Zoom!

My car has 265 horsepower. That’s more power than I need, but occasionally all that power comes in handy, especially when I enter an interstate highway and have to accelerate rapidly to keep from getting run over. Zoom!
But time zooms faster than my car. This fact became extremely clear when I spoke at the 50th anniversary of Bible Baptist Church in Williamson, New York, in 2005. I had served as the church’s first full-time pastor until 1964. More than four decades of absence seemed like days, not decades. So I expected to find everyone I had left in Williamson to look the same as he or she did in 1964. Wrong! In 1964 the church’s leaders were in their early 40s. At the 2005 celebration, they were in their early 80s. Somehow, their energy had plunged, their walk had slowed, and their faces had wrinkled. (Their bright smiles were still bright, though.)
When I left in 1964, the youth group was overflowing with vivacious teenagers. Much to my delight, a few were on hand for the 50th anniversary. “Glenn, how old are you now, I asked one of the former teenagers.”
“Fifty-nine. I retired from Kodak,” Glenn responded.
Turning to another former teenager, I asked, “How old are you, Terry?”
“Sixty-one.”
Zoom! Where had the years gone?
I’m sure you, too, have wondered where the years have gone. You can close your eyes and see yourself in high school or learning to drive or at your first job or at your wedding or holding your first baby. It’s hard to believe the past passed so quickly.
The apostle James compared life to a mist that evaporates rapidly, so he counseled us to make the most of whatever future remains by living according to God’s will.
When I was in my late teens, I heard the words, “Only one life. ‘Twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” None of us know how much time remains to do God’s will, so I want to make today count—for eternity.

Happy Birthday, Rosie!

Rosie, our red toy poodle is celebrating her sixth birthday today. She is all poodle: protective, loyal, devoted, and oblivious to the fact that she is not a human. Rosie has two favorite places in the house: at my feet or on my lap.

Our other dogs are special, too, and I wouldn’t accept a million dollars for them and Rosie, even in these tough economic times.

If I value our three dogs so highly, how much more must our heavenly Father value His children? He assures us in Scripture that one soul is worth more than the whole world. His Son gave His life for us, and our heavenly Father has promised to meet all our needs—every day without fail.

I’m thankful Rosie, Molly, and Sadie are members of our family, and I’m glad Gloria and I are members of God’s family.

You Should Have Seen the One I Got Away From

We might sympathize with Jonah if we think he scorned the Lord’s commission to preach against Nineveh’s wickedness because he was afraid. After all, Nineveh was the Assyrians’ capital city, and they were Israel’s vicious enemy. Everybody knew how the Assyrians piled their victims’ corpses like cords of wood and dismembered or burned survivors at the stake. But Jonah scorned the Lord’s commission because he feared the Ninevites would repent and receive God’s forgiveness. His prejudice blocked his willingness to preach to people he despised.

Soon Jonah had a change of heart. He repented and prayed from the belly of a whale (likely a sperm whale) that the Lord had appointed to preserve Jonah’s life and subdue his rebellious spirit. Like Jonah it seems we pray best when we are in a tight spot. When we are at wit’s end, we find strong motivation to pray and submit to God’s will.

Jonah ended his prayer by exclaiming, “Salvation is of the Lord.” The only way out for Jonah was to look up and confess that only the Lord could deliver Him. Have you looked up to see the way out?

I read somewhere that when Jonah exclaimed, “Salvation is of the Lord,” the whale thought, “Jonah is an evangelical, but I’m a liberal. I can’t stomach this.” So he vomited Jonah onto dry land.

When a Blackberry Was Just a Black Berry

Do you remember when a blackberry was a black berry? You ate it; you didn’t “play” with it. And you didn’t have to use your thumbs. Now we have i-Pods, i-Tunes, i-Photos, i-Chats, IDVDs, and a host of other high-tech gadgets that make our heads swim. If you know your way around computers and other techie toys, you are either an adult with a uniquely wired brain or an average 12 year old. You are probabIy not a senior. I wonder how the world got so high tech and what quantum leaps lie ahead. I fear change, and I am too old to jump.

Even the purchase of a new telephone can lead us to the edge of a nervous breakdown. How do you set the date, day, and time? How do you adjust the ringer’s volume? Voice mail, call forwarding, call waiting, and setting up a frequently-called numbers directory can produce night sweats and even nightmares. You can plop the receiver down almost anywhere in the house. It doesn’t have to remain on the base station. My wife and I recently bought new phones. And therefore had to move back to point zero on the learning curve.

Think back to “the good old days” . . . .

A manual typewriter hardly ever broke down. Occasionally, we had to clean the keys and roller and install a new ribbon, but we never had to rely on Geeks R Us to rescue us at $100 per hour.

If we wanted to make a phone call, we simply dialed the number. Either the person we called answered or didn’t. If no one answered, we called again later. We could call our doctor’s office and talk to a live person. That made scheduling an appointment or getting test results a lot easier than what we endure today. “Please listen to all options before making a selection. If this is a life-threatening emergency, please hang up and call 911. If you are calling from a physician’s office or a pharmacy, press 1 now. To refill a prescription, contact your pharmacy, and your pharmacist will call us. For a new prescription, press 2 now. To leave a message for a nurse or to inquire about test results, press 3 now. To schedule an appointment, press 4 now. For billing, press 5. For all other calls,please stay on the line and someone will assist you shortly. Bzzzzzzzzzzz!”

It seems high tech has gummed up most communication lines. A customer can’t even contact his telephone company without having to negotiate his way through a series of menu options that lead to a long hold followed by a response by someone who is struggling with the English language.

Fortunately, we don’t have to go high tech to reach God. Prayer gets us straight through to heaven from anywhere at any time. We never hear, “If this is a life-threatening emergency, hang up and call Michael the Archangel or Gabriel.”
God promised, “Call to me and I will answer you” (Jeremiah 33:3). Now that may not be a high tech system, but it is user friendly, voice activated, and reliable. Prayer never crashes, never experiences a power outage, and never puts us on hold.

Transitions

I need to take a break today from writing. I have been working against a tight deadline to write a VBS course for adults and another VBS course for 5th and 6th graders. I wrote VBS courses last year for both age levels, but I was younger then!!!

After a year and a half, my interim ministry at Penrose, Colorado, will end February 22. A full-time pastor will preach his first sermon there March 1.

The incoming pastor has been e-mailing me from his home in Georgia. He is looking forward to ministering and living in Colorado. I alerted him to the independent mindset he will find in Colorado. Coloradoans tend to resemble the mountains. No two are exactly alike. They value individualism and resist all attempts to make them conform to traditions and formality. Suits and ties are as scarce in our rural towns as an all-day rain.

I am scheduled to preach March 1st about 50 miles east of Colorado Springs. The church is not far from where Gloria and I purchased Molly, our Maltese, our “little dog on the prairie.” Currently, the church doesn’t have a pastor; so one Sunday of preaching may lead to additional Sundays. “Have Bible, will travel!”