I love the "Gaither Gospel Hour."  The old songs touch me.  We just don't hear them anymore, and some of you--and I--grew up on them.   They had real words with real messages.  And more importantly, they had four part harmony.  The younger generation doesn't share my feelings.  They have a new kind of church music that they are growing up on.  Saturday, the Gaither Hour featured Tennessee Ernie Ford. (Sixteen Tons, and whatta you get...")  I heard songs that I hadn't heard in fifty years.  He had such a beautiful voice.

Ernie was a big name back then and was asked to do a TV show.  He said he would--if he could do a hymn at the end each night.  They balked.  So he refused, and was willing to give it up.  But the producers relented--and Ernie sang his hymns.  They became the feature of his show.  America loved it.  I remember watching him with my family every week.

Four part harmony is a thing of the past in our churches.  I miss it terribly.  Now when we sing a song, the words are on the overhead screen--with no notes.  I am not a soprano, and can't follow along because it is too high.  I'm an alto.  I wish for songbooks.  That I can hold in my hands.  With four parts.  I like to sing.  I like to hear someone singing basso.  And tenor.

I call the new music "Blah, blah, blah" music.  There is very little message.  Ken called them "7/11 songs.  Seven words, eleven repeats.  However:  the younger generation will someday remember these songs just like I remember the ones I grew up hearing.  Things change.  We have to change with them.  The thing we need to do is not complain.  It doesn't help, and it doesn't glorify God.

A friend gave me an old, old songbook.  I opened it to play some of the hymns on my piano, and was surprised to find that I had never heard most of them.  I bet my great-grandmother was just as
nostalgic about the "new music" in her day as I am about the "new music" today.   I guess we just need to "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord..." Psalms 100:1

I got my eyes tested yesterday and they haven't changed in the two years since I had cataract surgery.  Still 20/20 for long distance.  That's good.  It is amazing what modern medicine can do.  I can see.

In three more months I will have to get a new pacemaker.  I don't have any heartbeats of my own any more.  I have a great heart, strong, healthy, no cholesterol,  etc.  It just doesn't have an AV node to tell it to beat.  I lost that when I was 34.  Forty-four years ago.  I should have been dead.  But once again, modern medicine came to the rescue.

I could go on and on about the near medical disasters in my life.  But I've made my point.

However, there are times when medicine or surgery won't fix the problem.   We should always call on Jesus for healing.  Most people say that we should do that first.  I say, do both.  God has given us wisdom, but He still decides.  He has the final say.

When I got breast cancer, it was aggressive and had spread.  The minute I found out, I started praying.  I also immediately went to the doctor to schedule surgery.  Then I left for London on a trip that had been in the making for months.  And started chemo the day I got back. No use wasting a trip with your friends because something bad has happened. That was 7 years ago.  I was healed by the grace of God.  But I still see the doctor and take my meds.  I'm not stupid.

Whether it is modern medicine or surgery, the outcome is still in the hands of God.  He has a plan.  We are just a small piece of it.  "If you will, you can heal me..." is what the leper said.  I think that is a good way to pray.  I've certainly lived longer than the doctors expected.  But they don't get to decide.

"...thy kingdom come, thy will be done..."  The Lord's prayer is full of things that are hard for us to pray.  But it works out better if we do.  Praise God.

You would think that there was nothing else going on in the world except primary elections. We don't get the news much any more.  We get opinions, arguments and advertising.  Blah, blah, blah.

The word "debate" is out the window.  I would love to hear someone discuss how important this election is--on the subject of Supreme Court appointees and how the future cases coming up before them will be affected by whoever is elected president.  I am upset by their ruling that corporations are now recognized as one "person" when corporations are obviously a collective of people--with billions to spend to affect the outcome of elections.  One man, one vote is now out the window.

And I would like to hear a realistic debate on Planned Parenthood (if that is what you support).  If they stop offering abortion--which is the problem between the two sides--maybe there could be discussion.  As long as the country considers abortion legal, there will be opposition from Christians who will always believe it is murder.  And from citizens (other than Christians) who have moral objections to their taxes being used this way?  What ever happened to compromise?

Am I a Republican?  Am I a Democrat?  No, I am a Demoblican.  Or a Republicat.  I'm to the point I don't know what I am.  I do know this, I am sick of the bickering, and name-calling, and insults.  Would someone please discuss the issues.

I want to honor the scripture: "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers...For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil..." Romans 13: 1a, 4a, and it gets harder every day.  When I look at past presidents that were good for the country, both parties were represented.  Hate leads to a stalemate.  Nobody is going to get everything they want.

We need the help of God.  "Thy kingdom come..."  I can support that.

Rabbinic literature was filled with contempt for women.  They were not to be saluted, spoken to in the street, instructed in the law or receive an inheritance.  A woman was to walk six paces behind her husband, and if she uncovered her head in public, she was considered a harlot.  (Sounds a little barbaric, like Muslim women in the middle east today.)  First thing every morning , many Jewish men prayed, "Lord, I thank you that I was not born a slave, a Gentile, or a woman."

The third miracle involved a woman.  Peter's mother-in-law.  Christ healed her--and she got up from her sick bed and immediately went about her work. To Jesus, a leper, a Roman soldier, and a woman, were real people, in need of real help.   They were not second-class citizens.  The Jewish priests may have been biased against certain classes of people, but Jesus made no such distinction.

He must have infuriated the Jewish legalists.  At the same time Jesus was throwing convention to the wind, concerning certain classes of people, he was doing miracles that couldn't be explained.  No wonder that the Jewish legalists considered him to be a demon.   If he wasn't a demon, then He must have been from God.  And that was unacceptable.

"...the Pharisees said, He casts out devils through the prince of the devils."  Matthew 9:34   They couldn't explain it, so they condemned Him.  He had power that they couldn't explain.  But the people loved Him.  He gave the people something that they didn't have.  Hope.  You can't condemn hope.

Today, we make the same judgments that the Pharisees did back then.  We do not want to encounter the contagious sick, the destitute, or people who are different from us.  We build monuments to hide in called synagogues, temples, or churches.  And there is nothing wrong with meeting to worship in beautiful places, but perhaps we need to rethink how we are trying to reach the lost and disenfranchised.  They don't come to church.  We have to go to them.  With hope.

Sunday's lesson from Matthew 8 was over three miracles that Jesus performed after he finished the sermon on the mount.  The first was the leper, who called out to Jesus (probably from the side of the road since lepers were not allowed in public around people)  and said, "If you will, you can heal me."  He didn't ask for healing, but for the will of Jesus.  And Jesus said, "I will."  And He did.  If it had been me, I would probably have asked that Jesus heal me.  But the leper was humble in the presence of Christ.  We usually add, "Thy will be done," to our prayers as an afterthought.

Jesus then sent the leper to the Temple to receive the blessing of the priests and to be declared clean--which was required by Jewish law.  I think that Jesus did that because there were those who said that Jesus was performing miracles because he was possessed by a demon.  By receiving a declaration from the priest that the leper was clean, it put those accusations to rest.  The leper was approved as clean by the Jewish priests, the Mosaic law, and by God.  Not by demons.

The second miracle involved a Centurion.  A Roman and a Gentile--both hated and declared unclean by the Jews.  To enter a Gentile house was forbidden.  To speak to them was looked down on.  So for this Centurion to speak to Jesus was very unusual.  And he called Jesus "Lord."  That was very, very unusual.  The Romans controlled the Jews.  But the Centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant--who was not there but was back in the Centurion's home.   He told Jesus that he understood authority, because he was in authority over many men.   For a Gentile to grant that Jesus was in authority over sickness, that Jesus could just speak a word and the servant would be healed amazed Jesus.

Jesus said, "I have not seen such faith as this in all of Israel."  This healing was a public declaration that Christ had come to heal all of us.  Not just Jews.  And the servant was healed--not by his faith--but because of the faith of the Centurion.  "...pray for one another, that you may be healed.  The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." James 5:16

Becky Bacon's husband Joe Mike is a pilot.  When he and Ken met each other, it was an instantaneous friendship.  They had both been pilots in Viet Nam, and the four of us fit together as friends like hands in gloves.

Ken quit flying after he got back.  Joe didn't.  He flew Lears  for a private company that chartered.  He also played the part of Wiley Post in the annual Will Rogers celebration in Claremore--flying in with a patch over his eye in full character.   He sometimes flew as as a charter pilot for Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood who live on the edge of Claremore.

One night, at two in the morning, there was a knock on our back door.  "Who is it," I yelled!!  "It's Franklin and Eleanor," was the answer.  I knew Joe's voice, so I opened the door, and there he stood in his pilot's uniform with a Styrofoam crate in his arms.  "What in the world are you doing?!!" I asked him. "It's the middle of the night!!"

 "I've brought you Franklin and Eleanor straight from Maine," he said.  I took the crate and lifted the lid and there were two big lobsters crawling around inside.

"I know you love lobster.  I just landed and wanted to bring them to you all right now so you can ice them down." 

"And you named them!  How can I eat a lobster that has a name," I asked him.

"They'll be tasty," he answered.

Friends are wonderful things.  Only Joe would bring me lobster at two o'clock in the morning.

Once when Becky and I had gone to London, the Muslims were protesting in the street that we were on.  They had formed into a marching group--kind of like a parade--and were carrying really explicit anti-American signs.  "Try not to look like an American," she told me.

Now how do you do that.  American tourists just look like Americans.  The first give away is a fanny-pack.  We left, but had to be rerouted a couple of times by the police because there were protests in other areas.  It was interesting.  I had never seen anything like that.  I'm used to parades being nice things.  This wasn't.

Another time, when we were taking a train from France to Czechoslovakia, (which was after the Velvet Revolution) the Czechs and the Germans had a train they "shared".  It stopped at the border and the Germans got off the back of the train as the Czechs were coming on the front in uniforms (and with guns) asking for our passports.  That was unnerving.  I was really sick with a sinus infection--probably a little bit delirious-- and I wouldn't give them my passport.  "I want a receipt," I told the man with the gun.

"Mom," Becky kept telling me, "Give him your passport."  But I didn't want to do that.  I didn't think I should have to do that.  "In God have I put my trust:  I will not be afraid what man can do unto me."  Psalms 56:11  "Give him the passport," Becky hissed.  I finally did.  The gun and the crossed arms of the soldier finally convinced me.  Maybe a little afraid is okay.

Becky has been overseas 3 or 4 times a year for the last 28 years and sometimes I went with her so we could take one of her boys while she worked (for Conoco) and the boys and I played--hopping trains, exploring castles.  But all good things come to an end.  The last time we were in Rome, I told her that I was never going to Rome again.  The cobble stone streets were too hard to walk on.  I am glad I had the opportunity to do all that.  It was fun.