I can see them in my mind’s eye. They came so close to the truth but were sidetracked by something or someone. Hardness set in and now they are completely callused to the truth.

Winston Churchill said it like this, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.”

Paul in writing to the Galatians put it as follows:

Galatians 4:16

Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?

Galatians 5:7

You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

Jesus made the statement that He was the way, the truth and the life and no man could come to the Father except by Him.

Give it some thought.

Gary

I was so vain when I was in high school that I wouldn’t wear my glasses. That habit is not a good one while playing baseball. It was a hit that sent the ball into the heavens. I was right under it as it was coming down to earth. That ball just brushed the top of my mitt and hit me between the eyes. Did that event make me start wearing glasses? No, I was too proud and concerned how I looked before the girls.  That miss, however, didn’t impress the girls much.

What a warped view of life teenagers can develop on their own. They can have, like me, a very shallow understanding of what is most useful. Most believe the universe revolves around them. It’s my environment that needs fixing and not moi. (That’s me in French.) I got a C in French my sophomore year of high school, so I’m pretty good at it. Because I said that, you realize I’m still working on the vanity thing.

If only I had known what God had to say about the subject, how much easier life could have been, and maybe I could have been a good ballplayer.

Ecclesiastes 2:1

I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure”; but surely, this also was vanity.

He had it right. How are you doing with that subject?

Think about it.

Gary

In 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (No, I wasn’t alive then).  Years later, in our time, Bob Seger described this phenomenon in “Running Against the Wind.”

These individuals both are describing life as a hard pull which doesn’t get easier with time. Bob sings, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” Fortunately, we can’t forget those events that we wish never happened, because they help keep us between the shores as we journey to our destination.

The Bible describes this thought as follows:

Psalm 39:4

“Lord, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am.

Life is short and stuff does add up, but in the economy of God “all things can work together for good” Romans 8:28.

Think about it.

Gary

There’s an account of Israel’s journey out of Egypt when they were trapped between the most powerful army on earth and the Red Sea. You talk about being in a real pickle; that was one. The Germans would say they were in deep kimchi.

I’ve never experienced that kind of terror and apprehension in such an insurmountable situation, but I had many a mess where I cried out to God. Do you know that God says the same thing to me as He did to Moses?

Let me put it in the contemporary Gardner vernacular of Bible interpretation. “Get off your can, quit crying and move forward.”

Exodus 14:15

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”

I like a story with a good ending. You know from having read Exodus, this had a good ending.

Think about it.

Gary

“You Gave Me a Mountain” (sometimes credited as “Lord, You Gave Me a Mountain”) is a song written by country singer-songwriter Marty Robbins during the 1960’s. I only heard it sung by Johnny Cash.

It was about an individual who never had a break in life and he said as much to God. I acknowledge that God does give us mountains but never one that can’t be climbed.

Caleb was promised a mountain full of opposition by God, but that didn’t deter Caleb from asking Joshua for it when the time came.

Joshua 14:12

Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said.”

The problem is never the mountain or the opposition; it is the fact we just don’t want to climb it.

Give it some thought.

Gary

My grandson came home for three weeks last summer.  Good friends of ours lent us their side by side to tour the trails of northern Maine. (He drove.) Being a seventeen-year-old, he wanted to try the limits of this recreational vehicle made for rough country. I had to hold the reigns tightly because it was borrowed. Had that machine belonged to me, I wouldn’t have cared if he wrecked it, as long as neither one of us had been hurt.

Borrowing something brings with it tremendous responsibility as can be seen with the account of the borrowed ax in Scripture:

2 Kings 6:5

But as one was cutting down a tree, the iron ax head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, “Alas, master! For it was borrowed.”

My very farsighted offspring suggested that next year we would buy our own ATV, so grandfather wouldn’t have to talk like Miss Daisy.

Think about it.

Gary

I was a three-year-old and my fifteen-year-old sister lifted me unto the seat of the pickup to travel to the local store. A kid could stand up in a vehicle in those days before car seats or even seatbelts were required.  She wasn’t going to take me in, which I didn’t much appreciate, but I’m sure she had her reasons.

Not long after she went in, a teenage boy came out, opened the door, lifted me out and placed me on his shoulders to bring me into the store. In those days a kid going into an establishment that had candy, chips and soda pop was like going to heaven.

I don’t remember any more than that about the experience.  It seems like a short time after that I was home alone with my mother and she was crying. The only thing I could comprehend was that the young boy who had been so good to me had died in a jeep accident. It was my first experience with the heartache of death involving someone you knew couldn’t be replaced.

There are two types of events that will leave a long-lasting impression on an individual’s mind. One is when someone has been kind to him or her and the other is when someone has not been kind.

There is a commandment given to us as Christians that carries as much weight as the Ten Commandments:

Ephesians 4:32

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Think about it.

Gary