I have always found what people say interesting. People will say the most amazing things. And what is funny is that sometimes they don’t even know they said it. I started listening to people to see what they were saying. People talk about most anything. Sometimes they just like to hear their own voice. But if you listen to what is being said you will make the most interesting discoveries. For the longest time my wife had to pry words out of me. I wouldn’t generally talk about anything. One reason was that I didn’t want to share what was happening to me. I am a very private person. You may ask why then am I writing this blog. To tell you the truth, God told me to express myself and what I have learned in my life time in this blog. It took me a while to really begin to say things openly. I will tell you another truth, if you listen to a person talk within 5 minutes, they will tell you their life’s history. You know there is a difference between hearing and listening. Everyone hears, but not everyone listens. You have heard the expression that you are condemned out of your own mouth. You need to try listening to people. You will be amazed at what you hear. When you speak, it isn’t the amount of words that you say. It is what you say that counts. As it says in the bible in Matthew 12:34 “….for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” (KJV).

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I like to believe that I am an even-keeled man. I started my life as a happy go lucky kind of guy. I would rarely ever get angry at most anything. I remember an incident in high school. This classmate started an argument with me but I wasn’t going to get upset. He did it to show off to the rest of the class. He wouldn’t stop and kept on going. He started pushing me. I turned to him and without a word and pinned him by his neck against the wall. Then to my surprise I lifted him on the ground by his neck. He shut his mouth and stopped as I let him down. I still wasn’t angry with him but I scared him and the class. No one tried to get me angry after that. As in life circumstances change on a regular basis and you either go with the flow or fight against it. If you fight against it, be prepared to fight. Because things will happen to you like hurt feelings or anger. As I fought against circumstances, my anger grew. Until I was just the most disagreeable and cantankerous person you would ever meet.  This is where I met God. He came into my life and changed me forever. The first thing He did is to remove the anger from my heart. It felt so good not to be angry all the time. Everything changed. I saw the world and people differently. I could actually see people for they really are which is lost and hurt. As the bible says in Matthew 11:6 “And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.” (KJV).

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It is funny what you remember through the years. If it was traumatic you might remember it. If it was pleasant, you tuck it away to remember in the hard times. Our minds have an unusual way of putting things in order. The priority of the day is first, then a smell or sight will stimulate a memory. Sometimes a memory can be very strong. And sometimes you can’t remember why you do things a certain way. Our memory began back in the womb. Most of the time people can’t remember being born, but they remember a feeling. When a baby smiles or laughs or cries, they remember the feeling. And that feeling generates an emotion that stays with us the rest of our lives. You have meet people who have had a hard childhood. They are apparent to the world. Looking on Facebook, there is a bumper crop of babies. They are cute and cuddly and a lot of work. Do you know why God gives us babies? It not only to populate the earth, but it is the complete us. I have found that my 4 sons became my teacher. And I had to have children to complete my life. As we go through this life, we are ever learning to be human beings. We are the only species on this earth that takes an entire lifetime to learn what to do. As it says in the bible in Matthew 9:36 “But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.”

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It is Labor Day weekend and college football started. The 2 teams I follow lost today. One team, the college I attained, was dragged from one end of the field to the other. They lost big. But things are trying to get back to normal as soon as possible. With all the flood business, it is good to have a distraction to try and keep your sanity. I find that people down here are on edge. It is hard to face reality when it goes against you. But you put on a straight face and walk out into the world. I feel for the people who lost everything. One town the water was over 10 foot. And it covered most of the town. My In-Law’s house flooded before our house did. They were living out of a suitcase about 2 weeks before I was. So when people down here act the fool at a football game, I understand. I am going to bar-b-que Monday for Labor Day. Small things in the big picture of life, but necessary for us to carry on. Trying to get your life back is a normal thing. And everybody wants to be normal. So I wonder what is normal in God’s economy. How does one act normal in God’s world. The only thing that I found, after years of study and walking in the kingdom, is faith. It is believing and trusting God with your life. This is normal in God’s world.

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Do you remember the first time you saw something and it was the most amazing thing that you ever saw? That is called wonder. We say that things are wonderful. Or we say it was amazing. What ever happened to that feeling we used to have? Has the world driven it out of us? Has so many bad things happened to us that we have lost the wonder of the world? We grow up and wanted to be sophisticated adults. Knowing everything and not being surprised by anything. But what we have lost is what we need in this world. The northern lights of Alaska are amazing. The color of a sparrow is wondrous. The beauty of a Lilly is spectacular. Every sunset is gorgeous and new every night. Jesus was preaching and people were crowding around him. The disciples were keeping the crowd at bay. There came some children to see Jesus. The disciples pushed them away. Jesus saw this and rebuked the disciples. Jesus had the children to come and told his disciples never to do this again. Jesus said for if you do not become as one of this children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The life of God is a wonder.

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It is funny that from the beginning of my walk with God, I had to see it first in action. A lot of people had things to say about God, but talk is cheap. I wanted something real and in front of my face. Before I was going to commit myself, I had to see a real demonstration. And I didn’t mean just one day. I had to see how real God was. So I set out to find out if He really was there and interested in me. I was working for my cousin years ago, in the nursery business. I went to pick sod from a farm. I was my birthday. I told the owner of the farm that it was my birthday. He said he had something for me. I didn’t even know the man. He gave me a book about Corrie Ten Boom. She was a Christian from Holland, who was in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII and survived. A few years later, I met 2 men who had a business and invited me to join them. We would met at a cafeteria that one of the men managed. Before we would start the meeting, we would have coffee and talk. It was funny that they would always talk to each other about what Jesus was doing in their lives. I did business with these guys for 3 months before they asked me to go with them to church. I went and have never been the same. God proved to me that He is real and loves me personally. As it says in the bible in 1 John 1:3-4 “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” (KJV).

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I don’t know if you can remember this commercial, but the jingle went like this: plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is. You would watch as the 2 tablets disappeared into the water. Then you would drink the water for an upset stomach. It not only claimed that it worked fast, but it did. Sometimes I wish that things would work as fast and as simple as the remedy. This past 3 weeks have been physically and mentally draining on me. I am speaking about my flooded house. It will be at least 3 more weeks before we actually know what to do. It seems like a weight on my shoulders that grows bigger every day. The community around us has been wonderful. They have responded to not only to my family’s needs but to the other people who have flooded homes. Some people still can’t get into their houses because of the water. Over 200,000 homes have been flooded in Louisiana in August alone. Not counting the businesses that were flooded. This flood has affected over ½ million people. It is like Hurricane Katrina all over again. I know that my faith in God has sustained me in this disaster. I don’t ask why me. I know that this is a trial that I must go through. It is a crucible of my faith. Will I stand or will I walk away from God? Trials or the testing of your faith are never easy. They are simple but never easy. As the bible says in 1Peter 1:7 “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:” (KJV).

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I was speaking to the person I bought the product to kill the mold and bacteria in my house. As you know south Louisiana had a non-hurricane hurricane. It formed right over south Louisiana and dropped about 40 to 50 inches of rain. My house flooded out when the rivers started backing up because there was so much water. It took a week to get back into the house. We cleaned it and stripped the walls to 4 ft. We pulled all the insulation out too. This friend was telling me that we had to fog our house. And we need to spray up into the walls that are left because of mold. We also have to spray the attic and inside the A/C ducts and return. Mold is insidious. It hides in places you wouldn’t even think. Mold is much like the evil in this present world. You think you have it under control and it pops its ugly head up. We have a certain amount of power in our lives. We can do things or create things with much skill. But to change things that have gone wrong, we don’t have the power. When it is our fault, we will ask for forgiveness from the person. Hoping they will accept it and go on. But it doesn’t always work that way. Wars are started this way. The only way I could forgive people was to be forgiven by God first. Then everything else was easy. When you know that God has accepted you into the kingdom, everything else is simple but not always easy. There are hidden dangers lurking about seeking someone to destroy.

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If you live long enough you will see a changing of moral certainty. Young people are always pushing the boundaries to see what is there. As they grow up they see that their parents aren’t as dumb as the once thought. When men and women came back from WWII, they wanted some normalcy in their lives. After the horrors of war, they want things to be simple and standardized. When the baby boomers came along, they wanted different things. Their music changed and the older generation couldn’t stand it. Then Vietnam came along. The young people pushed the boundaries right over the cliff. Then came drugs and free sex. Then young men and women came back from one of the most vicious wars America has ever fought. It was no holds bar. The young people pushed even more with no regard for life. In 1973, the Roe VS Wade decision of the US Supreme Court allow the killing of unborn babies. With no respect for life, the murder rate rose in this country until it is a national epidemic. There is a whole generation of American people who aren’t there. The world started coming to America because there was spaced for them to live in this country. The next generation of young people raised on computers, video games and cell phones, don’t see any moral certainty in this country. So who is supposed to provide this moral certainty? Is it the politicians in Washington or the cult in Hollywood or the media who couldn’t tell the truth if they had too? Where do people turn to hear the truth about this world? If Christians don’t stand up and speak out, we will lose what little we have in this world. Not preaching in the churches, but going out into the world. Where the people are living and dying.

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Having a small or minor part in anything doesn’t mean that you aren’t important. In the bible there was a man who was a servant of the king of Israel. Actually his job was plowing the fields. If God hadn’t chosen him to do a work, no one would have ever heard of his name. His name is Obadiah. He was a friend of Job and an Edomite. He moved to Israel with he converted to Judaism. He wasn’t a very educated man but he loved the Lord. Obadiah was in the fields plowing when God call him to do this work. God gave him a vision of his old home, Edom. If you don’t know where Edom was, the capital city was Petra. It was a kingdom built by Esau, Jacob’s brother. They built their kingdom in the middle of a mountain range. For 900 years they were quite successful. But somewhere in there they turned against Israel. Where the Assyrians captured Jerusalem, the Edomite’s helped. God brought retribution upon them. People who they thought were friends turn on them from within. They were slaughtered to a man. No Edomite was left. Obadiah was given this vision which came to pass. He served God as a prophet the rest of his life. This unimportant man became important in God’s economy. No one has a small part in the kingdom of God. In God’s eyes each person is important to Him and His kingdom.

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