I've explained how my father grew up. Wrestling hogs, hanging beef from the rafters and working in the restaurant washing dishes, cleaning tables, whatever needed to be done.

Ken's father was a different story.  He never worked in the kitchen in his life.  I don't think he ever set foot in a kitchen except to eat.  He left home and went to work full time as a carpenter and a plasterer when he was twelve years old, supporting himself.  When he married Ken's mom, he became a Christian and during the depression, he went to the seminary.  Before he could do that, he had  to go back to high school and get a degree.  Which he did, graduating the same year their daughter did.

He became a Baptist minister, moved to Pryor and was the pastor of our church--which he built.  Ken was in the eighth grade.  I hadn't started school yet.  I didn't know Ken.  But his father baptized me and his mother was my Sunday School teacher.  My dad and Ken's dad were very good friends.  Two men who couldn't have been more different.  Both of them had been forced to work like grown men when they were still children.  One grew up as an inside restaurant worker who slaughtered pigs.  One grew up as an outside construction worker.    Both of them were hard working men.

The only thing that Ken and I had in common family-wise was that both of our parents were devoted Christians.  We had very different perspectives on what men did and what women did in the home.

When my mom and dad got married, they both worked, but my mom went back to college to finish her degree at night and on the weekends so that she could teach school.  There weren't enough hours in the day, so she and dad divided up the house work.  Dad choose the kitchen.  Man's work.  She did everything else.

I've told you these stories about our families so that I can tell you about the biggest fight Ken and I ever had.  Tomorrow.  You can almost see it coming.  We hadn't learned to understand each other yet.

Psalms 4:7  "Wisdom is the principal thing;  therefore get wisdom:  and with all your getting get understanding;"

My dad was raised in a restaurant.  His father started the first restaurant this side of Arkansas--down in south Oklahoma, in Wilberton in the late 1800's early 1900's.  They fed any number of outlaws who used Robber's Cave to camp out.  It sounds like a western movie.  It was, it just didn't get filmed.

Belle Starr, the James boys, Pretty Boy Floyd.  All of them knew where to get good food. I have a picture of my grandmother  standing in front of the restaurant.  There was a great big plate glass window behind her that read Swan's Restaurant.  It is straight from the old west.

My grandfather, was shot and killed when my dad was seven years old.  Dad was left to care for his mom and keep the restaurant running.  He never got to be a kid.  He slaughtered hogs, washed dishes, whatever needed to be done.  He was the youngest of seven boys.  Three died, one was disabled by the measles, and the oldest two rigged the underbelly of their dad's Studebaker so that they could run liquor into "Dry" Oklahoma and left home.  My dad was left to care for his mother and brother.  And he did.  He dropped back a year in school to help his brother Harvey catch up.  My dad's name was Elmer.  He and Harvey were both such sweet men.

They never found out who killed my grandfather.  Getting shot wasn't that unusual back then.  Oklahoma wasn't even a state.  My grandfather had made a lot of money running cattle in western Oklahoma,  which a fellow named Edge absconded with and left Grandmother penniless.  Sounds like a wild west story.  Which it was.  But my dad lived through it and never had a day he wasn't working in the kitchen up to the day he was ninety-four and came to live with Ken and me.

Psalms 55: 22 "Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you: he shall never suffer the righteous to moved."

My dad was righteous.  I never once in his life heard him complain.  About anything.  He was a servant.  He was a caregiver.  I often think about how blessed I am to have had such a father.

My asparagus is going wild.  It grows two inches overnight.  I pick it every evening and every morning and am giving it away as fast as I can.  But my tomatoes are just sitting there doing nothing.  They haven't even grown a new leaf.  Both are alive.  But they are alive differently.  One is growing, the other isn't.  One is getting somewhere, the other isn't.  One is bearing fruit, the other isn't.

That is what I was trying to say last Friday about sitting and soaking in the pews.  Or not even going to church at all.  Unless we are growing, God can't do much with us.  I told you that you want to make friends with God before the last minute.  You can't catch up when you neglect your spiritual muscles.

Last week my daughter called and told me, "Mom, you had a perfect example of trying to 'catch up' and you didn't even use it in your blog.  You have spent the last two years neglecting yourself while you took care of Dad.  You used to swim every day, but you quit when he was so ill.  And you lost your muscle strength.  Now, since he is gone you are going back to exercise classes and you are finding that is is hard and discouraging.  It takes a lot of time to catch up."

She is right.  I can't tell that I have accomplished anything in my exercise class these last five months.  But when I went to visit her, she could tell the difference.   She said, "Look at you, you aren't wobbly.  You are walking  so much better.   You've got your balance back."

Spiritual muscles are the same way.  You gain ground slowly over time.  You don't even know you are changing.  But you are.  Reading God's word flexes your spirit.  Your spirit grows.  It gets stronger.

I hate to exercise.  But  I have a goal and I am trying to reach it.  The hard part is not giving up on it.  I have been reading the Psalms and when I got to Psalms 22. 14-15a, it rang a bell.  Even David got tired and lost his strength.  "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint:  my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my body.  My strength is dried up like a pot shard, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws…"  That describes it perfectly.  I let myself physically get out of shape.

Don't let yourself get Spiritually out of shape.

I was seventy six years old in March.  I don't know where those years went.  They evaporated.  Yesterday I was sixteen worrying about what to wear to school the next day.  Life gets lived in pieces and bits and then it is behind you and you wish you had done a better job of living it.

You are living your life right now.  Yesterday I challenged you to share the gospel with someone by investing your time in them.  You can always find something to say about how good God is.

On the first of May, it will be five years since I finished chemo and radiation for breast cancer.  I survived.  By the grace of God.  But if I hadn't survived, that would have been by the grace of God as well.  God has plans for us.  Who knows what the plan for my life this next year will be.  I don't have a clue.  Right now, I am writing to all of you.   That seems to be enough.

We live our lives one day at a time.  Include God, or when you are at the end of it, you will be scrambling to catch up.  And you really can't do that.  It's like building a friendship.  It takes time.  You have to give  it your attention.  You have to share, you have to listen.

John 13:34 "A new commandment I give unto you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another."

These words were spoken by Jesus.  They don't in any way resemble the ten commandments given to Moses.  The commandment from Jesus is new.  Because, not only do we have to love each other, we have to do it like he did it.

Selflessly.

This is my 354th post.  I've told you almost everything I know.  Which obviously isn't much.  Through the years in the Bible classes that I have taught, we would meet once a week.  Excepting Thanksgiving and Christmas week, that is 50 classes a year.  At that rate, I have given you seven years of teaching. If you started reading this in the middle, go back and read the first posts.

I always told the members of the classes I taught that they would be ready to go work in the church when they had listened for three years.  That the rest of their knowledge should come from study on their own.  And they did.  Almost every one of them "got it" and found something to do in the church to serve others with their lives.  Kathleen, Susie, Anita, Linda, Sally, Kathy,  and dozens of others…they went to work teaching high school students, children, and adults.  I am now a great grandmother in the Lord from the lives of these women.  They bless my life.

You can teach someone as well.  Take what you know and share it.  The best way to be effective is to connect the gospel to a story from your life.  Tell someone how God has blessed you.  Don't hit them over the head with a Bible.  And remember, it takes time.

I have always made it a point to choose one person from the group each year to pour my life into.  They all know who they are.  They were always someone who was eager to learn.  Some people just wanted to listen.  Others wanted to learn.  You can't save the world.  But you can do it one person at a time.

People are dropping out of church the last few years.  It is a shame because the church is a wide open arena in which to serve God.  The church is full of hurt, lonely, searching people.  God gave us instructions on church attendance:  Hebrews 10: 24-25a  "And let us consider one another to provoke others unto love and good works:  Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another…"

Life isn't all about you.  It is about others.  Service to others is a necessary behavior to live a full life.  Service in a church is so very rewarding.  God said, "…let us consider one another…let us exhort (encourage) one another… let us provoke others to do good works…"

You can do it.

In the last few hours of Jesus' life, two people that hadn't ever known him appear on the scene, and are impacted by the events.  The Jewish priests are calling for Pilate to crucify Jesus (Matt. 15:9-13)  Pilot, looking for a way to free Jesus, gave the crowd a choice.  He would release Barabbas, a criminal who had been sentenced to death--or Jesus.  The crowd chose to release Barabbas.

I watched a fictional-factional film called "Barabbas" the other night.  It was really good.   It made me think about what Barabbas must have felt like when he was freed from prison.  He must have wondered about this "Jesus" that had taken his place to die.  He was free from prison because of Jesus.

The other character who didn't know Jesus was Simon.  Mark 15: 21-22 "And they compelled Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross."  Here was a man who wasn't a Jew, coming into the city--probably to sell goods.  He just happened by at the moment Christ was trying to carry the cross up the hill to Golgotha.  His boys watched as their father willingly picked up the cross and helped Jesus.  

Later we find that at least one of those boys, Rufus, was active in the church.  Paul says in Romans 16:13a, "Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord…"  A chance encounter changed the boy's life.  Think of the chance encounters in your life that have changed you.  But along with that, think of the chance encounters where you have changed someone else's life for the good.

We change each other through encounters.  Some of them are chance encounters.  The thing we have to learn to do, is to recognize opportunities that God gives us to share Christ. In Luke 10:23, Luke told us, "If any man will come after me, (Jesus) let him take up his cross daily and follow me."  If you carry a cross for Christ, who knows what will happen.  Look what happened to Rufus. His life was changed because his dad carried the cross for Jesus. 

I have been overseas frequently.  My daughter Becky was an Industrial Engineer with Conoco, and they sent her abroad, sometimes for weeks.  She had so many frequent flyer miles that she took me with her and also one of her boys because she wanted them to have the experience.  And while she was working,  I would go explore the countryside with Steven or David.
They were young, seven to twelve years old and both of them much more adventurous than I was, but off we would go, hopping trains.

She was working off the North shore at Grimsby on a rig.  In England.  So one morning Steven and I caught a train to York.  The castle there is pretty awesome and we got absorbed in all the sights and missed our train back to Grimsby.  Which meant I had to improvise to get us home.

It was snowing and on the first leg of our alternate route, the train let us off at a concrete pad.  That was it.  No town.  No people.  Just a pad.  So there I was in the middle of nowhere with an eight year old boy with snow coming down.  We certainly hadn't dressed for the snow.

It's at times like that when your prayers get real.  You know that the only way you are going to get out of the mess you are in is with the help of God.  I needed a train to stop.  Now.  And I didn't have a schedule.  I had no idea if one was coming, or when.  We huddled up and sang.  I usually sing when I am scared.  Or hum.  We didn't freeze.  The train came.  It stopped.  I thanked God profusely.

Psalms 5: 1-3  "Give ear to my words, O Lord.  Consider my meditation.  Harken to the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto you I will pray."
Psalms 18:6  "In my distress I called on the Lord, and cried to my God:  he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even to his ears."

When you are in trouble, that's what you do.  You pray.  And you keep yourself free from doing wrong so that God listens.  In Isaiah we are told that there isn't anything wrong with God's arm that he can't reach you, or his ears that he can't hear you.  But that your sins separate you from him.

Stay confessed up.








 
 

Well, I wanted to pick those morel mushrooms so bad that on Saturday, I drove back to my daughter's farm and went tramping through the woods.  Down gullies, red dirt wash outs and downed trees to get them.  Which we did.  A whole basket full.  We washed them and fried them.  Heavenly.  So delicious.

But there was a price to pay.  Today I have been at the doctor's office getting embedded ticks dug out of my body…I knew to spray with tick spray.  But I didn't.  Really stupid.

Proverbs 4:7  "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all your getting, get understanding."  But all the wisdom in the world won't help you a bit if you don't apply it.  Which I didn't.

That old phrase, "You should have known better," is true.  But how many times do we know the right thing to do and we tell ourselves that, "This time it will be ok.  The ticks aren't biting today."  Or more like, "They won't bite me."

So many stupid mistakes are made that way.  You know better, but you ignore your knowledge.

I am going to be on antibiotics for two weeks because I didn't take two seconds to spray on some Deet.

Knowledge without application is useless.

Good Friday.  I have never understood why they call it good.  They killed Christ on that day.  I said "they," I should probably say "we." The Bible says that he willingly gave up his life for us.

When he was praying in the garden right before he was betrayed by Judas, He said to the Father (this is my modern interpretation of his words: "Oh, my Father.  Isn't there some other plan.  Do I have to go through this.  But if there isn't, not my will but thine be done."

He knew that he was going to the cross to bear all the sin of all time.  He knew he was the ultimate sacrificial lamb.

One of the worst things about the crucifixion--besides the painful agony--was when God turned away from his own son. Christ cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  Jesus had lived his life dependent on the Father.  But as sin descended upon Christ, God, who cannot look upon sin, turned.  He then ripped the veil in the temple from the top to the bottom as Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

It was done.  We can now go into the holy of holies behind the veil.  We can come to God.  We don't need a priest.  This is why we pray "In Jesus name."

This is why when we read in Revelation 21: 22 concerning heaven, "And I saw no temple there:  for the Lord God Almighty and Lamb are the temple of it."

Jesus called himself the "door," in John 10:9a " I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved…."  He is the way into eternal life.  One way.  No other plan, no other door, no other sacrifice.

Revelation 3: 20a "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come into him…"  You have to open the door from the inside.  There isn't a doorknob on the outside.  All Jesus can do is knock.  And when you answer that voice, that summons, that moment your soul knows that God is calling you--don't be stupid.  Open the door.

Last week, I was driving old highway 66 and turned off at Luther to go to my daughter's house.  All the way to my turn at Britton road, the highway was lined with redbud trees in full bloom.  There were hundreds and hundreds of them covered in flowers.  They looked like strawberry ice cream cones.   I just marveled at the beauty of them.

Later, my daughter and I walked the horses down to a wooded, hilly, overgrown part of her farm.  We climbed down gullies and ravines until we arrived at a spot where some of the trees were fallen and many were rotting.  Morel mushrooms love that kind of environment.  I had never seen a morel mushroom before except in a book.  There they were. dozens and dozens of them popping out of the ground.  But they weren't ready to pick.  They have to spawn first so there will be more of them next year.  Now I can't wait to taste one.  My daughter is going to pick them Saturday and bring me some.

I am a gardner.  Not a very good one, but I keep trying.  I just love to put a seed in the ground and watch as it comes to life.   I had already planted tomatoes, lettuce and parsley.  Then night before last, the temperature dropped to 29 degrees and froze it all.  So I planted it all again yesterday.  I will get to see everything pop out of the ground twice this year.

Life.  In the end, that's what we want.  Eternal life with God.  What a wonderful thing it is to have the promise from God that he is going to give it to us--if we are his children.

Romans 8:14-17a  "For as many as a led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You have not received the spirit of bondage (sin) again that causes you to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption,  whereby we cry, Abba, Father.   The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.  And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

How do you get it?  John 3: 16  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.  That whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

When I was young, my mother would always make me an Easter dress.  It would be special.  Something really pretty.  When she finished it, we would hang it up for me to wear to church on Easter morning.  And then my job was to polish my shoes.  When Easter finally came, I would put everything on and feel brand new.

Easter should always make us feel brand new.  That's why we say we have "New Life" when the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our body and soul.  Easter is the celebration of Christ conquering death.

Easter is the holiday that Christians celebrate.  It really has no meaning to other groups of people.  They may celebrate bunnies, or dyed eggs, or Easter baskets.  But the meaning of Easter is Jesus.  He rose from the dead to make intercession between us and God.

The commercial world would steal the meaning of things like Easter and Christmas from us.  There is so much stuff to buy and so many ways to make us want things.  Through the years as a Bible teacher I have always told my classes that:

1.  You want it when you are twenty
2.  You charge it when you are thirty
3.  You pay it off when you are forty
4.  You wonder why in the world you ever bought it when you are fifty
5.  You get rid of it when you are sixty
6.  You really don't want anything when you are seventy

Except an Easter dress and some black patent shoes that don't need to be polished.


 

With Easter coming up, I've been talking about the results of Easter.  That is, Christ living within us.  When that happens, you get Godliness.  I'm sure you have all known Godly men and women.  I was so blessed to have Godly parents.

My dad was a deacon, and the deacons had been challenged by the pastor to have daily devotions with their families. He tried.  First at supper. But with all the activities that my brother and I were involved in, he could never get us together at the same time.  But he kept at it.  Early in the morning.  Right after he got home from work.  There just wasn't a good time.

After weeks of trying, he gave up on getting us together in the same place at the same time.  So, each evening when everyone was doing homework, getting ready for bed or whatever, he would pick up his Bible and start reading out loud, wandering from room to room.  His voice would fade in and fade out as he walked around the house with the Bible in his hands.

I don't know that I got much out of the words that he spoke, but I will never lose the memory of my father, with the Bible in his hands, wandering through the house reading to us.  What an example of a man who was faithful.

Proverbs 20:7  "The just man walks in his integrity:  His children are blessed after him."

Deuteronomy 6: 6a-7 "…and these words…you shall diligently teach to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when  you lie down, and when you rise up."

The secret is to keep trying.  Don't give up.  Your children will be blessed.

Paul spoke of God's glory this way: Colossians 1: 23a, 26-27  "If you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and you aren't moved away from the hope of the gospel…Even the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but is now made known to his saints:  To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

First, God was in the tabernacle, then the temple.  Now that the price for sin has been paid and the veil in the temple between the mercy seat and us has been torn from top to bottom, God is now with us.  His abode is our bodies.

The Jews had the tabernacle and then the temple.  The mystery of God, his glory among the rest of us (Gentiles)  is  the Spirit of God within us.  We are his temple.  Paul said:  1 Corinthians 3:16 "Don't you know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"

Paul also gave a warning in the next verse. (17) "If anyone defiles the temple of God, God shall destroy him:  for the temple of God is holy, which temple you are."

When God breathed his Spirit into Adam, Adam was filled with the Holy Spirit.  But Adam disobeyed God and was punished.  And all of us since then are void.  No Spirit.  But God had a plan to return his Spirit into us through Christ.  Christ paid the penalty for your sin.  For my sin.  He cleansed us and made us a fit habitation for God to live in.

1 Corinthians 15: 45, 47  "…it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul: the last Adam (Christ) was made a quickening spirit…The first man is of the earth, earthy;  the second man is the Lord from heaven."

God's plan is to dwell in us.  The choice is up to us.  We have free will.  But if we choose Christ, our hope is glory.  That is what Paul said:  Christ in you, the hope of glory.

That's glorious.

Moses built the tabernacle, Which was a huge elaborate tent that they struck and took down every time they moved while they were in the wilderness.  Remember, they were wandering around after escaping from Egypt.

Solomon built the temple.  When you read about it, the description of it goes on for chapter after chapter.  Gold, gold, gold.  Imported workmen, People with special skills.  It was huge.  The ark of the Covenant was given an elaborate place of honor with the mercy seat above it.

In the Old Testament, when all the sacrifices were done, and done exactly as they were supposed to be done, God would come down and fill the tabernacle, or temple, with his glory.  It is described as a type of smoke that was like fog.  The people could see when this happened.  They bowed before Him.

Luke describes God's spirit, or glory, as tongues of fire when it came down on the disciples in the upper room after Christ had risen.

But Paul, well he truly was a scholar.  He spoke of it this way:   2 Corinthians 3: 18 "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."  And in 4: 7a "…we have this treasure in earthen vessels…"  The temple of the Lord is now us.

He meant that as others look at us, it is like looking through glass-- they see the glory of the Lord within us.  "Let your light so shine before men that they may glorify your Father which is in heaven."  That's what "from glory to glory" means.  Our glory points to His glory.

The Bible is replete with the word "Glory."  In the Lord's prayer, Jesus ends by saying "…For thine be the kingdom, the power and the glory forever."

You hold God's glory.  Shine a little.

I have been reading the Old Testament.  Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, The Kings, Chronicles.  It has been like wading through quicksand.  All the genealogy of everyone from Adam for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.  I didn't know there were that many people on record.  It is an amazing feat to know all of your ancestors and have it recorded.  Kind of like the book "Roots" but much bigger.

And wars!  Everyone was trying to kill everybody else.  The human suffering was horrible.  I got to see actual carvings of one of the wars that was described in the Bible when I was in London.  It was fascinating to see something that was carved way before Christ was born that had actually been described in II Chronicles.  They say that even archeologists who aren't believers have started carrying The Old Testament in their hip pockets because it is so accurate.  (We already knew that.)

But the most fascinating topic to me was the building of the temple by Solomon and the process of offering sacrifices.  It directly affects us.

The process of sacrifice was elaborate.  But was always done by spilling blood.  Some lamb had to die for their sins.  No less sacrifice would do.  And then it had to be repeated over and over again.  It was a tremendous burden on the people to stay right with God.  And even then, God looked on their hearts to see if they were just going through the motions so that they could go out and sin again.

That is why the sacrifice of Christ is so huge.  God decided to become the sacrifice.  He decided to shed his own blood once and for all.  No more yearly sacrifices.  Just accept him as your sacrifice and you are covered.  And He came to live in the temple of your body, not the temple of Solomon anymore.  He changes your heart.  You no longer go through the motions so you can go out and sin for another week.  He changes you.  I personally don't want to sin and embarrass God.  And when I do, I can't live with myself until I tell God I am sorry, and that I won't do that again.  And mean it.  He knows your heart.  He knows if you are sincere or not.

II Chronicles 7: 14 "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

When I started writing this blog, I was only going to write about the book of Genesis.  Specifically about the creation and all the theories that are out there.  Yesterday I got my latest issue of Discover and a "new" theory is being proposed by Gemma Tarlach, a biologist.  He says that Darwin got it all wrong about natural selection and that evolution came about through molecular genetics.  He says that Darwin never proved the occurrence of natural selection in nature.

I find it interesting that everyone keeps coming up with these new theories.   All of them skirt the God factor.  The fact dinosaurs were for the most part wiped out about sixty-five million years ago by (most probably an asteroid) and that animals appear suddenly on the scene is a problem they haven't solved yet.  There wasn't enough time for all these animals that "we" have to evolve.

I say all that to say this:  The Bible is a reliable book.  It's truths never change.  When I started this blog, I told you that there are three Biblical points that people will use to try and destroy your faith.
1.  The virgin birth.  That's the one point that you can't argue.  We believe it was true because the rest of the Bible is remarkably and totally accurate.
2.  The creation story.  Go back and read my blogs on creation and the truth of the Biblical account.  I did my degree in zoology and pre-med so I'm not just whistling Dixie.
3.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ.  If you want to read the accounts of the resurrection, read the last chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Read Acts and Paul's account of the risen Jesus.  Read about all the people who saw him.  It is an account of an event in history that was viewed by more people than any other personal witness account that is on historical record.

We are going to celebrate Christ's resurrection soon.  Eternal Life.  That is a gift that God has given us because Jesus gave himself up for our sin and conquered death.  He is risen.

What a beautiful thing a life can be.  Ken's life was just beautiful.  He never complained.  He was always satisfied with whatever he had.  I only remember one time in fifty-seven years that he said he wanted something.  A coat that he could wear when he wasn't in uniform.  (We were living in Virginia and it was very cold.)

He didn't see himself as anything special.  Everyone else did, but he would just say, "Well, I guess I've got them fooled."

He taught a Bible class for over forty years.  The last few months he was alive he would use every last ounce of his strength to get up for church.  "I want to go to church," he would say.  He loved the men he had taught.  He truly loved God.

When he was flying, he spent hours before a flight plotting vectors and flight plans to get to his assigned target.  You couldn't do your job if you didn't know how to get where you were supposed to go.  You needed to plan and design the unchartered flight path.

One of the last things he said before he died was, "I don't know exactly how I'm going to get there."  He knew where he was going, he just didn't know the flight path.  

John 14: 2-3b, 4,6a "In my Father's house are many mansions….I go to prepare a place for you.  and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  And where I go, you know, and the way you know… Jesus said to him, I am the way…"

Ken knew the "Way", Jesus.  He was just wondering about the flight plan, "How you get from here, to there." Aren't we all!!!  That's faith.  He lived his life on faith.  My privilege was to live my life with him.

I had taken care of everything in our lives for so long that when Ken finally retired from the Marine Corps, there was an adjustment.  Problems?  I could take care of it--whatever.  That was a very false assumption.  God had been giving me grace to 'manage' and I didn't even know it.  Besides that, all the financing came from Ken's salary.  I hadn't had to get a job.

But when I had heart surgery, when they removed the walls of my heart and damaged the timing mechanism, I was released from the hospital helpless.  They got the tumor, but they destroyed my ability to take care of myself--or anything else.  Ken and my children had to take over everything, including our one year old.  

And I was a guinea pig for medical science.  Since nobody had lived from this surgery, everything they did to keep me going was trial and error.  The drugs made me hallucinate horribly.  After I finally got to come home, after I would go to sleep,  I would wake up suddenly yelling, screaming that the ceiling was falling down.  My rational mind knew it wasn't true, but I would be standing in the middle of the king size bed with my hands on the ceiling trying to hold the ceiling up.  Ken would  tell me everything was alright, it was okay, to lie down, that the ceiling wasn't falling.  He tried to assure me.

But night after night I woke up terrified that the ceiling was falling. Then one night, when I was standing in the middle of  the bed, holding the ceiling up, he stood up beside me, raised his hands, took hold of the ceiling and said, "I've got it sweetheart.  Lie down and go back to sleep.  I've got it."

He loved me even when I was mentally and physically shot.   I could depend on him.  After twelve years of marriage, I didn't have to depend on myself anymore.  That was the moment in my life that I realized how blessed I was to have someone who loved me unconditionally.  He was going to be there for me.  He wasn't leaving.  He was going to hold my ceilings up.

Ephesians 4: 32a, 5:2 "…be kind to one another, tenderhearted,…walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us as an offering…" 

 

Our lives wound down.  We bought a house, a first for us.  Ken drew a circle with a radius of sixty miles around Pryor (as an acceptable commute) and got a job as an instructor at NEO College teaching Sociology.

"Why Sociology?" I asked.  "I'm just curious, why not something to do with airplanes? Why didn't you take the job United Airlines offered?"

"If I wanted to drive a bus taking people from point A to point B, I would have done it on the ground where there is something to see," he answered.  "Flat and level is not the kind of flying I am interested in.  I want supersonic that you can roll and summersault and chase clouds.  And I've been there and done that.   There's no way you can afford to fly like that unless you are in the military.  So, I am going to do something different."

And he did.  For twenty-eight years he changed lives.  Twice elected by the campus students as the outstanding teacher.  He would walk into the classroom and say, "I believe there are only two approaches to teaching interaction between human beings (sociology).  You believe that there is a God, which affects everything else.  Or, you believe that there is no God which does the same."

"I need for you to know that I definitely believe that there is a God and whether I mention his name or not,  it will directly affect everything I say this semester.  I am a Christian. You have a right to know where I am coming from.  If that bothers you, you probably need to find another class because I am not going to change that opinion.  There is a God."

Exodus 20: 1-3,  "And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out to the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  You shall have no other gods before me."

 Matthew 10:32 "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven."   Those are the words of Jesus.  Ken was always bold when it came to telling others that truth.

The month that Ken finished his Master's, I went in for surgery and they told me I was pregnant and had to have a medical termination.  "You can't carry this baby," the doctors told me.  "Your life is in danger."

"I'm not pregnant," I told them.  It had been ten years since our last child was born.  I was all through with babies and diapers and lack of sleep.  All of our children were in school.  I had finished a degree in Pre-Med and had plans to go to medical school.  But God had a different plan.

I had learned my lesson about unexpected pregnancies when I was pregnant with our third daughter.  God decides when life begins.  I explained to the doctors that I had lost a child twelve years earlier, and that I wasn't going to lose another one.  "I will carry this baby."

"You can't," they told me.

I did.  But to tell the truth, it did almost kill me.  I had a tumor inside my heart.  It was robbing me of oxygen and strength.  I had open heart surgery after Jonathan was born.  Everything turned out fine in most ways.  I didn't get to go to medical school. I didn't get back on my feet for years.  But he was worth it.  I wouldn't change a thing.

He was like a toy.  We just passed him around.  It was a lot of fun.  I teased him after he was grown.  "You didn't learn to walk until you were three or four because someone was holding you all the time."

But I was done.  No more babies.  It's a bad thing to lose your health.  But there are a lot of things that are worse.  I am thankful for my four children.

1 Thessalonians 5: 18  "In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."






Ken went on to teach an NEO for twenty eight years.

I have left out so many stories.  Some funny, some horrible.  But life is zillions of minutes, most of them routine.  As Ken always said about being a single seat fighter pilot, "It is hours and hours of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror."

After he retired, he went on to get a degree in Aerospace Studies at Oklahoma State U. (with a 4.0--I told you he was smart), and a Masters in Sociology at Tulsa University.  He had gone there on a football scholarship when he graduated from high school.  As he put it, "I went to play football and have a good time."  I think he must have done both because at the end of one semester he had a grade point of 00.04.  He didn't go to class.  Someone must have given him a D or it would have been 00.00 He was out of options so he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

The registrar asked him (when he applied for entry to the Master's program,) "Are you the same person that went here over twenty years ago.  What happened?"

"Twenty one years in the Marine Corps," Ken answered him.  "It makes a difference in a person's life."

After he enlisted, the Marine Corp did something very rare.  They opened the door to flight school to enlisted personnel if they could pass a college graduate equivalency test, and could pass the flight physical.  (You had to be in a certain height range.  If you were too tall you would lose your knees when you ejected.)  Ken passed both.  A few of them did.  Fewer still could pass the written exams in flight school--there was a ton of advanced math.  He was commissioned.  As he put it many times when he was teaching young people in our church, "It changed my life."

Ecclesiastes 9: 10  "Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."

Ken finally came home, thank God.  Vietnam wasn't like Afghanistan, or Iraq.  In Vietnam, the pilots flew multiple sorties over and over all day.  They didn't have drones.  They didn't have a lot of things.

He had to serve four more months before he could retire, so he came back to Oklahoma in January on leave, but then had orders to go to El Toro, California.  "I think it would be best for the children if they stayed in school here.  I hate to move them again.  So, why don't you all stay here and I'll go do the four months and come home on the weekends when I can get a plane," he said.

I argued with him, but he didn't want the three kids to change school in the middle of the year.  So off he went to California.  He had a hard time saying goodbye again.

He had been gone a couple of days when I called a conference.  The four of us sat down at the kitchen table and I said, "We are going to take a vote.  How many of you would rather move to California for the next four months?"  Four hands went up.  "Then it's settled.  Go pack your backpacks with three changes of clothes and a bunch of books to read and we will leave in the morning."

I threw every thing we might need to "camp out" for a few months in the trunk of the car.  And we headed west.  I called Ken, "We voted and you were outvoted.  We are already in the car on our way."

You could tell he was pleased.  He had wanted to do what was best for the children concerning school, but was very lonesome and glad we out voted him.  "Come on," he said. "I'll get housing and have one of the guys fly me to Albuquerque.  Meet me at the airport and I'll drive the rest of the way with you."

It was an excellent decision.  We had a blast for four months.  Beaches, free tickets to Disneyland for returning vets and families.  Sometimes, you have to have a family conference and take a vote.

Ruth 1:16 "…Entreat  me not to leave you, or to return from following after you: for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge…"