Forgiveness

 

Are you perfect?  No, I didn’t think so.  Relax, neither am I.  But why do we correct our kids and prod and push them as if we wanted them to be perfect?  Do they get the feeling that we think that they should be perfect?  I hope not.  I, for one know that I was not a perfect father, but I was the best father that my four children had.  And they would rather have had an imperfect father who loved them than a perfect father whom they could never live up to.  When I was in physical science in 1963 at Edgewood high school, I came into class one day to see everyone looking exceptionally nice.  Then I felt that sinking feeling that you get when you have forgotten that there was a field trip that day.  Oh yes I did!  But Mr. Archer, God bless his soul, took it all in stride.  We marched down to the secretary’s office and he called my mother and got verbal permission for me to go.  Then he stopped by the teacher’s lounge and bought me an orange crush drink to go with the sack lunch that I brought to school every day.  Mr. Archer paid for the drink out of his own pocket.  Then we got onto the bus and I had a great day visiting Peach Bottom nuclear plant.  Mr. Archer made it no big deal, but to me it was a big deal.  He smoothed over my forgetfulness and made me feel cared for.  And that’s a good feeling.  I know.  Hey, we should be kind and forgiving to others because the day will come when WE need forgiveness and mercy.  Paul said in Ephesians 4:32, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”  Did Jesus Christ forgive you?  Then go and do likewise to your fellow human beings, for we will all need forgiveness sooner or later.

Coca Cola

 

In 1968, I worked at Coca Cola in the afternoons loading retail trucks.  I went to college in the mornings and worked the afternoon shift.  By the way, when I graduated, I had no student loan debt, but that’s another story.  In the spring and summer months, retail stores sold so much more product that the drivers emptied their trucks by early afternoon and came back for another half load.  Then they returned that evening after a long day.  But us loaders still had to refill their trucks for the next morning.  We had forklifts for some of the order, but we had to build pallets with odds and ends of the various drinks that Coke sold.  Up front in the factory, we could buy tokens at ten for a dollar to get drinks out of the cooler.  But often, when they were running the little returnable bottles of Coca Cola on the line, a worker would give me a bottle right after it was bottled, and wow were they good!  The liquid was bottled just at the freezing point to maximize the carbonation.  One of the operators told me that I would get tired of drinking Cokes.  But I never did.  I could drink ten a shift, five days a week, all year long!  Hey, are you like that about reading God’s Holy Word, the Bible?  Do you love to read the Bible?  Or has it become mundane?  Are you over the thrill of reading the precious words that God Himself wrote?  I hope not!  David said in Psalm 19:9&10, “… the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”  Are the Words of God sweeter than honey to you?  They should be.  Never get tired of reading the Bible.  Hey, read the Bible today with renewed reverence and awe.  Respect it and love it: it’s good for you.

Granny Whitely

When I was growing up, it seemed to me that Granny Whitely had always been old.  But she was old in a good sense: she was old enough to get respect from everyone else, but young enough (at heart) to have fun with.  I remember Granny Whitely taking out her false teeth and chasing us grandkids around with a broom pretending to be an old witch.  She never had a bathing suit; she would wear old pants to go swimming in.  She called them “pear-shaped”.  At the time I didn’t know why she called them "pear-shaped", but later I realized that “pear-shaped” was a spoof on her figure.  Granny got a Social Security check each month, and she got another check from the federal government as a widow from her husband who had died on the job in the coal mines in West Virginia.  In order to get her coal miner’s pension check each month, Granny had to mail in an affidavit that she was still alive.  So, Granny would sign the paper and let one of us grandchildren countersign the paper.  We felt very responsible when we signed the government document.  No one in Washington D.C. knew that we were just ten or twelve years old.  That was my introduction to bureaucracy.  Like Granny Whitely, I want to leave a legacy of fun.  I want my five grandchildren to know that their Granddaddy Whitely loved them and that he loved God.  Solomon said in Proverbs 16:31, “The hoary (gray) head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”  May all that see this gray head know that I love the dear Lord because He is my crown of glory!

Dairy Cows

 

When I was about fourteen years old, my dad took me to work every Saturday in Churchville, Maryland.  I worked for an old lady who had a fifty-acre estate.  I worked every Saturday while in school and forty hours a week in the summer.  She paid me twenty dollars a day.  Good money for a teenager back then.  On the way to work, we passed a dairy farm of Holstein dairy cows.  The farmer had acreage on both sides of the little country road.  The cows grazed in a large field on one side of the road and were milked on the other side of the road.  Occasionally, on the way home, we would have to wait for the cows as they crossed the road.  About milking time, the cows would gather near the gate in the field.  The farmer would open the barnyard gate, cross the road, and then open the field gate.  The cows would calmly go through the gate, walk across the road, and walk into the barnyard lot near the milking parlor.  But that’s not all.  The cows knew which of the three herds that they were in.  When the farmer opened the barn door to the milking parlor, only herd “A” cows would walk into the milking parlor and each cow knew exactly which one of the forty stalls to go to!  When they were finished being milked, they would exit another door and the next forty cows in herd “B” would come in to be milked!  Each cow knew her herd and each cow knew her stall.  Each cow knew when and where to be, and each cow knew when to come in and when to go out.  Paul said in I Corinthians 14:40, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”  If cows can be calm and orderly, why can’t we humans be calm and orderly?  I think we need to visit the farm in Churchville, Maryland, don’t you?!

Toothpaste

 

There is a fine line between frugal and stingy.  And I may have crossed that line.  My toothpaste was running low, so I bought a new tube.  But trying to save money, I kept squeezing the old toothpaste tube past when it was reasonably empty.  I kept getting just one more squeeze out of it.  This has continued now for 10 days and counting!  It seems that there is just a little left as I squeeze and squeeze.  Hey, the good Lord’s grace just seems to go on and on and on as well!  God’s grace never seems to end!  I sang, “He Giveth More Grace” last Sunday evening at Calvary.  James 4:6&7, “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”