Shade Tree Wisdom 5/26/09

Yesterday across this broad land many stopped to remember and pay tribute to those who have died in battle defending this nation. I knew, as do you, that there are national cemeteries, 128 of them in 39 states and Puerto Rico. I did not know there were also 20 cemeteries in other parts of the world. I knew about Flanders Field, in Belgium, but there are 19 others where over 100,000 Americans lie buried. And the Concert in DC reminded us forcibly that the aftermath for many is years of suffering rehabilitation, enduring painful hours to get back to normal life.

Yet we treat these freedoms so casually, and take so much for granted. This morning’s paper ran a sad story of the death of a football star, about to graduate from high school, looking forward to service in the Air Force to which he had been accepted, killed in a crash while a passenger in a racing car. The driver of which escaped nearly unharmed, of course.

The same issue carries a story of a justice of the peace ordering a girl who is a habitual truant and disobeyed a court order to attend class to wear a GPS device. She has to push a button and let people know where she’s at, and if she is where she is not supposed to be, an officer is to sent to haul her back to class! What ever happened to wanting to learn?

Maybe it’s the system. I heard of a supervisor visiting a class and reporting this. The teacher of a Math class mislayed her time piece and frets about the time. This supervisor overhears this bit from a boy in that class, ‘Who cares about what time it is, we’re learning something here”. Whatever happened to that?

Maybe its a sense of discipline that we are missing. A need to want to do, a feeling for duty, an obligation, a sense of right. An inner urge to carry out what lies at hand for us to do. A determination to see something to a conclusion.

The Letter to the Hebrews does just that, it brings us back to basics, it sets aside our own self and sets before us Jesus. Listen to what he writes in chapter 12, 1 Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. 2 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in."

The letter to the Hebrews reminds us of the faith that is clinging to what is not seen, and trusting in that to be true. So they who believed were tortured, hounded and often killed. Then he speaks about following this sample, and avoiding “the sin that does so easily beset us”. Did you catch that? “so easily besets us”. That’s the very nature of sin, it sneaks, it besets, it gets hard to shake, and it likes to follow especially bad examples [ for an example witness the rush of States to make ‘same sex’ marriage legal]. Peter speaks of the devil as a “roaring lion walking about, seeking whom he may devour”. And Paul calls this “spiritual forces in high places”.

That’s what we are living with, fighting, overcoming. And we can and do overcome, because, as Paul writes, “as many of you as are led by the Spirit are sons of God. Romans” 8,14.God, give us strength to do Your will as long as you give us life.
GPD 5/26/09