Wisdom of The Week

   “I don’t need to go to church. I see God in my garden…I can worship God on the golf course…I worship Him in the mountains…”   I’m sure you have heard those excuses that people often use for not being part of a local assembly of believers. (Hopefully you haven’t used them!). Now, it is true that we can and should worship God while we work in our garden or play a round of golf or hike in the mountains, but God is not a plant nor is He the beauty of a golf course or the mountains. He is the Creator, but we are to worship Him, and Him alone. We are to appreciate, but not worship, His creation.

  Some folks are nearsighted, their eyes focusing clearly on what is close by. Others are farsighted, their eyes focusing on more distant objects. Then there are a few of us who have both going on, with one eye focusing up close and the other into the distance. Several years ago I started experiencing double vision, usually getting worse later in the day as my eyes got tired. It made it very difficult to read, to play softball or tennis. I mean, how do you know which ball to hit!  I do recall that I got more out of the 4th of July fireworks that summer, though! 

We have a rather large vegetable garden, about 40′ by 100′, with a seven-foot fence around it to keep from sharing all the produce with our resident deer herd.  Just inside the fence, and all way around the garden, we have daffodils and tulips. It had been a few years since we dug them, so last fall we did so, and ended up with numerous wheel barrow loads of bulbs–thousands of them. We dug a trench and replanted with bulbs and also planted about a forty-foot row along our lane, but gave big bags full to as many as would take them. Lincoln County should be bursting in narcissus, daffodils and tulips this spring!        Bulbous plants, like daffodils and irises, propagate by sprouting baby bulbs off of a mature bulb. For a while those babies can grow right next to the mother plant and thrive. Some of the clumps we dug were so big that it took a shovel on either side to pry them out of the ground. As the clump of bulbs gets large, the new bulbs remain tiny and produce smaller and fewer blooms. That is why you are supposed to occasionally dig them, and divide them up before replanting. The wise gardener separates bulbs frequently to insure big, beautiful blooms, and there are always plenty of extra bulbs to share with neighbors and friends.

 We live in northwest Montana in the midst of the Kootenai National Forest with trees all around us. When we were in junior and senior high school, a large portion of the folks in our community were employed in the wood industry, with some 1500 working at a large local saw mill. The U.S. Forest Service was another large employer, and a major task was working out timber sale contracts and building logging roads. Now we have no sawmill and the U.S.F.S. spends much of its time working on Environmental Impact Statements and dealing with numerous environmental groups (“Tree Huggers”) that wish to shut down all logging and get rid of the roads in the forest, making it all a wilderness area. Our sports teams here are still the “Loggers,” but now only a relatively small percentage of our work force is involved in the logging industry. A number of folks in the community wear T-shirts that have a picture of a stump on the front, and on the back it says, “Don’t Worry, I Hugged It First!”   

“Tree Hugger” is a relatively modern term with political implications. Some like it and some don’t. Did you know that the original “tree hugger” was one of the writers of the Bible as well as the third king of Israel? Solomon, in his Book of Proverbs, likened wisdom to a tree of life and guaranteed our success in life if we would “take hold of (hug) her.”  “She (wisdom) is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who hold her fast” (Pr. 3:18 NASB).

Although man was created on the sixth day of the creation week along with animals and like the animals are dependent upon God for life and breath, humanity differs greatly from the rest of earth’s creatures for we alone have been created “in the image of God.” In the Genesis account of creation we read: “And God made the beasts of the earth…and the cattle…and everything that creeps on the ground…and saw that it was good. THEN God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish…the cattle…and over every creeping thing’…And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:25-28). We were not a part of the animal world that somehow evolved to the top of the food chain (as taught to our children in public school as scientific fact), but we were made special, in God’s image, to rule over God’s creation. We were given the responsibility of stewardship over the earth and the life on the earth. We, being made in God’s likeness, are charged with the duty of acting as His agents in this world. We, as the Psalmist wrote, are the “crown” of God’s creation, not some ape-became-man over millions of years of evolutionary process. “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place; what is man, that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor! You made him ruler over the works of Your hands; You put all things under his feet” (Psa. 8:3-6).

 A year ago when we were on our way home from Oregon, we stopped, as we most often do, at a Taco Bell in the Tri Cities to have lunch. As we were eating, we couldn’t help overhearing the conversation at a table next to us where two young men were discussing spiritual matters. We introduced ourselves and told them we too were Christians and that I had just retired as a pastor of a little rural church in northwest Montana. It turned out that one of the men pastors a church in Pasco and the other, even younger man, was one of his associate pastors but felt that God was calling him and his wife to go and minister in Asia. We told them that we had some good friends who have been ministering in the same area for a number of years and gave them the names and mission contact.

On August 23, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr directed a peaceful march of 250,000 people who gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. to advocate for the cause of civil rights. It was before this crowd of protestors that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, challenging America to fulfill her promise. He said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.'”  In preparing for his speech, King penned one of the most eloquent defenses of the moral law: the law that formed the basis for the civil rights movement, and for all of the law for that matter.

 As we  witness the downward spiral of our nation on nearly every level, and the loss of more and more of our freedoms, especially those of Christians who want to live out their faith, we can’t help but wonder how we can continue being an influence as the “salt” and “light” we are to be (cf Mt. 5:14-16).  Whether it is in the public school classroom or in a business run by Christians who want to maintain their biblical world view in the work place, it is becoming harder and harder for believers to express and live their convictions without reprisal from governing authorities. 

Our son Grant and his family drove  to Libby from Oregon City to spend Christmas with us. At Thanksgiving, they had gone south to Glide (near Roseburg), Oregon to spend the holiday with the Finlays (Grant’s in-laws). On their return, their van started shimmying badly so they stopped at a Les Schwab dealer where they balanced and rotated tires and checked the alignment and sent them on their way. It started happening again so they found a Sears tire shop and had it checked out again. They were told all looked good and they should be able to safely drive the rest of the way back to Oregon City (a suburb of Portland). Well, it wasn’t okay and shimmied and shuddered badly, but they limped on home. They took the van to a Honda dealer. They kept it overnight, and one of the mechanics drove it to Salem to his home and back the next day–and it didn’t have any problems! (How often does that happen!). Well, they found a weak motor mount and replaced it–at a high cost–and thought they had it fixed. It didn’t cause any problems over the next couple weeks. But, as they were headed to Montana, about three hours into the trip the  van started shuddering again–quite severely. Grant called us and we checked with mechanics here to get some advice on what he should do. It was Sunday so there was very little open. They discovered that if they drove between 50 and 55 mph the shaking wasn’t too bad, so they set the cruise and had a long, boring ride to Libby. 

You’ve probably never been greeted with these words, or have you?  You’ve heard people wish you a “Happy New Year,” or a “Blessed New Year,” so, you really have been wished an “Asher New Year,” for the Hebrew word asher is translated in our Bible by the words “blessed” and “happy.”