two questions when challenges arise: Where is God in the midst of these events? How is God using these events to reveal himself to us?

“His purpose is to reveal himself to us that we might know him and serve him,” Cash said. “If we are to be caught up in God’s purpose – to set people free by the gospel – then we must be willing to step outside the wire.

“In Afghanistan, the barriers are easy to see. You know when you leave a safe area. But as Christians, the barriers are not easy to see. We Christians have become comfortable, entrenching ourselves inside the wire. We rest safe and secure in a predictable Christian lifestyle.”

He said Jesus, who “suffered outside the gate,” calls us “to risk.”

“Therefore, let us go forth to him, outside the camp,” Cash said, noting the Old Testament records that sin offerings were burned outside the camp, a place of outcasts and the unknown. “And yet it was here our Lord was sent to die, numbered with transgressors, outside the camp, crucified with criminals.”

Cash said Jesus “plunged himself into the great theological debates of his time.”

In Afghanistan, Cash accompanied a “Provincial Reconstruction Team” which visited a village to talk with its elders.

“One-third of them were Taliban, deciding whether to cast their lots with us,” he said.

He described enmity and hostility between Afghanistan’s tribes and said interactions involving U.S. soldiers and Afghans are “sometimes successful – always dangerous.”

“Our society is not so different from theirs,” Cash said. “Here, lawlessness is celebrated, and there is enmity between races. We see ourselves far from the brutality of Afghanistan, but we have fallen into the same evils that seduce people. In many ways, our land is just as factious as Afghanistan.”

Christians need to step “outside the wire” in identifying with Christ in their daily lives, he said.

“[We should be] saying things to friend and foe, for the gospel, outside the relative safety of the security of our lives we create for ourselves,” he said. The places where lives are being won and lost are outside the camp. When we give our lives to Christ, we are no longer our own. I’ve asked myself, ‘Why am I doing this [serving as a chaplain]?’ And the answer comes, ‘You are doing this because your life is not your own.’”

He said Psalm 23 contains this concept: “He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

“Our warriors overseas are doing great things,” Cash said. “Let us pray for them. They are living out a metaphor: Victory can only be won outside the wire.

“Outside the wire: That’s where Jesus is. … May we hear and heed his summons to join him ‘outside the wire’ to the glory of God.”

If You Can't Feed 100 People ...

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one,” said the late Mother Teresa.

I think Mother Teresa’s statement has something to do with this old saying: “He can’t see the forest for [seeing] the trees.” This reverse version of that statement may be more in tune with Mother Teresa’s advice: “He can’t see the trees for [seeing] the forest.”

When someone desires to feed many people but lacks means or ability to achieve that goal, he may decide to give up and feed no one. His crushed, perhaps-unrealistic vision may cause him to lose faith.

The Scriptures advise us: “Despise not the day of small things.” Jesus observed that he who is faithful over a few things will be made ruler over many.

In our pop-top, drive-thru world, we covet instant gratification. When someone inspires us to reach out to people, we may think in touch-the-whole-world terms. We think big – maybe too big (at the beginning). “The longest journey begins with a single step,” someone said.

My wife often notices my self-defeating ways of thinking. After I sometimes rehearse all the things I think I need to get done, she will say, “But what are you meant to do today?”

As Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”

Bless You, Mothers

“Do you have children?” a young dental hygienist asked me during one of my routine checkups.

I said, “Yes,” and told her the ages of the two adult daughters my wife Carol and I cherish.

“I have a son; he’s eight months old,” said the trim, blond hygienist whose husband works as a golf course manager.

“That keeps you busy,” I said.

“Oh, yes, but if we decide to go somewhere special, we take him with us,” she said. “He’s starting to ‘pull up’ and will soon be walking.”

“It’s great you’re committed to having children,” I said. “You may better appreciate this statement when your son is older, but someone said, ‘The decision to have a child is a decision to take your heart out and let it walk around on the earth.’”

She was silent for a short time before she said, “That’s enough to bring a tear to an eye.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have given her that quotation. I didn’t mean to cause her to lose the joy of telling of her son’s endearing baby behavior. I wondered what crossed her mind in the seconds between my statement and her reply? Did she envision her son growing away from her during his teenage years? Did she see him as a young man wearing a military uniform and waving as he boarded a plane?

I was no more than six years old when my mother looked at me while she said to a lady visiting our house, “They say war comes around about every 18 years.”

I remember thinking I would probably follow in the footsteps of my father, a U.S. Army veteran who fought in Germany during World War II. Mother had known the stress of waiting for her husband to return, and she seemed concerned about my future. Mother’s statement came to my mind many times before I entered the U.S. Army. I spent a year in Vietnam but saw no combat.

“The decision to have a child is a decision to take your heart out and let it walk around on the earth.”

Many mothers have “poured out their hearts in prayer” for their children. They’ve prayed for children who “made them proud” and prayed for wayward sons and daughters.

While living years ago in Greenville, S.C., I often listened to the Rev. Oliver B. Greene’s “The Gospel Hour” radio broadcasts. Greene was born in 1915 in Greenville, South Carolina, and based his ministry in that city. He died in 1976.

A Gospel Hour website describes Greene’s youthful life as “that of a wastrel, living in wanton wickedness. Drinking, stealing, bootlegging, immorality – he was a veteran of all those vices. But at age 20, God saved that wayward youth when he attended a revival meeting (solely in an attempt to date a pure country girl) and heard a sermon on ‘The wages of sin is death.’” Greene said he moved “from disgrace to grace.” In 1939, at age 24, Greene bought a tent, and for 35 years conducted revivals across America, until failing health forced him to stop.

During one of his radio programs, I heard Greene tell of “coming home drunk” when he was an unsaved young man. He heard his mother praying for him as he passed her room. A sermon may have convicted Greene and clinched his decision to follow Christ, but his mother had prayed for him for many years.

When the angel Gabriel traveled to Galilee and told Mary she would give birth to Jesus, Mary was joyful. After Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph (Jesus’ stepfather) carried Jesus to Jerusalem “to present him to the Lord.” The elderly Simeon “came by the Spirit into the temple” and took Jesus in his arms.
 
“And Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary his mother, ‘Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against. Yes, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul, also…” (Luke 2:35).

Mary knew the joy of giving birth to Jesus Christ, “the Light of the world,” and she knew the soul-piercing pain of seeing her grown son, her “sweet little holy child,” suffer rejection and endure the agony of crucifixion.
 
Dear Father, bless all the mothers who have known and will know the joys and sorrows that come from being willing to take their hearts out and let them walk around on the earth.

At the Altar

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Pictured above is an after-church gathering (around 1951 or 1952) on the steps of Gum Springs Pentecostal-Holiness Church in the Blue Ridge section of Greenville County, South Carolina. I was sick that day and missed being in the photo. My friend Don Hill and I are the same age. He is pictured on the front row near the center. He was about four years of age when this photo was made. My first-grade teacher, then known as "Miss Nell Thompson" is also shown in this photograph. (Left-click once on the photo to see it enlarged.) 

The church I first attended as a child had a banister-type, wooden altar rail that ran across the front of the sanctuary.

That red-carpeted church sanctuary had three aisles (one center aisle and two wall aisles) and two sections of pews. The pulpit stood on a raised platform behind the altar railing.

The folk in that rural Greenville County, South Carolina, body of believers called their group the Gum Springs Pentecostal-Holiness Church. The “church” was made up of people; the people met in a “church house,” a building that “housed” the church (the people). Those dear people seemed to go to the altar a lot after sermons were delivered.

The altar in our sanctuary seemed, to me, to be a very holy spot. People knelt there to “do business” with the Lord. Many who used the altar area prayed out loud, and the sounds of their corporate voices were beautiful in my ears.

Many altar-goers raised their hands in worship, and I often saw handkerchiefs in the palms of ladies who prayed at our altar. Those handkerchiefs absorbed tears that flowed.

Sometimes, when our pastor presented an “altar call” for anyone who had never accepted Christ, a solitary figure might walk to the front of our sanctuary and kneel at the altar. The pastor prayed for that man or woman. Several people gathered ’round to pray – sometimes with the “laying on of hands” – for each penitent person.

As a child, I perceived that the altar was a good place for people to lay down burdens and release tears, as their hearts cried out to God.

I’ve heard some people say altars in churches are outdated and that Christ’s work – his being laid “on the altar of sacrifice” (the cross) – took away the need for an altar. Many churches have prayer areas between pulpits and pews or sanctuary seating, but they don’t have “altars with railings” on which one can lay his arms, cradle his head, pray and let tears fall.

  

I’ve seen many people who seemed to “meet God” at altars. And I recall good times I spent on my knees at altars. I still have a fondness for altars.

'Love the Unlovely'

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I’ve heard pastors say we should “love the unlovely.”

I think that means we should love people who repulse us in some way. But have we heard that phrase so many times that it has lost some of its meaning and become part of the Christian-ese Christ-followers sometimes speak?

When I hear those words, “love the unlovely,” I often envision someone watching television. A photo of a beggar, a sad-eyed child or a starving person appears on the screen, and while sitting in an easy-chair, the viewer decides to send funds to help “love the unlovely.” No muss, no fuss. Funds are needed. Sending money is good. It’s okay to love the unlovely from a distance.

Another scene I visualize when I hear the words “love the unlovely” comes together in my mind in this way: a vagrant enters a church sanctuary on a Sunday morning. People are singing as the inebriated bum staggers down center-aisle. Unlovely odors radiate from the “down on his luck” man’s rag-clad torso. Two ushers wearing coats and ties intercept “Mr. Bojangles” and his worn-out shoes before he can do any kind of dance, click his heels or “speak right out.” (Mr. Bojangles may have fared better if he had danced across a TV screen.) The ushers take the bum to a backroom, determine he’s too drunk to reason with and haul him to a mission or homeless shelter. Maybe the church could have done more, but it loved the unlovely enough to provide some help.

“Loving the unlovely” opportunities sometimes come to us through easily identified characters. But loving the unlovely can be toughest when the unlovely are people we know and love, or should love. The most challenging unlovely people may be relatives, coworkers or others with whom we have to interact. Sometimes, the unlovely are fellow Christians. And, of course, our “loving the unlovely” is complicated – it’s complicated because of the un-loveliness we discover in our own hearts when we begin to try to love the unlovely.

  

We, the totally depraved, who have placed faith in Jesus Christ for our salvation, need Christ’s power to truly love the unlovely.

Proud Accomplishment - Who Gets the Credit?

The accomplishment I am most proud of and thankful for is my “accepting Christ.”

Of course, some people say a person doesn’t “find” Christ – they say Christ finds that person. The recipient of salvation by faith in Christ may think he/she makes all decisions that culminate in his/her accepting Christ, but some people say many factors work to that end.

For one thing, no one “comes” to Christ unless God “moves” him.
Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him… ” (John 6:44 NASB).

Though I question what part I personally played in accepting Christ, I feel my conversion to Christ is my greatest accomplishment. If I had not accepted Jesus Christ when I was six years old, I’m not sure where I now would be – or if I would be living.

I seem to naturally and hereditarily drift into melancholy and self-doubt. Without Christ, would I have “given in” during my lifetime to a “what’s it all worth” feeling and “ended it all”?

My sometimes restless mind tries to trace feelings and actions to their roots. Faith in Christ helps me understand “fallen-nature reasons” for mankind’s record and my own history. The Word of God offers peace and helps me “discern,” or understand, the thoughts and intents of my own heart.

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NASB).

I believe Christ saved (and is saving) me from sin and its penalties. He empowers me to live an obedient and victorious life.

As a child, I heard the Word of God (the Bible), sensed my sinfulness and need of a savior and “believed on” Christ as that Savior. That has been my greatest accomplishment.

But sometimes I wonder this: Is that accomplishment really mine, or should I give God all the credit?

'I Need My Body'

A few years ago, I took a day off from the carpet manufacturing company where I work and sat in my easy chair with a small pillow behind my aching back. I kept thinking of things I could be doing if arthritis hadn’t acted up in my hips and lower back.

The day before, I had visited my doctor who confirmed with x-rays that I was almost in need of at least one hip replacement, and my lower spine had a touch of arthritic inflammation.

Anxious for the Lord to heal me and thinking of things I wanted to do for Christ, I thought, with some frustration, “Lord, I need my body to do your work.”

Pausing only briefly, I thought better and prayed silently, “Lord, I’ll try to be something for you and work for you no matter what shape my body is in.”

Alone, in the mid-day silence of my living room, I believe the Lord seemed to say to me, “I, too, need my Body to do my work. And I will work through it - no matter what shape it’s in.”

When Bunnies Grow Up

When we were children, my sister and I enjoyed owning a white rabbit.

Dad built a wire pen that stood on tall wooden legs and placed it against an outside wall of our barn, located near our house in rural Greenville, S.C. Our own “Peter Cotton-Tail, Hopping Down the Bunny Trail” scampered around his little cage and contributed to our happiness.

One day, as we worked and played near our barn, Dad ate an orange and gave some of the peelings from that fruit to our rabbit. I later walked past our long-eared prisoner’s cage and discovered our pet had “passed on.”

“Daddy! Our rabbit’s dead!” I called.

Mother, Dad and Sister hurried to investigate. Dad was embarrassed and guessed the dye in the orange peelings killed our snow-white nibbler.

Lianne McLeod, DVM, says rabbits are often acquired as pets at Easter time and end up neglected or given up for adoption. Bunnies grow up and need as much attention and care as dogs. Rabbits are not ideal pets for children, partly because rabbits often don’t like to be held or cuddled.

A friend of our older daughter, Janelle, gave her a rabbit named “Flower” and a cage when Janelle was in high school. I cleared a space in our garage in Southern Pines, N.C., and Flower and her big hind feet came to live with us.

Janelle appeared thrilled with her hop-along pet – for a few days. Flower seemed to abhor a clean pen. As soon as Janelle would tidy up Flower’s habitation and line the cage’s floor with clean newspapers, Flower would have a kidney spasm. Janelle soon found someone to take Flower off her hands. The upkeep had exceeded the enjoyment.

My wife, Carol, and I recently asked an older gentleman who lives alone if he owned a dog. “No,” he said. “I don’t want anything around my house that makes a bigger mess than I do.”

We once had a neighbor who wanted an “English garden.” Her husband paid to have rocks brought in and various flowers and greenery artistically planted in their yard. The garden had to be weeded, however, and our friends hadn’t counted on our local deer population routinely tasting their nice plants.

Beginning something is often easier than maintaining it.

I heard about an unmarried woman who gave birth to a baby. After a few months, she knocked on the door of the apartment where the baby’s paternal grandmother lived. “You take him,” she said. “I can’t handle it.” She left that child with his grandmother, who raised him to adulthood.

Moses was anointed to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. The Hebrews hailed him as a man of God as he directed them across the Red Sea on dry ground. His sister, Miriam, broke out her tambourine, and they rejoiced over the Lord’s deliverance. Soon, however, the Israelites lacked water and grew weary in the wilderness. Some wished they’d never left Egypt and complained to Moses, “Have you brought us out here to die?” Moses went from “hero to zero,” someone said.

Perhaps you’re a Christian who felt joyful when you realized the Lord Jesus not only saved you but gave you the privilege of finding fulfillment through some kind of ministry. Maybe you even “birthed” a ministry. Perhaps doors opened and you felt energized as people praised you for your vision. But the upkeep of your creative aspiration has become a burden. Perhaps you feel discouraged or depressed.

“Bunnies grow up and need attention and care,” Dr. McLeod said.

Some projects or ministries are started with little planning for “maintenance.” And some worthwhile ministries are only useful for certain seasons of one’s life. Joyce Meyer said, “If the horse is dead, dismount.”

But sometimes we give up too easily. A person’s lack of depth of character and “small strength” may cause him to quit when adversity comes. We should remember this: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9). And here is practical advice: “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds” (Proverbs 27:23).

I think many of us spend the first half of our lives learning how to do many things and spend the last half of our lives figuring out how many of those things we need to quit doing. Our egos keep us “spread too thin” and stressed. We try to regroup and prioritize. We wonder how many things that call to us are “of God” and how many are “of self.”

Someone said, “Duties never conflict.” I’ve often wondered about that statement.

Jesus visited Martha and Mary. Martha busied herself preparing food and making sure Jesus’ visit went well. Mary sat and listened as Jesus talked. Martha criticized Mary, saying, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:40-42 NIV).

When my wife sees me worrying over many things I feel I need to be doing, she often says, “Steve, what are you meant to do, today?”

That statement brings me back to earth, and I pray for wisdom. Things important to God should be at the top of my to-do list. St. Paul wrote: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

“Bunnies grow up and need attention and care.”

Father, give me wisdom when I consider making commitments, and help me stick with commitments I’ve made that are important to you. In Jesus’ name, amen.