"Don't Blink"

When I first heard the song, "Don't Blink", I thought, "That's kinda cute, what can happen as life slips by." But as I think about it more, I realize that I have often wondered what I was really doing when our kids were small. Somehow, they slipped through those early years while I had my eyes in the books of learning, and only in my spare time, did I really play with the kids. Here I am in early retirement and I see what my life has been. I see my grandchildren starting to get married to begin the same stage of life that went by me all too fast. It now seems like a long blink- well I had my eyes open part of the time. I am glad now that we have pictures to refresh our minds of what was happening along the way; probably over 40 volumes of them.

But what is even more important is what we put into those years. Do we have only memories? Or do we leave a difference in the lives of our children, grandchildren, and with all the multitudes we met on the way to aging? What difference will it actually make that we were here for some decades? It is trite to say we get old too soon? Yet even then few youth can imagine that.  I hope this song of Kenny Chesney helps fix our minds on the fleeting nature of life, encouraging us to keep our eyes open as life flies by. 

And do more than stand on the sidelines watching it speed by. Rather filling each day with 24 hours with living activity, making the world a better place as we get older. I was asked by a psychologist once what I my goal of life is. I said that I want to reach retirement with no regrets what I have done with my life. That was almost 30 years ago. Following the call of God to a life of service in Belize, I have never regretted it for a moment. Now the challenge for the future, is to come to the end of my journey to look back with no regrets of my present life. Enjoy the song.

Kenny Chesney - Don't Blink

Forgive Me Again
Forgive me for saying this, but as I was sitting at Walmart today again, waiting until my lovely and energetic wife  is done shopping, I meditated on why it is that we cannot compromise on the length of time we want to spend shopping. I came to the conclusion that a compromise is a blending of two matters- two durations in this case. Some mathematical facts gave me insight on why we can't compromise on duration for shopping. I want to be there for a finite duration of time. She for an infinite duration. What is a compromise of infinity and finiteness? THERE IS NONE. FINITENESS CAN BE A SUBSET OF THE INFINITE BUT INFINITY CANNOT BE A SUBSET OF THE FINITE and is thus UNCOMPROMISABLE. Thus, I as one of the finite preference must yield to the infinite in the mathematical reality of duration, and wait with patience and understanding until she has used up a finite duration within her apparent infinite duration of shopping.

Who Am I?
After being treated with much appreciation for about a week each with two daughters' families, I searched for some kind of appropriate self-image, so special it was to be among them both individually and as a group at times. A designation that came to me was that of “Respected Patriarch”. I was more than just one of them, sometimes withdrawing and resting and sometimes just among them as they engaged in animated family talk. Sometimes when I spoke, they listened with real interest what I might have to say as a matter of wisdom. When we prayed the next morning in coming home, it was with great love and intercession as we remembered the second generation who are making so many decisions of life- vocation, education, partners, and commitment to Kingdom life and service. I am committed to give to them all I can as the elder they look to for inspiration and example.



 At Aldi's store this morning it seemed that most of the women shopping were so very big. I just felt it would be a bit dangerous to be married to one of them as they could easily throw you out if they got vexed at you. Or such a wife could pushed you out of bed effortlessly, whether inadvertently or advertently. I should be grateful for the gift of smallness in the one with whom I share life.

 But Seriously,
Like the confetti falling from the windows of a high rise apartment along a street in a parade so that everyone is experiencing the expression of love from above; and sometimes something so definitely falls on a marcher that he feels he must be the target of a personal confetti thrower, so it is at times when our eyes are open to the innumerable bright spots in our lives where God blesses us with showers of his love and sometimes it is so personal that it seems he had his eyes on us precisely when the blessing falls on us and we are especially awed by all the blessings that also fall like rain all around us.  [This is in the context of our retirement setting where we are blessed with family, friends, finances, and a beautiful home on a large lot of trees and gardens and lawns where we can relax indoors and enjoy the outdoors endlessly.]

June and July Blogs

June 10

My First Glimpses of Heaven

June 12

Me and Daudy from “My Life story”

June 15

Seventy Things For Which Life is Too Short”

July 8

Healing Love

Love Is...

July 10

Chuck Stoner Visits Nicaragua video

July 14

What is My Worst Sin?

Me and Brother Norman

Comments welcome at lornoah@comcast.net

                                               ME AND BROTHER NORMAN

Brother Norman was my teacher at Clinton Christian Day School the first three years of its existence and my last three years of school. It was his first teaching job. I remember how he stood before us on that first day and told us with a little nervousness that he was a new teacher. He was friendly, down to earth, and a serious Christian which showed every day. Friendly yes, but not a buddy. He was the teacher, and his friendly dignity never broke down.

He told us only a little of his family, being one of 15 children in Montana, far out West. He was married to a local young woman. But I new little more. I knew that he became a deacon at some time. He was a Mennonite and I was Amish, so we met little outside of school functions.

I remember how he could prod students to study. He was consistent in a memory program of Scripture. Every Monday he would assign a group of verses. These we practiced during the week and by Friday we wrote them. There would be anything from 5 to 14 verses. We memorize the book of I John and the 4 chapters of Romans- 5-8. The longest stretch for a week was John 1:1-14. Then there were many other individual verses. Did we memorize the Sermon on the Mount? I don’t know, but it has always been very familiar. It did not seem laborious for me.

Brother Norman had a way of saying something that would always stick with me. Some were sayings like, “Wait (weight) is what broke the wagon down”, (possibly as an antidote to causing delay) which I repeated to my children for years before they fully comprehended it. He always said that there are always two alternatives to every problem, something I recalled many times when my family thought there was not even one way out of a dilemma. He even claimed that he can prove that a hill was a lazy dog: “a slow [p] up.”

He had other ways to make a point. One time when I had trouble getting to class after recess, he had me and another student with the same problem write an essay on “Choice, Not Chance, Determines Human Destiny” I don’t know whether the other student took that seriously, but I did and wrote up a page of my thesis. He had a reason for making me do it.

One time, perhaps soon after the above essay, I’m not sure, he summoned me into the office and asked me point blank, “Are you a Christian?” I was probably about 15 at the time. It didn’t help to say that I hope so, or wanted to be. He wanted to know if I WAS then; or to make me think on that issue. I don’t remember how that conversation turned out but I never forgot the question. He had that kind of concern and when I responded then at Brunk Brother Revival invitation, about that time, I knew the salvation Scriptures a little better than the person ascribed to help me reach a conclusion. Brother Norman was really concerned about important matters.

So he was also concerned about self-control. When I discovered a girl sitting near me in the class room who was willing to listen to me anytime I said something, he noticed that. He had us stay in one recess and allowed us to talk all we wanted to, which wasn’t nearly as much fun as in school time. I suppose his watchful eye spoiled everything!

Brother Norman really fostered a love of music in many of us. He led in chorus practice and in many school programs. He noticed my bass harmony singing and once asked several of us to sing a song for the group to help them hear what it should sound like. We sang many kinds of music, of course all religious. He made choir singing enjoyable for all.

I always admired Brother Norman for his persistent tutelage and concern for me both in my education and Spiritual development. His character was so consistently Christian and his dedication to teaching so clear. It was then a bit of a disappointment that when I left school, I also lost familiar contact with him. When we would see each other at school functions, I admired him more than he considered me a special person. He was special to me. Perhaps I was a problem to him some times, or he couldn’t be close to all his students. But to me he was a noble mentor, one of the most significant teachers I had in my first nine years. I will always remember Brother Norman as one who went before me when I needed a model for my life.

                                             What is My Worst Sin?

(Or What is God’s Desire for Christians Living in an Affluent Culture in a World of Desperate Needs?)                                                     

                                                         

Many people have their favorite sin to hate. When I was young the most unforgivable sin was murder. We didn't expect to see anyone in heaven who had killed someone. Later it was adultery that was hardly remediable. Today for some it is harming the environment. Probably child abuse is near the top, or is it the bottom of worst sins followed closely by domestic abuse, especially men against women.  For evangelicals, homosexuality ranks high. For the liberal it is capital punishment and war. For the conservative it is big government and doubt of the literal truth of the Bible. The Singer Keith Green emphasized that judgment will be based on “what they did and didn’t do” with reference to the poor and unjust victims of society. For some in Belize, where we lived for years, about the worst sin was to get angry; immorality was understandable to them, but anger called into question one’s Christianity.

With that prologue, I suppose I have no right to claim any favorite sin to hate of my own. Perhaps we can safely say that all of the above sins are serious enough to warrant our attention. Perhaps on the positive side, it is good that at least someone is drawing attention to the serious faults of mankind. On the negative, it is a serious fault to regard any sin as worthy of our total focus so other sins can then be lived with more comfortably. It is true that Biblical teachers such as Paul and Jesus had a whole list of sins that they did not seem to list in order of seriousness. Anger is listed there with immorality, but so also is greed; and covetousness is in the Ten Commandments along with murder. But anger and greed and covetousness can be rationalized away easier than murder and so seem more “gray”. So we have many other gray sins that we can reason away so as to accommodate to our culture, religious and personal values and be at peace with these sins we hate less.

I suppose my favorite sin to hate is the way Christians can do just that- interpret Scripture in a way so that they can justify largely what they want. This goes across the board, from selfishness to greed, materialism, and militarism. Many Christian will also steer from sexual sins but totally ignoring Jesus’ words about “loving the [global] neighbor as one’s self,” permitting them to live on an economic level 50 or a hundred time that of starving millions.  They rightly hate abortion, but ignore the thousands of already born persons dying each day of hunger and lack of simple medicines. They believe in evangelism but hoard wealth in the form of mansions, vehicles, and security- rather than to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. They support the causes of God with a token stewardship of the tithe and perhaps a bit more and then spend the rest on comforts and cultural ideals. Yes, this is my favorite sin to hate, but I believe it agrees with God’s word and his Heart as He reveals it by the life and teachings of Jesus. The Western church needs a cultural revolution where it once more  responds to the words of Paul, not to let the “world” wrap it self around [it], but to be transformed by a new mind which follows Christ instead; where we are dead to sins of cultural conformity. Our usual favorite sins to hate are easier and more comfortable to avoid, but the “gray” ones call for a radical transformation of our style of life. Being “dead to sin” also means to be unresponsive to the affluency sins that the church and polite society accept as well as what is rightly rejected.  Again, our economic standard of living should not be determined primarily by a "Christian" culture or a compromising church, but by Christ and the will of God for all of us as responsible stewards of wealth. What would God really want to do in the wide world through the resources he has given to his people? [Again, Keith Green said, “It is not God’s fault that the lost are not being reached.”] Hasn’t God given the church the economic resources to carry the Gospel to a lost and impoverished world, which the present church is using too much on itself, all of us Christians doing our part in this?

Chuck Stoner Visits El Salvador 2013

                                                      Healing Love 

She was standing there on the outside stairs, halfway up, crying out her heart with a hurt much too big for that small two year old heart. From out our front door 15 feet away, I was watching her for a moment; then as our eyes met. I raise my hand and pointed right at her to fix her attention, without any expression on my face. She gazed through her tears, no doubt wondering what would happen next. As I walked toward her, her crying began to subside. I took her little hand into mine and our eyes continued focused on each others’ as I held her hand. I kissed it with eyes meeting between several kisses. I visualized God’s love coming to her and strengthening her heart. I continued thus for a bit, as my eyes were filled with love and emotion, almost crying, conveying to her the love and compassion God has for her. She drank it all in, seeming to get a fill of love, confidence, and strength. A small dog came up to her on her right side and a larger dog on her left, with their noses coming close to me. On my level, I began to back off as she began to focus on the dogs and began to stroke one of them and breaking out with a smile at them. I withdrew and she in a moment scampered up the stairs, no doubt running to her mother, or at least to play in the house, having no doubt experienced the love of God that enabled her to face her little life with new strength and hope. 

                                                                    LOVE

                                                                 Reflections*

Love is accepting people in hope they will learn to understand God’s love and respond to him. 

Love is listening to the small boy who everyone looks down on because he is so small for his age.

Love is picking up the toddler whose mother just ignores him, and holding him close, smiling to him as he smiles back. Earlier love had broken bread with him, not being sure if he will get it all into his mouth or drop some on the floor.

Love is tolerating a lot of kids and putting up with their noise because that is who they are.

Love is listening to loud music, not because anyone is deaf, but because some think it sounds so much better that way, though not to the one who tolerates it out of love.

Love is popping corn, and popping some more, until hungry boys are content.

Love is learning a new boy’s name, laughing with them when his friend misnames him in sport.

Love is telling a singer that our boys love his singing, and one had requested it be played.

Love is listening to a friend and feeling a special tie that had been tested by anxiety hours before and found most durable.

Love is walking to the store in the dark with a small family, and buying pampers for the toddler and then giving them enough money that they can eat a snack before they go to bed.

Love is echoing feelings of a new Belizean who is frustrated with the disrespect of boys barging into their house to use the bathroom without asking, and then make a lot of noise banging on his truck.

Love is requesting the translation of a favorite Garifuna song as the singer’s son feels complimented that you want him to do a favor, learning what the song is about.

Love is hearing the grief of a spouse who can’t find something, suspecting theft and just accepting her frustration, even though suspecting it was just mislaid.

Love is giving your last change to a young man who is slow of academics, but full of feeling.

Love is gratefully eating your ethnic soup after others have been served, and you relish the peace within.

Love is imitating our Heavenly Father who cared for us from birth, or before, and has always given us a sense of his loving reach to us, desiring our fellowship; ever patiently hoping we will learn to love others as he has loved us regardless, endlessly, continuously

Love is signing off for the day with a grateful heart that God has given so much love to people this evening through his servant.

*Reflections after a busy evening, January 12, 2006 when we had a home center in Belize for kids, youth and adults dropping by, one evening when things were busier than usual and God was present to give extra strength to persevere with his gift of love.