Baseball Cards

When I was ten years old, I collected baseball cards.  I wasn’t a serious collector; I just bought them for the bubble gum and then put the cards in an old cigar box under my bed.  So, when I would need a “motor” for my bicycle, I would pull out the cigar box, take a baseball card, fold the edge with a half inch margin, and use a clothes pin to clip it onto the fender bracket of my tire.  As the spokes spun by the flapping of the baseball card made the “motor” noise for my bike.  Ingenious.  Or so I thought.  But now, as I think of those old cards, I cry thinking of how much they would be worth today.  But back then, a noise on my bicycle was more important than a baseball card collection.  Solomon said in Proverbs 8:5, “O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart.”  Kids just don’t know the future.  The wisdom to know what something will be worth in fifty years is just too much for a ten-year-old to know.  How good it is to know that we can trust in the wisdom of God.  I know that as a young boy of six-years-old, I made a good decision: I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior.  Best decision I ever made!  Even better than if I had kept all of those old baseball cards.  After all, it’s only money.

Green Beans

Yesterday I had a revelation as I was on the back deck pitting cherries.  Yes, that’s right, I was cutting beautiful black Bing cherries in half and digging out the pits so that my wife could make some homemade cherry ice cream.  I had to wash my hands five times before the purple stains were gone!  Anyway, my revelation was about how our lives have slowed down because of the Covid crisis.  I remember years ago sitting with my Granny Whitely under the spreading beech tree stringing and snapping green beans.  Some of you have never prepared green beans from scratch.  You thought that green beans came in a tin can.  But back in a former time, you picked fresh green beans out of the garden, pulled off the strings on both sides of the beans, snapped them into three or four pieces, and dropped them into a pot of cold water.  Then a generous hunk of fat-back bacon, cooking down for an hour or so, and it was time to eat!  There was so much wisdom shared under that huge beech tree by Granny Whitely.  I learned about life and love, and losses and the good Lord’s faithfulness.  Wonderful memories.  The apostle Paul recalled memories of his young protégée, Timothy learning Bible truths from his family.  Paul said in II Timothy 1:5, “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.”  When we have a Godly family, we can stand on their shoulders and accomplish more for God.  And if you don’t, you can start a Godly family for your children.

Rat Poison

It was 1985 and we were living in an old three-story stone and brick house in the Brainerd area of Chattanooga.  We lived on the middle floor with the kids’ bedrooms upstairs.  The house was on a steep hill, so the basement was totally underground on the front end but opening out by a garage door on the back end.  Our washer and dryer were in the basement, so we spent a lot of time in the basement.  My wife announced that there was a smell in the basement.  I nosed around but couldn’t find anything.  As days went by the smell got worse.  A reward was offered, but kids were not interested in finding a “stinking” reward.  I narrowed it down to the washer area.  I thought that maybe a leak in the washer allowed mildew to build up, but my idea didn’t get any traction from the rest of the family.  I finally upended the washer and found … a dead rat.  I had set out poison to exterminate unwanted visitors to the drafty basement, and the poisoned vermin had died looking for water - dripping from the washer.  Hey, as I discovered that rat carcass, I saw how God perceived my righteousness: As putrefying bandages!  The prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags …”  The best we can come up with before a holy God is nothing.  The best we have is like an old Band-Aid soiled with nasty oozing all over it.  Our righteousness is like that nasty rat carcass!  Hey, God is so holy that we can’t even begin to imagine His purity!  But, thankfully, God can redeem us and make us as pure as He is pure!  Thank you, dear Lord, for your salvation!